Long Week, 18 Birthdays, Stewing In The Feelings

Last week was a long week. A week ago Monday my wife and oldest daughter flew out east to New York City for three days of Broadway shows, museums, and subway rides to and fro. While the ladies were in the Big Apple, the boy(well, man now) and I and the four-legged creature who secretly […]

Fourteen

I remember my 14th birthday like it was yesterday. It was the birthday my parents bought me my first electric guitar. It was a 1986 Squier Stratocaster. Blue with white pickguard. They’d bought it with the help of my guitar teacher at the time Jim Howie from Paradise Music Store. In my hometown at that […]

Too Many Candles, Not Enough Cake

Eighteen years ago I celebrated my first birthday as a father. We had a six-month old going on seven months. It was that spot in new parentdom where you begin to feel a little comfortable with this living, breathing being that can make you feel on top of the world and as if you’re losing […]

Sing

When my oldest was 2 years old we used to get in the car – my wife, daughter, and myself- and we would drive. No real destiny other than a bit of sanity. My wife at the time was pregnant with our second child and we were more than ready for her to get that […]

Birthday Les and the Hubner Boys Jamboree

Primus were one of those bands that even in the throes of my relentless fandom in the early 90s I still wasn’t sure what it was that I loved about them. I seem to have that problem with music that comes across both funny and prodigiously. Primus did both in spades. Les Claypool played the […]

Memo To My Son

What have you done to the mirror? What have you done to the floor? Can’t I go nowhere without you? Can’t I leave you alone any more? Can’t I leave you alone any more? One year ago yesterday on March 1st I drove my wife along snow-covered county roads to what would be her final […]

constants are changing

As I walked outside this morning to leave for work in the black of 5:40am Eastern time I was greeted by something quite wonderful: cool air. Yes, as the garage door lifted for me to walk around and get in my car there was, dare I say, a briskness in the air. Coming from merely […]

41 Years and Counting

What do I have to bitch about? Not much, really. I turned 41 yesterday and I’m surrounded by a wife that loves me, kids that love and look up to me, parents that are proud of me, and an older brother that comes by with a couple beers in hand and a Primus record to […]

Fathers & Sons

Today is my son’s birthday. He’s the ripe old age of 9, and as the saying goes, it seems like only yesterday he came into this world in the middle of a snow-covered March night. He was a surprise baby, for sure. But to imagine our lives without him is to imagine a far less […]

Over The Hill(not so far away)

Warning: The following post contains sentimentality. I sit here typing on my lousy HP computer with my sinuses feeling as if they’re packed with Quikrete, lungs prickly as if they’re lined with insulation, and a face pulsating with pain like I just finished bare-knuckle brawling with the late, great Jake LaMotta and I wonder to […]