When I was a child, I had a simple wish for a holiday gift exchange. I asked for a calligraphy set so I could begin learning the craft and sharing homemade cards with others. My [read more]
I’m a history fan, and one thing I love is how important the mail order catalog was toward settling the West. Before, if you wanted a shovel and the local store didn’t have one…well, you [read more]
My wife is a great list-maker. I am not. So sometimes, if she’s going to the grocery store, she asks me to write down what I need that week. I haphazardly think of the stuff [read more]
You know that feeling when you send an email and are gripped with the desire to take it back? I don’t mean when you accidentally hit “reply all” or when you realize you’ve attached the [read more]
One of the most frequent holiday-time conversations I have with my wife is when we’re out shopping and I see something I like. She tells me, wisely, not to buy it because what if I [read more]
Every year, our friends Greg and Becky throw a latke party for Hanukkah. Becky is Jewish, and they’re raising their children in that faith. Since the kids were born, it’s been interesting and fun to [read more]
Not too long after we were married, my wife handed me a handwritten note, which I assumed, in my newlywed bliss, would be a poem of sweet nothings. Instead, it was a list of things [read more]
Nobody is into just one thing. Everyone has a lot of hobbies, passions, and interests. A woman in our building loves our local football team—like, to the point where I’m worried about structural damage. But [read more]
If you’re like me, then your excitement about Christmas shopping looks like one of those stock market charts from the 1920s. It starts out going up because you’re excited about getting things for people and [read more]
I remember the joy of making a Christmas wish list when I was a kid. I’d think about what books I wanted, what toys I needed (needed!), which video game commercials had spoken directly to [read more]