Are there rapids in Grand Rapids? Maybe I should have researched this more… I don’t really know a lot about Grand Rapids, even though I am from Michigan. But it might be a little late to worry about that now. All my worldly goods are on an eighteen-wheeler heading into a snowstorm and I am […]

How’s that title for showcasing three of the homeliest words in the English language? A couple of days ago, Alec sent me a Facebook message that read: “Today I was in philosophy class and they defined temperance as the mean between abstinence and gluttony. I thought of you and had to share this“. First of all, I […]

I had a great evening last night – a group of us went to see Ambler Hutchinson’s show at Florida Mining Gallery, and then to dinner at India’s restaurant afterwards. It’s to the point now, where old friends talk about my previous grapples with alcoholism casually – the way they might remember a long ago bad […]

  I had dinner with my friend Tall Girl last week. She said, “You really are the epitome of the steps – putting one foot in front of the other. No matter what has happened to you, you just kept plodding along, staying sober… ” I never thought of it that way before, but I […]

  I was picking up dinner at Bonefish Grill in Ponte Vedra last night, and as I waited by the hostess stand, I had a chance to observe the goings on in the huge, mobbed communal bar. Bonefish is set up so that you can dine privately at tables in one large room, or find […]

  My friends Rae and David are in San Francisco and they have sent me several photographs of themselves in front of famous landmarks. It brought back memories of when I lived there. I think of myself as a ten year alcoholic, but when I look back on my time in San Francisco, it is […]

Did you know STAT comes from the Latin word “statim,” which means “immediately”? I have never known what it meant in the hospital shows, but I like the way it sounds – important and urgent when a TV doctor demands, “Get the defibrillator STAT! We’re losing him!” Not that I need anything too quickly here – it is […]

  I was having dinner with a friend last weekend and he asked me, “What’s the best way to get a person to stop drinking?” I think we all know someone who is teetering on the edge of alcoholism. I get people asking for advice often – telling me they have a friend who is behaving dangerously, asking […]

  I penned a post about doing the Drunken Disappearing Act a month ago; I was the designated driver a lot during the holidays and it reminded me of how I used to get to a point in the evening where something would click and  I’d think, “If I don’t get out of here now […]

  Yesterday I got in my car, all bright as a button at 6:45 and the gear shift knob was stuck in PARK. It would not budge, even though everything else was working like a car is supposed to work – radio on, lights on, heat pumping and so on. This is not something I […]