If you’re not in hot, sweaty love at the moment, in the relationship of your dreams, or in a relationship at ALL, it’s easy use today’s date as another reason to do a self-loathing pile on and beat your esteem to a bloody pulp. Let’s not do that. The temptation is there, I grant you.…

Well hello there. You made it. Over the rickety holiday bridge into the vast tundra of the new year, possibly the last year, if the Mayans have it right. I’m not all that worried about it. In fact, more of you are likely dreading something else–weight gain, or rather, a failure to lose weight gained…

You have not seen a happier man than my father about to have at a dozen oysters. Which is why rather than sweep into town to borrow the car he so generously lets me use to drive to Massachusetts, and bolt back out, I proposed dinner, just the two of us, at one of his…

It’s the easiest thing to drop from the to-do list, and the simplest thing to excuse yourself from doing: A creative thing for its own sake. Getting that (whatever it is–writing, painting, scrapbooking, model-airplane-making) onto your schedule, and fending off all other competing, and arguably more urgent issues, is easier said than done. And that’s…

There are lots of nice-looking tomatoes out there, but if given the choice, I skip the conventionally pretty and go for the ugly-hot ones instead. Think Black-Eyed Peas over Black Swan kind of hot. You can find identical tomatoes that appear to have popped out of a factory any day of the week. But the…

Today is my birthday. October 9th. It falls during the preliminary days of autumn when you don’t know whether to wear shorts or pack a sweater. The day before Columbus Day. And, in grammar school, marked the beginning of Fire Prevention Week, during which local firemen would come to Our Lady of the Blessed Sacrament…