Some years it feels like doing the same holiday traditions over and over we is just going through the motions. Other years, the familiarity of those annual traditions provides comfort. That was the case this year for me. Our traditional events include baking Christmas cookies for Santa a few days before Christmas, having family over for snacks on Christmas Eve, having my dad over to open gifts and cook waffles on Christmas morning, and going over to my mom’s for lunch on Christmas Day. We did all of those things this year and none of them felt like an obligation.… (read more)

In 2022 I bought one of those 12′ skeletons from Home Depot. Those skeletons are so tall and unwieldy that I had to call my buddy Jeff to come help me assemble it. We stood it up in front of my workshop facing the pool and strapped it to one of the porch’s support beams after a gentle wind blew the whole thing over. The skeleton is so tall that you can clearly see it over the fence when driving down the main road behind our neighborhood. I’m sure the neighbors were pleased. I left him standing the entire month… (read more)

I was off work last Friday and so Susan and I had planned a day trip to Tulsa. While getting ready that morning I hopped in the shower and noticed there was no hot water. In one of our older houses we owned a hot water heater with a pilot light that was constantly going out, although we haven’t had that problem in either of our last two houses. I got pretty good at relighting it and wasn’t too worried about restarting this one before we left for the day. A few minutes later Susan discovered the real problem, which… (read more)

Getting a song stuck in my head drives me crazy. When I can’t remember where I know the song from, it drives me even more crazy. And when I can’t figure out the name or the song or who the artist is, it drives me absolutely bonkers! I mostly watch television these days on my computer, either using DirecTV Stream or one of a few video streaming apps (like Pluto). These streaming solutions have commercials just like regular cable television, but they seem to have a smaller stable of commercials meaning I end up seeing the same ones over and… (read more)

For Halloween in 2002, when Mason was only ten months old, Susan and I dressed him up in a costume (Tigger, I think) and took him “trick-or-treating” at the homes of our friends and family. For the past twenty years our Halloweens have revolved around celebrating with one or both of our children. Now that the kids have moved out into their own place, Halloween felt a little… empty this year. Susan spent two weeks of October being sick before finally passing her cold on to me. We’re feeling better now, but neither of us were feeling great during peak… (read more)

Ah, eclipses. There was a time in our history when eclipses were explained as the work or sorcerers, mythical creatures eating the sun, or religious miracles. Today we know exactly what eclipses are and how they work, but they are still interesting to watch and slightly disorienting to experience. And less terrifying than thinking a giant dragon has eaten the sun. Last weekend’s eclipse was not a total solar eclipse for those of us in Oklahoma. Here, we experienced a 70-80% blockage of the sun for a short period of time. The peak viewing time was just after 11 a.m.… (read more)

A couple of months ago I began seeing advertisements for a new website named Temu. Seemingly overnight I went from never hearing of Temu to seeing 20 Temu ads or more a day on Facebook and Instagram among other websites. You may have seen those ads too and wondered if Temu is a legitimate company. I decided to take a chance and find out. Temu is similar in structure to another retailer you may (or may not) have heard of, AliExpress. Temu is a Chinese-owned company that is registered in the Cayman Islands, has a physical headquarters in Boston, and… (read more)

Mr. Sancho’s is a all-exclusive resort located just a few miles from the port in Cozumel. It is not, like Chankanaab, an officially sponsored Carnival excursion, meaning you have to make your own reservations and arrange your own transportation to and from the resort. It also means that it’s nowhere near as crowded as Chankanaab. Transportation comes in the form of a taxi, and reservations are easily made online. Admission is $65/adult for the entire day, which includes all the food you can eat and all the drinks you can drink. More drinks than you should probably consume, in fact.… (read more)

As the four of us make our way down the overgrown path toward the cenote — Spanish for “sinkhole” and pronounced “sih-NO-tay” — I could not come up with a way to describe the experience that did not sound like the plot of a horror movie. With no cell phone reception or any real idea of where we were, the four of us followed our tour guide until we reached a rickety set of steps leading us down into a dark hole in the ground, where we planned to swim for the next hour. Underneath the Yucatan peninsula lie a… (read more)