Regular Life

(Note: Those reading “They Keys Are In It” may now read Part Fifteen. Those who are not, you might as well start now.)
It’s amazing how you find things of interest accidentally on the Internet. When I went to the library to study in college, merely seeing the title on a random book [...]

Sunday we attended church, where the minister’s voice broke and tears welled up each time he mentioned or was reminded of a 16-year-old boy who had died in a skateboarding accident. A told us later that the boy’s death had prompted friends who were not members of the congregation to meet with the minister. [...]

   
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Shannon and her friend, A, met when they were seven years old and living in Little Rock, Arkansas. Their families lived within easy walking distance and the two girls were inseparable. When they were 12, A moved to Texas with her parents, but the two friends stayed in [...]

In a plan whipped up by my brother and me on Thursday, I got the second half of Friday off and whisked Benjamin away for his first cousin’s birthday party weekend. A six-hour drive later we arrived, and only after shaking off his nap did LC realize Ben really was right there in the [...]

(Note: Readers of “They Keys Are In It” may continue today with Part Six.)
Over the past week, between two bursts of working and hanging out in Memphis, I drove back to my hometown to visit family. The business trip had brought me close enough to family that it would have made little sense [...]

Tonight is what we call pack night. I stuff dirty clothes into my suitcase lid’s inner pockets and tuck my portable electronics into safe crannies of my laptop bag.
Goodbye, Memphis. See you again sometime.

Clockwise from top left: Where we ate dinner on Tuesday night; a purse in a gift shop window; the Mon [...]

The scene above is exactly one city block from my hotel. The scene below is from my hotel window.

I have a few more nights in Memphis before this trip ends, but putting things off has burned me in the past, so I ventured out Thursday night.
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While typing this, I’m seated on an airplane. Seat 10B, to be exact. The flat, concrete Dallas metroplex landscape shrinks below as we make our way up into the clouds.
I have come prepared for this flight of a little more than one hour. In fact, I’m a little too prepared. Because [...]

(Note: This is the fifth in a series of posts about the first meeting of three online friends.)

At least one of you has looked at kids in those crawl tubes at fast-food restaurants and thought, “I wish they had that for adults.” On my recent trip to St. Louis, a unique place granted that [...]

(Note: This is the fourth in a series of posts about the first meeting of three online friends.)
At age 37, I finally found a beer I like. More on that later.
The appetizing aroma of Moonshot’s Irish stew in the Crockpot welcomed us back from the Adrenaline Zone. Conversation wandered from our blogs to [...]