Husband & retiree. Former software developer, technical writer, & IT geek. Occasionally do weird & goofy things.
Biography
I grew up in an upper-middle-class slash upper-class northern suburb of Chicago in the 1960s and 1970s. I was odd as a kid. However, I was with the same group of kids from kindergarten through eighth grade, so I avoided the mess that middle school can be for many odd kids. I wasn’t weird, I was just Jack, as far as my elementary school classmates were concerned. Then high school came along, and a huge school full of strangers, and suddenly I was weird, and wrong, in so many of my choices and the way I talked about things and…
A guide to some of the things I’ve published on Medium and elsewhere.
Conversations with My Wife
Lessons & Observations
We have special creatures in our backyard, and yes, “special” is a euphemism
We were sitting on our back porch, all windows open (on a nice morning with low humidity, which is a big deal this time of year in south central Pennsylvania) when Deb got up and walked over to take a closer look at our bird feeder area.¹
DEB: Honey, can you come here? We may have a problem.
I was afraid it was a problem with Scarface, a neighborhood kitty who disappeared after visiting last year, but has now returned to visit our backyard occasionally.
But no, it was one of our, um, special birds. …
No singing at lunch, and sandwich choices
This is yet another chapter in a series I “finished” last year, but my characters kept talking to me. Then Roz Warren convinced me into fill out the series into a book, so now I’m working on that. Most of what I’ve been doing lately has been filling in gaps or adding to existing material, but this chapter felt like it could stand without the reader having just finished the one before.
Short summary of the story to date:
The series covers two academic over-achievers with limited social skills (aka “nerds”) in the last semester of their junior year in…
“In my own defense, I was left unsupervised”
Hey, did you know that you can buy hair color products that just spray on?¹ No more holding your head in the sink, or paying “I’m sorry, I don’t have that much on me, is there an ATM nearby?” at a salon for spot treatment? Apparently anybody can just walk in and get this stuff at Target.
I have the receipts to prove it.
ME: So, how bad is the damage?
DEB: You mean, what wonderful things did I do to my hair? Check it out:
“Who is Sharon?”
This is yet another chapter in a series I “finished” last year, but my characters kept talking to me. Then Roz Warren convinced me into fill out the series into a book, so now I’m working on that. Most of what I’ve been doing lately has been filling in gaps or adding to existing material, but this chapter felt like it could stand without the reader having just finished the one before.
If you do want to read the one before, it’s here:
Short summary of the story to date:
The series covers two academic over-achievers with limited social skills…
Thursday, September 2, 2021
The summer day
bright
with blue skies
deep shadows
no hint
no clue
that a candle has gone out
and we shall not see his light again
Naturally weird “In Five Words”
funky fungi
frequently flourish
festively
“How do you feel about holding hands?” “In general, or with you in particular?”
This is yet another chapter in a series I “finished” last year, but my characters kept talking to me. Then Roz Warren convinced me into fill out the series into a book, so now I’m working on that. Most of what I’ve been doing lately has been filling in gaps or adding to existing material, but this chapter felt like it could stand without the reader having just finished the one before.
If you do want to read the one before, it’s here:
Short summary of the story to date:
The series covers two academic over-achievers with limited social skills…
Naturally weird “In Five Words”
magically mellifluous
multicolored mixed-up
mum
We have a mum that we got last fall, which we planted just in time for the local deer to get autumn munchies. It was multi-colored, which we liked, but the problem with those is that it’s a one-time thing — the nursery uses tricks to make the flowers come out different shades, and when the mum dies off and grows back the next year it’s all monochrome when it blooms in the fall.
Or.
It comes back in yellow, bronze, pinky, off-white, and whateverthehell that color is near the top. In a nice compact ball, instead of all gangly like our other mums. And it started blooming in August.
Weird.
In response to Tre L. Loadholt’s five-word challenge:
