I fired up WordPress to start this roundup post and checked my list of projects I wanted to share, only to discover that about half of them ended in August! My family finally got hit by COVID, recovered in time to take my eldest kid to her first year of college, and then got my other kids started with their school year… and more time passed than I realized. Well, not to worry—the one thing you can count on is that no matter when you look, there are still plenty of tabletop projects seeking funding. Here are several projects that I’ve been alerted to lately—in some cases, a publisher contacted me but I didn’t have time to do a review....
Peanut butter and jelly (or jam) sandwiches are icons of American childhood. In fact, the average American kid eats more than 1,500 PBJs before graduating high school and will consume almost 3,000 over their lifetime. The PBJ is a perennial favorite in school lunches and after-school snacks because it’s delicious, quick, simple, and cheap to make. But it can be so much better with homemade brioche bread! If you were like most kids, the sandwiches you grew up on were made with highly-processed, store-bought bread that was…unremarkable. Let’s be honest; the bread was just there to help get the jelly and the peanut butter into our mouths. Well, it’s time for the PBJ to get an upgrade. Our Brioche Bread...
"The Simpsons" took over the world in 1989 and never looked back, with Matt Groening and company creating season after season of amazing television filled with unforgettable jokes, brilliant characters, and a non-stop bevy of fantastic guest stars. The show kept going, and going — and it's still going, with the 34th season set to premiere later this year.With over 700 episodes, some say "The Simpsons" has more than overstayed its welcome. Naysayers are more than happy to point out that the show hasn't been good for decades. I think that claim is absolute rubbish. Although "The Simpsons" is no longer in its golden age and all the writers that made the show loved the world over have long since...
ANAHEIM — Statistically, it makes no sense. Luis Rengifo and José Suarez have been up and down between the majors and Triple-A over parts of four seasons. Rengifo has hit 25 big league homers. Suarez has pitched 62 games. So what are the odds that Rengifo would have hit eight of his homers in games that Suarez pitched? Of course, what are the odds that a couple of kids who lived 10 minutes apart in a suburb of Valencia, the third largest city in Venezuela, would eventually have lockers right next to each other in the Angels’ clubhouse? “We were teammates, and we became friends,” Suarez said through an interpreter. “And now we’re here together, like brothers.” The hermanos from...
I was recently talking with the person responsible for hiring educators for a large regional chain of preschools. Altogether they employ some 300 teachers. With the school year on the verge of starting they still had 45 vacant positions with few prospects in the pipeline. I asked the logical question one asks in a capitalistic society, "Have you offered more money?" She had. Indeed, she was offering more money than some of the current teachers were making, which had her worried that should the word get out, everyone would legitimately want raises. And word would get out, she knew that, which would mean raising tuition, and that would be a hardship for some of the families, many of whom had no other...
