This image has been on my About page for years. Before that, as evi­denced by the crinkly, thumbtack-​bestabbed bor­der of the phở­to­graph, it was on my bul­letin board for years. It was taken at my first home, 514 Franklin Street, in Con­nersville, Indi­ana. There’s a spe­cial place in my heart for this photo, despite the completely […]

When I was very small, the worst word I knew was “hate.” I could get smacked for using it too freely or inap­pro­pri­ately. Later, I was taught the typ­i­cal tru­ism “if you can’t say any­thing nice, don’t say any­thing.” Once I’d processed that by being required to sit in a chair and think about man­ners a few times, I then became confused […]

Since my library books and Ama­zon order haven’t arrived yet I started reread­ing David Cooper’s Exis­ten­tial­ism last night. I picked this up at a table in the fac­ulty build­ing at Notre Dame many years ago. This was a very cool table. Profs would drop what­ever books they no longer had a use for there for other profs [and pirat­i­cal students […]

When I used to get sick and mom would take off a bit of work to care for me, I wouldn’t have much of an appetite. Often, I’d request ice cream, and, not get­ting it, would be told that I’m obvi­ously not that sick if I want to eat ice cream. A com­pro­mise was usu­ally reached with straw­berry gelatin, which […]

After my run yes­ter­day I went to Dave’s and made myself a salad and grabbed a Brae­burn apple. It was what my body was crav­ing, so appar­ently I needed some iron [the major­ity of the leafy greens were spinach] and sundry other ruffage. It dis­ap­peared in no time. When I was work­ing over the sum­mer at Notre Dame, I used to […]

Today my cat Calvin is get­ting euth­a­nized. I’m okay with that, since he is with­er­ing away, incon­ti­nent and likely senile. He’s lived a life that any cat would be proud of and I’m going to tell you about it. We don’t know exactly how old Calvin is because he adopted us. Or, to be com­pletely truth­ful, I helped […]

In which Adam talks about the orig­i­nal 8 bit Nin­tendo Enter­tain­ment System.

When I have off­spring they shall not play the banal form of con­cen­tra­tion that most of us played when we were knee high to a grasshop­per. They shall play Set. This is a match­ing game that gives your brain a seri­ous work­out. A set is deter­mined by group­ing three cards accord­ing to four dif­fer­ent cat­e­gories and by sim­i­lar­ity or difference. […]

My first dog was a bea­gle that I named Rosie. She was the best dog ever; even if she wasn’t trained all that well. She used to roam around down­town Con­nersville when we lived in town, and she got knocked up by some dead­beat dad of a ter­rier. So she was a rough kind of girl, but always loyal […]

When I was at St. Gabriel’s for ele­men­tary school we would always put on a Christ­mas pro­gram right before Christ­mas break. This was a big to-​do; weeks and weeks were spent in prepa­ra­tion for it. Each class had its own set of songs to sing, arranged by our music teacher.

When I was a very small child, I took swim­ming lessons at the pub­lic pool. I assume there was some trep­i­da­tion on my part, but learn to swim I sort of did, at the shal­low end of the pool. How­ever, as part of the course­work, we had to jump off the div­ing board at the deep end of the pool. […]

Some mem­o­ries worth remem­ber­ing from my high school days. This is by no means an exhaus­tive list. Not avail­able in all areas. Void where prohibited.

I might have talked about this before, lord knows I’ve thought about it enough times. I don’t remem­ber. This could be nor­mal for­get­ting, unsurety of whether I’ve dis­cussed this before, or some­thing sin­is­ter and hid­den. This sort of gives me the willies. Think­ing about it that is. It begins, like so many other things, when I was […]

My first friend was also my first girl­friend, appar­ently. Leila lived next door, with her grand­par­ents, the impos­ing Ker­ri­g­ans, but only dur­ing the sum­mers. She was older than me and some­times we would play Soap Opera.

i went to the Notre Dame Young Alumni Happy Hour last night and met a few other grad­u­ates. typ­i­cally, i was the youngest, but i’ve always got­ten along with those older than myself so it was no big deal. and now today i am dri­ving to south bend in approx­i­mately two hours to see my team­mates fence for […]

The night before last was nearly sleep­less for me. Typ­i­cally I have almost com­plete con­trol over what I dream about, even unto night­mares. Yet Mon­day night, I had quite uncom­fort­able dreams, and I am not cer­tain why they were so uncom­fort­able. Every dream I had, and when ever and where ever it took place, my best friend friend from high […]

my first truly per­sonal expe­ri­ence with antique fur­ni­ture was dur­ing potty train­ing. my potty chair was this tiny wooden seat with a hole in it. inside the hole was a porce­lain cham­ber pot. in back of the seat was a lit­tle door which gave access to the cham­ber pot. it also had a pullover restraint/​table that now reminds me […]

Senior Year was by far my best year of col­lege. My grades were superb, I had a room all to myself, the foot­ball team under the new tute­lage of Tyrone Will­ing­ham, was 10 – 2, and to crown it all off, the fenc­ing team won the national cham­pi­onship, and I get a ring out of it! It started out inno­cently enough, fall […]

this year was my sec­ond best in col­lege, mostly due to being on the fenc­ing team, which let me expel my — excess — ener­gies. i also declared my majors, Anthro­pol­ogy and Film & Tele­vi­sion, and got firmly into the swing of my classes. First semes­ter I got a pity D in my Clas­si­cal Greek 103 class mostly because I was one of three […]

This is sup­posed to be the tough­est year of col­lege, and in terms of intel­lec­tual growth that rings true. Although personal/​social growth would also top this list if not for my Junior year. That comes later how­ever. I sup­pose I was a bit scared about going to col­lege and liv­ing in an 8′ x 14′ room with someone […]

my weblog is one year old today. and i was 2 – 1 fenc­ing today. But more impor­tantly, the Space Shut­tle Colum­bia dis­in­te­grated on reen­try today. For no good rea­son, i have a strong emo­tional attach­ment to the space pro­gram and NASA. i didn’t hear about this until long after it hap­pened. i hate it. when i was 5 back in 1986 i was watch­ing the […]

i used to be an altar boy. a damn good one at that, i knew what needed to be done at exactly what time and i knew all of the foibles of the priest i helped out. it was dread­fully bor­ing. i did how­ever gain the abil­ity to keep a totally emo­tion­less face for an entire hour. i always took the honor […]

about twelve years ago my favorite activ­ity con­sisted of some­thing i called ‘creek­ing.’ about 300 yards from my house, down a ravine and through a bit of new growth wood­land, you came upon the not very impres­sive Lit­tle William’s Creek. not impres­sive unless you are a ten year old boy. it was around 25 feet wide at the near­est point to […]

my last home game as a senior at Notre Dame has just ended. right now i am sob­bing my eyes out. no longer will i be able to expe­ri­ence the unity and spirit of the stu­dent sec­tion at a home game as a mem­ber of the stu­dent body. as much as i have hated it here, see­ing my friend PJ crying […]

well i drove 4 hours home today. i’ll offi­cially be here for three weeks although i am going to spend some time in Chicago. as soon as i got home i began ‘nest­ing’ as my mother calls it, going through all of my stuff and run­ning around in cir­cles like a dog does to assert and make itself famil­iar with its […]

my writ­ing has started to change in many sub­tle ways. it is becom­ing less rigid in struc­ture and less angst filled in con­tent. per­haps i am finally get­ting a sense of per­spec­tive and a use­ful out­let for what­ever wis­dom i have gained dur­ing my time on this mor­tal coil. only prob­lem is, i still don’t know if it is good […]