I've given up on my clock radio. It's about a dozen years old, and a few years ago the buttons for adjusting the time started wearing out. You'd press and press on them, but they wouldn't make contact with the, uh, contacts inside, and you couldn't push the time forward or backward with any degree of precision. After a couple of power outages and ( Read more... )

Someone in my high school's dusty past created a fake student named "Ort Smith" and his photo -- always taken with the camera facing the light so his face was in shadow -- showed up in the yearbook every year. I don't know exactly when he "attended," but the yearbook staff figured he started showing up in the 1970s, sometimes in the class sections ( Read more... )

State and federal tax returns for 2009 are done. TurboTax calls the result "great tax planning"; I call it "underemployment."

I'm officially declaring the dishwasher dead. Yesterday, my pal theseitz and I opened up the lower panels and discovered a bad leak where the intake and motor meet the underside of the tub. The machine is some 30 years old, so I ( Read more... )

Plans are underway for my 20th high school reunion, largely through Facebook.

Hrm.

Eleanor and I took the blue IKEA "POÄNG" armchair and ottoman to Philly AIDS Thrift's Pair o' Dice Garage furniture annex on Sunday. The change in the livingroom is remarkable ( Read more... )

"Ten immediate benefits" of the bill that will come into effect "within six months of the President's signature": Crooks and Liars blog

A brief summary of what's to come in 2011-15 and 2018: Reuters

1) One of the two local SuperFresh supermarkets has discontinued 5-pound sacks of whole-wheat flour. They carry only the 1-pound sacks of King Arthur flour: no other sizes, no other brands or generics. I think it's a conspiracy. They tracked my purchases through my savings card, and after I quit buying bread and started buying flour, they figured ( Read more... )

• rolled in to my parents' house from Saturday night's Joe Trainor Trio show at about 3:40 a.m.
  
  
• woke up about 7:00 by habit, got some water, then went back to bed because the 2:45 a.m. fries from the Golden Monkey were apparently still sitting in my stomach, completely undigested
  
  
• got myself up and dressed about 7:45 because Heather phoned and ( Read more... )

The Philly AIDS Thrift management gave its volunteers gift certificates to the store for Christmas. Did I spend mine on a suit that I could get re-tailored to fit me? Did I search the racks for a coat for Eleanor next winter? Did I reach for that unusual pair of glass vases that would have served as a lovely housewarming gift for boutellNo ( Read more... )

Job intarview today with a local office of the state government. I don't wanna go into more detail publicly, because who knows. I feel that the meeting went well, and I just fired off a thank-you e-mail to the dude I spoke with. (No, a letter through USPS isn't necessary; I heard about and applied for the job through e-mail, so no need to print out ( Read more... )