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(Editor’s Note:  This is a piece I wrote about four years ago and I’m pleased to announce that my beloved and I will celebrate our twenty-fifth in a couple of weeks.)

My beloved and I recently celebrated our twenty-first wedding anniversary.  After putting up with me for more than two decades I figured she deserved something special.  I checked with the Nobel people to see if they had a category for endurance in a marriage.  No luck.

So an award was out.  I checked the web to find the traditional gifts for people whose marriage is of legal drinking age.  Any guesses?  Elegant dinnerware?  Fine fabrics?  Sweet foods?  Nope.  Nickel, brass and iolite.

Which raises an important question; what the heck is iolite? (Full Text)

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The agent crept across the floor, taking each step with precision. His stockinged foot landed on a sharp object unseen in the dark and he winced in pain, drawing a sudden, sharp breath to stifle a scream. He paused. Had he been heard?

“Whaaaaa!” The baby starting crying.

Any first-year dad would have known better than to walk in a child’s room in stockinged feet. Face it, secret agents have the glamorous life-style, but dads have the real skills. (Full Text)

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My wife and I take two radically different approaches to gardening.  She negotiates with Mother Nature, trying to find the perfect plants which blend with the environment.  I engage in acts of malicious horticulture, using poisons and sharp implements to impose my will upon the earth.

She’s all about free-form creativity and coaxing life from the soil.  I’m all about applying the latest in technology.

She’s a from a Venus Flytrap and I’m from … well, oddly enough, there aren’t any plants I can find with Mars in their name.

Maybe that’s why her efforts so much more successful than mine. (Full Text)

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In our family we “do” Science Fair the same way other families “do” soccer…or gymnastics…or professional ice skating…or junior beauty pageants…or organized crime.  We don’t so much “do” Science Fair as live it.

Our Science Fair efforts are generally divided into four phases — Planning, Production, Panic, and Performance. (Full Text)

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