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With the metaphorical microphone passed to me by Mrs. Chicky earlier this week via an Interview Meme, I am carrying on the tradition with a different spin. In addition to interviewing a few bloggers who posted their answers on their own sites , I opened up the line of questioning to interested parties without blogs. Taking advantage of the opportunity was a regular reader named Kate. I am pleased to introduce her to you now. Me: You are in a room full of strangers--different sexes, ages, ethnicities, backgrounds, professions, familial statuses, etc., are all represented. They want to know who you are. How do you identify yourself? Kate: This is a difficult question to answer because I need more context. Why am I in a room full of such a diverse group of strangers? Am I mingling and just introducing myself to individual people along the way, or am I addressing a crowd for some reason as a leader/keynote speaker? Even so, I would need to know the reason everyone is gathered. If I ...

What is wrong with this picture? (Besides the fact that I have no photography skills whatsoever?) Did you get it? Did you? If not, here's a bit more of the scene: No, it was not a freak of nature that caused this. No blustery wind, no driving rain. It was The Boss, the dog and I on the way to the park. Well, actually, it had nothing to do with The Boss, except that she was there and could quite possibly have been killed if the porch ceiling wasn't so capable of remaining suspended practically by its lonesome. I was walking out the front door, helping The Boss down the steps with one hand and holding Roxie's leash in the other. That's when our pit bull saw the cat in the neighbor's yard and bolted toward it. I lurched forward, struggling to hold on as Roxie put all of her 50 pounds, plus the strength of momentum, into the chase. That's when I did the stupid thing for which The Parnter is currently not speaking to me. I grabbed ahold of one of the porch's ric...

Charming Historic Cape w/Commerical Possibilities A taste of old and new. Set on 1 acre; offering 1862 sq.ft. of living wiht beautiful, wide board flooring, soapstone kitchen sink and center chimney with newly lined fireplace in the living room & great garage/workshop! Will somebody tell me what it is about this home that attracts only the rudest, slimiest and most ignorant of prospective buyers? One freak show at my door is not unexpected, but two, three, four...the parade is endless and wholly unproductive. We had one offer that fell through and another that's falling. Our agent held a showing with another gentlemen who spent over an hour on the property before he told her he hated the house, but loved the yard. Then he said he doesn't much like to mow. Where the hell do they come from? How many more of them are out there? We have an open house on Saturday, and I have a feeling I just might find out.

Special correspondent Mrs. Chicky , of Chicky Chicky Baby , is here today with a few hard hitting questions for yours truly. Stay till the end to find out how you can participate in the interviews sweeping the blogosphere. Mrs. Chicky: Where did you meet your husband? Me: Funny you should ask. Funny because it's true. I met The Partner via the Instant Messenger function of AOL v. 3.0. As a college sophomore with nothing better to do than send random IMs while I should've been studying for mid-terms, I typed the keywords "Connecticut" (for my home state) and "78" (for the year of my birth) into the member directory search. When his profile popped up, I saw that this 19 year old male, born and bred in Connecticut, attended the same university as a friend of mine. With nothing more to go on than those three apparent commonalities, I fired up the IM. "Do you know so-and-so?" I typed, using my friend's name as a shot-in-the-dark impetus for conversa...

My friend's daughter is a pre-schooler who likes to write songs. I think she's got what it takes to go far. Don't believe me? You be the judge. "I ask my mom for a chore, She says sure, how ‘bout four. So I do the dishes And she acts suspicious." ~ Bella, age 4 It's a bit unnerving to feel as if I have to move over for the next generation before I've even taken a seat.

I've written before about a local court case with international implications. Coast to coast, sea to shining sea, hopping continents and bouncing off satellites in space. Read about it , because it could happen where you are, too. You might think it can't, but it can happen to you. Here's the meat of the nutshell as I cracked it earlier: "Julie Amero, a substitute teacher, was convicted on four counts of risk of injury to a minor for exposing middle school students to pornography on a school computer. The conviction came after she testified that the sexually explicit material on her computer popped up as a result of adware , not from any prurient searches of her own. She faces up to forty years in prison." She will be sentenced this Thursday. There's someone else around these parts who will not face a day of jail time, however. It's a man who sexually assaulted a three year old girl. Under a plea deal, he will get five years' probation. According to t...

When she really wants something, The Boss calls me by my name . "Bink! Binky! Biiiiiiiiinky!" She sits in her high chair and bangs on the tray as she imitates her father. I mean, that has to be where she got it from. He's the one who says my name on a regular basis in her presence. As it happens, it's usually when he wants something, too. Or when he's annoyed. Or when he finds it hard to believe that something I said actually came out of my mouth. " In a withering tone" is the best way to describe the most common utterance of my identifier around these parts. "Binky!" Today The Boss called me out at the supermarket when I strayed too far from her in search of a plastic bag for the chicken. "Bink. Bink. Binky." She stared at me from her perch in the front of the cart, looking all baby blond and munching on a cookie. "Binky!" she repeated, in between bites. Call me narcissistic, but there is nothing cuter than hearing my daug...