Author Archives 
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Attack of the worms!
My wife and I are big-time recyclers and proud of it. If it can be recycled, we recycle it. And if it can’t be recycled, we oftentimes find a way to repurpose it, especially clothes where repurposing is called refashioning.
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Sun Day and HCR make waves together
Usually when someone makes waves, it’s not a good thing. People enjoy the status quo. What’s that saying? Don’t rock the boat?
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Hat trauma
Fellas, if you’re ever on your way out the house and your wife says you look cute, go change immediately.
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Blue (and red) light special
Blue (and red) light special
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To T.R.’s hair, eat your heart out / Student outgrows teacher
It’s said that students, or some, surpass their teachers. Although the idea is flattering, I’m not sure how this is possible. Granted, the teacher may give up one day on his/her development or a teacher may have a prodigy student destined for pure greatness, but people are constantly learning, constantly growing, and, by and large, teachers are older than their students.
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A happy holiday wish and important Sun Day updates
Tomorrow, December 21, is a big day. First, it’s the winter solstice and, therefore, the shortest day of the year, which is a big deal for the vampire I am. I love the dark (and almost hate the sun). Second, it’s my wife’s birthday! Third, and this one may trump 1 and 2, according to the Mayan Calendar, it may be the end of the world. (Doomsday? Darkness? Yes, the jokes abound about my wife’s birthday being the darkest day of the year and possibly the end of the world to boot!)
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If you don’t know what time it is, guess
For somebody who is supposed to be in the prime of his life, moving and shaking, on top of this changing world, it appears I’m brutally behind the times.
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No skeletons. Only gargoyles, chimps, and tacky turtles, Part II
Old and deadly. If you look closely, the bottle is unopened and about a half-finger of pure, concentrated poison sits at the bottom. By now the whiskey is probably nuclear.
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No skeletons. Only gargoyles, chimps, and tacky turtles, Part I
I am exactly the person that will peer through the keyhole, open the box (save for coffins), brush aside the curtain, and eavesdrop. And I admit this without shame. The entire world of journalism (and even bigger world of writing) is built on peeking through the cracks. Where do you think our material comes from? Google? Well, maybe some get it from Google but the great journalists and writers out there are masters at decoding interaction, which is the key to inspiration and the formula for any Pulitzer prize-winning journalism piece or any classic novel. If Upton Sinclair’s The Jungle isn’t a peek through the keyhole, then I don’t know what is.
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You laugh because you don’t know me
It’s very common for humans to characterize the people we know, especially our family members. Oh, he’s the serious one. Oh, she’s the pretty one. He’s the smart one. He’s the athletic one. I swear, she’s the only one in this family with any grace at all. Sound familiar?
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Good to the last drop … not always
I recently performed my first magic trick by brewing coffee into thin air. Despite its obvious success (not a drop in the mug!), it was not accepted with great applause by my wife. Her patience with me was like a magic trick itself: now you see it, now you don’t.
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Sun Day Refresher Course 101
Due to a placement test for college, I was remanded to taking a refresher course in mathematics before continuing into standard college level math. It was no secret that I was a poor math student, partly because I found math boring, partly because my brain doesn’t seem to process numbers like most people’s, and partly because I couldn’t see how anything beyond basic math skills was necessary for “real life.”
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I love my wife, I really do, but sometimes…
A couple weeks ago, my wife and I were enjoying a fine summer evening on the porch of our new house (light breeze in the air, streetlights just coming on, a little red left in the western sky, neighborhood quiet and content), when my wife said, “Your columns haven’t been so great lately.”
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Sein-language at Walmart
Seinfeld was a show about nothing. But what made it so successful is that “nothing” really is “something.” Moreover, I think everyone has, at times in their lives, experienced a “Seinfeldian” moment, where a trip to the grocery store turns into an epic, daylong fiasco of little slips and mishaps that would be nothing on their own but turn into quite something to talk about and remember forever and yada-yada-yada.
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Me, a sledgehammer, a knife, and a couch. The saga ends
I think most people at some points in their lives have experienced reoccurring nightmares or at least reoccurring dreams. And whether they’re nightmares or dreams, they’re usually not pleasant. When I was 16, for three nights in a row I dreamt I walked into an old, Victorian style room that was located somewhere in Europe and sometime in the 1770s. It had a real Dickens feel to it, and like Marely’s ghost, a floating head would appear and chase me around the room.
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A rant on why I switched to AT&T, the lesser of two…
I am positive that if you had to contact the customer service departments of major corporations on a regular basis, you’d go insane real quick.
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Vision tests, written exams, fees: sounds like a birthday to me
I recently celebrated my birthday. And by celebrated, I mean I spent the bulk of the morning at the DMV. Not a bad place for birthdays if you like that grayish, semi-depressive atmosphere (wait a minute, that’s exactly like birthdays). The DMV is like The Bad News waiting room.
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When going weekly, there’s nothing spare about change
Consistency is good and dependable. Ask any farmer who’s having a bad year, and he’ll tell you consistency is king. But we do love spontaneity…just in doses, of course, because too much spontaneity can quickly turn into its evil doppelganger, Chaos. Tornados are spontaneous, for example, but we don’t like them very much, especially the aforementioned farmer. It can almost be said that people prefer “planned spontaneity.”
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Hidy ho, neighbor
There is a strong chance the next time I sit down to write my Happy Trails column, I’ll do it from a different place (and if not the next Happy Trails, then the one after that, for sure). Because within the next couple weeks, my wife and I will move into our new home. And you and I (by “you” I mean Sun City) are going to be neighbors. It’s true. I’m about as close to Sun City as I can get without living in it.
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When paupers dine like kings
As a couple, there are a lot of things my wife and I are good at and a lot of things we’re not good at. I’m afraid the latter is more prevalent, but who’s counting? One of the things we’re worst at is using gift cards, especially those credit-card gift cards that are supposed to be accepted everywhere but never work.
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For keeps
Here is something a lot of people don’t know about me. In fact, except for my wife, I really don’t think anyone knows this about me at all. I love tattoos. I even remember when the fascination started. I was a kid, very young, and was washing my hands at a restroom sink when an older man started washing his hands in the basin next to mine.
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Writing off into the sunset
Former Sun City resident Sondra Kastin was born and raised in the Bronx, and it’s the way she says it, bold and full of tough, that lets you know she’s not fooling around about that. And maybe she shouldn’t, because the recent story of Sondra Kastin is a real Bronx Tale, one not lacking moxie, brilliance, or the will to write on.
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Edgewater: Welcome to the Sun Day
Welcome to the Sun Day! What you have before you is an exciting and, most important, beneficial newspaper new to the Edgewater community. The Sun Day offers you news, features, previews, profiles, columns, and other fun, distinctive, and informative editorial content 100% relevant to you and this community. Inside Edgewater’s section The Edge, you will see stories about residents and events that you won’t find in any other news publication.
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Better late than forgetful
In some ways, I’m a terrible son. I’m sure I don’t talk to my mother enough (what son really does?), and I’m a repeat offender of forgetfulness.
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That open space, well that’s just room to grow
Living with my wife for 14 years has taught me the value of “waste not, want not,” an adage I genuinely couldn’t make sense of in my youth.
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Color me orange
Technically, I should have written this edition’s Happy Trails last edition, as that was our active edition over Valentine’s Day, which, by its very nature, topics of relationships are suited to. But remember, I was confused last edition, and Valentine’s was the farthest thing from my mind (yes, ladies, shame on me, I know). However, it’s never too late for matters of the heart.
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You’re never too young to be confused
Whenever I sit down to write, and I’m staring at that daunting, impenetrable Blank Page, I make a promise first to myself and then to readers that I will get to the point as quickly, as effectively, and as efficiently as possible. That’s called good writing. That’s called active voice. How many times have you read something that rambles on and asked yourself, Is there a point to this?
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Why eat your cake in a closet, when you can watch it on TV?
On the day that you receive this edition of the Sun Day, you can trust that I’ll be a very happy man indeed. You might wonder why I say this. Maybe I struck it rich in the Lotto (my ticket bought at Drendel’s Corner, of course), and I’m taking a very early retirement (33 is old enough, right?).
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Like father, like daughter
Artwork is a regular feature in Neighborhood 24 resident Bobbi Vinton’s home, but one wall in particular displays a collection that means more to Vinton than what an appraiser’s price tag might read because how does one appraise the work of his or her father?
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If you keep your resolution in order, everything else is playing for gumballs
Last year at this time, I wrote in my Happy Trails that I didn’t believe in resolutions. I should amend that. It’s not that I don’t believe in resolutions. I just don’t agree with them starting at the New Year, because a real resolution can start at any time.
