ThomasLitchford

Writing.Life

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Entries from July 2008

Getting Old

July 31st, 2008 · No Comments

Yesterday my doctor told me I had to ease up on my coffee intake. The conversation went something like this:
Doc: I bet you drink a lot of coffee.
Me: That depends on what you consider a lot.
Doc: How many cups would you say you drink in a day?
Me: Well, how big is a standard cup of [...]

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Tags: The Life and Times of a Navy Husband · The Mysteries of Everyday Life

Book Row: New York Diary, Part 3

July 28th, 2008 · No Comments

Deciding which of New York’s bookstores to visit should not have been difficult. There are a lot of choices—Barnes & Noble, Borders, Housing Works, St. Mark’s, Gotham Book Mart—but the one to see is the one we (kind of) stumbled on: Strand Books.
We arrived in the city with a long mental list of potential things [...]

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Tags: Books · Widely Spaced Beacons of Hope · Year of Bliss

Writing in Public

July 25th, 2008 · 4 Comments

This is from the comments.

Thanks, Nancy! It’s so hilariously true I can’t even stand it.

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Tags: Writing

Almost Forgot…

July 23rd, 2008 · No Comments

My latest post, Ground Zero, is up at Milspouse.com.
When we arrived we weren’t sure that what we were looking at was actually Ground Zero, the former site of the World Trade Center. First we saw the PATH terminal and a fence. We couldn’t see the site itself until we walked across a footbridge that overlooked [...]

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Tags: The Life and Times of a Navy Husband · Writing

Gotham: New York Diary, Part 2

July 23rd, 2008 · 3 Comments

The most concise explanation I have read this morning of why New York is sometimes called Gotham is from a letter to the editor of the Times from 1989, shortly after Michael Keaton first put the badass into Batman (honestly, Adam West’s Batman seems like a total wuss by comparison). Basically, Gotham is a reference [...]

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Tags: Writing · Year of Bliss

Island of Many Hills: New York Diary, Part 1

July 21st, 2008 · 3 Comments

Much has been written about Manhattan, and New York City in general, but after visiting the city last week for the first time, I feel compelled to offer some thoughts.
I’ve always been intimidated by New York. It holds no romance for me, only fear. It is the Big City of all big cities. The way [...]

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Tags: Writing · Year of Bliss

…And We’re Back

July 17th, 2008 · No Comments

Just got back from a 3 day trip to New York. I want to write more about the visit, but the 90° heat cooked my brain.

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Tags: The Life and Times of a Navy Husband · Year of Bliss

Books Are Awesome

July 13th, 2008 · No Comments

The Web Urbanist has a beautiful post about books as design elements. I especially like the color-coded library organization scheme. It reminds me a little of Rob’s autobiographically arranged record collection in the film High Fidelity. Maybe in the book, too; I don’t know; I haven’t read it.
It looks like I could easily kill an [...]

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Tags: Books · The Mysteries of Everyday Life

Is Home Ownership Really all It’s Cracked up to Be?

July 12th, 2008 · No Comments

My new post, To Buy or not to Buy, is up at Milspouse.com.
There’s a little voice in my head that keeps telling me buying a house is a lot like jumping into a pool: you don’t know if the water is quite warm enough, but the other swimmers say it is, and you dip your [...]

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Tags: The Life and Times of a Navy Husband · Writing

Rewiring

July 11th, 2008 · No Comments

It’s interesting how some of these posts take shape. I’ve been meaning to write about the cover story of this month’s issue of The Atlantic—‘Is Google Making Us Stoopid?’—since it came out, but I didn’t know what to actually say about it until now.
John sent me a link to the Guardian’s books blog about American [...]

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Tags: Books · The Decline of Western Culture · Writing