Today is the child bride's birthday. She is...Well, how about if I let you guess her age. Here's a recent picture of Rachel, how old do you think she looks?(Hint: She's younger than me -- hence the...
Continuing on from my experience......
It's been a while since I've written any sort of update on what's actually going on in my life. A fair number of this blog's readers are family members who check in occasionally to see how the child bride is doing, and who have no interest in "Doctor Who." Sorry, y'all.Rachel's fine. She's been in better spirits since summer arrived and her Welsh course ended. I think the latter may have had more effect. The summer is typically British. Occasionally the sun will peak out and make you think: "Ooh, I'm a bit busy at the moment, but tomorrow I will go out and make the best of this weather. I'll make a lunch and bike out to Gelynis and pick strawberries and it will be lovely." But then it will rain for three days. The child bride is planning to carry on with her Welsh learning in the autumn;...
Remember 2003? Year of the blog, I think it was. And all we ever did was blog via memes. Heather, Chris and Neal are bringing the good times back, and now so am I.
1) WHAT WAS I DOING TEN YEARS AGO?
I had driven out to Lake Tahoe to spend the summer working at the now-defunct Ponderosa Ranch, a "Bonanza"-themed tourist trap on the Nevada side of the lake.
I was a gunfighter, "robbing" the wagon rides that took people up the mountain to have breakfast. I also worked in the photography area, taking pictures of people dressed up in cowboy outfits. I was apparently really good at the latter because:
1) I goofed around a lot, which kept the people who were waiting from getting bored. 2) I understood the basic principle that people wanted to be photographed holding lots of guns. They'd say...
Once again I give you the audio version of my latest column. this idea of reading the column aloud would be far better if I weren't doing it. In a perfect world, I would resurrect Orson Welles and he would provide the voice. I had also thought about having my dad read it. He and I have slightly similar voices but he has better annunciation. It would be amusing to give him a column and provide no direction, allowing him to decide what words should be emphasized and what pauses belong where. One of the weird things about writing is that the voice is not all that clear. I've been to book readings in which I sat there listening to the author voice his own work, thinking: "Dude, you are getting it all wrong."Although, I don't suppose there's a great deal of variation in the interpretation of a...
The child bride is enjoying so much having her sisters visit that she has decided one of them should stay. In light of the immigration issues that raises we've decided that the most expedient way to keep Ya-Ya here is to marry her off to a citizen of the European Union, mail-order-bride style.But in this case, you don't have to be some wealthy fella willing to pay for false affection -- you simply have to be someone that Laura would want to marry. Which means that you should probably be Mike Phillips or Gordon D'Arcy .Ya-Ya is charming young lady who enjoys dancing, singing, photography and verbally assaulting her brothers-in-law. She can speak Spanish fluently and is instilled with a cooking skill that, while not equal to that of the child bride, is certainly better than any of that...
The child bride now has a Facebook account. Add her as a friend so she'll...
One of the seminal novels of Welsh-language literature is Traed Mewn Cyffion, by Kate Roberts. The title literally translates to "Feet in Chains," but the book could just as easily be called "101 Things to Be Miserable About." It is that kind of novel that so often appears on lists of classics, in that it is about miserably poor people living their miserably poor lives. These novels always annoy me and cause me to react like some sort of 1920s Tory, growling at the book: "What's wrong with you, man? Pull yourself together and make something of yourself, why don't you. What?"To her credit, Kate Roberts tries to answer that question in the title and in a dialogue late in the book that was probably put there for stupid people like me that need things spelled out. In life we are bound to all...
My latest column is out and features the line: "Darling, your love is like the fine men and women of the United States armed forces."Something else that happened on 12 June 1999: GW Bush officially announced he would run for president. It's a factoid that my mother-in-law, a hardcore Republican, can take solace in -- at least the day wasn't a total...
Young Amy Winehouse is an odd duck, isn't she?The child bride and I spent a quiet evening in Sunday. I realise it's not very sexy to spend New Year's Eve watching television but it was actually a much more enjoyable experience than you might think. For one thing, it had been an exhausting year. In 2006 we lived in three different homes, three different cities, and two different countries; and at least since May we have been in an almost constant state of movement and stress. We are immersed in debt. The depression that gripped me in October/November/December was arguably one of the worst I've had in my life. A New Year's Eve spent keeping our heads down was actually very appealing. Also, God seemed relatively against the idea of our going out. Weather forced cancellations of New Year's...
Our first summer in St. Paul was particularly hot and our apartment did not have air conditioning. One day I came home and found the child bride making dinner wearing nothing but an apron. I responded as you would expect -- with glee. But when I attempted to grab her she was having none of it. She hadn't been naked to be sexy, but because she was that...
