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  • Happy Easter

  • ODDS and ENDS: Stressful, Blue to White, and I Gotta Run

    ODDS and ENDS: Stressful, Blue to White, and I Gotta Run

    (I will sing, sing my song…)

    Man in blue tracksuit frantically running out of the Sakura Heights apartment building door.
    Word Press’ AI creates some awful images, huh?

    You know the one thing in my life that I had no idea would be stressful; Planning a kid’s birthday party. I thought planning our wedding was bad. I had no idea that birthday parties for 10 ten year old girls causes me to lose sleep at night. I wake up in a cold sweat scared that I have forgotten some detail. My stomach churns at the idea a kid will come to the party and not have a good time, or will be excluded for whatever stupid reason, and then it is my responsibility to make sure EVERYONE HAS A GOOD TIME! Seriously, there should be a list for new parents of all the shit that will stress you out that you have no idea on God-s Green Earth are stressful. Making memories here…

    So, it seems my default colors right now is white and blue. I say all of this because as I start to “Spring Clean” and de-clutter my closet, I’m tossing shirts which are old, and have holes in them. What I am left with is an amazing spectrum of blue to white, all in an Oxford style. I have written a couple of times, how in my middle age period, I have taken on a Classic American/Oxford/New England/Ivy League look. It feels comfortable, defined, and at the same time casual on me. The draw back here is that I seem to have boxed myself in color wise. I do have some Nantucket Red pants, but really, I seem to have dropped the ball on having a splash of color in my life.

    Ah… It’s almost 11am, and I need to run to the grocery store. It’s a busy day and I have a lot to do.

  • Short Story Review: “Enough for Now” by Cassandra Neyenesch

    (The short story “Enough for Now” by Cassandra Neyenesch appeared in the April 6th, 2026 issue of The New Yorker.)

    Illustration by Cecilia Carlstedt

    And then I read a short story that’s just a good, solid short story. I wasn’t sure what to expect from the first paragraph, but Cassandra Neyenesch’s “Enough for Now” is a deft piece of fiction. It’s concise in the specific story it is telling, and it never wanders into heavy handedness. Yet it is apparent that the impact of these events will live with the protagonist; perhaps not paramount in her thoughts every day, but influencing decisions though she may forget where that influence originated.

    I will be honest and admit to my bias here; I have never been a fan of stories about people in their early twenties backpacking through foreign countries. Most of these works have the stench of elitism and privilege on them, which renders the inevitable “coming of age” plot toothless in dramatic impact. Also, to steal from another work of literature, this genre of story tries very hard to convince us that these characters are travelers, when they are in fact tourists.

    I bring this up because “Enough for Now” does stick a toe into the clichés of “backpacking” stories. The protagonist, Martha, meets a fellow traveler on a train, a Dutch guy named Joost. Soon they decide to split a room together, and not long after that, they agree to travel together, as they are heading in the same direction, which leads them to start a sexual relationship together. None of this I didn’t see coming.

    What Neyenesch does in “Enough for Now” to keep the story engaging is to conjure up some very smart writing. The setting, post Tiananmen Square Massacre China, work beautifully with the stories themes; honesty, what we say in public as compared to private, trauma… Martha is a fascinating character, she is young enough to be optimistic, but also has lived enough to understand inevitable outcomes. Also, she is a woman traveling alone in a foreign country, and there is a constant, and underlining feeling of threat in this story, wherein Martha’s guard needs to be up. And it was a pleasure to read how Neyenesch takes all of these threads and themes to dash each cliché.

    This is a story about a traveler, a little jaded, but still out to explore. She might return home, and she might not. Martha is experiencing and learning as she goes. This isn’t a character who is coming of age, but learning that she an adult who is more than the sum of her experiences, and some experiences have more weight than others.

  • Earworm Wednesdays: See, I’m Not Too Old

    This one is brought to us by my daughter.

    We do a lot of road trips over the Summer as a family. And with long hours on the road, playlists are needed. The wife and I both make one, and when its our turn to drive, our playlists get played. This past year, the kid requested some songs to be added to our respective lists, as the kid claimed there wasn’t any of her music being played. (This year, she is making her own playlist, which means that we will all take turns sharing music in the car.) On the whole, the music she suggested was fine; a bit of Taylor Swift, and some other people that I kind’a heard of.

    But one song that stuck out was Dua Lipa‘s “Dance The Night” from the Barbie soundtrack. It’s a fun song, that is crazy catchy to me. I mean, the whole song is one big hook.

  • Planning Home Projects

    General Update – The car got fixed, you know, from yesterday. It was the engine thermostat that needed to be replaced. Cost over $1,200 to get it fixed. But the car is back, and all is well in the Universe.

    The other thing that happened yesterday was that the air conditioner that we ordered arrived a day early. See, this winter, we got rid of the a/c unit that was in the kid’s room – it was over six years old, and had seen better days. The plan here is to move the unit in the livingroom (6,000 btu) into the kids room, and replace it with a larger and more powerful (8,000 btu) unit. 6k btu might be overkill in the kid’s room, but it just wasn’t cutting it in the livingroom. (Also, the end of March is a great time to buy an a/c as they are all on sale, to move out last year’s inventory for the new in prep for Summer.) BUT, before all of this installing can happen in both rooms, we need to repaint the windows and trim, so everything will be matching, and the apartment looks a little more unified.

    I say all of this because, as I was hauling the unbelievable heavy a/c unit up three flights of stairs, I was excited for all of the home improvement projects we have. You know of the a/c and window project. Then there is redoing our “mudroom” area by the front door, and replacing the livingroom ceiling fan. There is the touchup painting in our bedroom, and hopefully coming up with a better closet situation. The biggest project of them all is working on the kid’s room. It reflects the interests of an eight-year-old, and not the aspirations of a soon to be teenager. Not sure how to accomplish that, nor what budget for it will be, but I know that it’s important to the kid, so it’s important to me.

    I say all of this because what it really means is that we are coming out of Winter. We can open the windows again, and let the breeze blow through. There is a wonderful peace and tranquility that comes from this time of year. It is fleeting though. Soon, it will be too hot and steamy in the City, and the windows will close up and the a/c’s will roar on. If it’s a good year, we’ll have a comfortable Spring until early June. If it’s a bad year, we’ll be locking up in May.