b.rox

Some two-letter words are ordinary and banal, while others are obscure but ultimately aggravating, and finally there are those that are both obscure and gratifying. In this last category we find ai, a variety of three-toed sloth native to South America. When it comes to three-toed sloths there are only four kinds. You’ve got your [...]

Got my check for working as an extra for HBO’s Treme. It seems the going rate for this kind of work around here is $7.25/hour for a non-union extra like me. Eight hours of that plus four hours at time and a half equals $101.50; after taxes, I got $95.77.

I say we all meet here on the second Friday in November at 49 minutes before noon… Who’s with me?

Ah, yes, so now we come to one of my favorite words: ah. I like this word because it’s so dramatic yet also so subtle and ambiguous. It can mean almost anything — or almost nothing — depending on how it’s inflected. “Ah, this bath feels great.” “Ah, say what now?” “Ah, what a beautiful [...]

I took Persephone to the doctor yesterday for her three-year checkup. I was going to ask the doctor about getting a lead test, even though it was my understanding that standard protocol doesn’t call for it. A brief recapitulation of her numbers might be in order. These are all expressed in µg/dL (micrograms per deciliter [...]

Yeah, I mentioned this already, but I’ve got a couple new photos that really round this out. Let’s see if I can shut up and tell this story pictorially. Any questions?

In April, I’ll be making a presentation to a special interest group of the AERA titled “The Role of Blogs in the Rebuilding of New Orleans.” My plan is to tell five separate stories that have emerged in, around, through or about the local blogosphere since the flooding of the city in 2005. I thought [...]

I was alarmed to see this report because the location is not far from our house, but the details are kind of interesting. Armed Robbery, 3900 Block of Banks Street On February 21, 2011 at approximately 10:15 AM, First District Officers responded to an armed robbery in the 3900 Block of Banks Street. The victim [...]

Dear Persephone, You are three years old today. I just realized that your birthday is exactly five weeks after mine. That means when my birthday falls on Martin Luther King Day, yours falls on Presidents’ Day. I guess that will occur about every seven years or so. One year ago, I was impressed by your [...]

There is no af, so the next word I will consider is ag, which is short for agriculture. Like ab, it would seem to be most natural as an adjective. “I’m auditing a couple of ag classes down at the community college.” But it’s also, apparently, an expression of annoyance that comes to us from [...]

My friend James called me this afternoon and asked if “the iPad thing” was for real. I had no idea what he was talking about. He quickly informed me of my latest Facebook status update, and when I got home I saw it with my own two eyes: Finally got my iPad from that site! [...]

Having a toddler on your shoulders kind of precludes taking photos. Nevertheless I was able to pop this one off. Here’s Seph and me watching Krewe du Vieux, the best parade of Carnival in New Orleans. KdV is known for its satirical themes, which are often given the raunchiest treatment imaginable. I still remember the [...]

No matter how much king cake I eat, it never truly feels like Carnival until I see a parade. That time is here again. Last night we saw the Krewe of Brid in Lakeview. It was so much fun I can’t believe we’d never done it before. They are a relatively new group, still small, [...]

I was just coming home from the first real parade of the carnival season, fired up and aglow with the love, and I get online and I check my e-mail and I find myself on Facebook, looking at a kindly invitation to enjoy the next night’s diversions, looking at the profile of a friend, and [...]

I thought it might be interesting to collect all the stuff that caught my attention on the net today but it proved impossible. There’s just way too much. What follows is only a smattering.

On the subject of our household finances, a consensus has emerged both in the comments of my recent post and elsewhere: Our grocery bill is out of whack, off the chain, out of control. I agree. I’m not sure why I didn’t notice it myself earlier. In part, it might be an example of not [...]

This photo just turned over 10,000 views on Flickr. This is the fourth such photo of mine to achieve such popularity — and thus far all of them feature Xy. Only two are sort of vaguely cheesecakey. One you can’t even tell if it’s a man or a woman or what. And in none of [...]

And so now we come to ae, the most controversial word we’ve yet seen. Or so it seems to me. The controversy springs from a fundamental linguistic question: Is Scots a dialect or a language? If a dialect, than sure fine, ae is a word in the English language. It means simply “one,” and is [...]

Last Mardi Gras, a dog bit me on the calf. The marks are still visible today, one full year after the fact. I was recently informed that the dog has died. A friend joked that I had come out on top, which I thought was funny, but I do feel sorry for the dog and [...]