The Spirograph Obsession

My fellow Coedxian, author Elaine Isaak, sent me a tweet yesterday asking about my “recent obsession with Spirograph.” I thought perhaps this deserved a better-than-140-character explanation. It was Memere who had the Spirograph at her house — we might have owned one, but I don’t ever remember playing with it at home. Only ever at Memere’s house. There were…

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Wedding Day

Today’s the day! Wish me luck with the family and the insanity. And wish my niece Alana luck–she’s the one getting herself into this. Heading out to Morrisville this morning–not sure if I will have phone & internet service or not. But I will have a black raspberry creamy and a trip to the Bijou, for sure. Have a…

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In Which the Princess Comes Home

I am in Vermont this weekend for my niece’s wedding. It is good to be home again in my green mountains where the air just smells better than the rest of the world. Of course, it’s still a wedding. Which means drama. I’ll deal with that tomorrow. In the meantime, please enjoy the guest blog post I did today…

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Inglorious Moments

I got out of my Meeting Marathon at work last night just in time to hightail it to the lovely Malco theatre we have here in Smyrna, Tennessee. I missed all the trailers, but I didn’t miss a second of Inglorious Basterds. Quentin Tarantino is the movie geek’s movie geek. I was raised at the movie theatre (literally, as…

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Happy Anniversary, Mom & Dad!!!

I have declared today Only Good News Day. Next up in our series of happiness: My most excellent parents were married 36 years ago today in a Greek Orthodox church in Vermont, with my father still drunk on ouzo from the night before (thank my godfather for that one). The legend became just one of the many amazing stories…

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The Godfather

As some of you may not know, my esteemed Godfather is Nectar Rorris, founder and former owner of the world famous Nectar’s Restaurant in Burlington, Vermont where the band Phish got their big break. In honor of that–and in honor of The Best French Fries With Gravy in the World–Phish named their fifth studio album "A Picture of Nectar."…

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Anxiety Says What?

Anxiety dreams are born with us; they grow and evolve with us and take on many different shades. What scared us then doesn’t scare us now, and vice versa. Sometimes it’s not so much fear as it is general preoccupation, some deep-seeded nagging thing we’ve shoved to the bottom of our mental priority list for so long that its…

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Genre Chick Interview: Luc Reid

This month, Genre Chick Alethea Kontis gets past the nerd gate of subculture slang and learns to grok everything from Basic Faire Accent to Ciazarn. Our professor today is Luc Reid, award-winning author of the chunky, entertaining reference book Talk the Talk: The Slang of 65 American Subcultures. ************************** Alethea Kontis: How long did it take to write Talk…

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