Last night I was at a dinner of a dozen of us from the neighborhood. I got a call from my sister, Barbara, who lives in Las Vegas. I ignored it out of phone politeness to those around the table. When the phone rang a second time I got up to answer it because you never know when an emergency might arise. She was calling to make sure we were OK based on what she…
There is an old joke that involves a guy who goes to Hell and is asked by Satan to choose his preferred poison. The first room is freezing cold with snow and ice all around and everybody in that room is shivering cold. The second room is your classic hellscape with fire and brimstone and everyone in that room is in agony as their flesh burns. In the last room, everyone is standing around in…
We, like so many people, used to say that we were not cruise people. It’s funny how that has changed over time and once you get a look at the people who do cruise you understand that unless you are going on Carnival, Celebrity or Disney (all of which tend to cater to families with kids), the adult cruise lines have an older demographic. Our choice of cruise lines is the one that gets consistently…
I have to admit that as strange as it may sound coming from someone who has spent his entire adult life over 300 pounds, I am eating less and less every day. The prevalence of reduced food intake (also called anorexia of aging) among seniors is a very real phenomenon. According to studies, approximately 15-20% of older adults living independently experience significant decreased food intake. The percentage rises to 30-40% among those living in assisted…
As I started my senior year in college, 1974, a guy by the name of Robert Pirsig wrote this philosophical novel as an exploration of the concept of Quality. What he called the Metaphysics of Quality (MOQ) originated with his college studies as a student of biochemistry. He found the number of rational hypotheses for any given phenomenon appeared to be unlimited. It seemed to him that this undermined the validity of the scientific method.…
Back in the summer of 1971, when I was 17 and not really legal yet, I anxiously left my home in Rome, Italy (actually skipping my high school graduation) just to get myself to, of all places, Cleveland, Ohio. It was my first real summer job since leaving the States in 1968 and it was at Case Western Reserve University, so it felt like the start of my college career even though I was just…
I am sitting here at our boarding gate at the San Francisco International Airport, awaiting our Alaska Airlines flight back to San Diego. Our car is sitting in the garage at Terminal 2 at SAN and our little Buddy is soon to be sleeping once again on our bed rather than spending the night at his dog boarding house with a gang of his small, medium and large dog buddies (we will pick him up…
Recently I started watching the Ken Burns series on The Roosevelts. It more or less covers the century from when Teddy Roosevelt was born in 1858 until when Eleanor Roosevelt died in 1962 at the age of 78. Teddy only lived 60 years, dying in 1919 and Franklin (FDR) died in 1945 at age 63. Ken Burns is my age and is perhaps the best chronicler of American history (at least in film) of my…
I am in our room at the University Club of San Francisco. The University Club of San Francisco was founded in 1890 by a group of college graduates who wanted to create a social and cultural center for university alumni in the city. The club was originally located in several different downtown locations before moving to its current home at 800 Powell Street in 1909. The distinctive clubhouse building, designed by architects Bliss & Faville…
Last night we went to a party on a hilltop near us. To the north of our hilltop are several other hilltops (we live in a very hilly area to the west of the serious mountains, but to the east of the flat plains that run out to the ocean). Tucked in between Hidden Meadows and the Lawrence Welk resort complex (that’s right, once owned by Mr. Bubbly himself), there is a relatively expensive gated…