Category: hobby

  • Laundry List

    Well, here it is, my first day home after the termination of my position at the office. The whole day’s my own, yet somehow I have a whole week’s worth of work to do. Funny how that happens. “I wish I could pay you to stay at home and be my house husband,” My Darling Read.

  • Ex Libris

    I finally finished The Great Influenza, a history of the Spanish influenza pandemic. Very cheery book. Millions died, nobody quite got the hang of a vaccination, and the message throughout the book was “The next pandemic is on the way!” You should read it. Back home, I found a copy of The Right Stuff while Read.

  • bottled!

    Bottling the beer went off without a hitch – without a single hitch! That never happened before! I usually break the siphon, or spill a whole bunch of beer, or run out of bottle caps … something always goes wrong. Except this time. I shouldn’t feel like I’m waiting for the other shoe to drop, Read.

  • bottles

    Bottle washing, the down side of bottling your own beer. What you see in the photo is actually bottle soaking. I soak the bottles I’m going to put my beer in for about a half-hour in a sink filled with water that has a dab of bleach in it, to kill off any little beasties Read.

  • wrong wrong WRONG

    You are looking at one of the most colossal failures to come from my work shop in recent memory, or even long-term memory. I can’t remember the last time I did something this mind-bogglingly stupid. Every time I look at it, I want to drink myself into oblivion. Okay, not oblivion, just until it’s funny. Read.

  • practice

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    I was practicing dance steps with My Darling B in the front room last night, which is quite a feat if you take in to account that our living room is about the same size as the bed of a pickup truck, and we can’t remember dance steps to save ourselves. Actually, our living room Read.

  • Alas, Peppino’s

    Peppino’s closed up shop in December, and the place is nearly empty now. I used to have dinner here with My Darling B every Friday the Thirteenth (November was the last). Now it’s waiting to become an entirely different Italian restaurant. I miss Peppino’s.   Read.

  • Olivetti

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    We stopped at the co-op yesterday morning for groceries and at the thrift store to see if there were any books I had to take home (there were; I finally scored a copy of Tom Wolfe’s The Right Stuff). On my way to the front door of the thrift store I glanced through the window Read.

  • moon man

    Buzz Aldrin, who hoofed his way along the surface of the moon forty years ago, is trying out his moves on Dancing With The Stars. I thought I might have heard about this the other day on the radio but figured it was just my tin ear picking up a name that sounded like “Buzz Read.

  • cha-cha

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    We’re still doing the cha-cha in the group class we go to on Tuesdays, but at our private lesson afterwards the instructor had us doing the rumba and waltz. I’m pretty sure anybody who can count to three can waltz, and the rumba isn’t much more difficult, although you need a sense of rhythm to Read.

photo of the author and the author's best friend