Photo credit: Lovisa Photo    The other day Carol referred to “our” new air fryer as “your” new air fryer. Later she returned from running errands, and said, “I took ‘my’ car to the car wash.” And she added, “By the way, did they deliver ‘your’ wine order?” Maybe it’s the quarantine, but I’ve found […]

   It happened again, just the other night. I’d gotten up from the couch, a rare enough daily occurrence that it prompted a comment from Carol. At the time, I was headed for the freezer to take out some cornbread for dinner that evening. The cornbread was to go with the red beans and rice […]

   We were walking back to our hotel from a wonderful Florentine restaurant following an enlivening and lengthy happy hour near the famed Domo. In other words, we were buzzed, Carol had to pee, and then soon, we were lost.    I’ve written before about the hidden discoveries one can make while trying to find […]

   I’ve written earlier that having grown up in the Deep South, the first rule of cooking is, if you don’t know what it is, fry it. In the bayou country of Louisiana, where my family comes from, that maxim is a little more refined: if it moves, fry it.    Thus it was, I […]

   There was the time I walked into a theater with Carol for a showing of The Book Club. A youngish woman (I’ve attained the age where they’re all more or less youngish) who passed me in the aisle said, “You’re like the third dude in here.” I didn’t know whether to feel special for […]

   Back when I believed in reincarnation, I announced to anyone who’d listen that I wanted to come back as an Italian. “A tile and grout man, I really don’t care, as long as I have an Italian grandmother.” In other words, I wanted to reincarnate for the food. That’s why when I saw that […]

   I have three existential fears: snakes, premature burial and standing in lines. For anything, for any reason. When I saw those lines in front of stores that had nothing to sell in the days of the old Soviet Union, my stomach would be in knots just from watching the footage. Closer to home, I […]

While my incurious nature has gotten me off the hook from having to drag myself through some of the most renowned and beloved tourist attractions in the world, the one exception is any site related to my favorite authors I’ve read or movies I’ve seen. Thus, in Paris, have I sat in the Brasserie Lipp […]

   No sooner I say I’m going to refrain from something, I go ahead and do it anyway. All I can say is, I sit and stare blankly into space until an idea occurs to me. If I choose to ignore that idea, then I get nothing, and go back to staring into space until […]

   I’ve never experienced writer’s block, per se. For me, staring at a blank sheet of paper or a clear computer screen with a blinking cursor for hours, occasionally wiping drool from the corner of my mouth is simply what I call my writing process. Eventually, something winds up being written, and if Carol doesn’t […]