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Noodle Packaging & Preservation

Do you see what I see?     Both the front and back sides of these boxes of Great Value bowtie pasta and half-length angel hair pasta show pictures of the pasta. Yay! That means I know what I’m buying. What makes me more excited is what these boxes don’t have. They are lacking the plastic windows you find on most boxes of pasta. That makes these boxes easier to recycle because you don’t have…

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A Research Surprise That Isn’t All That Surprising

As I contemplated today’s blog post last night, I realized I didn’t have any blog topics in my back pocket, waiting to be written. When you have a regular blogging practice, this happens occasionally and you’ve got to think of something fast to write about. While Twitter is generally good for immediate blog post inspiration, what’s top of mind for me is research I’m doing at work on a guy who lived in my county…

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Errand Hanging

This past week, my Eldest Son and his fiancĂ© came to visit for a day. There were a few errands I had to run the morning of the day they were heading back home and I wanted to spend as much time as possible with them, so I invited them along. It was fun! I’ve done this before with relatives, sharing errand-running time with them. I didn’t know there was a term for this until…

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Caregiver’s Leave

This past week I spent a few days helping take care of my grandson in case my daughter had a reaction to her COVID shot. (She didn’t. Yay!) You know what? Taking care of a newborn is a TON of work. Which shouldn’t be a surprise having gone through the experience three times myself, but as Daughter and I have discussed several times, there’s a sense of amnesia that sets in regarding the work involved…

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Defusing Confrontation

It’s Indepence Day in the United States. Historian Heather Cox Richardson has a marvelous newsletter to mark the occasion, one that reminds us to live up to our highest ideals in this country, rather than sink into our lowest manifestations of a society. We haven’t been doing a good job of reaching the ideals of life, liberty, equality, or the pursuit of happiness lately. There’s a sliver of people who would rob the majority of…

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