So it goes...

 As with many Christmases past, this one came with its share of technology gadgets and upgrades. It seems our kids continually push us to the bleeding edge of technology and while I am keen as to why, I am not always willing to take the leap without their gentle nudging. For starters, this year my daughter gave us a Chromecast for our TV. While I've known about this technology for a while, we never really had a TV to support it. (That's another technology leap we made a year or two ago.) For those that don't know, Chromecast allows you to project various apps from your phone or computer to your TV. Once you've synced all your apps like YouTube and Netflix to your Chromecast, you can pretty much look up anything on your phone and send it to the TV. The biggest benefit of this is no more arduous typing using the stupid TV remote to search for something. It is much easier to search on your phone and then casting it. On Christmas Eve before we opened the presents, it was k...

Today marks month 9 of the pandemic. I think I was told to stay home from work as of the 16th of March, which felt extremely weird to me. I don't know how I thought it to play out, but there's no way I expected we'd still be working from home at Christmas time. As it spread and we saw the impact, obviously I became aware that we'd be lucky to be back up and running by March 2021. That seems to be holding true, probably more like late summer or early fall. All of it begs the question, how are you holding up? I think it's fair to have felt every possible bad emotion during the course of spread of it. Disbelief, rage, sorrow, sadness, despair, hopelessness, anger, hostility, gloom and anxiousness. And I've been to all of those places briefly myself over these 9 months. I am fortunate that I have the ability to pull myself out of the dark places. I have a tendency toward optimism. It's not my nature, but I've learned to fake-it-till-I-make it. I tend to avoi...

 December is about as busy a birthday month as I can think of. Mine falls in a couple of days on the 11th. I'll be 59, feeling 29, looking 68. Ha! In addition to mine though, my brother Paul's is December 2nd, my little brother from the Big Brother's program is December 4th, Donna's is the 7th, my niece Giana's was the 5th (I think), my stepfather's is the 18th and a couple other friend's were today and the 21st.  Next to April, I don't know of that many birthdays clustered so tightly. It seems like the older you get, the more it is just another day. Because our birthdays are so close together, Donna an I usually go out to dinner with a couple of good friends as kind of a tradition. Covid killed that  and everything else good and positive this year, so as a substitute we ordered pizza for he birthday on Monday. It wasn't the same, but a nice evening just the same. (She's 6 years younger than me, but she is catching up. ;-) Anyhow, this year signi...

Lots of stuff going on in the writing realms lately, so I will try and give a quick rundown.  1. Personal sales of my new book, Cretin Boy have been strong the past couple of weeks. I am extremely grateful for everyone who purchases from my personal stock, as it is significantly better for the author than an Amazon sale. I have been making trips to the post office every few days lately and it is all with a heart full of gratitude. 2. To help with personal sales, I've recently created an online store using Square, which has made ordering books much easier for people online and gives them the opportunity to get my books signed and shipped to their house. Check it out here.   3. As part of my giveback for Cretin Boy, I am donating a portion of each personal sale to Cretin-Derham High School. In part due to the strong sales, I was able to make that first donation today. It feels good to give back! 4. I have signed up to be part of a panel at the Deep Vally Book Festival in south...