More than a decade ago, one of the regional grocery stores called their generic brand “Finast.” Around that time, I secured a new job which included a nice bump in salary. As Maria and I celebrated, I told her we could now buy “the finest meats and cheeses.” She replied, “Instead of Finast meats and […]
Back when the nuns taught me the Bible in grade school, I think I had trouble understanding some of the ideas. I completely got don’t kill, love your parents (even if that can be tough for a kid sometimes) and don’t steal, but the whole “do not covet” thing might have gone over my head […]
A few recent news stories have uncovered behavior by websites that shock and worry some people. First of all, we all learned that Facebook allowed researchers to mess with people, I mean “tweak the algorithm,” to learn how people reacted when they saw predominantly happy or sad news in their news feed. Then I heard […]
As I hobbled around last week because of a sore knee, I realized that this summer marked a pretty important anniversary. I thought about this because I tried to trace the root cause of my pain. I hadn’t taken a fall or had anything else serious happen. I had been exercising, but didn’t think overuse […]
A Pennsylvania bank made a critical error 25 years ago this summer. I want to peg Mellon Bank as the culprit since I lived in Western PA at the time, but I can’t be 100 percent sure. Whoever it was, they screwed up big time by giving me a credit card. I can remember getting […]
The signs that we would have a fantastic beach week with my family started early. First of all, we saw something we have not seen in ages on our ride down to the Delaware shore – the absence of lines at the Bay Bridge toll plaza. I almost didn’t know what to do when I […]
Sixteen years ago, I remember going out on a ledge. At the time, I was working as a sportswriter for this very newspaper. In fact, I was only a few weeks from the end of my full-time employment at 135 Baltimore Street. That job change and the risk I took are not connected. I sat […]
We all have those things in our life that slowly turn into obsessions. You know, the little daily routines that we do even though we know we might benefit from taking a break. Maybe you trim your nails a little too close or take an extra critical look at yourself in the mirror. As we […]
I have many great memories from growing up. For better or worse, a lot of them revolve around watching television with my parents and siblings. Back then, before everyone had their own screen, we would gather together to watch our favorite shows, especially M*A*S*H. I developed much of my sense of humor from watching these […]
Sometimes I worry about things. I worry my favorite TV shows will go away (that actually happened last week – not happy about it). I worry that I will miss out on a good joke. I worry that bad health things will happen to me. That last one can take up some serious brain space, […]