By Sue Murphy I am hoping for good things this school year. The teachers and students deserve it. With all that COVID mess, last year was rough on everybody. School in itself is rough enough. Take your average kindergarten class (I hear some of you screaming "NO!"). These little guys, even the preschool veterans, are embarking on a whole new adventure. They come through the … [Read more...]

By Sue Murphy The cheery automated voice at the airline phone center thanked me for my patronage, then said that, happily, my wait time would be less than two hours. Two hours. It reminded me that I could handle many of my air travel needs on their handy dandy website, but I was hoping to pay with an e-ticket/loyalty points combination, and I didn’t have a clue how to proceed. … [Read more...]

By Sue Murphy I’m going to apologize right up front. I shouldn’t be miffed about something so inconsequential. I should be kinder, gentler, less prone to muttering disparaging words in quasi-public, but alas, sometimes I am not. Like today. I was in the drive-thru line and there were, as always, several cars ahead of me. That was fine. Being a seasoned drive-thru veteran, I … [Read more...]

By Sue Murphy I don’t want you to worry about me. I’m as lucid as I ever was. OK, maybe that’s not all that reassuring, but I’m telling you this in case you should see me talking to myself, which I seem to do now with some regularity. I was ticking off items on my to-do list a few weeks back when I realized that I was saying each task out loud. Later that day, I caught myself … [Read more...]

I was up particularly early one morning (thank you, Dave) and walked outside into a raucous chorus of birdsong. There were several different melodies going on simultaneously, so I figured the choristers were birds of many different feathers, but I couldn’t tell you for sure because I couldn’t see them. I stood on the sidewalk for several minutes trying to identify all the … [Read more...]