After some day-after-National-Hangover-day laziness (the joyful indolence of those who did not have the Hangover to begin with), @WendyBuske and I reluctantly ventured out into the world of commerce. Boy, was that an ill-thought plan.
Fairview Heights is the primary center of commerce for the Illinois-side of the St. Louis metro area. During the holiday season it becomes a national disaster, as Christmas shoppers dog pile on sale racks and litter Highway 64 with fender benders. You’d expect the pandemonium to slow down a bit…

2010: Doesn’t it sound like the future?
Welcome to TEN. What are we going to call 2010? Is there an official version, and who decides? Is this what that Pearl Jam record was about?
We partied in the New Year with an impromptu gathering at casa de Wendronimo, also celebrating my wife’s birthday. Double whammy of awesome. With only a few hours of notice for our low-key shindig, we had a full house of merry makers and a full evening of laughs, hugs and good times. We kept it alive, if laid …

To all my friends, family, co-workers, assorted acquaintances and good people of earth – I hope you are having a lovely and fulfilling Christmas! (You know, if you’re into that kinda thing.)
Some Christmas Day advice: if you’re hungry, Sonic is open. However, they will forget your $4 popcorn chicken. And your fries. And you’ll be too distracted by holiday cheer to check the bag before driving home. And it’s a bit too nasty out to go back for it. And you’ll be left with mediocre burgers (but tasty tater tots…). …

It’s been a rainy Fall here in the midwest, and when the St. Louis metro gets saturated, basements start flooding. Ours is no exception. Friday night, we returned from work to find the unfinished portion of our basement with standing water, and our bedroom (which is the finished portion of the downstairs) a humid, carpety-bog.
The last time this happened, some 18 months back during a particularly nasty Spring, the rising tide destroyed our carpet and stained some baseboards. But, through fortunate timing and an hours long struggle to contain the …

This afternoon, my wife (@wendybuske) and I were dining with my sister, Cathy, and her husband, Jack, at the Red Robin restaurant in Edwardsville, IL. We don’t often get a chance to see Jack and Cathy outside of holiday gatherings, and they don’t get a chance to escape from our hometown very often.
We were celebrating Jack’s 25th year of living with a kidney transplant (he is the longest living kidney transplant survivor in America). They don’t dine out often, so we thought a burger place with a fun twist would …

This article was originally published a few years ago as a guest column in the Edwardsville Intelligencer’s “Edge” weekend insert.
There is a creature unique to the bounds of civilization, growing overpopulated and more prevalent. It inconveniences us, endangers our vehicles and, perhaps worst of all, takes up all the good parking spaces. It affects all but the most dedicated e-commerce consumer, and it’s an epidemic of our own making: shopping cart abandonment.
Every department or grocery store parking lot is an urban wilderness populated by cast-off carts, left to litter …

This article was originally published a few years ago as a guest column in the Edwardsville Intelligencer’s “Edge” weekend insert.
While out shopping with a female friend, we stop to examine a kiosk selling trendy purses and belts made entirely of big, dangly sequins in bold, fluorescent colors. I fear someone has accosted a figure skater and stolen their outfit for raw materials.
“I should get one of those,” my friend says, her face a canvas for disco-ball refractions cast by sparkling handbags. I raise an eyebrow. This young woman, characterized by …

Originally Posted to Blogger – Monday, December 17, 2007
It’s been some time since I’ve written here. As you may or may not know, I lost my mother at the end of October. It was very unexpected, and the single most difficult and damaging experience of my life. You expect a trauma like that to affect you, but I think ‘how’ is always the big surprise. My family and I are healing, and I appreciate all the help we received during this trying time – particularly from The Armada who, as …

Originally Posted to Blogger – Monday, January 22, 2007
My “underground” month continues, though the last two weeks without the benefit of being on vacation. I’ve learned an important lesson in these 14 days: I am not one of those “write my best stuff at 2:00am” nocturnal writers. I am way more productive in the typical 9-to-5, probably as a side effect of working that for years.
Now that I’m back in my daily work routine, I’ve generally been fitting an hour or two in a night, between 8:00pm and midnight. My …

Originally Posted to Blogger – Thursday, September 28, 2006
Here’s a few random-ish observations – a bloggin’ catch-all.
. Heroes – I was super excited to see the premiere of Heroes on NBC this past Monday. Advance word was really positive, and the premise sounded like a cousin to J. Michael Straczynski’s turbulent but often brilliant comic maxi-series Rising Stars. Unfortunately, I wasn’t very thrilled with the pilot. There’s some intriguing ideas happening in it, but it struck me as NBC’s attempt at a Lost styled fanta-drama (that’s a new word, folks, …