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Bitten by the Garden Bug
When my first ex and I moved into a duplex back in the late 1980s, the yard wasn’t even a factor in our search. The previous tenant must have had a big dog or two, as the fenced in back yard was more mud than grass–especially the perimeter. I planted a few impatiens around the…
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Hello New Me!
The year I turned fifty, my health went down the toilet. My colonoscopy turned up a precancerous lesion that required surgery, but fortunately, needed no chemotherapy or radiation. The retina specialist diagnosed my advanced macular degeneration, and I was in and out of the dermatologist’s office with numerous skin problems. The last straw was finding…
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My New Normal: Part Deux
I’m a grown-assed man and a creature of habit. Having never had a wife or children, I’m also used to having things my way. Yes, I’m more than a little set in my ways and interfering, as any of my ex-lovers will tell you, is ill-advised. For all kinds of reasons, changing my morning routine–the subject…
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Writing Update
Things are finally settling into something I’m calling my new normal. My kitchen table is down to just three piles–a stack of clothes that need to go to the dry cleaner, a reminder from my realtor that I need to get downtown to file the homestead exemption for my new house, and the stack of…
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Dereliction of Duties: Seven Excuses
My new normal is crazy busy. I thought the situation was temporary. For months I’ve believed that things would slow down once I got over the next hump. Being a slow learner, it took me more than a year to figure out that busy is here to stay. Reading and commenting on the blogs I’ve…
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The Way We Were
Some of you probably remember the way things were before the Internet made anyone with a Smartphone or a computer a know-it-all. Okay, who am I kidding? Nobody much under forty reads my blog. As memory loss is far more likely to be an issue, let me remind you. When a question came up, we would…
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The Longest Month
January is my least favorite month. In fact, I’d go so far as to say I detest the first 31 days of the year. How do I hate thee? Let me count the ways. Let’s start with the temperature. Here in Athens, January is the coldest month of the year. The average high is 54,…
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My New Normal: Part One
Now that the holiday season is over and the dust has settled from moving, my new normal has arrived. Routines are still evolving and will change somewhat with the seasons, of course. But the outlines and patterns are clear. Whether I have to work or not, I’m almost always up by 5:30. In the past,…
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Happy New Year!
In the spirit of out with the old and in with the new, I changed the lay-out and design of my blog. The set-up is different. To see the rest of this post, you need to click on “read now” below and to the right of “Happy New Year!” Obviously, this is for folks who…
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My Next Project
As a university employee, I’ve been off the week between Christmas and New Year’s since the mid-1980s. Depending on where the holidays fall, I usually add a few days to one end or the other to extend the break even longer. It’s never enough time off, and it always goes by too fast. In the…