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Continue reading →: I live on a busy street
I live on a busy street A thousand cars a day or more must drive past my house. I hear them from my perch in the living room. If the cars are mechanically sound, they go by with little more than a whoosh, almost like a gust of wind. Sometimes…
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Continue reading →: October (short fiction)
Mother’s replacement arrived on a crisp morning in early fall. We were nearly first on the postman’s route, father and I, and as the postman struggled with the package he complained that he might have pulled a muscle in his back. But we got the box inside and father made…
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Continue reading →: We’ve all seen how this ends
Disclaimer: I mostly write about my life but sometimes I write about things that piss me off. This falls within the latter category. I’ve been thinking a lot about electric vehicles lately, and with that comes a whole host of related topics, from climate change, to the workers now striking…
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Continue reading →: Being human suuuuuuuuuuuuucks
I could feel my anxiety ratcheting up today, a warning light that flickered at first, then held steady, until finally, having not done anything about it, all systems began flashing “eject, eject, eject.” After a lifetime of this, you’d think I’d be familiar enough with it to take evasive action…
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Continue reading →: My First Experience with Grocery Delivery During Covid
After avoiding it for more than three years I finally came down with Covid, and so this week used a grocery delivery service for the first time. I’ve typically been a slow adopter of consumer services that make it easier for you to never leave the house, because I’m the…
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Continue reading →: A large buffet of decay
Two days before I was supposed to get on a plane for a trip with some friends to Colorado that we’d been trying to put together for nearly a year, I got Covid. After avoiding it for more than 3 years, it has struck at the most inopportune time. As…
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Continue reading →: Squirrels are devious agents of chaos
When I was about 15 or 16, I wrote a letter to the editor and submitted it to the Argus Leader, a South Dakota newspaper with its headquarters in my hometown of Sioux Falls. The letter was in response to some news that a squirrel had found his way into…
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Continue reading →: There is no better bathroom than an outhouse
I remember taking a shit over a log when I was little and wiping my ass with fallen leaves, as I had been instructed to do, mind you, by one or the other parental unit. It must have been early fall, a beautiful time of year when the leaves turn…
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Continue reading →: I caught my wife in bed with the Dish Network guy and she tried to pawn it off as necessary to achieve a monthly discount
I’ve been struggling with what to write about the past several days because not much is happening in my life. I’m a single, 45-year-old man who lives a fairly leisurely existence. I work, I take walks, I fish, I workout, I cook, and I generally enjoy my life, but it…
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Continue reading →: I’ve lived in my home for 4 years and today I noticed a kitchen cabinet I’ve never seen
I was in the kitchen today and I noticed a thin cupboard door I’d never opened before. This isn’t the start of a fantastical piece of fiction where I opened the door and found a portal to a world I’d actually like to live in. It was literally a cupboard…
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Continue reading →: Planks and post-pre-diabetic positive body image
I’ve never been a fan of diets. In fact, the fundamental role of exercise in my life is primarily to allow me to continue to eat excessive amounts of food that I find delicious. Were I ever to break a leg, it’s possible I’d inflate like an emergency life raft.…
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Continue reading →: Ricky is a friend’s dog, but he wants to be my dog, I can tell
This weekend was a weekend of animals. A friend and her husband left town and needed a sitter for their dog, Ricky. Ricky is mostly a black lab, but he’s long and gangly and kind of goofy looking in the face, so he’s part something else—part nerd, I think. If…
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Continue reading →: I love lamp
I saw a monarch butterfly todayA creature like a little painting that takes flightLittle more than air and art That’s a bit of a non sequitur, so here’s the real story: I found a lamp the other day, set out near the curb by a neighbor a few doors down.…
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Continue reading →: My love is a banned book
There is a spider upstairs in my room, waiting for me. I saw him on the floor in the corner when I turned on the light. He was looking up at me. I know this because when I grabbed the nearest book to smash him, Travels with Charley, the spider…
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Continue reading →: Deadventures: Adventures for when you’re dead!
I once had an idea for a business where instead of spending money on a funeral, a person’s loved ones could send them on an adventure that they’d wanted to do in life but never got around to. This might be skydiving, or it might be a cruise to the…
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Continue reading →: The gifts of a garden
There is perhaps no greater gift than a plant for your home or garden—especially garden. Nearly a decade ago a coworker who has since retired gave me a few garlic bulbs and counseled me on how to grow them, and though I’ve since moved twice, I’ve kept that garlic in…
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Continue reading →: My younger self, watching me now, would consider me a complete and total loser
I’ve always struggled with what being an adult means. In many ways I still feel like the same person I was more than 27 years ago, when I was technically not an adult. Sure, I’m a little wiser now, a little less reckless, and there are about 60 more pounds…
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Continue reading →: There is no better activity than walking
I got some new walking shoes in the mail recently. Technically, they were advertised as running shoes, but I’m not sure of the difference. Besides, I want to be ready in case I someday break into a trot while wearing them—a trot, because what I do now couldn’t possibly qualify…
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Continue reading →: The best financial advice I ever received was from a guy who had just woken up alongside a riverbank after a 3-day bender
The best financial advice I ever received was from a guy who had just woken up alongside a riverbank after a 3-day bender where he and a buddy had consumed more than 5 gallons of beer via a Party Ball, which is exactly what it sounds like—a huge ball full…
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Continue reading →: When I was 16 my head caught on fire
When I was 16 my head caught on fire. It was around the 4th of July and my parents had left town on a family vacation that I’d usually take part in, but that year I was old enough to stay home alone and I’d also recently discovered booze. A…
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Continue reading →: Back when the fearsome triglyceratops roamed the earth
2023 is the year of the colonoscopy, my doctor told me recently during my annual checkup. At least, it is for me. The age for the procedure was once 50, she said, but now it’s 45, and now I’m 45. And I can tell you, every time I look in…
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Continue reading →: Are birds jealous?
I wonder sometimes whether birds experience jealousy, as when I recently saw an American goldfinch looking dashing in its spring regalia, balancing on the lip of a backyard birdbath. Looking curiously across at him was a house sparrow, who appeared to be wearing an old burlap sack. Surely the house…
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Continue reading →: So go on, ask your doctor if naps are right for you
I think that there are nap people, and non-nap people, and while I’d rather be a member of the nap people, I’m definitely a non-napper. I probably take fewer than 10 naps per year, whereas I have friends who take naps almost daily. At a happy hour recently the subject…
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Take a break from the chaos and read about my life to feel better about your own.
Hi. I’m Adam Overland, a writer based in Minneapolis. These are the meanderings of my muddled mind. I’ve written humor columns for various print publications, so naturally that’s dead and here I am, waiting for the last gasp.
