Another Man's Treasure

It’s trendy in my culture to throw acrylic lettering on the wall of your home. Some people go with words like, “Love Laugh Live” or “Believe”, while others go for phrases that were probably touching before they became mass-produced, like “All because two people fell in love”. The most annoying to me is “Return with [...]

I play Words With Friends on my iPhone, and today I got a request from an unfamiliar name. Actually, the name was familiar, since it was my last name with a few initials, so I accepted the game. Eventually he realized I wasn’t his mother and introduced himself as a distant relative, from the same [...]

I’m not generally into politics, but after the evangelical crowd helped Newt Gingrich wallop Mitt Romney I got curious enough to spend five minutes reading about the newt. He’s interesting. By interesting, I mean kind of a turd. He was 16 when he met his first wife, who was also his math teacher. Creepy. While [...]

As a rule, I don’t have much patience for old movies. But when I was a kid I fell in love with the 1956 film The Court Jester, and I’m still happy to make it the exception to my no old movies rule.  This Christmas, we got The Court Jester on DVD from my parents, [...]

This came to me at about 2:30 this morning, after my toddler son poked me in the face and demanded “mo book” (more milk) and I lay awake thinking for a few minutes. It will probably be long. There’s an old story: A financial planner, out of work, needed to drum up some business. He [...]

Thanks to a generous gift from Santa, I went with my two oldest sons to Abravenel Hall tonight to enjoy a live Brian Regan performance. Brian Regan is certainly the funniest comedian I’ve ever seen. His DVDs are a staple on the houseboats at Lake Powell, and no matter how many times I watch them [...]

I know, you read the title and you’re thinking, “Yeah, so tell me something I didn’t already know.” But, seriously, he’s nuts. Unlike a lot of people, I don’t think Jeffs deliberately deceived anybody or deliberately abused his power — I think he found himself in a position without boundaries, and fooled himself into believing [...]

Last year, while staying with the my family at a hotel in Northern California, my oldest son told me he wanted to try coffee. Who could blame him, really, passing by the exotic-smelling pots on his way to the muffins and cold cereal every morning? I told him I didn’t mind if he wanted to [...]

Growing up with two English-major parents, I learned early how to use I and me the right way. I also learned the difference between farther and further, when to use less and when to use fewer, and that there is no such word as anyways. But I didn’t learn until today that backwards is not a [...]

Cougars are among the most successful and prolific species in the world. They extend from the Yukon to the southern edge of the Andes and across much of the United States, thriving in so many diverse environments that they have more than 40 different names. (Cougar and mountain lion are the two I use, but [...]