It’s been a few years since I lived in a dormitory, but I had some wonderful experiences while doing so. Here are some of my favorites: Toilet Ball: my roommates and I spent hours playing a game that we invented. One of my roommates had a Nerf football. We set the football up on a…

Almost everyone has a phobia. For my family, that phobia is bugs. My daughter sent me this screen shot from the Internet, which describes what bug phobia looks like in my house: Because my family has a bug phobia, I am in charge of Bug Duty. “Bug Duty” means that I need to drop whatever…

My family and I have an ongoing dialogue about “foods we can live without”.  What we mean by this is “what foods could we do without for the rest of our lives, and not miss them?” The foods on this list give me no pleasure at all. It would be ok with me if these…

I visited my daughter in Milan a couple of months ago. If you had told me 25 years ago that I would ever write the sentence “I visited my daughter in Milan”, I would have laughed at you. At that point in my life, children weren’t on the horizon, and even if I had had…

My daughters tell me that I have a language of my own. I did not believe them, so they compiled a list of some of the things that I say. They call these phrases “Dad-speak”. I have provided some definitions for my Dad-speak: “Ressies”:  This is short for “restaurant reservation”, as in “should I make…

I obtained my driving learners permit on December 29, 1977, my 16th birthday.  My father took me out driving right away. We spent a few minutes practicing in a parking lot, and then he took me out on some quiet side streets in Northeast Philadelphia. We were driving on St. Vincent Street, a few blocks…

I am fascinated with the process of making predictions. Much of my life includes predictions. Your life does, too. —– I have to make predictions when I drive to work. How much traffic will there be? What is the best route to take? How much gas do I need to make it there? There are…

So there we were, Theresa and I, driving through the Painted Desert, sometime in 1992.  Pre-Heather and Dylan.  Pre-Darwin.  Free to roam the planet. The Painted Desert is a pretty part of Arizona.  It looks something like this: If you’re reading this, you should think to yourself “that looks sandy”.  That fact will be important …