Visitor

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A visitor who very much wished it was breakfast for three.

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The "No I" Phone

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It's a cheap party trick: I pull out my phone, flip it open to check the time or send a quick text, and watch for the reactions. In the decades I've owned a flip phone, people have given me a few double takes. Recently, though, when I opened my phone to squint at a photo texted to me, the person sitting across the conference table surprised me with a "Haha! I love your phone!" And I did, too. I loved my flip phone. Then, in a deadly mistake of distracted domesticity, I scooped it up with my bed sheets and dropped it in the washing machine: Eco Cold, extra spin. Oh gentle readers, the tragedy of beautiful T9 predictive text programming drowned at the bottom of the linens spin cycle! Yes, I lost saved phone numbers, the blurry store photos I'd snapped over the years to double check prices when back to internet access, the text threads with details about addresses and meet-ups... all lost. Sad, inconvenient, annoying, frustrating, all of it. But the biggest tragedy, ...
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Signs of the Time

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For several years, in the valley where I lived in my former life, there were large billboards along the freeway with a man smiling a cheesy smile as he draped his arms around the giant telephone number 222-2222. Aparently, if you were in an accident, he was going to be your buddy and fix all of your problems. What more could you want than a friendly accident lawyer who knew how to drape his arms around giant numbers? Fortunately, I never had cause to call him. But now I am curious, because on the same billboards, with the same giant red numbers 222-2222, there is a cozy little smiling family. They are smiling because they called the number to buy a house. They may also be smiling because they get to drape their arms around each other, but I'm not sure. I've thought a great deal about why a family would buy a house from an accident lawyer, and about an equal length of time wondering why an accident lawyer would change his career to realty without changing his advertising strateg...
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Amtrak Adventuring

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Trying to see it all, 2011 I may never look down the aisle of an Amtrak train without remembering a baby bouncing, holding fast to the seat as the train rocked and bounced even faster. All the world over, trains carry a reputation for efficiency and frugality. That has never been my experience with Amtrak.  The Adventure Begins, June 22, 2011 Thirteen years ago (almost to the day) our little family set out on our first Amtrak adventure. We thought three weeks touring the United States on a train with an infant made so much more sense than the alternative. The alternative being flying or driving (with the same infant) to a wedding in the middle of Cornfieldville, Ohio. Being young and foolish, it made perfect sense. Our baby did not yet sleep through the night, so sitting up in coach seating night after night wouldn't affect our sleep all that much. With a rolling ice chest filled with lunch sacks that prevented us from knowing in advance whether our meal was Option A, B, or C, w...
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