Sentence of Dave
The Required Amount at the Prescribed Rate (Handcrafted From the Finest Corinthian Leather)
Super-Reverse Psychology
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While my son Alex is very good at entertaining himself, my other son -- Ian-- often has trouble in this department, and he's also stubbo...
Consistency and Varmints
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I hadn't talked to this particular neighbor since Hurricane Sandy, but I saw him the other night while I was walking the dog and there ...
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Who Knew There Was a Battery in My Grill?
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For the past few months, my grill ignition lighter has been performing poorly, but last weekend -- serendipitously-- I ripped the cap off th...
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Buttons vs. Touch Screen: A Logical Debate
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My 5th Generation iPod Nano died the other day and I'm trying to make do with an iPod Touch-- which I know is an absurd statement, since...
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Case Closed
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There's nothing like getting to the bottom of a mystery, especially when you break a man under interrogation and he gives himself up . ....
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Fine With Me
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I'll never understand why local cops in movies and on TV shows get so upset when "the Feds" take over their case . . . if some...
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Building a Castle One Grain at a Time
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One of the great things about teaching is that if you find something that works, you get to use it over and over on each new batch of studen...
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I'm Working Again (and it's more tiring than not working)
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You know it's been a long day when you fall asleep during an episode of Orphan Black.
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How Would You Like If I Came Into Your Office And Heckled You?
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This time, Dave didn't make the situation awkward, someone else did, and I'll keep it vague to protect all parties involved, but I w...
I Should Put This Book in the Freezer
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Despite my tendencies towards vasovagal syncope , I am reading Megan Abbott's The Fever, which contains seizures, hysteria, and a myste...
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R.I.P Black Ipod Nano
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My little black Ipod Nano finally met its match (it suffered through a full wash and spin cycle in the pocket of my work pants) and-- and ...
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Bunny/ Seizure Juxtaposition
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At the end of my wife's first day of school, a woman had a seizure in the school parking lot, delaying all the buses, and then a bunch o...
Einstein and My Son Both Think Time is Relative
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It's really hard to keep a straight face when your ten year old son says, earnestly: "Ian, Ben and I have decided to get the band b...
Slanging It Around
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Sometimes, people use slang but they only know the denotation of the word-- so that the phrase works logically and grammatically-- but when ...
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No Fun No Fun No Fun
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I heard P.J. O'Rourke on NPR plugging his new book, which is about the "baby boom" generation, and he explained that his ge...
There Is No Unanimity About Uniforms
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The day of practice when uniforms are distributed is uniformly loved by players and uniformly hated by coaches.
We Are Bested by a Ninja Grandmom
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The kids and I went on an ethnic eating adventure Wednesday to the new dumpling place on Route 27 ( Shanghai Dumpling House ) because it'...
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Grim Semantics
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I'm usually a day or two ahead on my sentences and they automatically post in the mornings, so if I continue this project for the rest o...
Defying the Odds
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There should be a name for the disease that I have-- a sickness which defies all statistical logic: whenever I try to switch on a light or a...
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This Is the Deal
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I will entertain some high school students for ten months, as long as my town's school system takes my own children off my hands and ent...
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The Positive Manifold is Annoying
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Scott Barry Kaufman, an accomplished cognitive scientist who began his academic career as a special ed student relegated to the resource roo...
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Don't Know Much About History
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Greg Grandin's book Empire's Workshop: Latin America, the United States, and the Rise of the New Imperialism is giving me a headac...
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Let's Enter the Mind of My Child
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So I'm at the Chinese restaurant with my dad and my brother and the waiter brings us little plates for our dumplings, and my little plat...
The (Slightly Insane) Case of the Missing Teeth
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My nine year old son Ian had a rough time at the dentist on Monday; he had two teeth pulled-- or, as his pediatric dentist euphemistically p...
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We Can't Stop Watching the Guild
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I'm not sure sure which is nerdier: actually playing a MMORPG or binge-watching a show about people who play a MMORPG.
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The Guild
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If you need to watch something weird and funny, and you want to consume an entire season in one sitting (and you don't require A-list ac...
Non-Fiction/Fiction/Non-fiction Drug War Sandwich
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I was so enthralled by Don Winslow's brutal and intense semi-fictional account of America's war on drugs ( Power of the Dog ) that ...
Sun, Sand, Salt, and Seaweed
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You know you're on vacation when-- after a brisk run on the beach and a refreshing swim in the ocean-- you take a warm relaxing shower i...
The Bull Revisited (But Better)
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Nine years ago in Sea Isle City, the Springfield Inn had an electric bull and for five dollars you could ride as much as you liked, so we ro...
My Skin Hurts (But in a Good Way)
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The weather has been so clear, crisp and sunny in Sea Isle City the past week that I'm looking forward to some rain . . . do people who ...
What Else Is in There?
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While we were walking along Corson Inlet to the Strathmere Bay, to do some creature collecting on the sandbars, we saw a guy throw a dragnet...
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Sometimes Ignorance is Bliss
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If you like your novels with extra torture, then read Don Winslow's fantastic, Ellroy-esque tale of Mexican drug cartels, DEA agents, an...
I've Still Got It . . .
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Though it's been a three year hiatus, I've still got the remarkable ability to count to four at just the right moment in the bridge ...
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Mix and Match Your Way to Fabulous Wealth and Riches
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According to Erik Brynjolfsson and Andrew McAfee's book The Second Machine Age: Work, Progress, and Prosperity in a Time of Brilliant Te...
Art Doesn't Have To Make You Feel Stupid
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Art doesn't have to be the way it's portrayed in the inconclusive and unsettling documentary My Kid Could Paint That . . . I just wa...
What's In an Excellent Sounding Name?
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I met a man named Bill Rainwater yesterday . . . I wish I had a cool surname like that.
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This Sentence Could Be Better
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This sentence would be much better if I came to the end of three trilogies-- which is entirely in the realm of possibility, because the boy...
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All This So Kids Can Chase a Ball?
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Here is the necessary paperwork-- copied directly from the reminder e-mail-- so that my son and his friends can kick around a ball on a gras...
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The End of Days
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Monday was a rude awakening for me . . . a horrible wriggling thought wormed its way into my brain: summer is going to end . . . this awful ...
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Everybody Loves Creedence and Tom Petty, Right?
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Books have been written on the epic Beatles vs. Stones , debate but I'm pretty sure everybody loves Creedence and Tom Petty (and alth...
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The Troubles Can Be Very Entertaining
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Adrian Mckinty's second book in his "Troubles Trilogy" is as good as the first -- not only does the I Hear the Sirens in th...
Sometimes Dave Isn't Awkward
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While the primary purpose of this blog is to dwell on my awkwardness and nerdiness, once in a great while a positive light shines on me, and...
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Best Job on the Planet
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A lot has happened in the fifteen years since my wife and I visited the Galapagos Islands-- the last Pinta turtle, Lonesome George mated wit...
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Accepted Premise - Logic = Malcolm Gladwell
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Malcolm Gladwell makes good use of his tried-and-true formula in his new book David and Goliath: Underdogs, Misfits, and the Art of Battling...
Words, words, words . . .
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Erez Aiden and Jean-Baptiste Michel's book Uncharted: Big Data as a Lens on Human Culture sounds like a weighty tome, but it's actua...
It's Fun To Punt a Football in the Stratosphere
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Chronicle is an updated (and much much better) version of the Scott Baio classic Zapped! . . . minus all the gratuitous nudity; the movie i...
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Revisiting Beuller
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When I saw Ferris Bueller's Day Off in 1986, I thought the movie was all about Ferris outwitting his blowhard principal, Ed Rooney-- af...
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Hint: Brown M&M's
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If you listen to Freakonomics , then Steven D. Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner's new book Think Like a Freak a bit anti-climactic-- it&...
A Sentence in Which An Old Guy Runs and Thinks Faster Than Me
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I was at the pool the other day, waiting patiently for a lap lane to open up; someone finally got out and I made my way over so I could hop ...
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A Sagacious Aphorism from Someone More Sagacious Than Me
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Stephen Pinker, the great cognitive scientist, was asked by Stephen Colbert to describe how the brain works in five words or less and Pinker...
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It Takes a Bad Ass to Live in the Bad Land
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Jonathan Raban's book Bad Land: An American Romance tells the story of the homesteaders that attempted -- with varying degrees of suc...
Yeah? No? Maybe?
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In the past few years, the phrase "yeah . . . no" has become a bulwark of conversation-- SlateRadio concludes that the phrase crea...
Sagacious Aphorism #6
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When you carry too many things, chances are you will drop one . . . but you will avoid the dreaded "making of two trips."
OBFT XXI
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A light year attendance-wise for the Outer Banks Fishing Trip XXI, but no other complaints . . . the water was clear, the beer was cold, the...
Sagacious Aphorism #5
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Just because you can't see a rattlesnake, doesn't mean it isn't there (this goes for fish, spiders, and serial killers too).
Sagacious Aphorism #4
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Bob Dylan doesn't make any sense.
Sagacious Aphorism #3
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It's better to endure the pain than the alternative.
Sagacious Aphorism #2
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When you pretend things are made of lead, many of your friends will desert you . . . but not your true friends (I dimly recall that my frien...
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Sagacious Aphorism #1
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When you put yourself under great pressure and time constraint, it's harder than you think to write a sagacious aphorism.
It's Aphorism Week!
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After completing an epic cross-country journey, I'm sure I have some sagacious wisdom to dispense, and so I'm declaring it "aph...
There's One Place Like Home (And It's Home)
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After two mammoth driving days, we made it home . . . and the house was still standing . . . so a big thanks to all the folks who made this ...
Road Trip Day 23: Time To Reflect (Because We Drove Twelve Hours)
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Some places we visited on our trip that I'd like to live: Des Moines, Hot Springs, Minneapolis, Emigrant, Pittsburgh, Rapid City and Alt...
Road Trip Day 22: Watery Thoughts
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Minnesota is the "land of 10,000 lakes" and this means: 1) that you have to go ahead and name all ten thousand of these lakes . ...
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Road Trip Day 21: Feeling Minnesota
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We made our way from Bismarck to the Boundary Waters of Minnesota, where we stayed with our friend Sabine in her cabin on Lake Vermilion; th...
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Road Trip Day 20: If You're Ever in Bismarck . . .
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We stumbled upon two great things in Bismarck: 1) the Best Western Plus Ramkota hotel has a mini-waterpark, with one large and two small sl...
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Road Trip Day 19: We Visit Another Obscure State Capital
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My family and I are morning people, and so driving west to Montana was a pleasure-- the sun at our back, gaining hours as we passed throu...
Road Trip Day 18: We Learn Nothing
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Though I have already issued a warning about the size and scope of Yellowstone, we did not heed my own sage advice yesterday, and after crui...
Road Trip Day 17: Riparian Reunion
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We floated a beautiful stretch of the Yellowstone yesterday-- and though the trout weren't biting, the time passed quickly-- as our rive...
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Road Trip Day 16: Dog Days and Dog Years . . .
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My favorite moment in Homer's Odyssey is when Odysseus-- after twenty years of adventuring-- finally returns home and finds that his...
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Road Trip Day 16: We Do Some Stuff In Yellowstone
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We drove back into Yellowstone today, and: 1) we took a hike on the Howard Eaton trail into the Hoodoos-- and though the roads and main pa...
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Road Trip Day 15: Recommendations
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If you are going to visit Yellowstone National Park, I recommend: 1) staying at the cabin we rented in Paradise Valley, though it is thirt...
Road Trip Day 14: We Drive Until We Arrive
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A long day but a good one: 1) Alex recovered from his virus; 2) we visited some of the weird and smelly sites at Yellowstone-- fumaroles...
Road Trip Day 13: Flatulence in Paradise
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We hit our first bump in the road trip yesterday: my son Alex came down with a head-ache, a stomach-ache, some body-aches and a fever . ....
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Road Trip Day 12: We Drive Far Too Far
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We took off from Hot Springs, South Dakota at 5 AM yesterday in order to cross Wyoming, swing around the Grand Tetons, cut through a sliver ...
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Road Trip Day 10 into Day 11: We Learn Too Much
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We were barraged with salvos of information from Sunday evening through Monday, probably too much to absorb, so don't quiz me on any of ...
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Road Trip Day Ten: We Visit Places With Excellent Names
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Yesterday, we drove from Rapid City through Sturgis, and into Spearfish, and then descended into the Spearfish Canyon and hiked the 76 Tr...
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Road Trip Day Nine: We Drive (Not So Rapidly) to Rapid City
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Yesterday morning, we bid farewell to Interior (population 67) and drove Route 44 to Rapid City (population 67,000) and-- after the prer...
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Road Trip Day Eight: The Badlands Start Treating Us Good
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An epic day in the Badlands yesterday, but I will try to keep it terse: 1) I got up early to catch the sunrise over the Badlands, but so d...
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Road Trip Day Seven: Go West, Young Man (and Keep Going and Going and Going)
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Yesterday, we crossed the Missouri River and our trip into the West truly began: 1) Nebraska is a browner, drier, bigger version of I...
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Road Trip Day Six: Des Moines is the Capital of Iowa
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Bill Bryson begins his book The Lost Continent with an opening worthy of Herman Melville: "I come from Des Moines . . . somebody has...
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Road Trip Day Five: Megan Inadvertently Uses Zeugma
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As we drove through the endless farmland between Chicago and Altoona, I worried that the USMNT would be blown out by Belgium and I also worr...
Road Trip Day Four . . . I Begrudgingly Adjust to Central Time
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Diligent readers are familiar with my rants about Daylight Savings Time , but this time I have nothing to complain about, as I've in...
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