Yearly Archives: 2016

The Year’s At Its End; It’s Time To Push Send

by on
33 COMMENTS

Do you have a favorite joke? I do, and it goes like this: Two guys are out elk hunting. They’re crouched down in the woods when suddenly, they see a man running towards them, waving his hands and yelling, “I’m not an elk, I’m not an elk!” One of the hunters calmly raises his rifle and shoots him. The other hunter says, “What are you doing?! Didn’t you hear that guy yell, ‘I’m not an elk’”? The first hunter says, “Oh geez, my fault. I thought he said he was […] Click to read more…

Silver Bullet Blues

by on
50 COMMENTS

I’m not sure what words I’d most like to hear coming out of my twenty-three-year old son’s mouth, but I’m pretty sure these are not them: “That may be the most ‘old guy hobby’ on Earth.” And yet that’s exactly what my son Evan said to me when I told him how I’ve been spending my time. Let me explain… Listen To This Post Last month, while rummaging through some old boxes in the basement, I came upon a combination padlock. It had four dials on it, each numbered 0-9, […] Click to read more…

Are You Solving the Wrong Problem?

by on
18 COMMENTS

Want to play a game? Here’s how it works: Without reading any further, make a list of the last five people you’ve had a conversation with. Not necessarily a long conversation, but more than just, “Hello.” Got it? Here’s mine: The mailman A guy who we may hire to paint our house A guy in Starbucks who asked me to watch his computer while he went to the men’s room A woman in my neighborhood who I ran into at the supermarket The man behind the counter at CVS when […] Click to read more…

Are You Making It Hard For Me To Hire You?

by on
16 COMMENTS

We moved into our house 10 years ago. At the time, I made one promise: “I’m never moving again. They’re carrying me out of here in a box.” “Why move?,” I thought. “The neighborhood is great, the schools are nearby, and the house has everything we want.” Besides, it was such an ordeal to move that I did the math and quickly determined that death was preferable to packing boxes, painting bedrooms and killing/trapping whatever appears to be living beneath the back deck. But, like deciding to have additional children, […] Click to read more…

Aeration Complication

by on
29 COMMENTS

Have you ever aerated a lawn? I do it every year. If you’re not familiar with the concept, an aerator is a gasoline-powered machine equipped with a spiked metal roller on the bottom. It weighs about a billion pounds (I’m guessing) and its function is to poke finger-sized holes in your lawn, thereby “aerating” it and making it healthier. Your job is to walk behind this self-propelled behemoth as it takes angry bites out of the ground, all the while doing your best not to inadvertently run over any shrubs, […] Click to read more…