Just a quick note to my dedicated eight readers to let them know that as of late my Posting Mojo has been seriously compromised by the fact that, as it turns out, AT&T, my Internet Service Provider, has moved on, relative to networking hardware, past the modem they sent me when I first signed up with them, twelve years ago. It seems they can no longer support my trusty, ancient modem. The result, alas, is that for two days now I’ve been truly ... Read more
(This post is pertinent to yesterday’s Our Living Room: Why Pottery Barn’s Profits Will Be Up This Quarter.) Yesterday I was gratified to discover that a surprising number of my readers have fostered a distinct interest in my new home. Right on, sisters (and the occasional brother)! Up With Domesticity! Power to the plumber’s helper! Yes, we are able / to polish that table! One thing’s for certain / we love a good curtain! Let it never be said / that we can’t make a bed!... Read more
This is what you see in our new home when you walk up the stairs from our living room. You can’t tell because the image is flattened, but if you turned right (instead of walking into the pink wall), you’d then begin up the second set of stairs leading to the second floor. We wanted the wall of the stairway pink—and by Gumby, that’s the way our extremely intense Korean house painter, Eun Koo Kang, painted it. Eun Koo, as it turns... Read more
Yesterday a reader named Judy was kind enough to comment (in response to my post, A Working Class Zero, about having just moved to our new home) “Home at last. Good on you, John! [How exotic!] How much more unpacking do you have to do?” Well, Judy, here’s a photo of my new office, taken seconds ago: Let’s see what we see here: Books. I have about 50 cases of books waiting to go on shelves that are waiting to be bolted... Read more
Hello, reader! Unfortunately for you, the Interesting Quotient of this post drops precipitously from there. But I did want to take a moment before I spend 45 minutes rummaging around in boxes for socks and a pair of pants that over the weekend my wife Cat and I successfully moved into our new townhouse. It took four huge guys seven hours to move all our stuff from where we were to where we are. It was a blast working with... Read more
This morning I received an email from a “born-again” reader who chastised me for being a liberal. “Why are you still politically liberal since becoming a born again Christian?” he wrote. “I was once liberal. But when I was born again, I believe the Holy Spirit changed many of my views to those that I think are the norm for all who are indwelt by the Holy Spirit.” Hmmm. Okay. Well, for the record, I’m neither liberal nor conservative. Depends on the issue.... Read more
The letter below fell out of a book I was flipping through at a thrift store. Dated August 26, 1968, it’s from the Chairman of the Chicago Host Committee for the 1968 Democratic National Convention, welcoming delegates to that convention. If you’re old enough to remember the shocking violence of the 1968 Democratic National Convention, this makes for a fairly arresting document. If you’re not old enough to know about the 1968 DNC, I’d definitely recommend you learn about it. It took... Read more
The post you are looking for is included in HA!, a full-sized collection of five years worth of my best humor. If you are a Kindle owner and a member of Amazon Prime, you can borrow HA! for free, with no due dates. (If you don’t own a Kindle, here’s where to get one. To learn more about Amazon Prime—and to get a one-month free trial—go here. ) As per Amazon’s rules, content included in the Kindle Lending Library program... Read more
It’s 5:30 a.m. Here are some Random Thoughts zipping around the fringes of the muddled abyss that Little Sleep and Crucial Details have made of my once not-all-the-clear-anyway mind. I have to drop off my car for servicing at 7:45 this a.m. I will then go spend the day sorting through the mountain of books donated to my wife’s thrift store this week. I am doing this because the store’s volunteer book person took the summer off. I will fill literally... Read more
On Friday my wife Cat and I went The Escrow Office, and while a notary watched and directed us signed a trillion papers attesting to the fact that we really and truly wanted our new townhouse; that we could pay for it; that we would pay for it; that it was insured; that we wouldn’t sue anyone if it suddenly sank into the ground or floated off into space. Today all of that should come to its fruition, and we should at some... Read more
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