I heard someone say once that often when a person loses one sense, something else increases to compensate. For example, if you lose your sight, your hearing might get much better to help you know when other people are around. I don’t know if that’s true or not, but it could be true when it […]
So, what’s going on in our life? All kinds of things. Some of them good and some of them not so good. The good news is that I talked to Kenny yesterday, and while he is still in pain, he says he is slowly getting better. But he’s off work for a week and bored […]
We were up at 7 a.m. yesterday morning, which is much earlier than usual for us, because we had an appointment at 8 with a termite inspector. We are paying the mortgage down with the proceeds from our home sale in Alabama and refinancing our house here, and the inspection was part of the process. […]
Anybody who has ever owned a German Shepherd knows that they can be high-maintenance animals. Not just because of the fact that they shed all the time, summer or winter, but also because they are high-energy working dogs who need both physical and mental challenges to keep them out of mischief. At almost four years […]
A number of people have sent messages asking if we are safe from the flooding here in Arizona. Yes, we are, and thank you for your concern. The worst of the flooding occurred in the Phoenix area and also in the small town of Globe, which is about 90 minutes south of us, where they […]
Our internet service has been almost nonexistent since we got back from our trip out west. Whether we’re using our T-Mobile 5G hotspot or our phones as hot spots, it’s incredibly hard to open anything on the internet, to send and receive e-mail, or anything else. But since we have a lot of work to […]
Our German shepherd, Alli, was a year old when we rescued her almost 18 months ago. For the first year that she was with us she only barked when somebody approached the house. Then, a few months ago she seems to have discovered her voice and likes to use it. Not that she barks nonstop, […]
The double wall oven that was in our house when we bought it is old and has never worked properly, so I told Terry to look for a replacement. She found the one she wanted on sale online at Home Depot for something like $1,000 off the regular retail price. We prefer to shop at […]
Here is anothre blog from my days publishing small town newspapers. Publishing small-town newspapers on the Pacific Northwest coast and in Arizona was a lot of fun, and I like to think that sometimes my publications made a difference in the communities they served. I gained a reputation for stepping on toes, and that was […]
In last week’s Newspaper Days column I told you the story of a woman who called me because her teenage sons were playing with an unstable World War II-era hand grenade. I said that once I determined it was a live grenade, I called my buddy Rusty, who was a lieutenant with the police department. […]
It seems like in the last few weeks, my German shepherd has learned how to bark. Alli was a year old when we adopted her last June, and for the first several months she was a fairly quiet dog. She would whine when she needed to go out and make little happy yipping noises when […]
Back in my small town newspaper days, many editors and publishers, myself included, had a sign or plaque in their office that said some variation of, “The duty of the press is to print the truth and raise hell.” I have heard that phrase attributed to everyone from Mark Twain to a number of well-known […]
No question about it, I have a sweet tooth. I always have and I always will. I don’t use alcohol, I don’t do drugs, and I don’t smoke. But put a candy bar, or a cookie, or any kind of sweet treat in front of me and it’s gone! When it comes to candy, my […]
Some of you may think I spend my life writing mystery novels and playing on my tractor, but that’s far from the truth. I’m a multifaceted person who is interested in all kinds of things, believe it or not. I’m always finding some weird rabbit hole to go down when I’m browsing online, and sometimes […]
This week I had to say goodbye to a dear friend who has been a close part of my life for over 30 years. A friend I didn’t even believe I wanted at first. It was sometime in the early 1990s when a friend of mine walked into my newspaper office in Lakeside, Arizona and […]
I’m a little too young to have taken part in panty raids, which were a popular pastime during the 1950s and early ’60s when young men, usually college students, would descend on female students’ dormitories to steal their underwear. Like other youthful pranks such as swallowing goldfish or stuffing as many people as possible into […]
Note: For some reason some readers are not able to see the photos in today’s blog. If you can’t, try going to gypsyjournal.net After living in Florida for six years, where the week preceding and the week after the Independence Day holiday always sounded like the D-Day invasion, we had a quiet day and evening […]
I’m back with more questions from blog readers about RVing, my writing activities, what’s happening in our lives since we hung up the keys, and all kinds of other things. While I try to answer all questions individually, I also share some here occasionally. Q. I know you guys sold your bus a long time […]
Publishing small-town newspapers on the Pacific Northwest coast and in Arizona was a lot of fun, and I like to think that sometimes my publications made a difference in the communities they served. I gained a reputation for stepping on toes, and that was all right with me because sometimes those toes really needed to […]
In last week’s Newspaper Days column I told you the story of a woman who called me because her teenage sons were playing with an unstable World War II-era hand grenade. I said that once I determined it was a live grenade, I called my buddy Rusty, who was a lieutenant with the police department. […]