A Particular Set of Skills

Old people like to complain and my mother is no exception so, I’ve learned to take what she tells me with a grain of salt. But when the details of mom’s aggravation concerning food quality at her nursing home started tickling my waiter sixth sense, I did the most...

A Picture in Time

This photo was taken during my freshman year of seminary in 1986/87. Can you pick out the young aspiring cleric I used to be?  I was so skinny then – but my wife says my hairstyle never changed. I thought of writing a whole post about this snapshot, but realized...

Heartbreak Radio

Whenever my daughter gets into the car, she, like most of the women I’ve known in my life, assumes complete control of the radio or, in this case, Apple Music. “Dad,” my daughter said a soon has she buckled her seat belt. “Play Taylor Swift.” Notice the absence of the...

A Clean Well-Lighted Place

When I hit the 5K mark, I consulted my heart monitor and saw my heartbeat was only 135 – an improvement from my last outing. Then again, I took a five minute break to work out a kink in my knee. Perhaps I should do that more often. Feeling energized, I felt I...

A Guy Thing

A nurse with a very nice figure walked past me and being a male of the species, I cast an appreciative glance.  “You saw that too?” my friend said from his gurney.  “Hard not to notice.”  “My wife said half of it’s not real.”  “Who...

Petitioning the Lord with Prayer

Today was the National Day of Prayer and the township I work for sponsored an ecumenical service to mark the occasion. I know people get all hot and bothered about separation of church and state issues but, last I checked, all the Constitution stated was “Congress...

Satisfaction

I like the privacy of running in a park because, shielded from casual onlookers by trees, less people can see my embarrassingly slow pace and sweaty middle-aged mug. I’m also an oblivious sort of fellow and that’s not a good thing when you need to be aware of oncoming...

Civil Preparedness

Last week, the computer systems at my daughter’s school were frozen by a ransomware hack. Sadly, local municipalities are frequently targets of these Bitcoin seeking desperados, forcing government workers like me to endure hours of inservice training to avoid being...

Free Samples Are Never Free

“We’re out of dishwasher tabs,” my wife said.  “And what else?” I said over the car phone.  “Olive oil. We need the kind for frying and the kind for salad.”  “Anything else?”  “I dunno. Snacks for Natalie’s lunches whatever else you can think of.”...

Happy Anniversary

Waiter Rant is twenty years old today. What a wonderful and strange journey it has been! Many thanks to all my readers for walking with me through 826 blog posts over the years. You’re the best! If you’re so inclined, let me know what happened to you...