my sometimes-skeptical social commentary

Archive for the ‘community’ Category

I’ve been listening to a lot more music than usual… lately, and some of it is New To Me, so I thought I would share it with you.

Music is something else, isn’t it? There are some songs I haven’t heard in years that can remind me of what was happening in the world or in my life when I first heard the song. There are some bands that I listened to so much that they kind of define a soundtrack to that part of my life. Sometimes I look back at what I was experiencing…and the songs are vivid in those memories. There are emotions that come up with some songs, and I look back at them now and I don’t have exactly the same feelings about the music, but I remember the old feelings. Sometimes they make sense, sometimes I look back and I wonder how I felt that way back when….

I have told my family and friends, but I just want everyone to know that Valerie and I are getting married!

I put a tip jar on this web site today. It’s like begging, only you don’t have to say no to my face, and I don’t have to ask to your face. Basically, my income doesn’t match my outgo, so all the writing I do on this blog needs to start paying so that I can balance the budget, Gramm-Rudman style.

What if you don’t donate to the tip jar? Nothing bad happens. It’ll be just like all those years I listened to NPR and never donated any money. Will I keep blogging? Do they keep making new episodes of Car Talk and This American Life? You betcha.

If you do put something in the tip jar, make sure you give me a way of contacting you to say thanks.

Both my kids have birthdays that fall close to the start of baseball season, so this year, I baked cupcakes for them and decorated them like baseballs.

We haven’t made it to a game yet, but I think that I’ll have a chance to take them to a game during the Bisons’ next home stand. I love watching Bisons games.

The cupcakes are made with yellow cake mix with vanilla frosting, and once I frosted them, I dipped them into a bowl of sweetened coconut flakes (which adhered to the frosting). Then I used a tube of red frosting to draw on the lacing so that they look like baseballs.

The trouble with all these cupcakes is that I like eating them. I gave up eating cheezborgors, but that’s easy to keep up, because there are no cheezborgors in my house, and I’ve got a half dozen leftover cupcakes sitting right there, kept fresh in their shiny zip-lock baggies…. Mmmm….