If you stood outside of Chuck Poore’s door, with your ear on the wood, slightly below the ’118′ on the front, you could hear the fan.  The sound of the whirring blades sliced through the air, immediately letting you know not to knock on the door.  It’s the/… Read full post »

Can you ‘be’ with someone, and feel alone at the same time?

My friend, Brad, might disagree.  He’s a talented, affable, intelligent, but very, very passive chap who is desperate for love.  ”You’re so lucky, dude, that you have who you have,” he remarked o… Read full post »

I’m not sure which store carried them, but my mother always managed to find them.  Tiny square patches of fabric that, color-wise, expertly matched my slacks.  The slacks that I routinely put to the test by diving for loose balls on the grade school playground.

I laud my mother for ma… Read full post »

SweetTarts.  Never liked ‘em.  During my formative years, I learned, within seconds, that the ‘sour’ profile just didn’t turn the wheels for me.  After basketball practice at the old CYC, you’d find the candy-machines nudged up against the wall as you desc… Read full post »

I had already been holding the proper utensil in my hands, but it stopped me dead in my tracks.  Even though it was clearly dead.  The pre-lawn-mowing banality of scooping dog-poop suddenly interrupted by its lifeless corpse.

A rat.

I have a childhood fear of rodents, that continu… Read full post »

I don't know Rick, my neighbor, all that well, but his motorcycle accident this past week bothered me.  Aside, simply, from the gruesome nature of any collision with a car, I suppose it bothered me equally as much because I'm a motorcyclist, too.

When tragedy occurs, we always give pause.… Read full post »

If you’re not saying ‘hell, yeah!’ about something, then say ‘no’.

I admire the line.  My friend, Gary, loaned it to me, from a TED talk that he watched on-line.  He passed it on after I presented him with my latest decision-dilemma.

Sometimes, though, situatio… Read full post »

The logic of ‘calling hours’ has always eluded me.

After a long illness, and an even longer stay in an acute-care facility, Chuck Rushen lay in his casket, while the family stood in line to his left, hugging visitors.

My brother’s father-in-law was a unique person.  I really on… Read full post »

It costs $9.75 to go to a wedding in Ellwood City, Pennsylvania.

I didn’t mind paying the money, since it was old KDKA pal who was tying the knot.  But when your MapQuest directions get mis-read (by the driver) and you don’t have correct change, an otherwise short, pleasurable drive… Read full post »

‘Sleep’, apparently. has removed itself from my life.  At least for the time being.  These periods of waking-up-and-not-being-able-to-fall-back-asleep have occurred pretty regularly.  During the last few days, I could easily blame it on Donna, who has, again, resumed her bo… Read full post »

As much as you think you’ve prepared for it, the reality of a situation is usually quite divergent from the expectation.

Near the end of 2006, I knew that my position in Atlanta hung by no more than several threads.  The writing was on the wall.  And I lay in bed… Read full post »

It’s not so much a feeling as it was a non-feeling.  It was the catalyst that helped convince me early in my adolescence that I’m just now, as an adult, trying to find the adequate words to convey: that baseball is not only the greatest game ever invented, but a necessary compon/… Read full post »

You’re the personification of everything that is wrong about our industry, why it’s fallen to the bottom-rung of the entertainment ladder.  You are the symbol for ‘scum’, the living, breathing, walking icon that brings to the surface all that continues to deteriorate insi… Read full post »

‘Lying’ never feels good.  It’s a grotesque feeling that’s compounded exponentially when the prevarication involves your mother.

It was day very much like today, weather-wise.  Cold, windy, and overcast.  On that Wednesday, I told my mother that I didn’t f… Read full post »

I’m not sure it’s necessarily a badge-of-honor, but it makes for interesting conversation fodder: to say you had the luxury of driving on D.C.’s Beltway.

While living in Annapolis and working in Rockville, I did it everyday.  Route 50 west-bound in to the Beltway north-bound. &… Read full post »

I stopped to drop off the monthly check at the storage-facility.  And after slipping it into the small mailbox near the front door,  I stepped back and looked more closely at the long row of buildings, with their green garage doors, numbered, in various shapes and sizes.  I realized, t… Read full post »

Sometimes Deuter goes with me, and sometimes he doesn’t.  There are instances where I quite like his soothing, meditative style pulsing through my cracked and worn headphones.  On other days, I prefer that the cold be air be punctured with the sounds of barking dogs in the distance, o… Read full post »

He’s a self-described ‘simple pilgrim’.  Yet, he exited the Vatican on a helicopter.

Joseph Aloisius Ratzinger is hardly simple.  He’s not a parish priest who squeaked by with a Master of Divinity degree, just getting under the rope enough academically, as some have… Read full post »

They left in a huff.  And so did we.  Or, at least I did.

Now I feel badly.  But Friday night, I didn’t.

And it was fairly dumb, too.  A conversation about ‘social media’.  And ‘change’.  Our friends, Jeanne and Ivan, have no interest in any… Read full post »

Some people in our neighborhood still have Christmas decorations littering their yards and front down-spouts.  I can’t complain, or make fun of them, since we do, as well.

It’s a slim, faux Christmas tree that sits in a metal stand on the front porch.  It came with lights alread… Read full post »

Everybody’s looking for a deal.

I was trying to explain the concept of ‘Craigslist’ to my mother.  She nodded, but I’m almost certain she didn’t truly understand.

“So, what’s the difference between that and this ‘eBay’ I hear about?”

I… Read full post »

The anxiety was in the pit of my stomach, but I liked it.  I started to feel it as I pulled out of Frank’s Trailer Park, every Saturday evening around 10:30.  I’d stop at Apples grocery store and add a few items to what Donna had already packed for me.  Usually… Read full post »

It was a short journey.  Less than 5 miles.  To drop off papers at our accountant’s office.  But without a phone, it seemed like 5 lifetimes.  Or slightly less time than it takes to play the average baseball game.

How did this happen?  I take great pride in my seemingly… Read full post »

Saturday afternoon was ‘confession’ time.  The day I normally took part in the sacrament of Reconciliation.

Because my parish sat squarely in the downtown-area, the rush of traffic was literally non-stop.  But I came to expect it, anticipate it.  The constant purr of car-en… Read full post »

A monthly payment for health-insurance should not cost more than your mortgage.

Yet, it does.  I stare at all of the hieroglyphics that Donna has in front of her.  She’s a ‘scribbler’.  Somehow, the gibberish that fills up several sheets of notebook-paper coalesce int… Read full post »