Formula indicates Black Friday wait

Written by David Vogel Tuesday, 29 November 2011 16:03

I’m writing this column using a brain that has been deprived of two nights of sleep within a four-day period.

The latter of those nights—last night, to be specific—was the unintended tag-teamed result of a 9 p.m. espresso ice cream drink and a restless imagination cooking up assorted future self-employment schemes.

One of those schemes might have been Professional Interior Home Christmas Decorator, but I’m too tired to remember it exactly.

The sleepless night before last, however, was from my family’s traditional Black Friday shopping spree.

That’s right: I just sneak-attacked you with my annual Black-Friday-in-Review column.

I’ve been writing the post-Black Friday review for several years now—recounting each...

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Toll collection plan is Okie dorky

Written by David Vogel Tuesday, 15 November 2011 15:43

If figure if I’m going to have to pay money to a state government, I might as well keep that money in my own state.

That way, when I get pulled over, I can have the satisfaction of knowing that it’s my own hard-earned money funding the gallant red and blue lights reflecting off my rearview mirror.

Some greedy states, however, have implemented systems to trap visitors into involuntarily leaving large chunks of money behind as they pass through.

I don’t want to point fingers or anything, but one of those states just happens to start with an O and ends with a klahoma.

It does this by installing covert, unmanned tollbooths about every 3.75 miles with hopes that out-of-state motorists will pass through, either oblivious to the...

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Music aids the quest for perfection

Written by David Vogel Tuesday, 01 November 2011 15:36

The search for perfection is possibly one of the most uniquely human characteristics we possess. We are in a daily quest for it: the perfect job, home, recipe, vacation, cup of coffee. You get the picture.

Yet, attaining perfection is a much rarer occasion. Google’s definition of perfection is “the condition, state, or quality of being free or as free as possible from all flaws or defects.” I can’t think of a time in my life where I participated in or produced something that could be rated as perfect.

There’s always room for improvement: A different word choice. A game call worth reviewing. More practice. Or maybe less rehearsed.

Yet, this weekend I witnessed something that I can only call perfection.

Wife Hanna and I...

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With age, rooms close and open

Written by David Vogel Tuesday, 18 October 2011 15:32

t’s time to put away the fingerless gloves.

I find myself becoming increasingly nostalgic these days. It has a lot to do, I think, with the purposeful steps I keep taking into full-fledged adulthood.

Getting married this summer certainly began the process. And it seems that with the changing of the seasons, I keep striding toward a phase of life I haven’t quite figured out yet.

I can’t shake the dawning realization that in a few short months the concept of “school” will become something I used to do. And—more worrisome—that this earthly life is nearing the entrance of its second quarter.

Life, it seems, is a poetically interwoven series of firsts and lasts.

There’s a play by David Ives titled “Variations on the...

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