The Crotchety Old Man

Category: Gripes

  • Busted Routines

    I’m very much a creature of habit. Toodles and I move through our days like well-oiled machines. Routines drive our actions from the time our feet/paws hit the floor in the morning until our heads hit the pillow at night. Doing things in a particular order helps me get more done and keeps me from having to think about what’s…

  • Social Network Fatigue

    Once upon a time, the only social networking options were snail-mail, rotary dial telephones, and face-to-face. Travel costs and long distance telephone charges made letters the preferred means for keeping up with out-of-town friends and family. When not in class or hanging out with local friends, I spent hours on the telephone talking with them. Yeah.…

  • My Cable Bill

    The ability to retire a few years earlier than planned has provided an incentive to pay a lot more attention to my monthly bills. Don’t get me wrong. I’ve always been vigilant. But the emphasis has shifted from checking for errors to looking for (painless) ways to cut back. As they’re based on usage, I expect bills…

  • Poisoned!

    A whopping case of food poisoning has made for a rough week. I should have known better, but misplaced trust and my inner cheapness conspired against me. I have nobody to blame but myself. The nasty little beasts hitched a ride into my gut last Friday. I’d paid a pretty penny for a thick ribeye…

  • Pet Writing Peeves: Pop Culture References

    A good writer makes the reader feel like he or she is a witness to events in the story as they unfold. Keeping the reader’s attention focused on the action and dialogue is the goal. Errors and mistakes, when noticed, take the reader out of the story. Ignorance is bliss. Before getting published, as long…

  • Pet Writing Peeves: Adverbs

    Adverbs top the list of my Pet Writing Peeves. These little words modify actions and usually end in -ly. They’re perfectly acceptable in lots of different situations, but should be used sparingly in novels. Paragraphs riddled with -ly words — like the one above — are fine in blog posts, status updates, conversations, tweets, news…

  • OMG Scarlett! Snow! In Atlanta!

    Last week, the mess in Atlanta from the big winter storm caught the nation’s attention. All the finger pointing suggests someone here in Georgia caused all the problems. I hope they find the bastard. I got stuck in Savannah, my favorite city in the US. I probably could have driven home on schedule Wednesday afternoon without any…

  • Fake-umentaries

    I like documentaries, perhaps because learning something makes me feel less guilty about watching television. When I was a kid, my favorite show was Mutual of Omaha’s Wild Kingdom with Marlin Perkins, though in retrospect, I may have had a crush on his assistant. I looked forward to a new National Geographic special as much…

  • My $85 Watch Battery–Revisited

    The watch I wear everyday stopped running again. The battery lasted from March, 2010 to just the other day. I call that a good value, even at $85. This time, I went straight to the watch store. Here’s the story, reprinted from 2010, of how I came to pay $85 for a watch battery. Almost…

  • GayRomLit: A Virgin’s Tale (Part 2: Thursday)

    Last Monday, I wrote about my preparations for GayRomLit in Atlanta. Today’s post picks up with Thursday morning — the first full day of the retreat — before I really knew what I’d gotten myself into. What an experience! First thing Thursday morning, the organizers offered an orientation session for newcomers. All the newbies got cherries…