Back in February 1984, Tammy Elrod's baby was due on Valentine's Day. But little Joshua was too shy for a flashy debut, so he held on until the end of the month.

Wow, who knew everybody wants to be a cartoonist?

Get 'em while they're hot. The scorching new 2013 Lexus GS 350 has just landed at Lexus of Chattanooga on Brainerd Road. And, indeed, landed is the right word because the new GS looks like it could be the fuselage of a jet aircraft.

Best-case scenario, other people will think you are dull. At worst, they'll think you're sullen.

Twenty minutes into our test drive of the adorable new Fiat 500, two women literally waved me off the road near a Chickamaugua Lake marina.

Ron Baldwin, 43, of Trenton, Ga., doesn't celebrate Christmas or New Year's. Instead, Baldwin saves up all of his festive energy for Super Bowl Sunday.

When the Toyota Camry, the best-selling car in North America over the last decade, gets a major re-design, it's big news in the automotive world.

A book landed in my office mail last week called "Tennessee Tragedies," by Allen Coggins (University of Tennessee Press, $39.95, www.utpress.org).

Parked at the intersection of Value Street and Utility Avenue is the durable Honda CR-V small SUV. Small, of course, is a relative term since the CR-V has more than 100 cubic feet of passenger space.

Last Sunday, on our way to see Billy the Exterminator at the World of Wheels expo at the Chattanooga Convention Center, my two sons decided to play a game called "Stump Daddy."

For years, the Ford Focus has soldiered on with the same basic body style and mechanics, while other automakers zoomed ahead developing small cars for the fast lane.

Every year, my Sunday school class has a New Year's Eve party. It's a typical, suburban get-together. All the kids play upstairs while the grown-ups eat sausage balls and watch football.

I had a landlord years ago who drove home a new Audi sedan one day. As he was wiping down his new car with a chamois cloth, he told me one of his goals in life had been to own a piece of German engineering.

At my age, 53, standard portions of food no longer metabolize to produce a reliable weight. Like a jelly doughnut, I'm getting soft in the middle.

If you work in the media and you embarrass yourself in public, you will almost certainly wind up humiliated.

Adam McElhaney, 30, has designed a smart-phone video game you should know about. It's called "Heartland-Chattanooga," and it involves an air invasion of our city by Russia and China.

My 10-year-old son has decided he wants to play drums and shoot shotguns.

Natalie Jump, 11, of Rabun Gap, Ga., is the winner of the Times Free Press Wrapping Paper Design Contest for 2011.

For 33 years, Rick Bonine has kept a runner's log, carefully recording dates and distances.

My family recently took a four-night cruise on Disney Cruise Line's new Disney Dream ocean liner, and we felt a little star-struck, like the Beverly Hillbillies thrust aboard the QE2.

At home, I have become the designated homework helper for our 10-year-old son.

For much of his life, James Chauncey said, he tried not to talk about his near-death experience as a 7-year-old boy.

James Wilburn Chauncey does not think of himself as a prophet. In fact, he doesn't even consider himself deeply religious.

On a weeklong family vacation earlier this month, I put myself in time-out.

When last we visited the Daves family of Ooltewah, back in May, they were hoping for a happy ending.

Brothers fight. History has taught us this. Witness: Cain and Abel. Jacob and Esau. Arnold and Willis.

My high school class is having a 35-year reunion soon, and class leaders have set up a Facebook page for the occasion. Clicking through the profiles this week, I was struck that some of my classmates, now in their early 50s, are already grandparents.

During our 90-minute interview, Sabrina Daniel, 54, an unemployed Chattanooga educator, twice described herself as "sanguine."

Sundays have always been important to 49-year-old Aletia DuPree of Calhoun, Ga. It was the day her family of restaurateurs dubbed "profit day."

Perhaps you saw the report last week that said watching "SpongeBob SquarePants" leads to learning difficulties in some 4-year-olds.

Born in 1958, I'm a 20th-century kind of guy. By the year 2000, I was 42 years old and my personality had already been bottled and corked.

Ah, yes, here we are at yet another wonderful Comfort Courtyard DoubleTree Inn and Suites motel.

Money magazine has published a list it calls the 100 Best Small Towns in America. My copy came in the mail this week.

Viktoriya Kashin, a 25-year-old Russian immigrant living in Cleveland, Tenn., has a life story that appears to have been scripted by a higher power.

The other day a co-worker arrived at my desk beaming. "I have to tell somebody this," he said, before revealing that his son, a recent college graduate, had just landed a good job with a local company. "Wow," I said. "That's really great news."

The kids go back to school this week, and suddenly another summer has vaporized.

"Mapmakers call it Highway 127, but the folks who live inside the dots on the map just call it Main Street.

Rossville’s Lauren Alaina Suddeth, who finished second on Season 10 of “American Idol,” has a personal style that’s a work in progress.

If you still have a job, the bad economy probably feels like a lump in your throat.

Rossville’s Lauren Alaina Suddeth, who finished second on Season 10 of “American Idol,” has a personal style that’s a work in progress.

As a kid, I remember my stomach growling in church.

There’s a fine line between an incentive and a bribe.

Chattanooga has won the online voting component of Outside magazine’s “Best Town Ever” contest for 2011.

A report in Monday’s Life section said that experts now believe that horseplay is beneficial to children. They are calling it a form of “deep learning.”

I had forgotten what it was like traveling with small children until last week when my husband and I took our daughter and two young granddaughters to Panama City Beach, Fla.

I read an article in Kiplinger’s Personal Finance magazine the other day called “How To Complain and Get Results.”

Chattanooga has surged into the lead in Outside Magazine’s online poll to name America’s “Best Town Ever.”

In the fall of 2009, a 20-year-old Southern Adventist University student was murdered while on a student mission in Yap, a tiny island state in Micronesia.

Volkswagen turned over the keys to its Chattanooga-made Passat to North American automotive reporters last week and crossed its fingers.

That swarm of brand-new Volkswagen Passats that blew past you on Interstate 24 last week is coming soon to a newsstand near you.