The Joys of Voice to Text

I teach Human Anatomy and Physiology for incoming college freshman, and because I am a horrible teacher, I ask my students to take tests in essay/short answer format. I also make them do take-home tests, open note, open book, untimed, for the same reason. This almost always leads to some fun answers though in the…

Superb Owl

My husband loves sports. Basketball is his favorite, but he'll happily watch football and hockey as well. I am not a sports fan. I have never been a sports fan. Nor do I plan to ever be a sports fan. I do however, watch a lot of sports. But there is something to be said…

Deja Vu, all over again

Omicron. She's here. We just don't know how bad she is yet. And we won't know for a while. Will she be like OG Covid, primarily attacking the elderly and infirm? Or will she go after the younger or the vaccinated? First, they closed the airports. But that's always reactionary. Omicron was here already. She…

When to make a change?

At what point do you decide to make a change? Is it when things get so frustrating that everything makes you want to scream? Is it when you’re bored with how things have been going and you want excitement? Is it when the status quo is no longer engaging to your mind? Or do you…

How to start writing?

One of my best friends asked me that today. "How do I start writing? This bad event happened to me and I want to write about it. Can you tell me what you do to start?" First off, he's got way too much faith in me. Secondly, there's only one real answer to this. Write.…

The weather as a character

Guess what? It rained today. It also rained yesterday, and the day before, and the day before that. Only July 7th, this was the 4th wettest July on record. It's now the 19th and the rain has not abated. Because of all this wet, we have been dealing with periodic basement flooding. On Saturday, I…

Poke the Bear

I had been on a long hiatus - having written almost nothing for months. COVID-19 and job responsibilities left me tired and decidedly not creative. I tried everything I could think of to poke my muse and get her started but she remained silent. My first attempts to get her to stir were dismal at…

Letting go

We put my grandmother's house on the market this week. Purchased in 1908 for $5000, it was the house my grandfather, and my mother, and I grew up in. It predated the land records - standing there, stalwart, since the 1880s (that we know of). It was farmhouse first, then a tenement house, outfitted as…

Moving Forward

I've been trying to prepare my body for a procedure for about 6 months now. I did everything right the first time - and the procedure was cancelled anyway because my body decided to be a troll and do it's own thing, despite medical intervention. This month, we tried something else and at the first…

Entitlement

Full disclosure - I am a millennial. Granted, I'm an old millennial. I was born in the mid-eighties. I grew up without internet and learned about computers by taking them apart and fixing them. Social media was myspace and livejournal; Facebook didn't become a thing until college. The media loves to vilify us as a…