Todd, I Presume Every day we take risks and we try to manage them as best we can. We do not live in a perfect world and no matter what we do, we cannot live life without some risks. Hopefully we minimize the big risks and get lucky for the rest. Can any of us do better than that on a day-by-day basis? When it comes to personal household security some people believe in fortification.…
Lining Up for Slaughter Yesterday I received a message from my healthcare provider, UCSD Health, explaining to me the prioritization queuing for vaccinations. It basically explained where I sit in the line formed for receiving the Coronavirus vaccination. It didn’t give me a timeframe, but said that the system was still working on the first cohort of first responder and assisted living resident vaccinations and when done with that would move on to 75+ and…
Coping In 1997 I was on the Management Committee of Bankers Trust Company after twenty years of rising through the ranks and having taken on a wide diversity of roles in many different businesses. I had served in mostly line management capacities, but had also had a few staff positions, all with a growing breadth of responsibilities. In other words, I had risen through the middle management levels and was one of the firms leadership…
Getting Big Enough Ever since I can remember, for at least the last sixty years, I have lived with the reality that I am too big. The relative measure that causes me to say that has nothing to do with life insurance charts that define healthiness based on a height/weight ratio or a BMI (Body Mass Index). I long ago decided that I fall outside those standards and that they just don’t apply to me…
The Buffalo of My Soul By now we all know that the proper name for what we all grew up knowing as a buffalo, is bison. Technically they are Bison Bison in scientific terms and are a subclass of Bovinae or large, even-toed ungulates (hoofed creatures) that are native to the Great Plains of North America. We all know Tatonka (the non-specific Native American word for the buffalo) from Dances With Wolves fame, and know…
Special Edition – The Battle for Democracy The Last Castle If you haven’t seen Robert Redford’s movie The Last Castle, you should watch this entertaining film. It’s the story of a top Army General (Redford) who pleads guilty of contravening a presidential order and going into an African war zone in order to rescue some of his otherwise abandoned men. He is set up as a man who acted on conscience, a primary sense that…
The End Game I’m sitting here tonight not watching a movie as is my habit. Instead, I am still watching MSNBC as we head towards 8pm. The election night music is becoming very familiar to me and watching Steve Kornacki tally and project votes seems like a normal thing for us. I can’t say I like watching county-by-county voting results for Georgia or any other state for that matter. That seems like a level of…
Snow Where to Go Today I got spanked by a loyal member of my motorcycle club. This is a group I founded twenty-five years ago. In fact, this past year I authored a 440-page tome titled The Ride is All about the twenty-five years of riding together all over the world. There is an entire chapter up front about all the characters that make up the club. I’m not sure we are any more or…
Double Barrel Every day when I sit down to write I am always want to write about something other than the Coronavirus and the nonsense in Washington. I opt to write about how I feel, how I occupy my time, what Betty is up to, and bigger things underway in the universe. But today, ostensibly the first working day of 2021, I am dragged back to reality, so let’s see what is on the plate.…
Working Stiff I have a strange feeling that 2020 was a buffer year for me, not so much by design, but by happenstance. After many years (I mark them as starting in 1966 at the age of twelve…so call it fifty-five years), the inertia of work has set in. People talk about “failing retirement” as a cute tongue-in-cheek way of bragging that they are so busy in retirement or see such a demand for their…