Earlier this year I learned that my friend Scott, a fellow movie aficionado, no longer owned any DVDs. His movies are either digital copies stored locally, or streamed from online services. I was really shocked by this revelation. “Isn’t that weird?” I said to several of my other friends, only to learn that they too also parted with their personal DVD collections (some of them several years ago). The more people I asked, the more I began to realize that I seemed to be the only one hanging on to DVDs. Last night, my friend Jeff told me the last… (read more)

Last week I celebrated my 24th wedding anniversary, followed by my 46th birthday. Every year those numbers seem more incredible to me. “Beats the alternative,” as they say. Susan has been burning the candle at both ends at work for weeks on end, so we decided to celebrate lightly this year. The two of us had dinner at Lucky Star Casino before dropping some money into a few of their slot machines. With most of our money gone, the machine I was sitting at hit big, and I ended up winning $720! We left the house with $200 and returned… (read more)

As you might recall from my recent post about the Three Stooges, I like to fall asleep while watching old television shows. After watching all 190 Stooge shorts, I was searching for something else to watch before bed and discovered that Amazon Prime recently added American Gladiators to their streaming library. I just spent the past month watching the entire first season of the show. In case you missed it the first time around, American Gladiators was a game show that pit four contenders (two men, two women) against a team of gladiators in a series of events. The show… (read more)

Over the past ten days, I put 3,101 miles on my car and drove through more than a dozen states. Saturday, July 27, Susan, the kids and I set out in the Ford Flex, headed for Washington DC. That first day, we crossed Oklahoma and Arkansas before stopping in Nashville, Tennessee. The next day, we left Nashville and drove through North Carolina and Virginia before finally arriving in Washington DC. Monday morning, the four of us visited the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. Morgan is doing research for her Girl Scout Gold project, which is what led us there. The… (read more)

I keep my iPad on my nightstand next to my bed, and each night I put on something to fall asleep to. Usually it’s a television show (I don’t stay awake long enough to watch an entire movie), but a couple of months ago I started watching the original Three Stooges shorts, and as of last night, I’ve officially watched them all. There were 190 Three Stooges “two-reelers” (shorts) in all, that range from 16 to 18 minutes in length. The first 97 shorts feature Moe, Larry, and Curly. After Curly’s stroke, Shemp joined the group for shorts 98 through… (read more)

Several years of seemingly never-ending political news and conflict (largely forced upon us through cable news and social media) has left me emotionally drained when it comes to discussing anything remotely related to national politics. When drama began to unfold in regards to this year’s Independence Day celebrations in Washington D.C., I made a point to intentionally ignore it, and put my focus on local events and our own personal freedoms instead. Thursday morning, we were delightfully surprised to find our favorite local diner was open for business, and so Susan, Mason, and I stopped by for some Independence Day… (read more)