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By Bruce Sallan
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I’ve been playing video games for as long as I can remember. It started one fateful evening when my family went out to dinner and there was this new machine at the restaurant, and it wasn’t a pinball machine. It had two long blocks and the goal was to knock the smaller block past the [...]

When I was a child, my mother brought home a little dog that was so small that she carried it in her purse. The dog was a mixed-breed of Pekinese, Pomeranian, and Chihuahua and my mother named it Su-Su. Fully grown, she weighed maybe 7 pounds. Su-Su was cute, adorable, and [...]

Editor’s Note: We are honored to welcome guest columnist Don Harrold from practicaldad.com. This article is the second in his three-part series exploring college planning. The first column, published in January, is “Rethinking the College Model.”
The experience of choosing a college is very different when you’ve got a teenager and are looking at it [...]

As I stepped through the automatic doors with my pregnant wife, I realized I was woefully unprepared for our first trip to the baby store. After an hour under the fluorescent lights, I was feeling lightheaded from the dizzying array of baby gear.
When the panic set in, I began sweating and [...]

What parent hasn’t dreaded report card time, especially when a child is under-performing? How do two kids, born of the same genetic material, turn out so differently when it comes to school performance and work ethic? When is it wrong if the “problem” child gets more attention than the one who gets his work done [...]

The scene: Four parents sitting at a cocktail table drinking a beer and munching on chips with salsa. The board game is splayed out in front of us. The category is “vehicles.” One parent shouts out, “bus.” Another parent states firmly, “airplane.” Sounds like another boring game night of Pictionary, right?
The “builder” continues to plug [...]

I’ve been playing video games for as long as I can remember. It started one fateful evening when my family went out to dinner and there was this new machine at the restaurant, and it wasn’t a pinball machine. It had two long blocks and the goal was to knock the smaller block past the [...]

In the television world, no show, no matter how original and smart is completely safe. Some of my favorite shows of all time have been cast into the awful world of cancellation. From the hilarious and poignant Freaks and Geeks, to the over-the-top (and apparently over people’s head) intelligent humor of Arrested Development to the [...]

Heading into the Olympics, the United States men’s hockey team didn’t really get a lot of respect. The Yanks were ranked far below the likes of Canada, Russia and Sweden and just below Finland and the Czech Republic. With a very young and inexperienced squad, not much was expected from this group by [...]

For those of us in the northeast, it may seem like winter is not even remotely close to ending. But, the first day of spring is March 20th, also known as the Vernal or March Equinox. It is now less than a month until spring technically begins. What styles of beer is spring known for? [...]

The scene: Four parents sitting at a cocktail table drinking a beer and munching on chips with salsa. The board game is splayed out in front of us. The category is “vehicles.” One parent shouts out, “bus.” Another parent states firmly, “airplane.” Sounds like another boring game night of Pictionary, right?
The “builder” continues to plug [...]

A lot of fanfare is made about the beginning of NCAA basketball and football seasons in the summer and fall respectively. Often overlooked by mainstream audiences are sports like Hockey, Baseball and lacrosse. Baseball and Hockey are pretty much only shown to a national audience during their respective post season tournaments. But college lacrosse (as of [...]

Some of you may be thinking, “Dr. E…, you’ve got that all wrong. It’s supposed to be ‘If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it’.” Well let me tell you all, we’ve got trouble… right here in River City…with a capital T that rhymes with P… (sorry, I digress). But seriously, we do have [...]

The dawning of a new year prompts many people to take a fresh look at their annual budget, and what they’ll find is that auto insurance costs are substantial. Even after that revelation many people just grin and bear it, but a larger number of people are now spending more time searching for better insurance [...]

Orthodontists and College. No two words scare me more since each involves kids and significant amounts of money.
But college is the scarier word. Orthodontia might or might not be required, but if the kids are going to have a leg up in the world, then some form of higher education will be required.

Talking to children about tragedy is a job most parents would love to avoid. If only our children did not need to hear about things like this week’s devastating earthquake in Haiti. But they do hear. And they are full of questions: Could this happen to me? What’s going to happen to the children? Can [...]

One thing auto industry veterans will tell you is they never saw a year like 2009 … and they never want to see another one like it. The year included the seemingly unthinkable: bankruptcy for General Motors. And as an added fillip, Chrysler went bankrupt too and was rescued by the unlikely combination of the [...]

Bye-bye, Aughts — don’t let the door hit you in the ’00s on your way out.
True, there were all those years of economic euphoria. Only thing is — like that classic sitcom Seinfeld — they were based on nothing. As a result, the United States is stumbling into the Tweens with a full-on nasty hangover [...]