Year: 2016

I drove into the gas station in New Jersey, where there are still people who pump the gas for you.  I’d been to this particular station many times before, and it happens to be located in a pretty middle-class, quiet suburban town.  It’s not like it’s a palace, I mean, it’s still a gas station,…

My friend lives next door to her elderly father.  Apparently, his health has been in more of a decline lately, what with his kidneys not being strong, and his need to sleep more than is normal.  I worry about her, because it has been years of her taking care of her elderly parents, and the…

Here’s the real thing about workplace life:  Sometimes you have to walk a tightrope between keeping things professional, and making sure that you don’t step on peoples’ emotional wounds.  Here’s a quick primer on a couple of things you can do to make the worklife family work a little better. When you work with a…

As I walked through the parking lot of the barbeque place I like to go get our dinner from on occasion, I looked down and was noticing the crushed stone they used to fill in the expanse of parking lot that was not paved.  It had rained recently, and I noticed that the stones looked…

As anyone who is my Facebook friend can tell, I have been battling with angst, despair, depression, and bewilderment with my job for quite some time.  I used to have an enviable job, with the greatest boss and co-workers, satisfying work and a sense of security.  That is, until my boss got a better job,…

Under duress, people show the real stuff that they are made of.  Some of my favorite books and movies are those that delve into the true character of the, er, characters, and show the strengths or weaknesses they possess.  It’s easy to judge those people from the perspective of the cozy couch you are sitting…

I was recently reading an article online mentioning that someone had gotten a tattoo of the phrase, “Ride or Die”.  I looked up the meaning of the phrase, and it means a combination of the phrases “ride it out” or “die trying”, and “ride or die” has come to mean someone who will be with…

One day recently in my office, I was discussing some event with a co-worker, and I happened to mention that someone in the story was a black person.  As soon as I said that, the co-worker’s eyes widened a little, and her head whipped around – as if she was checking to see if the…

For most people in the United States, St. Patrick’s Day is a day to wear green clothing and wacky, cheap shamrock encrusted jewelry bought on a whim from the dollar store.  There are parades, green food, and the best excuse for drinking, second (or third?) only to New Year’s Eve and the Super Bowl. For…

I was on a mission:  Find a replacement lid for a friend’s Pyrex tray.  Any color is fine, she said.  I even knew which outlet store carried Pyrex products, and I knew that I had seen replacement lids there.  All I had to do was find the right one, using the exact dimensions my friend…

One of the jobs I held in high school into college was as a waitress in a small diner.  At first I worked the counter, and as I developed a little bit more skill and could keep up with the experienced waitresses on the floor, I was allowed to also cover some tables. I loved…

  I sometimes watch the “Real Housewives of…” types of shows.  I admit this with no small amount of shame, because certainly there are better ways to spend one’s time.  Mr. Helix knows if I am guiltily watching one of these shows, because he will wander into the living room, glance at the tv and…