ComputerFamily and FriendsWellbeing

When your computer really is out to get you, too…

I don’t mean to make you jealous, but I have to talk about the TAM again (Twentieth Anniversary Mac). Take comfort, dear readers… this brief spell of apparent gloating will soon be tempered… The wife and kids are taking a vacation from me. Well, that’s not really true (not completely anyway). We were supposed to take a grand tour of New England… our ancestral &amp…
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Family and FriendsWellbeing

The urge to purge

My area of relative academic expertise is psychology. I say “relative” because I haven’t put this expertise to actual use since I graduated from UF. I didn’t go on to earn any advanced degrees, and it seems like it’s been a really, really long freaking time since I graduated. Living through my own psychological thriller (of sorts) has given me cause to look back on my…
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Family and FriendsWellbeing

Where art thou innocence?

I don’t know when it was, but sometime between my childhood and parenthood, bare footed children became the height of neglect. As a child, freedom from footwear followed freedom from responsibility. The backyard was our summer oasis, relieved from the yolk of academia. The bare, dirt stained foot was no less an icon of liberty than a bald eagle soaring on the updrafts of a hot summer…
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Family and FriendsWellbeing

Testing your imagination

Imagine you grew up in a seemingly ideal home. Your dad worked Monday through Friday and was home for dinner and weekends. Your mom stayed home, cooked the meals, and handled the domestic duties… always there when you came home from school, or needed something to drink. Your dad was the king of the castle, but your mom was the queen of everyday needs. The only thing missing from Leave it to…
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Wellbeing

First cold

I was in no mood for posting yesterday, even though life has been boiled down to surfing, blogging and TV watching over the last month or so. Today I’m home alone again, but with nary a thing to do… and no desire to nap. So here goes! Yesterday was the day I came down with my first at home, immunosuppressed cold. I woke up early that morning to my early warning system telling me a head…
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CancerWellbeing

Working stiff

My triumphant return to work yesterday was exhausting. I’m only working part-time this week in order to gradually work may way up to being a full-time, responsible, adult member of society. However, I learned a really important lesson on the first day back: I should have been slowly working my way up to getting up at 5:30 in the morning. Going from a month of getting up whenever I woke up…
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Family and FriendsWellbeing

Made in the shade

Nine years ago we were shopping for a house. It was slow going due to our conflicting spacial requirements, budgetary limits, and geographical preference, but there were a few houses our realtor showed us. I remember seeing this house the first time and thinking I might be home. There wasn’t anything fancy about the house. In fact, it was (and is) pretty ordinary. It was on the small side of…
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CancerWellbeing

For once I was right

I have a lot of experience being a visitor in a hospital. When it comes time to leave, I’ve often thought that evenings must be the most lonely time. If you’re visiting someone in the hospital, you’re almost always leaving someone behind when you go. Evening seems like a time when a lot of people might be leaving people behind. In a few hours I’ll have been in this hospital…
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