personal

When I was growing up, one of my favorite claims to fame was the fact that my grandfather had written one of the songs in the Latter-day Saint hymnbook. Not just any song, but an actual good one! True, we only sang it about once a year, but it was different than the other ones, in a very good way. It’s got different endings depending on which verse you’re in, for one thing. How exciting was that? And there was my family name down at the bottom of the page. “Composed by.” Fame incarnate. (And in all honesty, it probably

I debated even writing this. Normally I don’t like to amplify articles I dislike, but in this case, I’m making an exception to the rule, just because it ticked me off so much. Yesterday, Wired ran an article on Brandon Sanderson. I was very excited to see it pop up in my feed, as I love it when friends have cool things happen to them. So I clicked over and read it, and discovered this was Anything But Cool. The author basically spent the entire article talking about what a bad writer Brandon is, how strange he is, how strange

My new glasses came yesterday! There was much rejoicing, for values of “rejoicing” that are “mild relief.” I was surprised by how light the frames are that I bought, and (more importantly) I was very happy to see how effective the progressive lenses are. Ahead of time, I did some research into ordering different kinds of lenses, and from what I read, progressives are an area where it’s worth it to pay some more money for them. For me, glasses are how I view everything in the world, every day. I spend a lot of money on a nice home

As yet another piece of evidence that yes, indeed, I’m getting older, I ordered my first pair of bifocals last week. Well, they’re not actually bifocals. They’re “progressives,” which means “bifocals, except they don’t look like bifocals. (I debated refusing to order progressives and demanding I be allowed to order conservatives, instead, but something told me people wouldn’t get the joke.) The bottom line is that I’m tired of having to take off my glasses to look at anything close up. This should hopefully help with that. As I was looking at new frames, one thing that was important to

On New Year’s Eve, one of my friends got a message on his watch. He glanced at it and then said, “Oh! Hold on a sec. I’ve gotta go do my French for the day.” A few minutes later, he was back. “I’ve got a Duolingo streak of over 400 days. Don’t want to break it.” That got me thinking. My friend has no real connection to French (that I know of). He just wants to learn the language. And here I am, 21 years into being married to a Slovak, and I still just speak caveman Slovak. If he