I’m trying to figure out how to transition my usual weekly ramblings into a focused, health-oriented blog. But…no dice this week: It’s all beer and cheese.   Mr. Beery’s often hosts beer-and-cheese pairings, but last week’s twist–grilled cheese sandwiches–had CCB drooling in anticipation for weeks. Alas, it turns out, it wasn’t just the anticipation: CCB [...]

  The office of the editors here at the mag is quiet and sunlit, on the second floor with one wall of windows overlooking Pineapple Avenue. Sometimes over the tappity-tapping of the keyboards, we hear the conversations of passersby on the sidewalk below. Everything’s been more hectic the past week or so with the Chalk [...]

Not sure this pumpkin was worth the two fingers I lopped off while carving… When Mike met Amy Beerslinger Bud in his usual position. This is a great photo for playing "Spot the Zombie." So that was that, and now they’re playing Christmas music. It’s amusing to me that, instead of getting its own stand-alone [...]

It’s that wonderful time of year again—gorgeous fall weather, the glittery social season, decapitated bodies in the bathtub… At this point I might as well just call this my annual ode to Halloween. Since we started throwing our parties a few years back, it feels like we’re at least able to give Halloween its due [...]

For as satisfying as it is, I reserve a faint sense of disappointment after a hockey tournament—especially one we host. For all the prep that goes into it, all the hours at the rink, all the Monday-morning soreness and bruises and the faint smell of glovestink lingering on my hands, it seems too significant to [...]

Well, Mad Crow beefed it. That sucks. There’d been some mixed reviews about the food way back when they first opened, but we’d had great experiences there, and it seemed like they were gaining momentum, gonna pull through. You’d like to think, if they’d just been able to make it into season, then things would’ve [...]

Been a rough couple of weeks trying to hammer out a (massive, complicated, touchy-subject) feature. Spent a lot of time playing that weary, disheveled role, like in college when you take pride in the fact that you haven’t slept all night, haven’t been out of your pajamas all day, haven’t showered since Tuesday, everything’s all [...]

Ok, apologies, but I’m up to my ears in a rather involved story right now, so devoting an hour or so to a blog would, let’s face it, just make me cry. So in lieu of anything literary, here’s a series of photos from my life of late. I think they say a lot of [...]

So much stuff going on, getting started, coming together, looking back—feels like the beginning of the school year: changing classes and jumping topics, sports practices and season schedules, everyone reminiscing and summarizing the summer. And I’ve got a paper due already. The class schedule is hectic and whiplash inducing. Here I am, hunkered down into [...]

Took Ma and Pa to a Marauders game last Thursday. Walked through our neighborhood, there and back, and ate hot dogs and popcorn. Not sure why, in all our casual dinners together, it never occurred to me to schedule a McKechnie family outing, but I’m sure we’ll be doing it again.   Ma and Pa [...]