I heard earlier that a #1 best-selling book from the 90s was written in 11 days. 11. The manuscript was a labor of love that the author created for family and friends, but at the end of the day, one of those friends shared the author’s work with a…

It’s official: I started my Christmas shopping. While sparkly green, red, silver and gold decor has been disturbingly visible in stores since before Halloween, I’ve been hesitant to fully embrace the holiday that I love the most until the day afte…

For the better part of the day, an ABBA song has been stuck in my head. Earlier this evening while I was hoofing it around the streets of Anaheim, I realized how fitting the song was for this fine election day. “The Winner Takes It All” is the tun…

I am fairly confident that dudes shaving during their morning commute have replaced makeup-applying women as the most feared group of motorists on the road. With the recent time change and gloriously bright, sunny morning on my hands, I looked in …

“Only” is one of those words that can speak of everything from loneliness to hope. “It’ll be only me,” friends might say when RSVPing for a party, a wedding, an event. I’ve been only me for a while, and while I don’t remember the last time I had a…

No. Sorry. Fail. Out of luck. Out of order. Try again. Play again. Game over. Sold out. Discontinued. Wrong way. Do not enter. No outlet. No dice. Not hearing or receiving some version of “yes” can be the most frustrating thing in the world, espec…

I saw a man shuffling slowly across a crosswalk earlier this evening. It was possible he was drunk, or maybe he had some sort of physical impairment. It was rush hour, and everyone except the man trying to make his way to the other side of the str…

The funny thing about order is that something so predictable can be dizzying. Think about it: we’re taught all our lives that if we follow the steps and do them in a certain order, more often than not we’ll get to where we’re going. But we don’t a…

It was a chilly morning, and the usual characters were out in full force on Beach Boulevard as I drove to work. There were a few new faces, too, being that today was Halloween and all. Teenagers were dressed up and on their way to school. Some adu…

About 15 years ago, when I accidentally took a semester off of school, I went to the pet store to buy fish food for a little finned wonder my brother had bequeathed to me when he left home. It was October, and we were in the middle of yet another …