Aqua Velva Water as soft as a baby’s bottom is the literal translation of Aqua Velva. I think of it as the oldest men’s cologne in existence. It is, indeed, quite old since it was first introduced in 1917 to the American public and is so much a part of American male grooming that during WWII, the book The Thin Red Line, about the battle for Guadalcanal tells the story about a PX set up…
Barking Buddy We’ve had Buddy with us now for about five months. He has settled in nicely and we with him. The one thing that is still going on that we want to correct is that the little guy does like to bark. I sort of understand why a 5.5 pound ball of energy might find the need to make himself known by barking, but it seems to be more than that that’s going on.…
Cousin Itt Do you remember The Munsters TV show? It only aired for two seasons (1964 – 1966, but a hefty 70 episodes that ran successfully for years in syndication) and like its competitor series, The Addams Family, they probably left an indelible mark on our youthful memories. The Munster show was produced by the team that brought us Leave It To Beaver and was similarly written to mimic suburban life, only with a macabre…
Accepting the Loss You may recall that I recently wrote about replacing some windows in my house on the hilltop. Views being such a big part of the appeal of this property, windows are a clear priority (pun intended). You may recall that I chose the prudent path of ordering the replacement windows from the top window firm in America, Andersen. I have yet to find anyone who has anything but good things to say…
Time to De-Junk Every once in a while I get the urge to declutter my life. We have lived out here on this hilltop going on five years now and we shed a lot of junk when moving here and when moving our extra junk from Ithaca here, but I think we have only had a junk man come to take away excess junk to the dump one other time. Like most people, the urge…
Star Witness This morning we are waking up to the most explosive part of the Trump Hush Money trial in Manhattan, the testimony of Michael Cohen, Trump’s personal lawyer and fixer over a decade in days gone by. At the early part of the testimony, the bulk of the pitter patter from the cable news legal/litigation pundits is about what the prosecution wants of Cohen and how the defense is likely to try to undermine…
Field Trip It’s May and its warming here on the hilltop. Yesterday we had a gathering of the Hidden Meadows Garden Club as organized by Kim and Melisa, its co-presidents. Kim carried most of the load since Melisa was recuperating from her prior day’s Emergency Room trauma. She had aspirated half of a Calcium/Magnesium/Zinc supplement and had spent seven hours at the Palomar Hospital ER (chauffeured there by yours truly) working through the dissolution of…
Woodworking When we were kids, one of the rights of passage was to spend time learning how to make things out of wood. With 3-D printing and all the varieties of plastic that prevail these days, its hard to say whether kids learn woodworking any more. Some kids had a distinct leg-up with a father who proudly owned a complete woodworking shop in his basement or garage. Thewe were the dads that helped their kids…
Intimidation Donald Trump is an expert at intimidation. Just look at the array of recent portraits of the man. He is making a habit of lowering his face and scowling at the audience from underneath his bushy eyebrows and fluffy yet wispy coif. He has perfected the snarl. He is under a rather strict gag order because his comments can energize a legion of faceless followers to reign down violence and distress on anyone that…
Stormy Days Today is the second day of the Stormy Daniels testimony in the Donald Trump falsification of business records case in Manhattan. Everyone is debating the importance of the Stormy Daniel testimony to the Trump case. We have all heard ad nauseam that it matters not whether anyone believes the sexual encounter actually occurred in 2006 between Trump and Stormy (my rhetorical question is, who among us does NOT believe that it did happen?),…