I gave him a good life, but I also give him a hard time. It’s a balance.
There’s been a meme floating around for a month or two that shows a row of five numbered chicken wings, each one a little more stripped of meat than the last. Number one has a single small bite taken out of it; number five looks like it’s been dug up by a paleontologist. The punchline is that you can tell a lot about someone’s upbringing based on the amount of meat left on the bone.
My 11-year-old son and I both love wings, but we are on opposite ends of this chart. On the cleaned chicken bone scale, I’m…
This was beautifully written. But between your fears of climate change and your concerns about the cost of buying somewhere that you actually want to live, you seem to be making a really good case for your continuing to rent.
I understand why you're moving, but why are you trying to buy?
Let the landlord shoulder the risk of climate change. Of ever rising real estate taxes. Of repairs.
Stay flexible. You're not planning to sell so you're not buying for investment. And that $100,000 in purchase costs is 4 years of rent at $2,000 per month.
There are a lot of towns where you can rent a 2-bedroom house, with garage, for that.
Especially since you are fine living away from people.
What's the appeal of owning at this late date?
And now I’m going to distract you with them, too
Song I heard that I haven’t heard in a long time. No, not Blue Monday. You can’t swing a dad cat without hitting a version of Blue Monday. I’m talking about Matthew Wilder’s “Break My Stride”.
A book I’m reading. Razorblade Tears by S.A. Cosby. Oh, man. This book is great. Best thing I’ve read all year. The best book I expect to read this year.
Which is saying something since I’m doing a deep dive into Chris Offutt.
Something I’ve written that you probably didn’t read. How Life Taught Me a Lesson in the Woods.
A thing I ate…
Fire was the bogeyman of my childhood
As a young child, I can remember being talked to about “stranger danger” only once. It was at a YMCA summer camp when I was nine years old. But I didn’t spend a lot of my time worrying about creepy old men in panel vans.
No, the real malevolent force in my life was fire. Raised in Chicago, a city that has the losses that fire can bring burned into its DNA, I was taught on TV and in school to not open doors that felt warm and to “Stop, Drop, and Roll” if I burst into flames.
In those…
Even In Space, Billionaires Still Need Bed Turndowns
October 19, 2044
Bob Hackley shows a two-dimensional photo of billionaire Jeff Bezos triumphantly doing the Running Man on the Moon’s surface. The view is overhead. “I took this picture by jumping in the air and shooting down. They cropped it for the publicity shot, but if you look closely, you can see still my flip-flop.”
Sure enough, A bare foot, shod only in a pair of dime store sandals is visible in the picture’s bottom right corner.
It’s been decades since the first billionaires began to conquer space. Still risky business, those first voyages were reserved for the few…
