Luxury Redefined The concept of luxury comes from some combination of Latin, Old French and Old English and generally meant excessive extravagance. It was generally considered in olden days to be decadent, bordering on offensiveness. But then society decided to change all of that a few hundred years ago and the concept of luxury turned more benign, or at least less troubling. It became a standard of extreme comfort that may have gone beyond pure…
Long Distance Grieving I am packed and ready to head to the airport for a Redeye flight to JFK, arriving tomorrow there at the bright and early time of 5am. I know I won’t sleep much on the flight even though i am traveling in Jet Blue’s Mint service, which had lie-flat seats. I used to sleep like a baby on overnight flights when I was in full work harness, but those days and those…
The Game of Law This week has been a news cycle of one thing after another focused on who and what falls within the boundaries of the rule of law. The rule of law is more than a collection of four words, it is a political philosophy that lies at the center of the modern world, whether you believe in it as a guiding principle of governance or as something that is irrelevant and bears…
Surrendering to CostCo Everyone thinks that CostCo started in Kirkland, Washington, just outside of Seattle back in 1983, just when Howard Schultz was getting his hands on this little coffeehouse startup called Starbucks and starting to rev it up into a global retailing juggernaut. But by virtue of its merger with another big-box retailer named Price Club, CostCo can claim to have started back in 1976 right here in good old San Diego. The behemoth…
Loving Life I think I am settling into my retired life at long last. It’s only taken three years, but today is somehow different. When something good or bad happens on a given day, it’s fairly easy to comprehend why we might feel particularly good or bad overall. But when something noteworthy does NOT happen and you feel noticeably good or bad, that seems worthy of some reflection. I have long held and even discussed…
Touched by the Big Chill Yesterday was quite a day. I have written about our AC problems in this mid-August heat wave, a problem that got resolved with relative ease. I have also written about the events at Mart-A-Lago and the irony of all the informational overload we as Americans are being asked to take in about all the people from the right that are trying literally and figuratively to flush all evidence down the…
Cooling Off Sometimes things are easy. Two days ago, our northern air conditioner went on the fritz. That is the older half of our AC system in the house and if measured in BTU strength, it is also the smaller half of the system. I’m not sure that is a wise configuration, given the importance of AC to comfortable sleeping, but I inherited and retrofitted the HVAC and Hot Water systems in this house and…
Going to the Dogs When we were young, we would sometimes be forced to tell our friends that we had to go because our mothers were expecting us for some reason or other. Then as we got more independent and older, but were still mostly dependent on others, we used our schoolwork or perhaps our new work situation to create an excuse for why we all needed to run off before the festivities were completed.…
School Daze It’s early August and despite my every effort to the contrary, I cannot make myself into Rod Stewart. My Freshman Fall at Cornell was heavily dominated by Rod’s rendition of Maggie May, which came out in July, 1971 on his Reason to Believe album. You may recall that for him it was “late September and I really should be back at school…” Well, for me at age 68, it is a case that…
Weekend at Moonstruck We are coming up on the first weekend of August and we are completely unscheduled for the next three days. While we are by no means social butterflies, we usually do have activities of some sort planned for the weekends. Sometimes it is only a dinner or a movie, but our usual go-to’s are out-of-pocket. Sister Kathy is trying to get out of her COVID bout, but can’t seem to get a…