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Half Full or Half Empty?

Kris and I are taking a short vacation to Washington State’s San Juan Islands. “What time does the ferry leave from Anacortes?” I asked last night before bed. We were planning our agenda. “5:25,” Kris said. “And if we miss that, the last ferry is at 6:00. What time do you think we should leave?” …

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Most of the time, the talk about the housing bubble and the credit crisis and the faltering U.S. economy seem rather abstract to me, as if people were discussing a problem in Canada or Mexico. Or Norway. I’ve spent the past four years focused on my own financial situation, ignoring the outside world. The national …

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Connections to the Cosmos

Over the past few years, I’ve accumulated a lot of Amazon credit by selling books on my various web sites. The problem is, I accumulate it faster than I can spend it. Sometimes I buy comics. Sometimes Kris buys something for herself. But mostly it just sits there, unused. Today I decided to splurge a …

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Complaints from Rosings Park

It’s come to my attention that I haven’t written enough about our cats lately. I apologize. Here, then, is a revealing look at the psychology of the beasts with whom we share Rosings Park. These are the top complaints from each animal. Max “Not enough birds.” “This family is boring.” “Simon plays too rough.” Nemo …

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A Comics Geek Gets Serious

I originally intended to post this at Get Rich Slowly, but Kris rightly noted that I’ve beat this topic to death lately. I’ve revised it for posting here. I’ve spent a lot of time this weekend thinking about my motivation for collecting comics. On some level I do it because I’ve always done it. I’ve …

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J.D. and I already have our favorite fresh salsa down to a science, but we only get to enjoy it for a few short months when real tomatoes are in season. In order to see us through the rest of the year, I went searching for a canned salsa recipe that we’d like just as …

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Self-Disciplinarian

It sucks to have a lack of self-discipline. The month of August was rough for me. For a variety of reasons, I was under tremendous stress. My response was to do all the bad things I could think of, and do them a lot. I ate a lot of junk food. I drank a lot …

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More from the J.D. and Kris show. I’m upstairs, eating my dinner and answering e-mail. Kris is downstairs making a taco salad. She stops moving around, comes to the bottom of the stairs, and in a whiney/sad/bewildered voice, says, “Jay Deeeeee…..” I know I’ve done something wrong, and I wrack my brain to think of …

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By Any Other Name

Kris and I went to the local Methodist church rummage sale last weekend. I found a 25-cent label maker, a “cartigan sweater”, and a hideous lime green-and-yellow turtleneck. Kris found some treasures of her own. For some reason, I took my camera, but the only thing I found worthy of photographing was the attendance chart …

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Behind the Scenes at Pok Pok

Every evening it’s a struggle to keep from heading north to Pok Pok. I love Ike’s Vietnamese fish-sauce wings with a tamarind whiskey sour. Yum. Amy Jo forwarded this short video of Pok Pok’s owner Andy Ricker describing his inspiration for the restaurant: Now The Oregonian reports that Ricker plans to open Ping, a Chinese …

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