AppleBeth

To buy, or NOT to buy, THAT is the question

Flush with accomplishment from recently achieving her savings goal of $187, plus tax, Beth is contemplating higher plateaus. Suddenly, the kiddy slide isn’t high enough any more. Now, she wants to play with the big boys. That’s right, she wants the 20GB iPod now. “But Beth, you don’t have enough music for the 20GB iPod.” “So. Someday I might. See right there…
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Wellbeing

Office life on a random spring morning

Spending most of my morning hours cooped up indoors, despite my office with a view, I find mornings to be more abstract construction than reality. Most of the time, life in an office is rather homogenous. Time of day, week, month, or year, it’s all the same. The scene outside my window slowly shifts, but I rarely associate the view with the barrage of senses being “in it&#8221…
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Beth

H2O

If you have a child, chances are you are familiar with the fresh water phenomenon. As it happens, we have a child, two of them in fact. Since our oldest child has had the ability to communicate – whether it be by speech or wild gestures with her extremities – she has wanted fresh water at her bedside at night. Yes, I fondly remember the day Beth learned to use “dehydrated&#8221…
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Wellbeing

Trying times

Addiction. Hunger. Desperation. I had looked all over, in all the usual places: my desk drawer, my briefcase, the nooks and crannies around my office, nothing. I was damn near close to loosing that which distinguishes us from animals: my ability to reason. Yet it was at this most desperate hour that a single hope shown through the mist of dire circumstance: “my car, maybe I’ll find it…
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Kitchen SinkSports

I am the very model of a modern major league punch-line

The owner of our beleaguered little baseball team has more than his fair share of bad press. Whether or not it is deserved is for others to decide. I’m interested in the press release the team recently made available, after Vince was accused of throwing a tantrum in front of a group of fans. A team spokesman reported that the Rays had conducted their own internal investigation, and…
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CoffeeWellbeing

When cleaner isn’t better

There are some circles where this is generally not true (there’s a circle around my house, for example). However, there are a few narrowly defined areas where cleaning – especially with commercially available solvents – is taboo. I’ve heard that there are families where the unwashed spaghetti sauce pot is an heirloom, passed from generation to unwashed generation. What I…
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Wellbeing

Any club that would have me as a member,

In what may be a first for Kauffman kind, I am concerned about something working exactly as it should. I approached my desktop representative from the twin evil empires (Dell and Microsoft) with my accustomed trepidation. Yet for all my caution, I entered a seemingly random string of characters for my login password. I think I’ve discussed the rhythm method of typing before, haven’t I?
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Family and Friends

Ultimatums are a guy’s best friend

I laid out the law. I told my wife that if she loved me, she would watch the Battlestar Galactica mini-series. (Would you believe that “Battlestar Galactica” was not in the Microsoft Word spell-check dictionary?) It took me two weeks of relentless pressure, followed by my aforementioned last ditch ultimatum before Cheryl relented. I told her that if she would just watch the mini-series…
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Kitchen Sink

Being late

Being late is almost never good, unless you are trying to have a baby. Otherwise, it’s pretty much a drag. The other night I was up late. I even wrote about it. I was up late again last night, once again dealing with a tragic and unavoidable urge to play video games (damn you to hell, Xbox). The question remains (despite the Xbox scourge), why am I staying up so late? Come with me as I take…
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