We recently spotted a groundhog living under our shed, and have been pondering how best to get rid of it. So this morning, when Irene saw tiny creatures frolicking at the base of the shed, she thought—we’re too late! The groundhog’s already given birth!

But when we looked more closely, we saw those weren’t tiny groundhogs gamboling … they were baby foxes!

Three of them, in fact! (more…)

I spent many wonderful hours Sunday wandering the Art Institute of Chicago, and one of the paintings there that caught my eye was “The Rock,” by Peter Blume.

According to the information card up on the wall to the right of the painting, it was commissioned by the Edgar Kaufman family for their Frank Lloyd Wright-designed home Fallingwater.

I’ve been to Fallingwater. I didn’t much care for it, at least not the inside, but I’d been there. And I wondered … on which wall could such a painting possibly have hung? I could picture the claustrophobic interior of Fallingwater clearly, and so I asked the employees in adjacent rooms (I could find none in the room containing the painting) whether they knew. They did not.

Enter the Internet. (more…)

I bought a Fitbit Flex on Saturday, May 2, and have been wearing it around the clock since then, save for the times I’ve been recharging the device while I worked at my computer. And since then, I’ve met my goal of 10.00 steps/5 miles every day, topped 15,000 daily steps six times, and yesterday even broke through the 25,000-step barrier!

I was in Chicago over the weekend for my latest visit to Next, and spent any time not at the restaurant wandering Chicago’s streets and museums, walking 18,387 steps (9.15 miles) Saturday and 25,134 steps (12.51 miles Sunday).

Here’s the way yesterday’s steps broke down in 5-minute increments.

I was looking forward to getting home and seeing how the Fitbit pie chart broke down my activity for the day, because I’d been scared straight by a study that showed the early deaths awaiting men who sat for more than six hours per day.

I was dismayed to discover—this. (more…)

I have been remiss.

I experienced The Hunt at Next restaurant seven weeks ago, and have so far failed to write about it here the way I did earlier for both the Sicily and Kyoto menus.

And I’ve run out of time—because I’m heading back to Next tomorrow night for its Vegan menu! (more…)

While I was over at my sister-in-law’s house Sunday night, I happened to notice a stack of old comics on the coffee table and picked up this one—Detective Comics #350 (April 1966)—because who could resist a Batman drawn by Joe Kubert or those Go-Go Checks?

The house ads in the issue were as much fun as the stories (which is often the case), and I was particularly intrigued by this one, in which DC claimed it sold “twice as many comics as any other competitor” and “almost as many as all other comics combined.” (more…)

I drove over to Gaithersburg yesterday so I could take part in the Maryland Ukulele Jam, a gathering which started last month and, if all goes well, will continue on the third Sunday of every month.

We jammed to about a dozen songs, one of which was led by yours truly. I decided to share Malvina Reynolds’ “Little Boxes,” not just because it’s a fun song, but also because it only uses three chords, and is therefore easy to pick up even for those who’ve never heard it before.

Susan Shen Yu was kind enough to record me in front of the group. (more…)

The Nebulas Awards banquet was held last night in San Jose, and usually, I’d have been there. But this year, I wanted to attend the the March George Formby Society Convention in Blackpool, and so something had to give—which meant the Nebulas as well as this year’s World Horror Convention in New Orleans were out.

So I amused myself this weekend by looking back two years to my photos from 2003 Nebula Awards weekend and sharing them on Twitter, but thought I should gather them together here as well.

So get ready to flashback to a gentler, more innocent time …

Scott Edelman (with butterfly) and Bill Shunn

(more…)

Earlier this week I shared a photo taken in high school which shows me wearing a tutu and a black-and-white sequined bra—a photo which once seen cannot be unseen and therefore deserves some kind of trigger warning before you click.

While flipping through old albums in search of that photo, I came across a couple of other images which feature an equally unrecognizable while also bizarre younger me. These were taken when I worked in the Marvel Bullpen, and were used in the fake ad below which appeared in an issue of Crazy magazine.

Behold!

(more…)

Next restaurant, which reinvents itself three times a year, releases a video to promote each new menu. Sometimes, as with its video for The Hunt, you get a good idea what you’ll be eating while there. But the just-released video for the new Vegan menu, which launches tonight, is a bit more … enigmatic.

Enigmatic … but hilarious.

After having watched that, I have absolutely no idea what Next will have in store for me when I sit down at my Kitchen Table at the end of the month.

One thing I do know, however—it makes me want to go on a heist with those guys!

I picked up a Fitbit Flex over the weekend to track the level of my activity and the quality of my sleep, and have been wearing the device on my wrist 24/7 since around 6:00 p.m. Saturday. The chart below reveals disturbing news about what my Monday was like, even though I logged 10,560 steps.

I was sedentary for 12 hours and six minutes! Since I already know that staying seated during the day is a killer, that’s not good news.

As you can see, the ratio of sedentary to active so far this morning isn’t quite as unbalanced, but I’m sure that by day’s end, it’ll be looking a lot like yesterday.

So what’s a guy with a deskjob to do? Am I doomed?