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trials and tribulations : resolved!

This calendar year has been a bit one-thing-after-another and when-it-rains-it-pours, which has led despite my best intentions to quite a bit of kvetching and moaning around our household. I’m happy to report that our various unfortunate developments have all been resolved quite nicely.
Most recently, Carefirst has correctly reprocessed the remainder of my claims and […]

making a loop of Lake Erie

Our rings, made for us by Cynthia Corio-Poli.
Today we leave for our ten day wedding celebration trip, during which time we drive first to Rhode Island and then to Ontario to celebrate our May wedding with our respective families. We’ll be offline for most of that time, as we eat hummus, drink rosé, and […]

trials and tribulations: BlueCross

I never thought I would reach the point where I would be telling people to run the other way from BlueCross. Yet here I am: after 6 years as a BlueCross subscriber, I recommend getting any other coverage available to you. Which is saying a lot, given that they have one of the […]

media literacy 101

Today’s article in the Wall Street Journal — ‘Latinos not the plague of society as previously believed‘ — is an excellent example of why I hammered away at my students year after year about their media deconstruction skills. It’s not even necessary to be aware of the retrograde politics of the Wall Street Journal […]

joining the 20th century with our new-to-us car

Our new-to-us car outside our house.
We bought a car this week. The car is the first one I’ve ever owned so we’re conceptualizing it as my starter car, which will hopefully make my partner’s shift from a red Mustang convertible to a gray Saturn Ion moderately less ignominious. Like I said, we’re hoping. […]

ringing in the new year with Neo

Salud!
Having received the third DVD as a holiday gift this year, we’re planning to ring out 2007 with a Matrix movie marathon. I’ve seen the first one several times, but I think I only saw the later two in the theater.
To go with our movies, we’ll have nuts (thank you, stocking stuffers!) and a […]

Republican presidential candidates debate

Uh, Mitt? I’m legally required to carry my green card with me in order to be able to produce it upon the request of an officer of the law. But, you’re saying, it’s ‘un-American’ for an officer to request it? Take some responsibility for your own house, dude.
Since when does any reasonable […]

National Novel Writing Month strikes again

I wake up, look around, and it’s November. October got away from me, I confess. I made absolutely no headway with regard to book reviews, and posts about walks to the pond and adventures in cooking are hanging around the back-end of the site only half-conceived.
Unfortunately, they are likely to linger in that […]

wildlife adventures in University Park

We had no idea when we moved here that we were moving to a haven of sorts for wildlife in this area. The past few weeks have been full of wildlife, in more ways than we could have imagined. We’d heard from our neighbors that coyotes, foxes, and something which might have been […]

Master Peace Community Garden

One of the projects I’ve become involved with this spring is a new community garden, the Master Peace Community Garden. The garden is a project of the Engaged University garden program at the University of Maryland, and is located at the Center for Educational Partnership in Riverdale Heights. A large part of the […]