by aaron | Jan 31, 2012 | Essays
I call my 83-year-old grandmother back in Michigan a couple times a month. I feel like a turd admitting it, but I don’t always make these calls out of enjoyment. Talking with grandma can be challenging in the same way that trying to get a fussy and petulant...
by aaron | Jan 24, 2012 | Essays
Eleven years ago this month I moved to the Pacific Northwest. Though I had bounced around some prior to that the large majority of my life up to that point had been spent in the Midwest. In the time that I’ve been here I’ve adopted many local customs and...
by aaron | Jan 14, 2012 | Essays
It has been one month to the day since I last had a drink of alcohol. This has been the longest stretch I’ve gone without a drink since… well, truthfully I don’t know when: at least since I turned 21, and probably even well before that. I made this...
by aaron | Jan 8, 2012 | reviews
The other day I wrote a piece about taking pleasure in reading. As a follow-up, below is a list of some of the things I’ve read over the past couple months. My criteria in making it were twofold: that the pieces be fiction and also be things that I enjoyed....
by aaron | Jan 4, 2012 | Essays
Friends regularly ask me the following question: What book are you reading right now? It’s often asked with an air of distanced curiosity, as if books were housed in a magical and rarified world that somehow I’ve obtained access to via the arcane mediums...