When former President George H.W. Bush passed away on November 30, 2018, I was surprised to find out that one of my relatives had not only met the president personally back in the 1990s, but she had the pictures to prove it. The relative in question raved about how George H.W. Bush greeted her. “When…
Not long ago, I was talking to a relative about the business of writing. This relative maintains a very active social media account, and I told the relative that I thought that maybe there was some potential to turn it into a blogging gig, perhaps even a monetized one to help offset the relative’s tight…
So, you’re facing a huge decision. This one’s big. Really big. This is the kind of decision that will make or break you. Sausage or bacon? Okay, maybe not, but there are plenty of times when we do have to make big decisions: about what car to buy, about whether to splurge on that expensive…
When I was in middle school, I once walked out of a speech class in tears because I couldn’t deliver the speech right. The teacher came out into the hallway and told me, “You’re a perfectionist. You like to get everything right the first time.” She encouraged me to go in and just do my…
I’ve been teaching high school for close to two decades now. When I first started teaching, Bill Clinton was at the end of his presidency, dial-up internet was still a thing, and there was no such thing as a smartphone. Some things have changed during that time, while other things have not. What follows is…
I was 23 years old the first time I cooked a legitimate meal. Growing up, I didn’t cook, and in college my scholarship was such that it actually made it to my advantage to live in the dorms. So, when the time came for me to spread my wings as a full-fledged adult, I had…
I probably don’t need to tell you that technology is everywhere. If it wasn’t, you probably wouldn’t be reading this. I don’t automatically think that the internet–and everything that comes with it–is necessarily bad. It’s a tool. At its best, it can keep us in contact with people far away, teach us about things that…
As an adult, jobs (for most households) are necessary in this world. They provide income to pay the bills, and in the United States they also provide access to crucial benefits like health insurance and a means to contribute to social security and / or a pension. For kids — teenagers — money is certainly…
For years, I’ve lived on the cheap end of cell phone plans. Like $8 a month cheap. And while, early on, my phones were more or less prehistoric, today I carry around a functional (if modest) Android smartphone. On Tracfone. My data cap? About 1.2 GB. A year. And yet somehow, I’ve managed to get…
There are a lot of ways to pay for entertainment, be it cable or a vacation. But sometimes you may not have the money, or you may not want to spend the money. Chances are, there are some free (or really cheap) entertainment options in your area and you may not even know about them….
