I have been friends with a girl for years. Lately my friend has been comparing me with other people and saying they’re her closest friend. I’m not jealous of other people it’s just that she keeps mentioning this all the time. She also makes me feel overweight and is extremely competitive at work. We have [...]

All this talk of new media, and instead I give you a poem.

Investment Advice

I think, given the detrimental state of it all,
that our salvation, as a people and species, lies in the
restorative power of skimmed milk.
We all know that water will fail us—
it is, after all, susceptible to the whims
of braggarts and scallywags, tarred and [...]

So, for Christmas I got a Flip Cam (so cool) and a Palm Pixi. In other words, I am technologically fashionable and rockin some heavy equipment. This means the blog is about to get much more interesting. Just a heads up. This shit is going to get real. And by “real” I mean “technologically badass.” [...]

Two Steelers fans found themselves thousands of miles away from home. In fact, both were in Texas during what may or may not have been the most significant game of the season for Pittsburgh. What did they do?

Brad sent me a text message at 1:46PM yesterday from the Dallas airport: “do you know the Steelers [...]

Thanksgiving, for me, is about the little thank yous, the ones that make you smile and make you realize that no matter how crap things can get sometimes, people still love each other enough to break bread and say thanks. This can never be a bad thing. Even if we’ve somehow made shopping a part [...]

A few weeks ago I invited some friends over for game night. No one wanted to play Trivial Pursuit, Cranium seemed trite and overdone, and the excitement over Electronic Cathphrase wore out soon enough. What to do?

Jamie Bono suggested Pictionary. Well, I offered, I have a clipboard, some paper, and a permanent marker. But what [...]

I wanted to share a podcast of me reading from my manuscript thesis (tentatively titled La Violencia) available at Hot Metal Bridge (the University of Pittsburgh’s graduate literary journal).

I apologize for the podcast editor’s crummy job (she accidentally overlaid some audio during the introduction); she should be reprimanded—or flogged. People take these things seriously around [...]

Learning to watch the Steelers has been an exercise in learning to watch football. Not that I didn’t know how to watch football—but when you are watching a specific team (and I know how “duh” this is), it means learning the ins and outs of all the rules. Even the little ones. Most of the [...]

I have a friend looking to leave their dead end job via grad school. They took an entrance exam and did not score very well. They are retaking the test, but are still looking into going to a top flight school. How do I break it that they should probably aim a little lower in [...]

Every now and then, I like to write about sports. Usually, it’s soccer, because… I’m a huge fan of watching soccer (does one really need an explanation for this sort of thing?). But I decided to take on a new project this semester: the Steelers. You see, I teach creative writing at a large university [...]

My friend Marissa sent me this earlier this week in an email, and as I read the poem, it reminded me of how ephemeral everything really is, which sounds maudlin, but I don’t really mean it that way. Like the way summer slowly turned into fall this weekend, but I hope summer comes back, and [...]

Whenever I write about soccer, I inevitably write about loyalty. Now, I know I’m treading on obvious territory: a childhood in Texas and over three years in Pittsburgh have taught me that all sports are territorial and arbitrary allegiance-based battles waged by two sides differentiated by what appears on their shield or banner, as well [...]

There are nights when I cannot sleep, for instead of seeking slumber, I am composing elaborate speeches. I’ve gotten quite good. This, I will explain to my imaginary audience, is how I feel about you. And I will go on to delineate a thousand reasons why you, my sweet one, are wrong, and I am [...]

Dear Adri,

This may be a strange question, but I’m not quite sure where and how to ask. I feel that if I mention this to my guy friends, they’ll think I’m weird, and I don’t have any girl friends. I’m almost thirty and my girlfriend is almost thirty-four, which she maintains is a huge [...]

I am a girl. Lately, I’ve noticed that my body smells funkier than before. I don’t think it’s a clinical thing, it’s just my body is starting to smell differently. I’m afraid that my body chemistry is changing as I age, but I’m not too sure that’s possible. Do girls just change smells as they [...]