MeSoFun Blog

Yes, I would leave this for the right job. I could be driving a AAA truck for a living. Of all the random job situations I've encountered over the last four years, the AAA job offer was by far the most random. But it makes sense, if you have the context. I was unemployed. You don't get rich driving a AAA truck but I would have made between $30,000 and $50,000 a year, depending on how much overtime I was willing to pick up. It's a stable job. There's no chance people are going to stop driving cars and needing help. If you just want a job, you could do a lot worse than working for a nonprofit, member-owned company. I've turned down a lot of jobs and potential jobs over the last four years. There was the night news editor job I turned down because it was a 60-mile commute. With stars in my eyes upon leaving Utah, I thought I wasn't going to work nights ever again. When I was interviewing for a part-time job in Portland, the editor in chief asked me if I was interes...

Summer's almost here! The Wife and I had no idea what we were doing when we got married. Not necessarily in regard to marriage, but certainly in many other respects. I was a journalist and I worked out a lot. Those were my defining characteristics. I hoped to someday, maybe, live closer to my family in Florida and maybe work at a big paper. These are the dreams of 28-year-olds who live 2,500 miles away from their families. The Wife didn't have a job when she moved to Utah. She worked at a naturopathic doctor's office in Duluth, but they were hesitant to open an office in Salt Lake City. She was going to take some time to figure that out. If you're miserably busy with jobs and kids and commitments, taking a few months to watch Netflix probably sounds delightful. TW was fairly miserable after about two weeks of that. Marriage, it turns out, does not make your life better. Your life is not a RomCom starring Mila Kunis and Justin Timberlake. It turns out, even after an amaz...

Every day is a beach day for TW now that she's married! The Wife abhors a pure happy ending. You know the kind. It's the movies where everything ties up nicely with a little bow on it at the end of a love story (preferably starring Hugh Grant). "Life isn't like that," she grumbles. "They make it seem like life is just perfect after they get together. I bet the first time they have sex is terrible!" I have strong feelings about restaurants and beers; The Wife has strong feelings about movie endings. We are a petty bunch. As a result of a blog series I wrote a few years ago, perhaps you remember , she has prodded me to write a second series about what happened after the romance died when we had dirty toilets. Well, we have a dirty toilet, so this seems like an appropriate time for an update. We were married on a fantastic day in June of 2005. The sun alone was spectacular because there were almost no clouds. It wasn't humid. Temperatures were in the up...

Megdoll, far left, and Dolleen, far right, were 2 years old and an infant when I helped take care of them. *Sigh* People occasionally ask me to write a blog about them. For a writer, this is similar to when people ask a funny person to say something funny. Just do it! Say something! Something. The Cousins are all taller but not much has changed. But when Dolleen, a child I practically delivered with my own two hands (sarcasm) asked me to write something about her, I took the bait. The cousins are always asking me to pick a favorite. There are five cousins on my mom's side and I love them all equally. But sometimes I like one more than another. The Five Cousins are (practically) age 16 to (practically) 21. Without exception, I have changed all of their diapers and fed all of them from a bottle. I love them all the same. But at some point, friends become more important than your family. That point is roughly age 14 and continues until roughly age 17. At some point, they stop sending ...

People still call newspapers with random questions. But in addition to killing classified advertising, the Internet has finished off many of those callers. The calls trickle in on a Saturday afternoon. "What channel is the BYU football game on?" callers would ask in Salt Lake City. It's unclear why someone would call a newspaper and not a television station with this question. The calls now are mostly for other departments. People call with complaints about their newspaper delivery or want to know how to place a classified ad. Sometimes, a reader has a complaint about a story. At least they're still reading. Thirteen years ago, The Valley News in Lebanon, New Hampshire, regularly got calls at all hours. People would call from bars with sports questions. "What was the Pittsburgh Pirates starting rotation the year they won the World Series in the 1970s?" Because people at newspapers know that kind of thing off the top of their heads. Then there were the regula...

The gingerbread house is made of styrafoam, for the record. I'm not that talented.  Forming a relationship with a kid is easy compared to an adult. Step 1: Be genuinely interested in the kid. Step 2: Do what the kid wants to do. Step 3: Besties for life! A handy guide for meeting adults: Step 1: Introduce yourself and immediately acknowledge you are terrible with names. Step 2: Ask superficial questions. Step 3: Search awkwardly for common ground. Step 4: Feign an excuse to leave the conversation. How to keep the kids entertained at lunch time: Selfies. When my aunts were popping out kids in the mid-1990s, I was worried about whether their kids were going to like me. They're in their late teens and early 20s now and they're still calling me. Those early bonding sessions/baby sitting sessions paid off with unusually tight relationships in adulthood. Still, I worried a little about being an uncle. The Wife's brothers and sisters-in-law began having kids a few years ago an...

Daisy Duke, in a contemplative moment along a Connecticut river bank. The Indestructible Mazda has 185,000 miles on it and still runs like a champ. Except for the ABS light that came on about a month ago and the unmistakeable gravely sound the car has been making as it comes to a stop. Clearly, the IM needs new brakes. Daisy Duke and I girded ourselves for a cold jog back from the garage today. I put on a tight running shirt and a running sweatshirt; Daisy danced around excitedly to get her body temperature up before leaving the house. The car guy is about 2.5 miles from our house, if you take a direct route. Finding a good car guy is always the second-least-favorite thing about moving. No. 1 is finding a dentist. It's nice to feel like you know a guy in the business. Our guy doesn't rip us off and has done some small repairs for free. Can't beat that. Daisy Duke hopped out of the Indestructible Mazda and quickly extended the leash until it was tout. We were going downhill,...