• Best Thing Ever,  Favorite Things,  Fun in Knoxville

    Putting “Take a Picture: It’ll Last Longer” Into Action

    Some of my favorite conversations with people I don’t know have come about because of the car I drive, a 2020 Ford Mustang Convertible in “Race Red”. Things you may or may not know about this car: I had two funny conversations just last week. The first one was in Nashville, when I was on my way to meet a friend for lunch. The car top was down, of course (June!), and my music was blasting, as usual. I exited the highway and stopped for the traffic light at the top of the ramp. A small white sedan was in the left lane, and the driver and her passenger were…

  • Best Thing Ever,  Blessings,  Favorite Things,  Friends

    A Picture Is Worth 1037 Words

    Sometimes the really great stories aren’t really great because something extraordinary happened. Stories can be really great if you’re with exactly the right person at exactly the right place, doing exactly the right thing. This is one of those stories, and it happens to be a favorite of mine (and was a favorite of Liz’s, of course). In December 2016 we were on the BlogHer conference team, and we all traveled to Orlando, Florida to do a site visit for the conference we would present six months later. Site visits were always fun because we all worked remotely, all around the country, and they were excellent opportunities to get everyone…

  • Blessings,  Friends,  Pretty Pictures

    Sea Glass Beach

    While I’ve never once lived in the Northeast, I have traveled to New Jersey many, many times. Having a second family there courtesy of my best friend resulted in my visiting multiple times each year, sometimes for a long weekend, sometimes for a week. Once I stayed for ten full days. Naturally I became very familiar with Central New Jersey (the home of Liz and her family) as well as many places along the Jersey Shore, all the way down to Cape May, the settings for many of our shenanigans. I have always felt very much at home in that state which, by the way, is more beautiful than most…

  • My Friends Have Mad Skillz,  Shameless Promotion,  Uncategorized,  Writing

    Protecting My Peace

    I want to tell you about a new writing project I’m very excited about: I got started over on Substack so I could connect with a lot of my writer/OG blogger friends: it’s easy to read and comment on each other’s posts because they’re all under one umbrella. I started a publication over there to claim a little more world wide web space but I have NO plans of giving up this site, my little corner of the internet that belongs to me and me only. I’m sure you’ve noticed that I don’t write nearly as much here as I used to, and it might bug you…or it might not.…

  • Confessions,  My Dad Has Mad Skillz,  Tradition

    A Visit

    I'm not a huge fan of cemetery visits. I mean, probably most people aren't, but while I see the value in the ritual of visiting a loved one who has passed and experiencing all of the emotional things that come with that, it's not something in which I find a lot of comfort.