Monthly Archives: August 2002

Grace is the light or electricity or juice or breeze that takes you from that isolated place and puts you with others who are as startled and embarrassed and eventually grateful as you are to be there. – Anne Lamott … Continue reading →

We’re heading up the path along the Cascade River, where the root beer-colored river drops in a series of spectacular cascades just a few hundred yards before it empties into Lake Superior. “Remember when you were so impressed with me … Continue reading →

Grace is the light or electricity or juice or breeze that takes you from that isolated place and puts you with others who are as startled and embarrassed and eventually grateful as you are to be there. – Anne Lamott … Continue reading →

[Last Sunday] We’re sitting at our table in our tent trailer at Lamb’s Resort Campground on the North Shore of Lake Superior, about 80 miles north of Duluth. We got a great spot, literally twenty feet from the rocky beach, … Continue reading →

See the intro to Scene 1 for an explanation. Scene 4: The B&B It’s New Year’s Eve, our 23rd anniversary. We’re scooting around town together, picking up items for our overnight stay at a local B&B, complete with a hot … Continue reading →

We’re headed home, back in Duluth right now. I brought my Palm Vx, keyboard, and Norman’s digital camera so I’ll post some pics and a couple of short essays when I get back. I thought I could get online in … Continue reading →

See the intro to Scene 1 for an explanation. Scene 3: Kitchen I yank the burner grids off the kitchen stove and sprinkle some cleaner on a scrubby to work on the baked-on grease spots. Garth Brooks is lecturing me … Continue reading →

I’m at the Browser’s Cafe in Duluth, on my way (with my wife and daughter) to a campground near the Temperance River on the North Shore of Lake Superior. Just a short camping trip… back home on Wednesday. I’ve got … Continue reading →

See the intro to Scene 1 for an explanation. Scene 2: Farm No TV. No music. No computer. No kids. We’ve secluded ourselves for three days at a friends’ weekend hobby farm. As we sit on some floor pillows, cold … Continue reading →

If life had a rewind button, I’d never touch it. – The Norm “The Norm” cartoon for today has this great line to try out on your sweetie this weekend, assuming you mean it. I’ll try it and report back, … Continue reading →

Is this programming or hardwiredness? How about the flirting with dummies?

The Affirmation Bullshit Generator is getting a workout this week. It hit #48 of Blogdex’s top 1245 blog entries earlier this week. A search of the phrase on Google turns up a much longer list now. A tip of the … Continue reading →

To deny there is a God is to stand on a building and deny there is a building. – Russell Brock It was just like God just picked up a semi-truck right off me and I actually started living. – … Continue reading →

Speedwell posted a comment on the Mitchard column reaction I wrote and the follow-up QOTD. It’s a great testimonial, Speedwell, so I’m posting your entire comment here. Your fiance is a lucky guy. And I hope the women who read … Continue reading →

Dust commented on yesterday’s Quote of the Day about women and beauty: I can buy that possibly men’s brains are hardwired to select for attractiveness, but I can’t buy that attractiveness itself is hardwired. What is attractive hasn’t been consistent … Continue reading →

Women will never be equal to men until they can walk down the street with a bald head and a beer gut, and still think they are beautiful. – Somebody A colleague sent me this quote this morning and I … Continue reading →

I’m in the middle of rewriting my “Why women don’t want sex with us” essay for my writing coach and just this morning I was working on a scene that involves one of my wife’s dresses. I came home from … Continue reading →

Many live in the ivory tower called reality; they never venture on the open sea of thought. – Francois Gautier Cool. A way to describe keeping a journal or a self-reflective weblog that might be more appealing to men: venturing … Continue reading →

I stole that title from Garrison Keillor’s monologue on The Prairie Home Companion rebroadcast last Saturday. It’s the perfect description for this soon-to-be $100 million megachurch. “The [nondenominational] congregation hopes to entice people who want some kind of spiritual home … Continue reading →

Doc Searls blogged the Real Joe Affirmation Bullshit Generator today and as usual with the Doc Empire, it set off a little chain reaction. Robert K. Brown blogged it in his Work in Progress weblog and noticed that I’m a … Continue reading →

This Wired news story from last month describes how “seniors in the early stages of Alzheimer’s disease, with mild to moderate memory loss, are writing Web logs to help them make sense of their daily lives. And the activity, they … Continue reading →

While you thought you needed the tea ceremony for the caffeine, what you really needed was the tea ceremony. – Anne Lamott She was referring to the act of writing. But now that I think about it, it’s also why … Continue reading →

Washington Post staff writer Carolyn Hax does the Ann Landers bit for the under-30 crowd in a column called Tell Me About It that runs in newspapers nationwide. I’m starting to like her stuff. She nails it in this column … Continue reading →

In his Gut Rumbles weblog (“humorous observations, vitriolic rants and a ceaseless quest for adoration from people who don’t know me”), Acidman writes about “suffering a severe case of testosterone poisoning” while driving his truck home from work. I don’t … Continue reading →

Happiness is when what you think, what you say, and what you do are in harmony. – Mohandas K. Gandhi If true, I guess I have a ways to go, as the blog entry of my bike trip with my … Continue reading →