Be the Adult

I hear these ads on the radio and we get these doom and gloom flyers in the mail for extended warranties on our cars and house. An engine failure could be $5,000.00! What are you going to do when the big one hits? Your furnace. It’s determined to freeze you out on the coldest day of winter. We prevent this. Our home warranty gives you peace of mind. You’re protected from the epic home or car fail. And it’s coming. It’s going to be bad. It’s going to be scary. It only happens on Christmas day, the Fourth of July, or 10 minutes before the guests show up for your kid’s birthday party. In truth, these things can and do happen, but is ‘peace of mind’ worth thousands of dollars that you could keep in your bank account for these inevitable events? What if you put your peace of mind in the wrong place? You have a $2,000 dollar extended warranty on your Toyota (which if you change the oil once every five years will last you twenty), but you didn’t cover your furnace? Your ins...

After a hellacious week at work, I decided I absolutely had to run, humidity be damned. I was pondering my running career over the last year-and-change since I broke my talus, taking walk breaks every half mile or so, and just mulling over my current state of affairs. As a former distance runner for whom the first half-marathon was a gateway to an entirely new lifestyle, this recovery time has been life changing. Swapping cockiness and chasing (and barely missing) the dream of running Boston for these little run-walks has been very humbling. I’ve gotten the ancient inline skates out, I bought a road bike, and took up swimming, but running (particularly trail running) is my first love. Even though the cadence is slower and sometimes the sound of the footfalls don’t always feel like my own, the clear head, the sweat, and the hundred calories per mile make it worthwhile. …and then I turned the corner. I was greeted by the Big Dipper in all of its humongous summer sky glory, which...

I can't tell you how many times I've heard something in the news, at a party, or on Facebook, only to find myself thinking, "I need to start a movement called 'Be the Adult;" I hear about all these freakishly passionate people on both the left and right, and think, "Who the heck are these people? If most people in the world are fairly rational, reasonably centrist, and reasonably open-minded, why don't we have a voice?" I'll be that voice- I'll be the adult. Not the self-righteous adult, mind you. I love karaoke, laughing until my sides hurt, and generally not taking myself too seriously. What I do take seriously is living a high-quality life. Not a rich life, not a leisurely life, not a materialistic life, but one where I look ahead to all the awesomeness on tap with just the slightest bit of effort. So there's that. And bacon. My mind is always racing from topic to topic; I'm extremely curious about the world-at-large, I ha...