I had heard next to nothing about Wish before I watched it. I knew it was the latest Disney animated movie, and I saw it was now streaming on Disney+. I was looking for something to watch with the family, and it seemed like an obvious choice, so I pressed play. I struggle to find things that I actually liked about the movie, as it failed for me on so many different levels. But as…

I’m a big fan of the earlier World War II series, Band of Brothers and The Pacific. Both of them brought home just how much of a struggle the war was in Europe and in the Pacific. Produced by Tom Hanks and Steven Spielberg after they worked on Saving Private Ryan together, the series are both very well done. Acting, casting, plot, production values–you name it. (My personal preference from a story perspective is Band…

I’m heading out to San Antonio on Monday to go to the Texas Library Association’s annual conference. This will actually be my second time attending TLA. I first went in 2022 when I was promoting Don’t Go to Sleep. This time around it’s going to be A Family of Killers. While I’m not looking forward to the travel (as you might imagine), I definitely am looking forward to the conference. The last time I went…

Over the weekend, I had a chance to watch General Conference again, the twice-a-year series of talks by leaders of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. It’s about 10 hours of talks in all, and we always make a weekend out of it with the fam. (Sessions go from 12-2pm, 4-6pm, and 8-10pm on Saturday, then 12-2pm and 4-6pm on Sunday.) You would think persuading your kids that they want to listen to…

Ever since the last significant eclipse we had here in Maine back in 2017, I’d been looking forward* to the total eclipse that was coming 4/8/24. The asterisk there is due to the fact that I was pretty pessimistic that we’d actually be able to see the eclipse. Maine is typically quite cloudy this time of year, and so I was more than a little skeptical that the big day would arrive and all I’d…

Having lived in Maine for the past decade and a half or so, I realize I have a lot more experience working with snow than most of the rest of you. (I’m looking at you, Arizona. And don’t think I’ve forgotten about Georgia or Texas, either.) Having just faced another round of removing more than a foot of snow this morning (yes, in April. Snow happens.), I thought it might be useful to the rest…

I keep going to talks and mini-conferences about artificial intelligence, and my thinking on the subject continues to evolve. Not that I’m really changing my mind on any part of it completely, but rather that as I dwell on the subject more and more, I see aspects I hadn’t thought of previously. So I thought it would be useful (to me, at any rate) to take some time and pin down where, exactly, I stand…

It’s been a bit since I’ve given an update on Tomas, I realized. Let’s see if we can correct that right now, shall we? Last week, he was transferred from Pilsen and back to Slovakia to a town called Prešov. (It’s pronounced PRESH-oh, more or less.) It’s a city with around 85,000 people, about 2 hours from the border with Ukraine. (And before you ask, the fighting in Ukraine remains all in the eastern part…

I’m back from my trip to the endodontist. (I’ve decided part of getting older is discovering the need to go to doctors with new names, some of which show up as typos on spell check.) Since I live just south of the middle of nowhere, it took an hour to get there. An hour of driving alone in the car, anticipating a fun root canal. Not exactly my idea of a good time. When I…

As of yesterday, we’ve officially added another sport to the family list. Tomas started things off with cross country, nordic, and track. Daniela followed in his footsteps until now, when she left track behind to jump over to the lacrosse team. Being on a team sport for the first time brings some different territory. For one thing, there’s much more in the way of unfamiliar gear. Daniela spent a while Sunday getting her mouth guard…