Musing, blogging, reflecting, affirming, complaining, documenting
Our lovely friend, Anna, is in rehab after a serious operation, and she loves U.S. mail, so I’m sending her a card a day until she’s able to go home. Today’s card:
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John’s:
Courtland Drive abode Many additions |
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John’s:
Bicycles await Waiting for a ride |
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John’s:
Daffodils not still Bob’s: Early spring flowers |
Our lovely friend, Anna, is in rehab after a serious operation, and she loves U.S. mail, so I’m sending her a card a day until she’s able to go home. Today’s card:
Our lovely friend, Anna, is in rehab after a serious operation, and she loves U.S. mail, so I’m sending her a card a day until she’s able to go home. Today’s card:
Our lovely friend, Anna, is in rehab after a serious operation, and she loves U.S. mail, so I’m sending her a card a day until she’s able to go home. Today’s card:
Our lovely friend, Anna, is in rehab after a serious operation, and she loves U.S. mail, so I’m sending her a card a day until she’s able to go home. Today’s card:
Our lovely friend, Anna, is in rehab after a serious operation, and she loves U.S. mail, so I’m sending her a card a day until she’s able to go home. Today’s card:
Our lovely friend, Anna, is in rehab after a serious operation, and she loves U.S. mail, so I’m sending her a card a day until she’s able to go home. Today’s card:
Our lovely friend, Anna, is in rehab after a serious operation, and she loves U.S. mail, so I’m sending her a card a day until she’s able to go home. Today’s card:
Letter from Prose & Post:
My letter to Prose & Post:
It smells like standing next to your grandmother who — even hours earlier — applied a quarter-cupful of floriferous perfume to her cleavage.
If you miss that, good news!
You can relive it every time you freshen the air in your washroom with this brand and scent:
Whew! It’s a lot.
Our friend, Tracy Bailey, “knows her audience” when she gives gifts. Last year, she made us a cookbook with recipes that related to places we visited during the year.
This is her gift for 2025’s Christmas:
The first delivery contained a story inside a card with this cover:
And this storied letter was inside:
It also included these 2 cards:
And, finally, this decal, a bookmark, and a ribbon:
It’s a very cool gift for a reader and a writer, and I look forward to the other 2 deliveries! Thanks, Tracy! 😍
We received this thank-you card in our mailbox from a couple we met recently at an event at our local bottle shop, Pelagic and invited them to our Pelagic Run Club Runners’ Happy Hour when they start back up after the time change in the spring.
To which I responded:
“Oh, the lost art of a hand-written thank you note! Bob and I are huge fans of them and send them regularly. (In fact, it takes everything in us not to send you a thank-you card for your thank-you card! 😂)
“Thank you for your very kind words, and we look forward to partying with y’all in 2026!”
Coincidentally, we are on our last thank-you card, so I just ordered a box of 100 of them — 25 of each of these:
| Being with neighbors | Seeing some houses | Being off the roads |
| The 4 houses hosting this year’s event — with an hour at each house and a theme of “Pours to Passports” — will feature a cocktail and a snack from their respective countries: Italy, France, Ireland, & Mexico. In addition to “Mexican Mixers,” we’ll have a midnight champagne toast at the last stop. | I’ve lived in this neighborhood for 10 years now, and I’ve never been in 3 of the 4 houses hosting this year. I’m looking forward to checking them out, which is a great aspect of this party, along with meeting several new neighbors that’ve moved in since last year’s party. | Beyond the neighborhood community being shared, which is no small thing in itself, another great thing about this kind of party — walking around the neighborhood — is keeping all of us off the roads. And bonus for Bob and me, the final stop is at the house of our next-door neighbor! |
Book #131 |
Book: In the Margins: On the Pleasures of Reading and Writing | Author: Elena Ferrante | |
| Source: Library loan Format: Large print |
Pages: 160 | Duration: 12/25/25 – 12/25/25 (1 day) | |
| Rating: ★★★☆☆ | Genres: nonfiction, essays, writing, books about books, memoir, Italian Literature, feminism | ||
| 📕10-word summary: Pandemic-aborted lectures about Ferrante’s writing process turned into a book. 🖌6-word review: Very academic and at times esoteric. |
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| 💭A memorable quote: “Beautiful writing becomes beautiful when it loses its harmony and has the desperate power of the ugly. And characters? I feel they are false when they exhibit clear coherence and I become passionate about them when they say one thing and do another.” | |||
| 🎓Some new-to-me words: camorrist, canticle, calque | |||
| Description:* In 2020, Claire Luchette in O, The Oprah Magazine described the beloved Italian novelist Elena Ferrante as “an oracle among authors.” Here, in these 4 crisp essays, Ferrante offers a rare look at the origins of her literary powers. She writes about her influences, her struggles, and her formation as both a reader and a writer; she describes the perils of “bad language” and suggests ways in which it has long excluded women’s truth; she proposes a choral fusion of feminine talent as she brilliantly discourses on the work of Emily Dickinson, Gertrude Stein, Ingeborg Bachmann, and many others. Here is a subtle yet candid book by “one of the great novelists of our time” about adventures in literature, both in and out of the margins.*From goodreads.com’s synopsis. | |||
| Thoughts: I’ve read 2 books by Elena Ferrante — The Days of Abandonment in 2022 and The Lost Daughter in 2025 — and both books have brutally honest female protagonists whose first-person accounts “take you down” with them. It’s quite remarkable writing, which is what made me interested in reading about her writing process. I gave this book only 3 stars solely due to the “may or may not recommend” part of that rating. I doubt this book would be interesting to non-writers, and it’s quite an academic endeavor, which is also a turn-off for a lot of people. | |||
See the rest of the books I’ve read in 2025 and previous years: 2024 | 2023 | 2022 | 2021 | 2020 | 2019.
| Had some controversy | Didn’t mention Christmas | Didn’t age well |
| I Saw Mommy Kissing Santa Claus was first recorded by 13-year-old Jimmy Boyd in 1952. Although an instant hit, it originally caused controversy for implying infidelity. The song was swiftly condemned by the Catholic Church, according to some disputed accounts. It was definitely banned by some radio and TV stations. | There are a few songs that weren’t written as Christmas songs, and in fact don’t even mention Christmas. They include Jingle Bells, which was originally written for Thanksgiving and originally titled “One Horse Open Sleigh.” Other examples include Winter Wonderland and Let it snow! Let it snow! Let it snow! | The #MeToo movement rendered Baby It’s Cold Outside coercive and suggestive of date rape, and It’s Beginning to Look a Lot Like Christmas has “gendered toys” with its dolls for girls and pistols for boys. There’s a handy cheat sheet to decide if a toy is for girls or boys. |
Updated with 2025 entry.
One of my favorite things about keeping my sentence-a-day diary is looking back over the years on any particular day for trends. Today’s day “in history” gave me a good chuckle. I’m so food oriented! 75% of the 11 12 years worth of entries include food. 😂
In other news, it’s our 4th-year anniversary of owning our air fryer. And I guess my entry for today should include some food in it.
December 21
2025
Sunday: We prepared our snack bags to give to the kids during the Mordecai Roll & Stroll on Christmas Eve, I grilled chicken thighs on the grill that Bob had tenderized and marinated, and I read the entirety of my 129th book of 2025, Run for the Hills.
2024
Saturday: I wrote my haikus for the remaining days of 2024, my biopsy from that cauterized spot on my face came back benign, Bob made the pretzels from the mix that Vivian & Jeff gave us a few months ago, I got a free haircut with Neal’s coupon from a Hurricanes game (I tipped the stylist $10), and I grilled some Montreal-steak-marinated chicken thighs to perfection.
2023
Thursday: I created our menu for next week for a change, the earbuds and charger adapters came for our new phones, and Bob made a Chicken & Kale soup to which we added some white beans—egads!
2022
Wednesday: Cindy and I went to Wegmans while Bob visited with “the boys” (his brother and nephews) at their Airbnb (1600 Carson St.), we spent a couple of hours there this afternoon, and then everyone came to our house for African Peanut Soup for dinner and all but me played Bananagrams afterward.
2021
Tuesday: I did 2 “talkaloud edits” for Anna Lonon, did my knee stretching exercises, we got cookies in the mail from Robyn Johnson as a thank-you for my work, our air fryer (compliments of Red Hat Rewards) arrived, and I started American Gods.
2020
Monday: Bob brought our BAP (big-assed poinsettia) and some homemade treats to Nicholas Blanchard, I wrote my first three 50-word stories, and I started reading my 75th book of 2020, Girls Like Us.
2019
Saturday: Bob wrote out a bunch of holiday cards that we got to the post office by Planet Fitness just before noon, did our workout there, had dinner at the food court in Wegmans later, and went to “black-out night” at Flex, taking The R-Line there and back.
2018
Friday: I got a 40-minute walk in downtown to the post office, to the SECU (New Bern & Salisbury for $100 bills), to the library, and to DGX for a card and eggnog for our “Bourbon Outfitters” meeting, and then we met the gang out at Flex @ 10.
2017
Thursday: We had our holiday party tonight, which was very festive and well-attended with a lot of potluck foods!
2016
Wednesday: In a most unexpected move, our CFO, Frank Calderoni, announced that he’s taking a CEO job at another company, and Red Hat announced “disappointing” earnings for this quarter.
2015
Monday: Bob and I spent a couple of hours identifying recipients, addressing, stamping, and putting return address labels on envelopes, before folding our holiday letters to put in them.
2014
Sunday: Bob came over, with Frances and Vincent, and we had BLTs for dinner, with some sweet potato fries.
| Doing research | No expectations | Permission to fail |
| Start collecting information: What are some beginner-friendly projects you could start with? What materials will you need? How much will they cost? Perhaps look online at tutorials and message boards, or maybe go into stores that sell the supplies and ask someone more knowledgeable for advice on how to proceed. | Chances are you won’t be an expert the first time you try your new hobby. You won’t be the best at it, but you won’t be the worst. Allow yourself room to grow, and when you finally reach the goal you have in mind, you’ll feel a sense of accomplishment. | Give yourself permission to fail and to take breaks. Becoming frustrated with learning something new is part of the process, so it’s okay to take a step back and take a breather. It’s a chance to remind yourself why you chose this project and what joy it brings to you. |
Source: Perkins, N. (2021, May 15). Having a hobby is good for you. Here’s how to find one. NPR. https://www.npr.org/2021/05/15/996193143/a-knitter-a-rock-climber-and-a-mixologist-teach-us-how-to-find-a-hobby
Why are some pills so damn big? (A quick AI overview says for 3 reasons: higher dose of active ingredients, inactive ingredients (excipients), and targeted delivery.)
Yes, seniors are easily entertained. I was tickled when I refilled my Amlodipine prescription and the pill size had decreased:
This makes them fit better in my small pillbox:
I really don’t want to have to move to a bigger pillbox, which I actually own:
Complete aside: We will not be able to use this particular “included for size comparison” object with the next generation.
And lastly, Bob and I can never think about pills and pillboxes without remembering that time on a cruise…
| The checklist manifesto | The slow media manifesto | The feminist manifesto |
| The Checklist Manifesto: How to Get Things Right is the name of a book by Atul Gawande, an American surgeon, writer, professor, and public health researcher. I read recently. The author presents 8 lessons about the unexpected, extraordinary efficacy of using checklists for simple, complicated, and complex processes and procedures. | The Slow Media Manifesto was mentioned in my recent reading of Digital Minimalism by Cal Newport. The authors of the original 2010 “Slow Media Manifesto” are German creators Benedikt Köhler, Sabria David, and Jörg Blumtritt, who developed it as a response to fast digital consumption, advocating for mindful, meaningful media. | The Feminist Manifesto, written in 1914 by Mina Loy is a call to action for women to critique the 20th century feminist movement, while designing an agenda to secure women’s identity within the changing spheres of society by casting out traditional roles and demolishing the distinction between the two sexes. |
Sources:
| WCPE radio | Internet radio | Amazon Music Unlimited |
| WCPE, theclassicalstation.org, is one of my sources for free music. The station is operated locally (near Raleigh), but has a global audience through streaming. The most common times I listen are when writing or editing and for 40 minutes, 3 times a week, while doing my stretching and strengthening routine. | InternetRadio is my most-used source of free music. It’s an aggregator of 8,500 free streaming radio stations organized by popular genres, and I mostly listen to Venice Classic Radio Italia in the classical genre, particularly when I’m writing or editing, and to the SF70s station in the 70s genre otherwise. | We are in the midst of a trial Amazon Music Unlimited subscription, for which there is a reminder on our calendar to cancel when the trial ends on January 7, 2026. It’s not a bad service, but there’s so much free music available on the internet, why pay for it? |
I’ve “written” and published two “books” in the past — one for our 1st anniversary and one for our 5th anniversary. Musing back at each of them on this auspicious celebration of being married 10 years.
I get, and I actually applaud, the N.C. Symphony for exploring different ways to bring more people into performances.
However, call me a “purist” — which sounds better than “a crotchety old man” — but I have no interest in 3 upcoming “theme night” performances for this holiday season.
| “Cirque de la Symphonie” | Ugly Sweater Night | A Candlelight Christmas |
 I’ve no interest in Cirque de Soleil when it’s not at the symphony, so it’s no surprise I have no desire to see what seems like a rather arbitrary pairing. For me, a bunch of people swinging around above the musicians would result in a distracting competition for my attention. |
 I’ve been to a couple of ugly sweater parties — with 20 or so of our closest friends — which have been fun enough. I just don’t see that scaling to 1500+ people, most of whom are complete strangers. It also seems like the kind of themed event that would attract children. |
 Call me lazy, but I have no desire to hold a candle in my hand for any amount of time, much less for a 90-minute concert. (And yes, I know they’re not heavy.) Since this event sold out last year, it’s great that many people apparently find the idea captivating. |
| Tardiness | Carelessness | Injudiciousness |
| How a service provider can be behind schedule on their first appointment. It has happened more than once, more than thrice even. I take the first appointment of the day and get there 15 minutes early. I don’t get called in until 15 or 20 minutes after my appointment time. | Why traffic barricades blocking a lane are left up even when no roadwork is going on. You’ve seen the signs: “Lane closed ahead. Merge left.” I can almost understand when it’s overnight, but way more often than they should be, they’re left up all weekend with no work going on. | Why some drivers at red traffic lights stop back 4 or 5 feet from the intersection. Often it’s enough room for another car to be in front of them. I always wonder if they’ve been hit from behind in the past and were bumped into the middle of the intersection. |
Bob and I are sticklers about sending thank-you notes, as addressed in this set of 3 50-word stories I wrote back in 2021:
Bob’s mother was a writer, and she owned this book:
It’s old now, but (most of) its principles still stand. It’s a short 27-page book, and 5 of those pages are about letters that must be written:
Of course, this day and age, this corollary is also true: “For example, it would never do for a young groom to reply on the telephone to a written dinner invitation from his wife’s employer!”
These are the 10 occasions for which a letter is a must — 3 of which are thank-you related:
“Thank you for the gift”
The receipt of even the most trifling gift must be acknowledged by letter.
“Thank you for the weekend”
You must write a “bread-and-butter letter” to your hostess to show that you have appreciated her hospitality.
“Thank you for the favor”
If a friend has shown special courtesy to a member of your family — if she has put herself out in any way to help you, it is imperative that you write a note to show her how grateful you are.
“Mr. and Mrs. accept with thanks”
Since all invitations should be written, it is necessary to acknowledge an invitation with a written reply.
“Bon voyage and best wishes”
To be correct, a hand-written note on your personal visiting card should accompany every gift.
“I enjoyed your letter so much”
Every letter you receive from a friend demands a letter in reply. However, if someone owes you a letter, do not stubbornly refuse to write until it is “your turn.” 😂 Write whenever you feel the urge.
“Best wishes for the holiday”
Your written message, no matter how short, means twice as much, especially at Christmas or other holidays.
“Congratulations and best wishes”
Whether it’s a new baby, a new job, a new husband (😂), or a graduation, a letter is the gracious way of expressing your pleasure.
“We hope you’ll get well soon”
A letter written to a friend who is sick is the most appreciated thoughtfulness.
“My deep-felt sympathy”
When a person is bereaved the simple, sincere expressions of sympathy you write are deeply felt and appreciated.
Here’s Bob and I waiting for our thank-you notes, if you owe us one:
On this day in past years:
2025
Tuesday: I did an analysis of the books I’ve read (including Mostly Social Book Club books) of the genre books about books.
2024
Monday: Vivian & Jeff visited after appointments with Nathan and an estate planning attorney, and the Fusion has been sluggish to start and the indicators (gas & temperature) keep resetting after the car has been turned off a bit, so I dropped it off at Brown’s Alignment & Auto Repair to have the battery checked.
2023
Saturday: We went to Christina & John Ramono’s “fry-out,” along with Wayne Wilson, David Stratton, and Christina & John’s friends Margaret & Brian Clement and Dana Deaton & Finley Lee, and it was a great time with deep-fried french fries, mushrooms, pumpkin pie bites, and Hostess Twinkies pieces.
2022
Friday: I met Shannon Schorey at the northwest Cary La Farm Bakery for lunch, and Clint brought (Claire Hakin’s and Pat Hayden’s) Tupperware orders over and Claire joined Clint, Matt, & Dillon for happy hour, which (after Claire left) ended up extending late into the evening culminating with Bob making breakfast for everyone and Dillon loading our dishwasher.
2021
Thursday: I took PTO for the morning for my PT session (8-9) and an Ameriprise financial planning meeting with Bob, and I presented my email editing analysis work at our Content team meeting, which was received with much appreciation and many affirmations.
2020
Wednesday: I ran to the Fayetteville Street post office to mail back an adapter that we accidentally took from Darren and Sandra Anderson’s cottage on Cape Cod that we rented for a month, and we received Anne and Dan’s notice that this year’s holiday “tween” gathering is being canceled due to the pandemic.
2019
Monday: The Open Studio area in the Red Hat Tower opened today, we moved our offices to the other end of the building, and Bob and I watched several season 2 episodes of Schitt’s Creek.
2018
Sunday: We had book club at Crossroads, and we discussed Logical Family: A memoir.
2017
Saturday: I took mom to bingo, stopped for Burger King chicken sandwiches on the way, and she just made a donation tonight, although she did win $200 on Wednesday.
2016
Friday: I was sick as a dog today, with what felt like the same stomach issues I had last Friday on the second day of our retreat, and I spent 3 hours (2 in the a.m., 1 in the p.m.) sleeping in the Wellness room at Red Hat.
2015
Wednesday: I drove to Greenville to take mom to bingo, and I spent the time working on the playlist for the birthdays CD we’re going to give out at the “surprise” birthday party on the Friday night before our wedding.
2014
Tuesday: I had lunch at Oak City Meatball Shoppe (which closed in 2024) with the Red Hatters to orient Colby Hoke on our processes.
| Rules | Service | Predilection |
| Friday is trash day in our neighborhood. Bins must be out by 7:30AM, on the curb, wheels facing out. Pickup is typically between 8AM and 10AM. Household trash weekly, recycle and yard waste alternate weeks. Bins must not be overloaded, recycling not bagged, yard waste without debris, no construction trash. | I started taking in a few neighbors’ bins a few years ago when I noticed TR’s bins, two doors down, were left on the curb for days. She’s single and often works until way after dark, so I thought I’d do her a favor. She sometimes thanks us with bourbon. | Not that I’m particular, but I think the bins should be placed in a certain order. Closest to the house door should be recycling, next trash, and then yard waste. Often the trash is not filled weekly, yard waste typically just monthly. The recycle bin is definitely the most used. |
| Connections puzzle | Bob’s movie | John’s book |
| My husband and I are both big fans of coincidences and of words. So, imagine our delight when the word “séance” appeared three times in one day. On Wednesday, 10/29/25, the purple category for the NYT’s Connection puzzle was “Words starting with the ‘say’ sound”: SACRUM, SEITAN, SEYCHELLES, and SÉANCE. | On that same day, my husband Bob — who is an avid movie watcher and who rates and writes a 10-word summary and a 6-word review for each — was watching Count Yorga, Vampire, and his summary of the 1970 movie was: “Friends learn handsome séance medium is vampire; vampire shenanigans ensue.” | On that same day, I was reading my 99th book of 2025, The Lost Husband, in which one of the characters fancies herself as having the ability to speak with the dead and offers to do a séance with another character whose husband had died a couple of years previously. |
| Birthday | Diwali | Halloween |
| Our neighbor’s child, Mary Winston, went from zero to one in 365 days, and they gathered friends and relatives in their backyard one afternoon to celebrate the milestone. It was fun watching the guest of honor’s face as she tasted the cake made with edible starchy tuberous roots — a.k.a. yams. | We attended the Diwali — Hindu festival of lights — celebration, hosted by our neighbors Sarah, Sameer, and Krishna. It was indeed a festive event, complete with great Indian food — appetizers, entrees, vegetables, naan, and desserts; a bartender tending an open bar; a DJ; fireworks; and lots of nice people to meet. | Our friends Dana, Finley, and their daughter Amelia had their 17th annual zombie party. We “zombified” some costumes we had from a nautical-themed party on a recent cruise we went on, by adding on face paint. The “grease-based” make-up we wore finally responded to some mineral oil to remove it. |
| Jury duty | Colonoscopies | Delaying RMDs |
| It varies by state, but in North Carolina individuals who are 72 years of age or older, can request to be excused from jury duty. They don’t take you off “the list,” or anything, so you can still be summoned. However, you can be excused simply for being “of age.” | It’s not a strict rule, but for average-risk individuals, most guidelines suggest that regular colon cancer screening can stop around age 75; for those from 76-85, the decision is made on a case-by-case basis. The benefits of screening generally decrease and the risks of the procedure increase for older adults. | Required minimum distributions (RMDs) from retirement accounts, like IRAs, are mandatory annual withdrawals that must be taken once you reach age 73. The amount of the distribution is calculated based on your account balance and your life expectancy, and failure to take the full distribution can result in a penalty. |
| Nurse | Teacher | Physician |
| I’m not saying this just because my husband was a critical-care nurse for 35 years. He spent a good portion of that career in the Medical ICU, working nights and weekends. His stories opened my eyes to the kind of care given in the MICU and the sometimes-challenging family dealings. | I’m not just saying this because my sister was a teacher. She was a great, compassionate, and beloved one, with multiple nominations for Teacher of the Year. After leaving the classroom to obtain her EdD, she rose to the position of Assistant Dean, Undergraduate Affairs and Educator Preparation at ECU. | Both my PCP (Amy Hird, PA-C) and my back surgeon (Dr. Conor Regan), are the kind of doctor I respect the most. That is, they both are incredibly knowledgeable in their respective areas of medicine, while also being exceptionally personable. In my experience it’s been rare to find that combination. |
Three 50-word stories about the emotional toll of living in the closet for 35 years.
| Keeping up appearances | In the interest of me | To come out—or check out |
| I’m married to a woman, but I am a terrified, closeted gay man trying to keep up the charade. So, I “ogle” at “big tits” and traveling as a trainer for work, I make sure I refer to “my wife” at least once while introducing myself. It’s kind of exhausting. | I was a young Republican because I believed I was a self-made man—before I learned about privilege. But mostly I identified as such to distance myself from “the gays.” Voting against their interests, I couldn’t possibly be one, right? I’m still embarrassed and haunted by this. I’m so sorry. | Riding home from my $100K job, to my $250K home, in my $40K car, I wonder: “Is there any way to plunge this ‘ultimate driving machine‘ into that ravine and ensure I won’t live with an ‘intended to die’ for the rest of my life?” It’s unbearable living like this. |
| Clothes | Binoculars | Swimsuits |
| We each had only a carry-on suitcase for 3 days in NYC, followed by a 7-day cruise. I wore all but one dress shirt, didn’t wear 5 of the 7 t-shirts, wore only one of 2 pairs of long pants, and only one of 2 pairs of flip-flops I brought. | I have some mini-binoculars that have, arguably, gone on more trips without being used than anything else I own. I don’t even like them — the hinge is hard to adjust and they’re hard to focus. I might just get a wild hair and not bring them on our next trip. | Can you believe I was on a cruise ship with 2 free-fall drop slides, 2 whip-twister slides, a main pool, an adults-only pool, and no fewer than 5 hot tubs, and I didn’t wear either of the 2 swim suits I brought? And no, I didn’t do any skinny dipping. |
| Plants | Lock | |
| About a week before we go, we submit a hold mail request to start on the day we leave and start back the day before we return. My husband takes care of this item for us. Too bad there’s not a way to indicate, “Just throw away the junk mail.” | We have 2 plants in our house, and the day we leave for vacation, my husband moves them to our kitchen sink that he’s put a small amount of water in that they can drink from when they get thirsty. Truth be told, we wouldn’t be devastated if they died. | We have a sliding glass door off our primary bedroom that leads to our porch. In addition to engaging the lock on it, we lay a stick in the track for extra security. There’s actually a product for this, called a “charley bar,” but we just use a free stick. |
| Sanitize areas | Pass muster | Meet cabin steward |
| It’s clean, but a little extra precaution never hurt anyone. Focus on the high-traffic areas of your room, such as the doorknob, deadbolt, TV remote, light switches, bathroom faucets, thermostat, safe keypad, etc. If you want to go the extra mile, rewash the bar glasses if your cabin has them. | The muster drill is an embarkation day requirement. Traditionally, this has meant identifying your assembly station and heading out there when the drill commences. For an e-muster, you will be required to watch the safety video in your cabin, and then make your way to the muster station in person. | Take this opportunity to tell them your preferences. We always ask them to empty our minibar to use as a fridge, tell them we need 3 pillows each, and let them know how we like our bed made up, which experience tells us is easiest to do with this picture. |
Source: Oliver, J. (Ed.). (2024, September 27). 10 things to do as soon as you get to your cruise cabin. CruiseCritic. Retrieved September 22, 2025, from https://www.cruisecritic.com/articles/10-things-to-do-as-soon-as-you-get-to-your-cruise-cabin
Read other 50-word stories that I’ve written.| Writing | Reading | Tracking |
| Stephen King says, “If you want to be a writer, you must do two things above all others: read a lot and write a lot.” I’ve written something every day for the last 21 years, 8 months, and 2 days. It’s definitely a habit, and it definitely brings me joy. | I’m on track to read over 100 books this year, which include books that our Mostly Social Book Club reads. The totals for the 3 previous years are: 102, 50, and 70, respectively. My joyful reading habit includes writing up 10-word summaries and 6-word reviews for each book I read. | “My quantified self”: I track a lot of things in my life — so much so that I have a web page listing a great deal of them. I confess to being a spreadsheet whore, and more than once I have had to talk myself out of starting a new one. |
| The train | The accommodations | The route |
| We’re traveling on the Amtrak Southwest Chief leaving Chicago and traveling to Los Angeles over the course of 2½ days. It is a 43-hour trip of roughly 2,265 miles with 31 stops. It’s known for its scenic views including the Painted Desert, Red Cliffs of Sedona, and the Grand Canyon. | We have the Superliner Bedroom with a sofa and a chair that transform into upper and lower beds to sleep in. There’s an in-room restroom and shower, and bedding, pillow, towels and linens, along with a dedicated first-class attendant, and we get priority boarding and complimentary snacks, meals, and drinks. | Leaving Chicago and arriving in Los Angeles, we travel through Illinois (4 stops), Iowa (1 stop), Missouri (2 stops), Kansas (6 stops), Colorado (3 stops), New Mexico (5 stops), Arizona (3 stops), and California (6 stops). An Albuquerque friend is meeting us for a drink during our 40-minute stop there. |
| Organ donation | Cremation wishes | Bus pass |
| In North Carolina, like many states, our driver’s licenses have an organ donor field, which is designated by a little red heart if you are one. Its presence means you are registered as an organ, eye, and tissue donor and signifies your legal consent for organ donation upon your death. | I have a Cremation Society of the Carolinas card with 3 steps to take if you find me on the side of the road (or dead anywhere else). It’s a pre-paid plan I’ve had for 20+ years and it includes repatriation of remains in case I die on foreign soil. | I’m an occasional user of the City of Raleigh’s city bus transit system, which is called GoRaleigh. Youth ages 12 and under, and senior citizens 65 and older, can ride the buses free. To that end, both my husband and I have applied for, and received, our Senior ID cards. |
This one made me smile, because our Amtrak Southwest Chief trip is imminent, when we’ll be on a train for 43 hours from Chicago to L.A. — and now on the lookout for lovestruck strangers. 😂
And this one made me literally laugh out loud,
because I spent years wanting a postcard published on PostSecret.com — and it finally happened on December 17, 2023:
| My physicality | My health | My career |
| I’m an ideal 5’10” tall and weigh 153 pounds giving me a BMI that doesn’t stand for bloated, miserable, and indulgent. I have a magic metabolism precluding me from any need to work out. And I can buy clothes off the rack or on the internet without trying them on. | Without high blood pressure, high cholesterol, or acid reflux, I’m using my pill box to store my sunflower seeds to snack on while out and about. Without arthritis in two of my fingers I can make a victory or peace sign faster than a knife fight in a phone booth. | I’m comfortably retired after a 25-year career as a chorus dancer on Broadway in shows including A Chorus Line, Chicago, 42nd Street, West Side Story, Oklahoma, Cabaret, Grease, In the Heights, and the best. gig. ever. of dancing in the men’s locker room in The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas. |
| Sailaway | Nautical | Pride |
 For the ship’s sailaway party when we cruise as part of BearCruise, we’re encouraged to wear a hat or a t-shirt (or both!) with a bear on it to help each other identify members of our group of about 100. This Norwegian Getaway ship has a guest capacity of 3,902. |
 BearCruises usually have 1 or 2 parties while sailing. Here’s the first one: “Hey, sailor! Come dressed as a sailor of any kind… captain, pirate, Gilligan’s Island castaway, swabbie, Crackerjack, Captain Crunch… you get the idea.” Bob and I went all out and bought $8 sailor hats for the occasion. |
 The second party’s theme is Pride Colors: “Come dressed in your best pride outfit or dress monochromatic in one of the colors from the pride flag.” We plan to wear our “Guncles” t-shirts that our niece, Mary Lou, bought us when she spent a few days with us in May. |
| Home | Côte d’Azur | Gym |
| My then-wife and I had a cleaning service, and after one cleaning, I went to change into the only pair of jeans that fit me at the time, and they were nowhere to be found. Why those women wanted men’s jeans is beyond me. They took some other stuff, too. | I was walking on the French Riviera, there on a 6-week IBM business trip, and had been warned about the pickpocketing Romani (then-called “gypsy”) kids. But like with most people, there’s such turmoil when it’s actually happening that by the time you realize it’s happening to you, it’s too late. | I got fraud-related text messages from 2 of my credit card accounts, both about charges at Lululemon and the Apple Store. Looking in my wallet, both those cards were gone, along with my credit union debit card, which was charged moments later for similar purchases at the same two stores. |
Hover over image for text, or click images to enlarge.
| Spittle | Coffee | Deodorant |
|---|---|---|
 |  |  |
| This postcard reminded me of a book I read recently about The Hershey Company, and the “ladies on the line” who made Hershey’s kisses. Rewarded for speed, and because those little “plumes” in the kisses sometimes blew away, some women used to spit on them to keep them in place. | This postcard reminded me of the reason I drink my coffee black, and it’s not because I’m trying to be some kind of badass. I started drinking coffee in college, and since I was acquiring the taste anyway, I wanted to learn to like the least caloric version of it. | This postcard reminded me of another set of 50-word stories I wrote about “things I think are irrational but that I do anyway,” which included nutritionally rating garbage disposal contents, my reaction to stand-up comedians’ failed jokes, and thinking that exercising is the absolute best use of a rainy day. |
Source: PostSecret. (n.d.). PostSecret. https://postsecret.com/ [Postcards change every Sunday.]
Read other 50-word stories that I’ve written.I thought of the “in” vs. “on” usage the other day for a term I, then, promptly forgot. But, it was similar to saying “in line” vs. “on line,” as in, “I’m standing in/on line for the next teller.”
AI reports:
When discussing waiting in a row or queue, “in line” is the grammatically correct and most common usage in most parts of the English-speaking world.
However, the phrase “on line” is a prominent regional variation, particularly prevalent in the New York City region. While it may sound less conventional to those outside this area, it is still used and understood in that specific region to mean waiting in a queue.
That’s specifically about “in line” vs. “on line.” The Britannica Dictionary talks about how to generally chose “in” vs. “on”:
More interesting than both of those, this entry — from Reddit, I believe — confirms that “the struggle is real”:
Why are “in” and “on” used seemingly randomly in English and how do you explain the difference? I have a friend from Mexico and he asked me to explain the difference between “in” and “on” in English and I didn’t know what to tell him because it really seems random which is correct to use.
Why is it like this?
| Home visit | Bar staff | Da bears |
| The “Coffee and Cake with Locals” excursion during our Bratislava, Slovakia port call was a rare chance to connect on a human level with people from other cultures. Andre opened up his home for a visit, and instead of coffee, he served us samples of the home-grown spirits he makes. | With the premium drink package, we spent a lot of time at the riverboat’s bar, where the bartenders became very familiar with “A309,” our cabin number to charge all our drinks to. Yulinana, Stefan, Dobrica, and Ayu got in a lot of steps serving my drink of choice — a CC&DC. | Our BearCruise group of ~40 folks included 7 from Raleigh, several guys we’d met on previous BearCruises (Mexican Riviera, Dominican MayDaze, and Northern Europe), and some new friends like Daniel and Michael and Tom and Art, and a couple of non-BearCruise guys like Chris and Steve from near Niagara Falls. |
| The itinerary | The boat | The group |
| We flew from Raleigh to Paris to Budapest, spent 2 days on land there, and we’re now on a Danube riverboat cruise traversing Hungary, Slovakia, Austria, and Germany. The port calls include: Budapest (Hungary); Bratislava (Slovakia); Vienna, Krems, Dürnstein, and Engelhartszell (Austria); Passau and Regensburg (Germany). We’ll return from Munich. | No it’s not a Viking, but an Emerald cruise. Our Emerald Star riverboat holds 182 passengers, and Bob and I have a Panorama Balcony Suite, a favorite feature of which is its sliding balcony window. There’s a pool, theater, sunning and games areas, and several restaurants and bars on board. | We’re with a BearCruise group of ~40, comprising mostly gay men — and the one straight woman is my ex-grad-school professor, who’s traveling with her gay grandson. Bob and I have done several cruises with BearCruise, including Halloweenie Mexican Riviera, Dominican MayDaze, and Northern Europe, and they’re always a good time. |
| Ratings | Sources | Format |
| I have a 5-star rating system and of the 50 books I’ve read in this first half of 2025, the ratings distribution is:
• 15 ★★★★★, • 18 ★★★★☆, • 9 ★★★☆☆, • 6 ★★☆☆☆, and • 2 ★☆☆☆☆. I abandoned the 2 one-star-rated books, because that’s part of the definition of a 1-star rating. |
I rarely buy books, and I haven’t bought any of the books that I’ve read so far this year. They’ve come — free — from 3 different sources: • Amazon First Reads (10), • BookBub email list (5), and • Wake County Public Library (32). Two were from friends, and one was free through Prime Reading. |
My preference of reading formats from most-to-least favorite is: 1) Kindle, 2) audiobook, 3) large-print book, 4) regular-print hardback book, 5) regular-print paperback book. This year-to-date’s 50 books comprised: 21 Kindle books, 6 audiobooks, and 23 printed books (3 of which were picture books, and one of which was large-print). |
| Mowing | Exterminating | Gutter cleaning |
| We were mowing our lawn — and by we were, I mean my husband was — and at the same time, the kid across the street from us was mowing his mother’s lawn. And while mowing, Bob noticed 2 other neighbors’ house maintenance goings on that we’re also having done this week. | The same across-the-street neighbor was also having her extermination service this morning, by Economy Exterminators, and our exterminator, BugOut, is coming today as well. Our assigned BugOut exterminator is Josh, who — another coincidence — was the exterminator assigned to the Red Hat building I used to work in before I retired. | Also this morning while mowing, Bob noticed that our neighbor two doors down is having their gutters cleaned, and we’re having ours cleaned on Thursday. The company our neighbor is using is amusingly named Suck My Gutters Clean. Our roof and gutter cleaner is — boring by comparison — Raleigh Gutter Cleaning. |
Long-time cruisers love to correct you when you call the vessel a boat, as in “We need to be back to the boat by 6 p.m.”
“It’s a ship!” they’ll cry.
In anticipation of our imminent Danube Delights Riverboat Cruise, I read Diamonds on the Danube in which, most times, the characters refer to the riverboat as a ship, which got me to musing… and Googling, of course:
A riverboat is generally called a boat, although in some contexts, particularly with larger river vessels, “ship” might be used. The distinction between boat and ship often relates to size and whether the vessel is designed for ocean travel (typically called a ship) or inland waterways (typically called a boat). Riverboats, designed for shallow draft and inland navigation, are usually classified as boats.
I’ll be saying, “It’s time to get back to the boat,” during this trip. This is what our boat looks like:
In contrast, our fall New England & Canada Cruise will be on NCL’s Norwegian Getaway, which is unequivocally a ship:
Words, words, words! Ever the editor.
| Editing | Reading | Exercising |
| I don’t edit as much as I used to before retiring, but whenever I do, I listen to classical music while doing it, because if I listen to music with words, I start singing along, and I lose my place editing. I typically listen to music I own while editing. | I listen to classical music while reading for the same reason I listen to it while editing — to avoid being “lyrically distracted.” For this activity, I typically listen to one of two free classical music providers: Venice Classic Radio Italia internet radio or a classical music playlist on Amazon Music. | Three times a week, I do 40 minutes of core, back, and left-knee stretching and strengthening exercises. For some reason, for this activity, I always listen to WCPE, theclassicalstation.org, a local classical radio station that broadcasts globally, and it is typically when George Leef, whom I love, is the announcer. |
| Man | Cop | Paramedics |
| A white man, presumably experiencing homelessness, was bent over so far on the sidewalk bench between Planet Fitness and Dollar Tree that the top of his head was almost touching the ground. A Styrofoam leftover meal container and Arby’s and McDonald’s bags were littered around him. Someone called the police. | A Black Raleigh police officer arrived and tried to talk with the man, who couldn’t keep his head and torso up long enough to talk to the officer. The cop took notes, and talked into his two-way radio situated between his neck and right shoulder. Shortly thereafter an ambulance arrived. | Two EMTs, one very-young white female and a Hispanic male, emerged from the EMS truck. They wrapped a blanket around the man from the waist down and helped him walk to the vehicle. A few minutes after it left, an older, white woman arrived and spoke briefly with the policeman. |
| “Paydays” | Library book due | Subscription cancelation |
| We have 3 “paydays” between the two of us every month. On the 2nd, I collect a chunk of change from a retirement investment. The other 2 are our social security checks, Bob’s on the 2nd Tuesday and mine on the 3rd Wednesday. Not bad for sittin’ around doin’ nothin’. | I calendar the due date of my library books even though, on average, I take about 3½ days to read a book, and the lending period is sometimes 2 weeks and sometimes 3. I can’t remember ever keeping a book until its due date, so calendaring it is really unnecessary. | We are diligent about canceling trial subscriptions and always make a calendar entry to cancel them the day before they end. We’ve never forgotten to cancel one to avoid any charges for a conversion to a paid subscription. This month, on the 26th, our trial subscription to Apple Music ends. |
| Beef Burger | Flip Flop | Brisket |
| It is National Beef Burger Day. A beef burger starts with real ground beef on a bun or between two slices of bread. Of course, some of us like ours double stacked, and others prefer them spicy. What’s really important is what is in the middle — that delicious beef burger. | Annually on the Wednesday after Memorial Day, National Flip Flop Day encourages us to wear our favorite flip flops and show them off! The term “flip flop” has applied to flat-soled sandals with straps between the first and second toes and across the top of the foot since the 1960s. | National Brisket Day celebrates one of the 9 prime cuts of beef that come from the breast or lower chest of beef or veal and when prepared correctly, renders both delicious flavor and tenderness. Select a well-marbled cut of meat. The fat will keep the brisket moist and add flavor. |
Sources:
• National Beef Burger Day. (n.d.). National Day Calendar. Retrieved May 28, 2025, from https://www.nationaldaycalendar.com/national-day/national-beef-burger-day-may-28
• National Flip Flop Day. (n.d.). National Day Calendar. Retrieved May 28, 2025, from https://www.nationaldaycalendar.com/national-day/national-flip-flop-day-first-wednesday-after-memorial-day
• National Brisket Day. (n.d.). National Day Calendar. Retrieved May 28, 2025, from https://www.nationaldaycalendar.com/national-day/national-brisket-day-may-28
| Boxcars | Flatcars | Hoppers |
 CSX boxcars come in lengths of 50′, 60′, and 86′ and heights labelled “standard,” “hi-roof,” and “auto.” The 50’ standard boxcar fleet can carry from 70-100 tons. They carry a range of products, including rolled paper, pulp, newsprint, metals, building materials, appliances, food products, or any bagged and palletized material. |
 CSX flatcars provide an open platform that offer flexibility that no other freight car can provide. They come in several lengths and configurations, ranging from general purpose to very specialized designs to move extremely large and heavy shipments — from transformers to tractors. There are “general purpose,” “bulkhead,” and “centerbeam” flatcars. |
 CSX hopper cars are freight cars designed to transport bulk materials like coal, ore, chemicals, cement, and grain. They have a unique funnel-shaped bottom outlet with doors that can be opened to discharge the cargo, often using gravity or pneumatic pressure. There are 2 main hopper varieties: covered and open-topped. |
Sources:
CSX Corporation. (n.d.). CSX Railroad Equipment. CSX. Retrieved May 22, 2025, from https://www.csx.com/index.cfm/customers/resources/equipment/railroad-equipment/
Google Search. (n.d.). seaboard+station+raleigh+train+depot. Retrieved May 22, 2025 from https://www.google.com/search?q=seaboard+station+raleigh+train+depot&rlz=1C1CHBF_enUS1013US1013&oq=seaboard+station+raleigh+train+depot&gs_lcrp=EgZjaHJvbWUyBggAEEUYOTIHCAEQIRigATIHCAIQIRigATIHCAMQIRigATIHCAQQIRigATIHCAUQIRigAdIBCDg4ODFqMGo3qAIAsAIA
| High school graduation | College graduation | Started @ IBM |
| 50 freaking years ago, on May 25th and marching to Pomp and Circumstance, I graduated from Lejeune High School on the Marine Corps Base Camp Lejeune. I wouldn’t be attending our 50th reunion in July even if I wasn’t going to be on a riverboat cruising from Budapest to Regensburg. | 45 years ago, on May 9th, I received my undergraduate degree from East Carolina University in Mathematics with a Computer Science Option. Computers were so new then, there wasn’t yet a separate Computer Science major. I immediately moved to Raleigh to begin my 42-year career working mostly for technology companies. | I remember it so clearly. That May 19th morning 45 years ago, when I turned off the Research Triangle Park‘s Alexander Boulevard and into the IBM entrance thinking. “I have arrived.” Never in a million years did I think that I’d work for such a prestigious (at the time) company. |
| Oak Island lunch | Raleigh cookout | Front-porch happy hour |
| We took Mary Lou on the 2-hour trip from Raleigh to Oak Island to join other NC family members at Shagger Jacks for lunch. Our party of 10 enjoyed some good food, shared lots of family memories, and made a few more. We visited 2 aunts’ houses before heading back. | It was a gathering of Mary Lou’s first cousins, along with John’s sister and brother-in-law at our house for a littlenecks with Portuguese rolls appetizer and grilled chicken thighs for dinner — along with a cheeseball, celery, and carrots, broccoli salad, macaroni salad, chocolate chip walnut cookies and fresh strawberries desserts. | We had a front-porch happy hour with Mary Lou and 11 friends and neighbors, and we cheered on the Pelagic Run Club runners as they ran by our house. Once they’d all passed, we moved to the back deck to continue the conversations, snacking, and drinking until about 8:30 PM. |
| The three coffins | The inner coffin | The green pope |
| The traditional, three-nested papal coffins comprise: The inner cypress coffin, symbolizing humility, holds the pope’s body and personal items. The middle coffin, made of lead, preserves the body and secures important documents. And the outer coffin, crafted of elm or oak, ensures durability, symbolizes strength and honors the pope’s dignity. | The inner coffin traditionally includes coins minted during the pope’s reign and a rogito – a history of his key acts – written on parchment paper and placed in a brass or metal tube. Also included: a death certificate and other symbolic items — including his miter, pastoral staff, broken ring, and rosary. | The carbon footprint of the traditional three papal coffins varies depending on the materials and manufacturing processes involved. However, Pope Francis’s choice of a single, zinc-lined wooden coffin significantly reduces the environmental impact compared to the traditional triple-coffined system. The zinc lining replaces the three-coffins’ cypress, lead, and elm protection. |
Sources:
| It’s complicated | Paper | E-book |
| Whether it’s better to read books in print or on a device is complicated, because of the complex interplay of the resources involved across the entire lifecycle of a published work: how books and devices are made and shipped, what energy they use to run, if they can be recycled. | Traditional print publishing comes with a high carbon footprint. It’s the world’s third-largest industrial greenhouse gas emitter, and 32 million trees are felled each year in the U.S. to make paper for books. Then there’s the printing and shipping — to say nothing of the many unsold books that are destroyed. | Digital reading seemingly has a considerable eco-advantage over print by saving trees, pulping and shipping. Moreover, companies that make e-readers such as Amazon, which sells the market-leading Kindle e-reader, offer recycling programs for old devices, helping save an estimated 2.3 million metric tons of carbon emissions over a 2-year period. |
Source: Veltman, C. (2024, May 25). What’s better for the climate: A paper book, or an e-reader? NPR. https://www.npr.org/2024/05/25/1252930557/book-e-reader-kindle-climate
It’s days like this that I revel in being retired.
| Fireplaces | Convertibles | Wind chimes |
| The theory: It’ll be so lovely sitting around it, with the flickering flames and the crackling sound — so romantic and relaxing. The reality: Somebody’s ass will be getting up every 30 or so minutes to stoke that fucker, or it’ll die out or worse yet, start smoking up the house. | The theory: With the sun on our skin and the breeze on our faces, we’ll be one with nature. People will notice and envy us — like we’re rockstars. The reality: I can’t hear you and this damn wind is messing up my hair even with the extra-hold gel in it. | The theory: The soothing sounds will bring us a sense of calm and peace, and they might bring some good luck and ward off negative energy. The reality: That damn thing is keeping me awake at night, and today we got a complaint from the neighbors that it’s annoying AF. |
| Tying shoes | Flossing teeth | Opening packages |
| With recent surgery on the middle and index fingers on one hand, it quickly became obvious that doing things that are normally second-nature become difficult at best, impossible at worst. I learned to do some of them with my ring finger and thumb instead. Tying shoes was one of them. | The next challenge was flossing my teeth. I wind the floss around my index finger of each hand — pretty tightly — and that didn’t sit well over the quite tender, stitched-up finger on my left hand. I was able to get by with a little help from my friends: dental picks. | Have you tried to open a high-density polyethylene bag like those inside cereal boxes? (I often resort to scissors even when all of my fingers are fully functional.) Fuhgeddaboudit with two fingers out of commission! Heck, I could barely open a GLAD® FLEX’NSEAL sandwich bag, or a pack of nabs! |
| Open on the sabbath? I went to my library on Sunday to return 2 books in the outside book-return receptacles and was shocked to learn it was open on Sundays! I knew that branch was open on Saturdays, but I had no idea it was open on Sundays, too. Sometimes, it’s the little things. |
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| What’s in a name? Having had 2 beloved cocker spaniels, they have a special place in my heart. From a distance, I saw a store sign that said, “Village Spanials,” and missing the misspelling, I thought, “What??? There’s an oddly specific pet store here now?” Closer, it turned out to be “Village Spa Nails.” |
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| Who knew from a wine bar? The restaurant that last July opened in the former location of Cafe Carolina, billed as a “wine bar,” has never caught my attention since I don’t drink wine. But today, the name Postino, certainly did grab my attention, since we recently ate at one in Scottsdale, Arizona and loved it. |
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People ask me how I don’t get bored during retirement, and when I say I’m on my computer at least 8 hours a day, it seems hard to believe. Well, this is a typical morning, which can take up at least 2-3 hours:
Doing morning brain teasers:
| AARP crossword puzzle |  |
| L.A.Times crossword puzzle |  |
| NYT Strands game |  |
| NYT Connections game |  |
| NYT Wordle game |  |
Next in my routine are visiting these websites:
| Check our Google calendar for the day’s commitments |  |
| Check today’s to-do list in my iPhone Reminders app |  |
| Review our checking account activity |  |
| Update my sentence-a-day diary |  |
| Check my wait-listed library books for movement |  |
| Check the morning’s stock market activity |  |
| See what my exercise check-in is for today |  |
| Read the day’s TLDR newsletter |  |
| Check the daily BookCrossing releases |  |
| Check my daily BookBub email for free e-books |  |
I do things like this on the computer throughout the rest of the day:
And usually, I spend my evenings reading. As of today, I’ve read 30 books so far this year.
Recently, like in the last month or so, these painful nodules popped up on the end of the middle and index fingers on my left hand.
A trip to the Raleigh Hand-to-Shoulder Center diagnosed them as mucous cysts, also known as ganglion cysts, and yesterday I had them removed.
They have to remain wrapped for 5 days, and it’s really cramping my style typing.
I am dictating what I want to say into an iNote on my phone and then cutting and pasting the resulting text into this blog entry. I will not be deterred.
| The Michaelses | The birthday boy | The Thompsons & Stoimenoffs |
| We had dinner with our friends Sherry and Fred at Baby Kay’s Cajun Kitchen in Mesa, AZ. John and Sherry met on an ambassadorial trip in October of 2008 to Beijing, Guilin, and Shanghai. We don’t see each other #IRL often, but like this time, it’s always a great visit. | My husband’s brother, Tommy, celebrated his 75th birthday, and we flew in to attend a surprise party for him. His brother Jimmy and his wife Cindy hosted the gala, and I met a nephew for the first time who also flew in for the occasion. Bob made the birthday cake. | We met grade-school friends of my husband for lunch one day. I was Facebook friends with one of them, so it was great to meet her in person. Bob and I enjoyed a bruschetta board, which was fantastic — second only to the company we enjoyed dining al fresco at Postino’s. |
| Gay trash | Asian literature | African American picture book |
| Notes of Unspoken Words is a gay romance novel. The description of it had 2 acronyms in it that I had to look up — MMM and HEA. This is only the 2nd gay romance novel I’ve ever read — the other one being of the oddly specific genre gay Amish romance. | Greek Lessons is classified as Asian literature about a student who has lost her voice connecting with a teacher who is losing his sight. The book won the 2024 Nobel Prize in Literature, and it was named Best Book of 2023 by both Time magazine and The New Yorker magazine. | Dream a Dress, Dream a Poem: Dressmaker and Poet, Myra Viola Wilds is a beautifully illustrated picture book about the titular African American poet. After losing her eyesight due to overwork as a dressmaker — who made gorgeous hand-stitched gowns — she hand-wrote the culturally important poetry collection, Thoughts of Idle Hours. |
| 2015 | 2020 | 2025 |
| The theme of the event was “Eat Local Chili,” Bob named his entry, “Bob’s Beanless Batch,” and he won 3rd place vegetarian even though there was turkey in it — oops! (A judging snafu.) I don’t like beans, so he made the bold choice to make and enter one without them. | The theme was “Passport to Chili,” Bob named his entry, “PORCH-uguese Chili,” and he won 3rd place in the meat category. The name of his chili was inspired by the fact that the entries in crockpots are placed on tables on the Watkins’ wraparound porch, and me being half Portuguese. | The theme was “Dune: The Spice Must Flow,” Bob named his entry, “Howya Dune?” and he won 3rd place in the meat category. The name was inspired by the fact that Bob is Irish, “Howya” is how the Irish say, “How are you?” and “Dune” is intimating the word “doing?” |
| What do I not need? | What is not wrong? | What do I not understand? |
| Here are the top-4 things I do not need, with the one I do not need the most first. 1) To ever relocate — love our house. 2) A retirement job — not bored, don’t need extra cash. 3) Another food to like — like plenty. 4) More age-related aches and pains — sucks. | Things in my life that are not wrong include: 1) My choice of a mate. 2) The relief from back pain I’ve enjoyed for a year-and-a-half. 3) The number of friends I have. 4) The result of “planning for retirement.” 5) The number of vacations I take in a year. | There are so many things: 1) Why men discard chewing gum in urinals. 2) What the draw is of violence and chase scenes in movies. 3) Our U.S. tax code. 4) How the proof for “1+1=2” can be 300 pages long.2 5) How a stationary car’s wheels can still turn. |
| The library | BookBub | Amazon Prime |
| The last book I purchased was White Fragility in 2020. I borrow most of the books I read each year from the Wake County Public Library. I’ve added a field to my list of books that I’ve read in 2025 to indicate where I got the book and its format. | BookBub is a service that alerts you to cheap or free downloads of ebooks on amazon.com. I only get one that sounds interesting if it’s free — or once I got a $1.99 one for free with a balance on an amazon.com gift card I’d earned participating in a focus group. | I get free book downloads from two services available as an Amazon Prime member. At the beginning of each month First Reads presents 9 or so free books to choose one — and sometimes two — from, and Prime Reading lets you borrow up to 10 ebooks or audiobooks at a time. |
We have these 3 movie posters hanging in our dining room, with a meal-times theme to them.
| Breakfast at Tiffany’s | Naked Lunch | Dinner at Eight |
| This 1961 movie’s claim to fame is Mickey Rooney’s beyond-cringeworthy portrayal of “Mr. Yunioshi,” which catapults it to the top of “movies that didn’t age well” lists. I read the book, by Truman Capote, and I was stunned that they could make a 2-hour movie out of a 179-page book. | I refer to this 1981 movie as “the weirdest f*cking movie I’ve ever seen.” William S. Borroughs, who wrote the book it’s based on, said people’s opinion about the book included: “Disgusting!” “Pornographic, un-American trash!” “Unpublishable!” He adds: “So Hollywood, in all its wisdom, made it into a movie.” | This classic 1933 movie had a tagline that stated: “MORE STARS THAN HAVE EVER BEEN IN ANY PICTURE BEFORE. The biggest film sensation in 10 years!” The trailer describes a gentleman “who has outlived everything but his vanity,” and a lady “who would sacrifice everything to give a society dinner.” |
| The trope | An instance | A good fit |
| The “nosy neighbor” is a well-known, and some would argue, timeworn trope in entertainment. Some say it’s time to jettison the archetype altogether. Others argue they represent real-life people and should stay — but “be ‘relatable’ and ‘3D’ while serving their purpose.” Lamentably, it’s women most often portraying this character type. | Arguably, Gladys Kravitz from Bewitched, is the most famous “nosy neighbor.” One present-day meme describes her as “The Original Doorbell Camera.” She was a grotesquely stereotyped shrewish gossip — always on the lookout for delicious secrets and rumors by peering suspiciously around her living-room window curtains at least once an episode. | Crime fiction is a genre in which nosy neighbors thrive — busybodies, gossips, sleuths. They’re the busybody who, over their morning coffee, witnesses a murder while spying on the house next door, and the town gossip who realizes there’s something not right about the family down the block and relentlessly snoops. |
| St. Lidwina | Wilgefortis (a quasi saint) | St. Isadore |
| The patron saint of chronic illnesses and ice-skaters. Ice skating at 15, she broke a rib and sustained a head injury leading to the progressive paralysis of her entire body, and putting her into a deep depression. After a life-long battle with illness, she died at the age of 53. | The patron saint of facial hair and gender-fluid people. She grew a beard to make herself repulsive to a king she was being forced to marry — and took a vow of virginity. Enraged, her father crucified her. She’s considered a “folk saint,” especially by women seeking to escape abusive husbands. | The patron saint of students, computer users, computer technicians, programmers, and the Internet. Isadore’s knowledge of encyclopedias morphed into the internet, seen as the modern encyclopedia of universal knowledge. I can only imagine the conflicting emotions of becoming a saint only to be assigned to the I.T. helpdesk for eternity. |
| “Solitary” | Connections | Crosswords |
| “I won my Solitary game on the first try today,” he says as I’m pouring my coffee. “It was one of those games where the cards just all fall into place, and you’re done.” He’s referring to the card game solitaire — the only game in town according to The Carpenters. | Typically, I do Connections just after midnight when the new one comes out. I show my results to him when I get to the breakfast table. He gets out his worksheet, and we compare our journeys to the answers. “I got blue, green, purple, then yellow,” he says comparing them. | “I gave myself a B+ today,” he reports. He is referring to the L.A. Times crossword puzzle that I printed and left at his place at the kitchen table to complete his morning routine. His grading rubric is loosely based on how many answers involve having to look up something. |
| Flotsam | Jetsam | Lagan & derelict |
| Flotsam describes debris that floats on the water that often comes from a shipwreck or accident. It may be claimed only by its original owner. A finder may hold it for salvage. If the owner does not claim the goods within a reasonable time, they then belong to the finder. | Jetsam describes debris that was deliberately thrown overboard by a crew in distress, most often to lighten a vessel’s load. Jetsam may be claimed as the property of whomever discovers it. If the jetsam is valuable, the discoverer may collect the proceeds received through the sale of the salvaged objects. | Cargo left behind intentionally — usually with a buoy attached — to be recovered at a later point is called “lagan,” while anything that sinks to the bottom of the ocean without any plans for recovery is described as “derelict.” These categories, along with flotsam and jetsam, are covered by maritime law. |
| Good gravy! | Ohmygravy! | Gravy for God |
| I was on the phone recently with an insurance company’s customer service rep, when she made a mistake twice in a row entering something into her computer and exclaimed, “Good gravy!” It struck me, because she sounded like a young person from whom I’d more expect something like a “WTF?!?” | Within just hours of that “Good gravy!” incident, a friend solved the NYT’s Wordle puzzle on the first try and shared those results on her Facebook timeline with the exclamation, “Ohmygravy!” I immediately wondered if more people say that than I think or if I was experiencing the Baader-Meinhof phenomenon. | Curious, of course, I did some research. According to one source, the history of saying “Good gravy“ is that it was said by those who didn’t want to utter “Good God!” and take the name of the Lord in vain, thus expressing surprise or anger without a hint of profanity. |
| Before | During | After |
| I had very-visible metal braces in 1986 when I was 29 years old. 35 years later, on September 30, 2021, I got new-fangled, Invisalign® braces to re-straighten my teeth. Recommended by a friend, I got them at Zaytoun Orthodontics, and the estimated time to complete my treatment was 6 months. | Being the overachiever that I am, I finished in 4 months. I swear that the biggest contributor to that was using bite sticks many times a day (instead of just the recommended 3 times), because it was a satisfying substitute for biting my fingernails, which I could no longer do. | I got retainers on February 3, 2022, which I’ve now been wearing for 3 years. I’ve only forgotten to wear them 3 nights (unsurprisingly, each after a night of drinking) over those 3 years, and I’ve never once done the proverbial accidentally tossing of them into a McDonald’s trash can. |
| Backup | Download | Love |
| Backing up your phone is a Covey “Quadrant 2” activity, which means it’s important but not urgent. Other Q2 activities include relationship building and finding new opportunities. Knowing I’d forget otherwise, I have an entry in my iPhone Reminder app for the first of each month: “Back up our phones.” | I like to have a personal copy of our bank and investment account statements in case we lose access to the online ones for some reason—like changing banks or investment firms or when some statements “roll off” sites after 7 years. Our beginning-of-the-month reminder says: “Download monthly financial statements.” | Back to that Quadrant 2 “relationship building” item. Like many couples, in the beginning, we “celebrated” our wedding anniversary monthly. But unlike a lot of couples, after 9 years, we still do. (This month was 110 months.) My phone reminder, set for each month on the 28th, simply says: “Anniversary.” |
© 2025, John Martin, JM50WordStories. All rights reserved.
| 10 years | 25 years | 50years |
| This year on November 28th, Bob and I will celebrate 10 years of being legally married. I asked him to marry me on June 26, 2015, the day the Supreme Court ruled that we could. We married 5 months later in our beautiful backyard on that sunny 72-degree fall day. | At an IBM-sponsored event, on February 1, 2000, I walked up to a young, straight, then-American-Express financial advisor and said, “I’m gay, and if that’s gonna be a problem, we can’t work together.” 25 years later, our mutually beneficial long-term relationship has helped get my net worth into 7 digits. | “We are sexy; we’re alive. We’re the class of ’75.” On May 25, 1975, amidst the jarring juxtaposition of Pomp and Circumstance and our class song, Stairway to Heaven, we moved our tassels from right to left, graduating us from Lejeune High School aboard the Marine Corps Base Camp Lejeune. |
© 2025, John Martin, JM50WordStories. All rights reserved.
| Nominative mis-assignation | You, too! | Suspect redirect |
| In a previous house, I had an exterminator who was somewhat socially awkward. The first time he came to service my place, he greeted me at the door by calling me Mr. Halliwell. I said, “It’s Martin.” He said, “I’m so sorry. Sometimes I call the customer their street name.” | Approaching my gym entrance, I start thinking: After scanning your membership badge, the check-in person is going to say, “Enjoy your workout.” Don’t respond, “You, too.” Similarly a friend shared that he has a tendency to say, “You, too!” when the DoorDash deliverer hands him his food and says, “Enjoy!” | This always tickles me when it happens. I’ll ask a gay friend, “How do you know Dave?” for example. And they’ll answer, “Oh, I’ve known Dave for 15 years!” [Full stop.] Okay. Doesn’t answer the question. Often, that’s turned out to mean that they met hooking up for casual sex. |
© 2025, John Martin, JM50WordStories. All rights reserved.
| Plumbing proclivities | Water works | Wondering women |
| After wiping our urinal with a piece of toilet paper recently, I wondered if I could just toss it in and flush it. A quick Google search says, “Urinals were never engineered to handle toilet paper — their drainage connections were solely designed to manage the flow of water and urine.” | We’d never thought about there not being a shutoff faucet or valve on our urinal — like you see on commodes. However, once when the water in our urinal wouldn’t quit running, our plumber talked us through removing the cap on the supply flange to find the urinal’s shutoff valve underneath. | Often at parties, upon finding a urinal in our guest restroom, a woman will say, “Oh, I’ve always wanted to use one of those!” We usually respond, “Please do!” and then try not to imagine the actual execution of that endeavor, thinking perhaps she keeps a SheWee in her purse. |
© 2025, John Martin, JM50WordStories. All rights reserved.
| Tomato knife | Wooden spoon | Slicing knife |
 I’ll give this oddly specific kitchen utensil its due as the perfect knife when cutting its eponymous fruit — well, according to Britannica, it’s botanically a fruit, but nutritionally a vegetable. Bob loves it and uses it to cut other things, too. I, being a purist, use it only for tomatoes. |
 Rarely do I reach for a wooden spoon when I’m cooking. Bob, however, uses one more often than not — for something — while he’s cooking. I’m cognizant of this, because whenever I dry dishes, there’s almost always one in the lot, to which I invariably utter, “He loves a wooden spoon.” |
 Bob loves this slicing knife, which is one of the last of our knives I’d choose when I need one. He has “history” with it, having acquired it in an auction — at the historic Heck-Andrews house on Blount Street in Raleigh — amidst a box he bought simply labeled “kitchen stuff.” |
| Power strip | Pillow | Prunes |
| Family bedroom cabins have only one power outlet. If you’re like most people who travel with multiple gadgets that need charging, you’re gonna need a power strip. If Bob and I were traveling, we’d need outlets to charge 2 phones, a laptop, a Kindle, and a blow dryer. Don’t judge. | “The Amtrak pillows are not the best. It’s totally worth the investment and effort to haul your own around.” Bob and I each use 3 pillows when sleeping — 1 for our head, 1 between our knees, and 1 to hug. The Amtrak-provided one would probably suffice for knees or hugging. | “The Amtrak food is kind of lacking in, what’s the word, fiber.” After commenting on how disgusting they look, Jeb tries a bite of one and immediately asides, “I gotta go to the bathroom.” Bob likes prunes, but I don’t. I’d take nuts or apples and hope for the best. |
© 2025, John Martin, JM50WordStories. All rights reserved.
Sources:
• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eYiMihP0OHU&t=756s
| Somnambulism | Somniloquy | Somnifacient |
| Somnambulists, people who walk while they’re asleep, have been known to walk to the bathroom, consume food, clean house, and even do hazardous things like cook and drive a car! “La Sonnambula” is a Bellini opera whose plot centers on a woman who sleepwalks into the bedroom of a stranger. | The medical word for talking in your sleep, it can range from mumbling to loud shouts or long speeches. Although typically harmless, it can wake others and cause them consternation, especially when they assign potentially erroneous meaning to what’s being said. IMDB lists 47 movies under “sleep-talking (sorted by popularity).” | Somnifacients — also known as sedatives or sleeping pills — is medicine that induces sleep. According to research, they only benefit transient or short-term insomnia, not chronic insomnia. Relatively recently, sleep gummies have become a ubiquitous form of somnifacients. A search of “sleep gummies” on Amazon.com returns: “1-48 of over 1000 results.” |
© 2025, John Martin, JM50WordStories. All rights reserved.
| Bottle-weary | Crapulence | Overserved |
| The urban dictionary defines bottle-weary as “feeling hungover AF.” Presumably, the popularity of this euphemism stems from Colin’s use of it in season 3 of Bridgerton. In episode 4, the “Old Friends” episode, he says, “My head is bottle-weary. Forgive me for lashing out.” I might like this one best. | One of 10 “top-shelf drinking words,” according to a Merriam-Webster – Wordplay – Obscure & Fun article, it ranks along with: drinky, upsy freeze, drunkery, hair of the dog (that bit you), jimjams (a.k.a. “The DTs, or delirium tremens), three sheets to the wind, high jinks (also written as “hijinks”), and barleyhood. | This euphemism can be nicely incorporated into a sentence that uses the passive voice, a grammatical construct in English that conveniently obscures blame: “I was overserved last night.” No one has to know who was performing the action of serving, that you were actually a sot at your own hand. |
© 2025, John Martin, JM50WordStories. All rights reserved.
Sources:
• https://www.merriam-webster.com/wordplay/even-more-drinking-words
I started a new job as a business analyst in a food-testing lab. I came into the break area with my lunch, and I could tell by the looks from my new, skinny colleagues that they approved of neither the amount of mayonnaise nor the mound of shredded cheese on my deep-fried chicken sandwich.
“Just so you know, we have broiled chicken sandwiches in our cafeteria,” they offered helpfully.
I explained, “I got this one at Burger King, the temporary job I had before landing this one, and where I still have a commitment of 2 more shifts before my employment ends.”
“I didn’t know Burger King hired business analysts,” one of them meowed.
“I’m not a business analyst there. I’m working the line slinging Whoppers®—some even special ordered with extra mayo, add cheese,” I hissed back. “It was my first job 45 years ago while in high school, so it all came back to me very easily, and I was immediately promoted to ‘the front board,’ where the very best sandwich makers are assigned.”
I’m in one of those tiny university or community theaters with about only 10 rows of audience seating, and the play begins. The actor with the opening lines is not projecting very well, and the person in front of me turns around and hisses, “Turn it up!” To which I respond, “I’m a patron, not part of the stage crew.”
A minute or so later, in this opening scene, they turn up the house lights for some effect, during which a patron walks in late and takes the empty seat on the other side of the guy to the right of me. The late patron says loudly to the guy between us, “Hey! Is it Red Hat or Cisco that you work for?” to which the man whispers, “The show has already started.”
In the opening scene of the next act, a character is lying in a bed, and all of the other actors are looking at her. Nonplussed, she eventually stammers, “I’m thinking of a number…,” and another character says, “2014,” which I recognize as the Unicode representation of an em dash. Then the actor begins her part, and I realize that she had forgotten her lines and was asking for a line number in the script to remind her where they were.
It’s intermission and everyone except me leaves the theater for concessions or to use the restrooms. After about 2 minutes, no one has come back, and an usher comes in and says to me, a little annoyed, “That’s it. We’re stopping now.”
I had a 7:40AM appointment for my annual eye exam. Each year when I see this doctor, he takes my breath away. So devastatingly gorgeous. He sits very close to me, as he does every patient, for the tests he is performing. I find the entire experience so homoerotic.
His face is on the other side of some contraption that is currently covering my eyes. He points to his left cheek and says, “Look here at my cheek.” I’m thinking, You don’t have to tell me to look at you. Then, “Okay, up here at my forehead.” Too late; I’m already looking there. I’m looking at every inch of you. Following your every move. Look at those lips.
I imagine for a moment that there is no machine between us, and the proximity of our faces is exquisitely realized—and magnetically charged—for me. His lips are so close to mine. His thick, brown, trimmed beard and greenish-gray eyes right before me. He re-adjusts the machine now and pulls his chair up closer. Now my knees are together, and his are spread open and the outside of my knees touch the inside of his. Electric. No detectable awareness on his part.
That feeling comes over me that there is no doubt that being gay is biological. My body is responding chemically. He has no clue that he’s having this effect on me, and seems like the type that isn’t aware that he most likely has this effect on most women. Which makes him even more magnetic.
Look into my eyes. Yes!
He is asking me how bad I want this stye on my eye to go away. And then says, “For me, apply this ointment…” and I’m thinking, I’d do anything for you. “Give me five minutes with a hot compress on it two to three times a day…” he goes on. You can have five hours, five days, five lifetimes.
I start to feel like Fanny Brice and Rose Morgan. “Nicky Arnstein, Nicky Arnstein, Nicky Arnstein.” I want a mirror with two faces in it—his and mine.
Paying my bill, I eye the huge family portrait above the desk on the back wall. Seven kids. He’s so virile.
Hey Mr. Arnstein, here I am.