I hate ceilings.
They block my view of the beautiful sky, hold in stale air, and generally interfere with my creative juices.  Oh, sure, they serve as places to nail down the floors for the folks upstairs if you’re not on top and make heating and air conditioning easier, and if you are on top, they [...]

First, my deepest apologies to Green Bay Packer fans everywhere. Now, on to my rant.
I’ve absolutely had it up to HERE with the whole Brett Favre thing. For crying out loud, people, since when is it news when somebody doesn’t do anything?! Brett throws a couple of passes to some high [...]

I guess it’s just the price we have to pay, but still, I would rather be checking out Las Vegas vacations.
The little town just north of here is spending money like crazy. The race track in Wheeling needed a kennel to house all the greyhounds, and the county and the track reached a deal. [...]

At myself, that is.
I spent all day yesterday with my nose buried in books, calendars, and the laptop, working like a little trooper on developing three syllabi for most of the new classes I’ll be teaching this fall.
Now, when I put together a syllabus, it goes well beyond “this is the book you need” and [...]

I realize that this is a somewhat distasteful subject, but it’s been bugging me for quite awhile now.
I’m talking about those electronic eye flushing devices on more and more public toilets.
Sure, I understand the idea behind them: make sure everyone flushes when done, and save lots of water while doing it. But tell [...]

We live in West Virginia’s northern panhandle. Less than a mile to the west is the Ohio River and the Buckeye State. Not twenty miles to our east is the Pennsylvania state line.
Ordinarily, I love this arrangement. Ohio has no sales tax on food. Clothes are tax-free in Pennsylvania. Everything [...]

Certain questions are better left unasked. The obvious one is, “What ELSE could go wrong?” It has been my experience that vocalizing that question will inevitably lead to an answer, and it’s never good.
So I’m more than a little ticked off at my toilet right now.
Last night’s trip to the bathroom (in the [...]

Sometimes retailers’ sense of timing confuses the dickens out of me.
Case in point: Our little portable electric heater gave out over the weekend, probably from overuse since we ran out of fuel oil back in January. So we decided to go get a new one because evenings here are still pretty cold.
What did [...]

Please don’t take this the wrong way, but if you’re a bureaucrat, I can’t stand you.
Nothing personal, mind you, but you work for a system that is designed to frustrate, aggravate, and belittle the rest of us. You are the tool of the devil.
Have you figured out yet that I had a rather nasty [...]

I admit it: I’m angry and frustrated right about now.
For the better part of a week, some jerk who owns another blog has been stealing my posts and putting them up over there. I’m not going to give said jerk the benefit of providing the title here, but for those people who have [...]