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I Gotta New Attitude
When I joined the gym last fall, I really didn’t think I’d stick with it. Nothing about my track record gave me reason to think otherwise. After a few weeks of sporadic and half-hearted use, any home exercise equipment I ever purchased went unused. I don’t know what made me think I’d go to the…
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Keep on Keeping On
A bunch of age-related health issues hit me around my fiftieth birthday. My BMI (Body Mass Index) was well over 30 (obese), my activity level was zero, and the scale had drifted close to 250 pounds. Even my dress pants had elastic waistbands. Middle-age had caught up with me, taken up residence around my waist,…
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Waiting Games
Three weeks ago today I submitted a query, synopsis, and the first twenty pages of Until Thanksgiving to a publisher. Three days later, I received a response to my query: a request from the publisher for the full manuscript. I sent the manuscript within thirty minutes and have been dancing off the ceiling ever since.…
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A Little Bit of This, A Little Bit of That…
Writing has been a key interest for most of my life. The rest come and go, some lasting for decades and others keeping my attention for only a few weeks. You’ll notice a trend. When I’m in, I dive into the deep-end and completely immerse myself in whatever activity has caught my fancy. My interests vary.…
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Never Say Never
Things I’ve always said I’d never do have become regular habits over the last year or so. Recently quite a few people–including some of my regular readers–have asked me how I do it. In today’s post, I’m going to attempt to explain. Writing Glass Houses was the beginning of my transformation. I never thought I…
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What on Earth Did I Do?
Since the first of the year, I’ve been running like crazy. Seems like there’s never a spare moment to just kick back and relax. Well, that’s not entirely true, but I sure don’t have the kind of downtime I had just a few years ago. Four years ago, we didn’t have any dogs. It’s not…
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Things I Like About Christmas
To balance yesterday’s overly negative (but entirely true) post about some of the reasons I hate Christmas, I decided to dedicate today’s post to things I like about the biggest holiday of the year. No doubt you’ve already noticed I said “like” rather than “love”. Call me jaded if you like, but in my old…
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Magazine Overload
In college I majored in consumer studies and family resource management. Rather than a textbook, many of my professors compiled packets of articles from academic journals and weekly news magazines that we had to purchase from Kinko’s. Nowadays they make this kind of information available to students online. All the weekly news magazines were represented…
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My Coffee Habit
Okay. I drink a lot of coffee. In recent years I’ve cut back…some. We’re still a two-pot-a-day household but now the afternoon pot is only eight cups instead of the twelve my mornings require. In my humble opinion, the coffee we make at home is the best anywhere. We have a Cuisinart Grind-N-Brew coffeemaker and…