When I started my new job a little over a year ago, I made sure to dress nicely on the first day. I wore a shirt, tie and jacket like I had at previous jobs. The jacket matched the pants I wore pretty well, so much so that people thought I had worn a suit. […]
A few weeks ago, we had a Christmas party. We started this tradition about a decade or so when we both left the full-time newspaper business. We look forward to the event every year and never have a bad time. Even with the bad weather – it rained all day this year – the 2009 […]
I enjoy making people laugh, especially my family. Several times a week, I express mock anger because Maria did not laugh at a joke or pithy comment. But even I have to draw the line when I know I’m being made fun of. When Bridget started school five years ago, we made an important decision […]
By now, everyone has probably heard about the Salahis, the couple which went to a state dinner at The White House without an invitation. If you haven’t, count yourself lucky. This couple joins the ever-growing ranks of people intent on doing whatever it takes to become famous for no real reason at all. They wanted […]
Most of the time, I enjoy change. I like experiencing new things and seeing what I may have previously missed. But there are kinds of change I don’t like. I recently discovered one of them when I had to travel for business. I hate changing time zones. I’m not talking about heading to Illinois for […]
I can do this. That’s the thought which went through my head when the spotlight first hit me on opening night for “Miracle on 34th Street.” I had never really acted before – other than acting like a grownup for the past 20 years or pretending I knew what I was talking about in general […]
I took a playwriting class during my junior year of college. For our final project, we had to write and present a one-act play. We didn’t have to worry about a set or stage directions. We just had to recruit some people to sit on the stage and read our play. So I convinced a […]
About this time last year, I found myself developing a character trait I did not like. Something that violated everything I learned growing up was happening. I found myself disliking television. At first, I wondered if I had changed. Had parenthood softened me? Did I develop too many outside interests? Had I become old? Then […]
A friend took me aside recently. She had watched two co-workers engage in an hour-long conversation about college football and wanted to ask me something. How can they do that? She really had no idea how two people could carry on a conversation about sports for so long. She admitted that she tried to get […]
Back when I used to work evenings, I watched a lot of goofy television during the day. One show I got to enjoy later than a lot of people was Mystery Science Theater 3000. If you haven’t even seen the show, it involves a guy and two “robots” who are forced to watch a bad […]