When Asking For Ketchup Earned Me The Side-Eye So I stopped at Wendy’s for lunch.  Went inside to eat in the dining room. I ordered my usual #6 combo (Spicy Chicken Sandwich [no lettuce, no tomato] with fries and a sweet tea). Then I moved left to let others order…

5 Sales Lessons Learned From Prom Dress Shopping With My Daughter There we were at David’s Bridal looking for prom dresses with our daughter at 10:30am on a Sunday morning.  We got there just as it opened. Now usually you’d find us at church at that time.  But our daughter,…

What a Disintegrating Suitcase Can Teach Us About Prepping for a Crisis We spent our New Year’s Day scrambling to buy a new suitcase. Why? Our daughter, Audrey, was leaving on January 2nd for a conference in Knoxville, Tennessee.  She needed a big suitcase to fit all her stuff in…

A Birthday Salute to Benjamin Franklin: A Man of Curiosity, Creativity, and Compassion It’s Benjamin Franklin’s birthday today! Well, it’s the first of his two birthdays. Why? Ben Franklin was born on January 6, 1706. And Ben Franklin was born on January 17, 1706. How’s that possible? He has two…

I Swore I Would Never Pick Up Dog Poop When we adopted Sadie three years ago, I swore the only thing I wouldn’t do is clean up her dog poop. I was wrong. You see me proudly holding a blue bag of her ‘leftovers’. How did I get to this…

“Don’t bend; don’t water it down; don’t try to make it logical; don’t edit your own soul according to the fashion. Rather, follow your most intense obsessions mercilessly.” Franz Kafka

The Disappearing Piccolo We won the eBay auction for a Gemeinhardt Model 4PMH Piccolo on Tuesday night.  My daughter Audrey was one step closer to holding it in her hands for the high school band marching season. The piccolo should arrive Monday.  That fit our plans perfectly.  We would leave…

“Lock up your libraries if you like; but there is no gate, no lock, no bolt that you can set upon the freedom of my mind.” — Virginia Woolf, A Room of One’s Own