A couple years ago, a friend and I, while staying at a beachside condo, were standing on the balcony staring at the flat, distant horizon, and we got to wondering, “I wonder how far we can see right now?” and “I wonder how much further we can see up here on the 9th floor than [...]

Have you ever noticed how, every time there is some sort of terrorist attack, the very first thing that all the politicians do is say, “I condemn this attack.” And the second thing they say is that the attack was an act of cowardice and that the attackers are cowards. This confuses the [...]

One year ago, today, some guy I had never met in Slovenia, who you all know as sgazzetti, left a comment on my blog. It was informative, funny, and knocked me down off my high horse, three qualities that I still admire in him, and in all friends generally. I checked out his [...]

It took longer than I expected for my wedding ring to become a part of my body. I was expecting to not regularly notice its existence by Christmas, but it still felt odd as we entered the new year. Today is my five month anniversary, and I can definitely say that I no [...]

I’ve had a slight cold all week, sniffling and nose-blowing every couple minutes all day long. Just as the horrible weather we’ve had lately reminds me to appreciate good weather more, being sick helps me to appreciate how nice it is to be well. I tell myself that, psychologically, these valleys are absolutely [...]

First, a quick follow-up on my previous post in the “What’s the point?” series about Facebook. I’ve ceased to log into Facebook on any sort of regular basis. The same “you gotta sign up to see it” philosophy that I praised as clever now strikes me as the most repulsive element of its [...]

Welcome to another installment of “Erik can’t think of what to blog about so he’s photographing items on his desk, many of which he’s not sure how they got there, but they sort of ‘belong’ now”. In researching for this entry, I found this hilarious Wikipedia page about Buckler Beer.

Yesterday, I was searching through some old spiral-bound notebooks looking for some information I knew I wrote down a few years ago. Before I found what I was looking for, I discovered the strangest little poem scrawled, in my careless handwriting, on a page in the middle of one of the notebooks. I [...]

I was asleep and dreaming the other night when my brain did something that amazed me. I was so surprised that I woke up and pondered about whether or not it could have been an accident. They say that those dreams that manage to incorporate your alarm clock, or whatever wakes you, with [...]

Like living abroad, learning a second language results in a lot of introspection about your own language, the rules that govern it (or don’t), and how and why those rules would have come to be. Also, as a member of a bilingual household, I find it interesting which words and phrases are typically said [...]