Eating Out of the Ice Box

Well, it finally arrived. Summer has descended on our little island and the thermometer has finally managed to stay in the 80’s for more than two days in a row. For me, that’s quite hot enough, thank you very much. It’s not that I haven’t’ experienced hotter living, I have. It’s just that loath it. [...]

And Then There Were None.

Harry Patch has died.
He was born in 1898, trained as a plumber at age fifteen, was conscripted into the army of Great Britain in 1916 and was the last living combatant of the First World War. There are three other men still alive who served, but Harry was the last who actually fought. A [...]

Cartoon Musicology

It happens with amazing regularity. At some point, my impressively large music collection works its way down to about seventeen songs that seem to loop in an endless… well… loop, I guess. I’m stuck like a needle in a record scratch and the same tunes go drifting through the house in a predictable pattern until, [...]

Over There

“So, I hear that you just got back from Venice?”
Tony, the woman on the other end of the phone line corrected me with the sound of wistful emotion coloring her voice.
“No, Florence. I was in Florence, Italy actually.”
By the sigh that followed the word “actually,” I knew the answer to my next question before I [...]

Slow and Steady Mows the Lawn

“Hey Dad, do you still have that old mower in the garage?”
The slightly guarded reply over the phone that followed was looking for more information. “Which mower do you mean?”
Action Girl and I had recently moved into our first house together after several years of apartment dwelling and suddenly I was confronted with the [...]