A fire truck was behind the 7-11, spraying water on a dumpster that had caught fire. It’s not just a metaphor!

It’s a lot easier to mend a fence when it’s 45°F and calm, compared to last weekend when it was 19°F and the wind was gusting to 20 knots. But everyone except me already knew that.

2012: Wife tells me to get rid of that old table. I do not. I disassemble it and hide it in the back of a storeroom. 2025: Wife needs a table for her studio. Gives me the dimensions. Asks how much I think one will cost. I think I can get one for free. 😀

We have a bad mailman, but that’s sort of OK. Knocking on neighbors’ doors to give them mis-delivered letters and packages is one of the things that builds community.

I instructed one of my #fencing students🤺 to imitate a mongoose attacking a cobra. He had never seen that before. What are parents teaching their children these days?

At a family gathering in 1990, I was introduced to my wife’s grandfather’s brother’s widow’s second husband. After a few seconds’ thinking, it was unanimously determined that the word in Virginia for that relationship is #Uncle.

Cleared out a hectare of pokeweed with the bush hog. Now my tractor looks like something from a Stephen King novel. #weeds

Young woman got on the train wearing a velvet jogging suit with rhinestones. Her shoes were the feet from a Chewbacca costume. I’m just going to admit that I don’t understand #fashion.

Today I Learned an #OldEnglish word for a wise old man “thonk-snottor”. I am glad my students never found out this term of respect.

Passed a garbage truck on the road. Painted on the side, it said, “Satisfaction guaranteed or double your trash back!” #marketing

Waiting at a red light near a McDonald’s. #Crows have assembled to remove a fallen breakfast burrito from the traffic lane. Each one grabs a beak full, then perches on the luggage rack of the Subaru in front of me to eat it.

They’re building a new house across the street, here in #suburbia. There’s a portable toilet by the curb. About every other day, a car stops at the curb and the driver uses the toilet. Apparently there’s a need for civic infrastructure of which I was hitherto unaware.

Alfred, Lord Tennyson, didn’t marry until he was 40. There is no evidence that he had an illegitimate child, like Wordsworth, or an incestuous relationship, like Byron. But scholars keep looking and hoping. - Richard Armour #poetry