Ravenweb Blog

The Optimistic Curmudgeon is an engaging personal blog by freelance writer Nick Zaino. The site includes numerous music and book reviews and some very funny slice-of-life pieces, including an article in which the author ruminates about his first job copy editing manuscripts . Nick also is distinguished for having once lived and worked in my home city of Buffalo, and then relocating to Boston, adopted home of my good friend, Ranting Nerd .

Cormac McCarthy's The Road is a grim, post-apocalyptic novel about a father and son hazarding across the bleak, demolished ruins of the southwest in hopes of reaching the ocean. The novel is definitely effective and worth reading, but I wondered a bit at the hype and what distinguished the text from other recent books with similar themes. Was it just ( as Ursula Le Guin has implied ) that some critics honestly believe that The Road is not SF and therefore deserves additional praise?

This is long overdue, but I wanted to go on the record and acknowledge the excellent service we received from our realtor when we bought our home. In the spring, shortly after we learned that we would be expecting our first child in September, we decided that we would buy a home. Enter Debra Sheehan , from Hunt Real Estate, who we had heard about from a co-worker at my wife's company. From the start, Debra was great. She met with us for an initial consultation, answered all of our questions, and never made us sign a binding document. When we started looking at homes, Debra quickly acquired a sense of what we wanted and directed us toward properties that suited our preferences. Never once did she try and force us to look at a property or steer us away from a house we really wanted to see. As we expressed interest in specific properties, Debra's knowledge and experience were really apparent. She informed us about the many little things to watch for, talked to us about the offer p...

We have moved and are now living in our new house! Not all of the renovations are complete yet, but we're nearly done and think we just might have everything finished before the baby arrives.