Author Archives: AJ Bourg

One great upside of social media sites like Twitter and Instagram, once you sign in, you get a whole view of all the people you follow. Unfortunately most of these timelines use algorithms, so you’re likely to find the most clicked but controversial content bubbling up to the top. And I can’t tell you how many times I wanted to like a friend’s post, but The Algorithm didn’t show it to me until 3 days later and I didn’t want to look like a stalker. Awkward.

That’s why I’m excited to get more people blogging. But how can you keep up? Fortunately, all you need is an app, the url to your blog, and you can periodically check in on all the blogs you’re interested in.

I use the Reeder app on my iPhone/Mac/iPad. But there are other apps for Android. The technical term for these apps is “RSS reader”, and there are a bunch. Here’s a good run down of some of the most popular.

Finally, while it’s fun to read and keep track of your favorite blogs, which will hopefully include mine 😊, it’s even more fun to participate.

Sign up for a free blog at WordPress.com, or wherever you want to blog, and send me an email. I’d love to follow along with you.

My email is aj at bourg.family. Would love to hear from you!

Happy anti-socialing! (social networking, that is)

We have a corn plant in our living room. I’ve had this plant since at least 2013 but in the past 2 or 3 weeks it’s started to flower. It has never done this before and I have no idea what took it so long or why it’s suddenly decided to flower, but this thing is fragrant! The whole house has a nice lovely light flowery smell to it.

That’s probably why the scientific name is dracaena fragrans.

We have a two year old and a three year old this weekend. Took them to the indoor play place at the mall and they kept running away to the larger mall.

Finally, after the third time of carrying the 2yo back, as I set him down I asked him to promise not to run away again. “No” was his reply.

I guess at least he was being honest? 😂

One of my little quirks is that I’m cold a whole bunch in the winter. I need my heat!

Alissa likes to keep the house cold and I like to keep it warm. Except not really because I’m cheap and all I hear when the furnace is running is the sound of my bank account emptying into the gas company’s accounts.

Cue black and white late night infomercial, there’s got to be a better way!

I’ve got a heated mattress pad, a heated blanket — a combination for my bed we call the waffle iron. I set both to max and it’s rarely warm enough for me but at least it’s a start.

A couple Christmases ago Alissa got me a shoulder heating pad. Great on the shoulders. Small enough I’ll keep it in my lap when I’m on a Zoom meeting to keep my hands warm without any of my coworkers any wiser.

The newest addition to my warmth family is a towel warmer. Did you know you can BUY a towel warmer? 🤯 I didn’t either, and drying off with a piping hot towel every day is HEAVENLY.

There’s a saying that you need to be really careful when dating or you might accidentally marry into a family that runs 5ks on Thanksgiving.

We were on a good streak of running 5ks for Thanksgiving but then Alissa’s parents moved away. And a pesky little pandemic happened.

So we haven’t done a lot of Thanksgiving 5ks lately. But another tradition in Alissa’s family is, instead of giving gifts, everyone participates in a fun activity around Christmastime.

Since marrying in, we’ve seen several plays, or gone out outings to places like the Botanic Gardens. But this year I had the idea to go dog sledding.

We found a place outside Leadville. And when Alissa’s parents came back to Colorado in January, we went. It was so fun. Each person got the chance to “drive” the sled which mostly involved standing and letting the dogs do everything. And after that, you got to ride in the sled which was the warmest part of the experience. And then the rest of us would ride a sleigh towed behind a snowmobile so we could watch the dog sled.

If I were one of the dogs I’d be pissed that people had the technology to ride around in the snow without me pulling them. But these dogs seemed to really love it.