Chris Hardie's Blog

Having some time to relax also meant lots of time to catch up on reading I've been meaning to do for a while now (though there's plenty more). Here's a quick run-through with my comments:

The Secret Life of Bees by Sue Monk Kidd. A great, compelling story that is so rich and enjoyable. [...]

Confession: one of my great pleasures/sicknesses when distracted is playing the game of reframing or rewording song lyrics and titles to be more thematically accurate, pseudo-politically correct, and/or appropriate for use in a scientific research paper.
For example:

My Girl by The Temptations becomes: The One Who is My Significant Other, and Also Female
I Believe I Can [...]

This past weekend, we visited the Cincinnati Museum Center at Union Terminal. I have such fond memories of that building (which I apparently for a long time referred to as "Onion Center", which if you've seen it's shape, isn't entirely unreasonable) - frolicking in the fountain out front, walking around its empty halls that [...]

It was 10 years ago this month that I co-founded Summersault website development with Mark. We're celebrating with some donations to help improve the community, and a look back at our milestones over the years.
It was 20 years ago this month that my father passed away from cancer. I celebrate his life, the [...]

Last fall I took possession of the building at 185 Fort Wayne Avenue here in Richmond. It's a cool old space with a lot of history behind it - folks named Nye, Ezra and Starr had a place that made stoves and tinware there in the 1860s, and since then it's been used for [...]

Doug, Scott, Brandon and I were all sharing a room at Chicago's Drake hotel while on a weekend school field trip early on in high school. I was having a miserable time for various teen-agey angst reasons I won't go into, and I was tired of being cooped up in our room watching JFK [...]

I'm on a paid vacation right now. For those of you who don't already know, this means my employer, Summersault, is actually paying me to not show up to the office for a while. Ha - suckers! Apparently it's pretty normal for employers around the world to offer some sort of paid [...]

You may know about the ongoing conversation about safe bike riding in Uptown Richmond (the business district). At the end of last year, there was a nice improvement when signs that appeared to prohibit biking on that stretch of Main Street came down. I had an interesting related exchange today while walking on [...]

It was a day where I've worn so many different costumes and had such a wide range of experiences, I know I'll never have another like it, and it just feels good to be alive.
Early Morning: black pants with dark blue dress shirt. Activities included helping track down someone selling stolen dogs and cats [...]

These numbers came into my inbox today:

Number of US citizens (non-military) killed by terrorists in 2005: 56
Amount spent by US government on War on Terror in 2005: $136 billion
Number of people worldwide who died of hunger in 2005: 8,000,000
Amount spent by US government on aid to world's poor in 2005: $4.9 billion

(Sources: US Dept. of [...]