Hurry Up and Slow Down While I watch what seems like the painfully slow process of my deck going up joist by joist, I keep waiting for the work to turn this magical corner and start racing towards completion. I sort of thought that would happen today, but as the old joke goes, “not so fast, Abernathy”. My new digital, app-based irrigation system was installed in a day and now works great, giving me the…
Loving Pandemic The wave is cresting. 76.8 million infected globally (just under 1% of the world) and 1.69 million deaths (most likely severely understated at 2.2%). In the U.S. 17.9 million infected (a whopping 5.5% of the population) and 318,000 deaths (slightly better at 1.8%). California is an extreme hot spot with 1.89 million infected (also high at 4.8% of the population) and 22,735 deaths (1.2% but one of those right next door). San Diego…
Popcorn Is Life For many months now, Kim has been in the habit of snacking at night on popcorn. She buys bags of popcorn or kettle corn and I find it hard to resist taking at least a few handfuls. I was mildly disappointed the first few times when I realized her request of whether I wanted some popcorn or not was not followed by the sound of popping corn on the stove, but rather…
Light The Night What reasons do we have for wiring up and lighting the out of doors? Beyond the security aspects there is the beautification issue. But there must be something else. I have had my own little internal wrestling match on this issue through the year. To start with, all my motion or photosensitive security lights around the house (I have nine of these), I replaced earlier in the year. I did it for…
Finding Things To Do I want so very much to remain upbeat and positive and I know I prize achievement orientation above most things, but I am still more at loose ends than I feel comfortable. Today is an instructive day in assessing my current problem. It is a week before Christmas and it is a sunny day here in San Diego County with temperatures ranging up to the mid-60’s. I do not see any…
No Snow Day I woke up early today, but it was a good sleep night. Mornings these days are about whether I was up a little, a lot or not at all during the night. I started taking Atorvastatin earlier this year even though I have had a long history of low cholesterol. I think it was a belt and suspenders prescription suggested by my new California doctor since statins are about restricting cholesterol production…
Somewhere Out There I’m a little bit sheepish in admitting that my favorite iPhone Playlist has some pretty sappy songs on it. I’m not one of these people who has spent a lot of time developing playlists for every occasion or mood. I have perhaps ten in total and there is an embarrassing amount of overlap among them. The one entitled Upbeat has the sappiest of the sappy songs. In fact it has a song…
Decorating for COVID Christmas Will this be our only COVID Christmas? Hard to say. It started at just the right time with the WHO announcement on January 9th that there was a mysterious virus in Wuhan, China. The first case of the Coronavirus hit our shores, from a man returning from Wuhan on January 15th and getting diagnosed by CDC on January 21st. By then four had died in China and the Chinese were sort…
A Visit From Betty I need to update everyone on Betty. Betty was Blind Betty, then Bling Betty and now she is just Betty. Betty can see again, sort of. We don’t know how long she was afflicted by blindness from cataracts, which we had removed. Her eyes were so messed up that during the surgery it was decided that removal of the cataracts would allow her to see distance, but she would never have…
PJ and the Bear In the Fall of 1971, I was just like every other schlubby Freshman at Cornell University, living in University Halls (U-Hall 4 to be precise, second floor, north wing) on West Campus. Those WWII-era cinderblock dorms were torn down and replaced by fancy new upperclassmen dorms bearing names like Hans Bethe House and Carl Becker Hall. I like to joke that instead of freshman yelling “Dorm 3 Sucks!” from the dorm…