http://ronaldtanner.com/blog Tue, 31 Aug 2010 05:00:50 +0000 http://backend.userland.com/rss092 en This year marks the tenth that Jill and I have been working on our old house. When we took on our Queen Anne, it was a wrecked frat house -- condemned property that had sat empty for nearly a year. Jill loved it at first sight. I said, "No ... http://ronaldtanner.com/blog/2010/08/houselove-x-10/ I love watermelons. In the summer, I will eat one a week. All by myself. If the day is particularly hot and I'm especially thirsty, I might eat half a watermelon in one sitting. So imagine my surprise and dismay when, just yesterday, I realized that I haven't eaten a ... http://ronaldtanner.com/blog/2010/08/what-happened-to-the-watermelon/ I brought home a doorstop from an auction recently. Jill doesn't like the doorstop but I'm not sure what her doorstop aesthetics might be, since we never see doorstops anymore. Who's to say what a doorstop should look like? Mine is cast iron, probably made about 1920, and in the ... http://ronaldtanner.com/blog/2010/08/doorstop/ Let me put my problem simply: I puke on planes. Not frequently. Not every time. But enough to make me finger through the jetliner's seat pocket, every flight, to make sure there's a tidy white barf bag. Just in case. Recently, I returned from a trip that made ... http://ronaldtanner.com/blog/2010/08/air-sick/ http://ronaldtanner.com/blog/2010/07/northern-maine/ Jill woke me at dawn this morning. She said, "We've got a house full of mice!" Our cats had already gotten two of them. As I stepped groggily from the bed, Simon chased another down the hall. Sofi had yet another cornered in the living room. Fortunately our two cats ... http://ronaldtanner.com/blog/2010/07/cabin-fever/ Jill and I went to Phoenix last week to see my mother, who is 83 and “still on foot,” as she likes to say – and smoking Pall Malls. She said, ,"Nobody comes to Arizona in July." It was 110-115 degrees every day.   It's remarkable that people live ... http://ronaldtanner.com/blog/2010/07/371/ On Saturday, Jill and I went to yard sales with our friend Scott. Scott is the uber antiques lover and collects vintage Christmas ornaments and decorations. Every time we go out with him -- usually to Pennsylvania -- he finds something rare and wonderful. The appeal of antique hunting ... http://ronaldtanner.com/blog/2010/06/antique-hunting-hoarding/ For Father's Day, my mother sent me an old photo of my father holding me and my two brothers. I was two at the time.  It breaks my heart to look at the photo because Dad was handsome and healthy and could not have  imagined that he'd ... http://ronaldtanner.com/blog/2010/06/when-daddys-gone/ Lady Gaga, my god, I had no idea who she was, only caught her in glimpses, heard her topping the charts, but what's another pop diva in a sparkly body stocking? Out of curiosity, I looked at ALL of her gone-viral videos last night. This 24-four-year-old ... http://ronaldtanner.com/blog/2010/06/why-lady-gaga-rules/