On the Road Home: Try Something French, and It’s Neither Fry Nor Poodle

Some days I’d like to write a post, but the evening is just too short.  I feel a bit guilty of neglecting my housekeeping duties around here.  Recently, I mentioned liking the station Latitude Franco from SiriusXM on my car radio.  Well, I’m still likin’ it even though I understand next to zero.  I tried [...]

Happy Holidays to All from Trip to the Outhouse

The year is quickly coming to an end.  I’ve got the car almost packed, and in the morning, I’ll add the last few items and stick Annie in the co-pilot seat for our annual Christmas road trip to Kansas. Although the mostly interstate drive can get long and monotonous, I’m ready for a change of [...]

On the Road Home: Those Sirius XM Channels Can Lead to a Place . . . Well, a Place where the Music Is “Musique”

How the 9 button got pre-set to 155 I don’t know, but luckily this mystery put me onto a kind of music I probably wouldn’t have tried.  My car came with 6 month’s worth of Sirius XM satellite radio on it, and I liked more than enough channels to renew it when the free time [...]

When Your Car Is Totaled and You Have To Replace It, Beware of “Apple Pie” Marketing Along the Way

It has been just a bit over a month that I got involved in what most would have seen as a “fender-bender” (details in previous post); nevertheless, my car was totaled.  Luckily, no one was hurt, nor was I the driver who caused the accident, but unluckily, my car got the worst end of the deal.  I’ve [...]

On the Road Home: When Getting Off the Crowded Freeway Is Not the Best Bet

Considering the nearly 50 miles I drive in heavy traffic every day, perhaps it was bound to happen.  I don’t know. What I do know is that my blog posts here have been almost nil for a month because I’ve felt like I wanted to write about what happened, but just haven’t been able to:  [...]

On the Road Home: Shut Up and Hang Up, or Why Don’t You Just Stop for a Psychic Reading?

They should pass a law that mini-vans always stay to the right.  The people (I’ll avoid stereotyping, but we all know who they are) that drive them are never going to drive anywhere near the speed limit.  With SUVs, though, it’s unpredictable.  Some of those drivers are the bullies of the highway and will never [...]

View from the Suburbs: Bug Love (not the VW kind) and Taxing Taxes

This Monday has been a long one (and by the time I finish this, it’s sure to be Tuesday), but at this point, I know I’ve made some accomplishments. Tonight I finished my income taxes.  They are not in the envelope yet, but the “written-in-black-ink” forms are all done, and I just need to make [...]

View from Suburbia: Hang Up and Drive Courteously

Despite what I wrote about not getting the February Blues this year, the colder, gray days haven’t been the impetus that I’ve needed to write; even so, there has been a hodge-podge of ideas running through my mind. Mostly, though, the drive home and arriving usually no earlier than dusk have made my days feel shorter, [...]

Greece in a $100 VW Bug

One of the things that I have spent some evening hours doing is going through boxes of slides that I haven’t given much attention to in a long time.  The move to my new house has made them more accessible, but viewing what’s on each of the little colored transparencies hasn’t been easy.  The projector [...]

View from Suburbia: Thrustmaster, the Yellow Gate, and Garage Culture

Fifteen minutes was about all that it used to take for me to get home from work, and after checking the mail and changing clothes, Annie and I’d take our walk, sometimes making a circuit to the edges of Memorial Park, but more often than not, just to “our” little Camp Logan Park, where we’d [...]