The Greenhouse Incident

Sometimes my wife Snowball’s projects don’t even sneak up and build slowly, they explode fully grown from the start. An example of this is the hobby greenhouse that we have. Pearl Harbor could not have surprised me more than what happened on a late spring day many years ago. We were sitting on the front porch enjoying a refreshing beverage. As the UPS truck pulls up Snowball says, “Oh that must be the greenhouse I ordered.” This being the first I had heard of any plans for a greenhouse, my mouth opened but no words came out. I just walked over to the truck and helped the somewhat overwhelmed delivery guy haul four 200-pound boxes to the garage.

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Do We Need a Techie 12-Step Program?

“Hello, my name is Curmudgeon, and I’m a nerd.”
The crowd murmurs “Hello Curmudgeon.”
“Well it’s been kinda a tough week. I mean, it’s been months since I even so much as downloaded a new app for my phone. But my wife, Snowball, she keeps bringing home these cool tech toys from work like some cruel, 21st-century, junkie dealer. I try not to touch them or even look too close. Then the other day she brought home this little pc board with LEDs that emulated a six-sided dice piece. I broke! I fell off of the no-tech wagon! I wrote two programs in a language called Python to measure the accuracy of the randomness. And then I made it even worse by looking up the website for the pc board and learning how that gets programmed. I’m sorry! I couldn’t help myself! I need to make amends!” […]

The Continuous Avalanche

My wife is a genius. But unlike many geniuses (geniusi?) she has wonderful people skills and most of the time doesn’t lack for common sense. She’s always thinking of new artistic projects, designs and new ways to arrange the house and yard. Me, however, I really don’t care for change in our lives. That’s probably typical of most couples. This dichotomy has caused me to come up with many nicknames for my wife, most of which should probably not be published on a website. But the one that best describes her is “Snowball”.

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All I Wanted Was a Cheese Burger Combo

Its been awhile since I had stopped to eat in this particular fast food joint. You know the one, it’s commercials have the gorgeous redhead talking about buns. Most times I just go through the drive-thru and I’m on my way. but I needed to get away and clear my head this particular afternoon so I ate-in. It was the usual combo order where they set out an empty tray and hand you an empty paper cup just to give you something to do while you wait for food. With cup in hand I turn toward where the eight choice, push button soda fountain used to be. It’s not there. Same corner with the same condiments and straws and cup lids and plastic forks – but no sodas! […]