Nice to meet you, old friend.


Six Replies to My Dinner with Amy

Lori Lancaster | July 12, 2009
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Aaron Shurtleff | July 12, 2009
Ha ha! Awesome! She really does exist!

Was this recently? How does someone come to town and not let me know? :P

Scott Hardie | July 12, 2009
This was Friday night. Amy drove to Venice for something, so she stopped in Sarasota for dinner with Kelly and me. I probably wasn't very lively company after a difficult day at work, but we had a good time, and good food. The photos were an impromptu thing at the very end.

Amy Austin | July 12, 2009
I thought about trying to drop in on you, too, Aaron -- but I remembered what you said about my dropping in on Steve! ;-)

Aaron Shurtleff | July 12, 2009
Fair enough. I was working until 10:30 anyways, so I wouldn't have been around. Just being difficult! :D

Aaron Shurtleff | July 12, 2009
[hidden by author request]


Logical Operator

The creator of Funeratic, Scott Hardie, blogs about running this site, losing weight, and other passions including his wife Kelly, his friends, movies, gaming, and Florida. Read more »

Unmitigated Gall

Life gets unpleasant quickly when your gallbladder stops working. TMI alert. I spent all day Friday with sharp pain in my abdomen, diagnosed as spasms from my gallbladder trying to expel a stone. Go »

Photos from Milwaukee

Some of these didn't come out as well as I'd hoped (many were snapped from a moving vehicle), but I'm putting them up anyway. complete set Go »

Blood Lines

A few weeks ago, I dropped a glass bottle of salad dressing on the kitchen floor, making the house smell like vinaigrette for a day. Today, I stepped on the last errant bit of glass hiding in a crack of tile by the corner. Better my foot than the cat's paw, I guess; I don't lick between my toes. Go »

All King and No Kubrick Make Jack a Dull Boy

I recently got to talking with friends who liked The Shining, both Stephen King's novel and Stanley Kubrick's film adaptation of it, but who were unaware that King has always loathed the movie, despite its reputation as one of the best horror films ever made. It's hard to imagine that a writer doesn't know his own work better than someone interpreting it, but I think this is one of those rare cases where the writer is just too close to the story to get it. Here are three reasons why I think Kubrick's film better understands the material, and is better overall, than King's novel: 1) In King's version, Jack Torrance is a fundamentally decent man who wouldn't hurt a fly, but who is down on his luck and desperate. Go »

Intruder Alert

At 5:30am I was awakened by the doorbell and the sound of someone fumbling with my door. Through the peephole, I watched a young man desperately trying to pick the deadbolt. After a couple of minutes, he gave up and stumbled off towards the other apartments. Go »

R.I.P. Pat

Kelly's mother passed away last week. The event had been anticipated for decades: Pat was diagnosed with type 1 diabetes as a child, suffered kidney failure in 1995 and survived on her brother's donated kidney, and had five strokes and five heart attacks and countless operations, including emergency brain surgery in 2007 that changed her personality. She obviously possessed quite an inner resiliency even if she seemed petite and frail on the outside, but it was inevitable that she would someday lose the fight with her own body. Go »