I have exciting news! Are you sitting? Good. I haven't really paid much attention to this blog over the last month or so (reason to be explained later, if you haven't gleaned from title).  In my last blog I mentioned that I have hit 25K visitors to my blog, which was amazing! So when I sat down to attempt to write this blog, I was shocked to see that I have now hit over 30K visitors! WTF?  What makes it even more interesting is the fact that the lion's share of new readers are in Hong Kong. As you can see from the image below, over the last month, over 5K people in Hong Kong have rea ..read more

Greetings, everyone. Happy to report that we are all well on our way to Spring and the days are getting longer. Welcome news indeed.  Some of you might be aware that I work for a big software company. Annually we host a large event with approximately five thousand engineers, designers, entrepreneurs, students and makers. It's a super cool event and chock-filled with cool tech and gaga gadgetry.  While I'm not a nerd by profession, I will admit to being quite "nerded out" by some of the incredible inventions and super cool new products we showcase that are created by our 7+ millions u ..read more

Hi all and Happy 2024! Wow, those holidays sure went by quickly, as usual. Hope everyone enjoyed the time, even though I feel we all got screwed over by both holidays falling on Mondays. It seemed like we went from having a full two weeks of holiday time to one. I have submitted my official complaint; I'll keep you all posted on where that goes.  Leaning lefter Cities in the U.S. are typically dominated by people who are more liberal in terms of their politics. I've always leaned slightly left, although I wouldn't say I'm liberal in all of my beliefs.  On the dating apps, I declare ..read more

Greetings, readers! Sorry for my absence but summer in Chicago is my time to play so writing, even fun writing, takes a backseat to all the fun things I can do outside when it's warm. We were treated to an absoutely beautiful summer here so I did my best to take advantage of it.  Checking off my first bucket list I recently checked one off my bucket list: seeing the Cinque Terre region of Italy. It's been on my list for the past 20 years after seeing pictures from the area in a Rick Steeves book. My goal was to see if before I was 50, but then life got in my way, as it often does. I spent ..read more

I would like to start off this blog by making an exciting announcement. Overnight I hit over 20,000 views of my blog! This is particularly shocking considering I've been playing all summer and haven't really been doing a whole lot of writing.  I only write when there's nothing I can do outside, and this summer has been particularly amazing so while I've played a lot of tennis and seen a lot of concerts, I haven't been particularly prolific in terms of my blogging.  A few interesting things have happened. My blog is read by people from countries all over the world, but the bulk of my ..read more

First off, my apologies for my rather prolonged absence. Nothing is wrong. It's just when the weather gets warm, it becomes less and less likely I will spend a weekend day inside writing but today is very hot and I've been outside a lot lately so thought I would spend some time writing a blog today. Wow, lucky day! Lately I have had several friends and family members who have kids that are either graduating from high school or college. Many of those kids are being gifted with cars, which made me think back to when I was heading to college hoping that I would also be lucky and get a car. Lookin ..read more

Ok, yes. I am aware that I no longer am raising teens, but I still remember those years quite vividly and have very helpful advice for those of you who are in the midst of raising those snotty, know-it-alls. I have many friends as well as family members who are still in the process. I like to randomly throw out helpful advice like: "it's going to get worse before it gets better" when I see my brother-in-law dealing with my beautiful, but feisty 15-year-old neice.  I've heard the effort of raising teens is akin to "nailing jello to a tree" and can't disagree with that analogy. Pretty sure ..read more

Nope, not me. For those of you who don't know my mother, also Barb, consider this blog post your official introduction to the amazing matriarch of our family.  Certainly doesn't seem blog-worthy to write about my mom taking up yoga, but then again it wouldn't be if it wasn't her doing it. I'm sure you remember my first foray into yoga. I chronicled my own yoga adventures at the beginning of the pandemic in my very first blog post back in 2020. From that blog:  For years, I've watched as the flood of skinny bitches pour out the yoga studio at the gym. Clearly they are o ..read more

 Some of you know that I recently had to put down my older dog, Marley, who has been my most faithful constant companion for almost 16 years. He would have celebrated that milestone next month actually. I will admit losing him has been heartbreaking. Yes, he had a wonderful life, and yes, I was quite fortunate to have had him as long as I did. For sure that is true. But still such a loss. Marley was my third dog, although my family also had several dogs growing up. But he was mine and from the day we picked him up, I was the center of his universe. Always and forever. I mean quite literal ..read more

Ok, so remember my last blog in which I proclaimed I was off the market and going to hunker down with the snow-birding dentist? So...yeah...that's a no. A rather unfortunate conclusion I came to about 45 minutes into my 72-hour visit to Florida. Probably should have seen the extreme, non-stop turbulence that tossed around the 737 Max I was on the entire way as a bad omen. I know many of you are asking yourself how this could have happened. What was she thinking? I have made this mistake before. I wrote about it in this blog. It caused the sudden demise of what seemed like a good relationship ..read more