The Dog Journal

I never imagined that at this stage of life I’d be spending Sunday afternoon in a classroom in Philadelphia, singing We Are Young. But learning to sing a capella with Penn’s undergrad group “Off The Beat” was just the latest of many surprises for the 32 of us who came to Penn monthly since last Sept

Years ago, when pagers went out of style in favor of cell phones that play “Another one bites the dust,” I thought, “Yay! We’re finally done with the beeps.” It took a tiny high-pitched pulsing sound penetrating the bedroom at 2 a.m. last week to remind me how wrong I was.

Sometimes less is more. And my granddaughter Taylor, 2, is a great one for making this point. With all the Easter hoopla possibilities, she was most content to find 12 plastic eggs hidden rather obviously in the front shrubs and then settle herself down to open them. The prize in each one was prett

Every family has one. That paragon of dietary and fitness virtue. In ours, it’s Aunt Sally. A tiny, wispy iron woman, Sally is a 95-pound repository of all things disciplined and difficult to do.

When I called my daughter-in-law this weekend, I was stunned when my two year old granddaughter answered. “Hi, gammy!” said Taylor. I soon found out there was big news behind this phone debut: “Daddy made popsicle!” The orange juice popsicle, poured in the morning, had reported been the focus of h

I've never met a true-false test I liked. What, after all, is 100 percent true? And what is completely false? I like to chalk up the brain freeze to superior analytical thinking but have a secret fear. Maybe I'm just a complicator. Someone who can take the stuff of everyday life, question it to de

I thought I was getting an iPad just to save my back and some trees. But the lean, mean machine doesn’t just let me haul a complete set of books and articles to class in my purse. Now, thanks to my friend Pam, I am using it to play something called Words with Friends. It sounded innocent enough.

Maybe you’re the New Year’s Resolution-making kind. Maybe you give yourself the luxury of a retreat to set goals for the next year. Maybe you give the coming year a theme, like “My Year Of Adventure.” Or maybe you do none of the above. Whatever your style, a useful exercise is to take inventory of y

They say a journey of 1,000 miles begins with a single step, so it should come as no surprise that de-stressing for something as big as the holidays must begin with 10,000.