Today I went for a very eventful personal appointment. When I moved here in 2020, I went about getting a California drivers license, which was not an easy feat in the midst of COVID. I finally got an appointment in the Temecula office of California DMV (Kim had to go all the way to Hemet to get her’s) once the DMV felt it was safe to reopen their offices to the public and re-expose their…
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…
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.…
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…
In three days it will be Christmas. As I’ve explained before, we tend to spread out the Christmas season over the course of a month. We have had our Holiday Party here in Casa Moonstruck on our hilltop for neighbors and friends. We have done our trek to Midtown Manhattan in New York City for the gathering with all the kids and our extended New York family and friends. We’ve done the Holiday Gala on…
We’ve all heard about the Aboriginal tradition of young people going through a rite of passage when they come of age and go forth to explore the broader world around them but more distant than what they have known in their upbringing. Its’s a time of reflection of the soul, a return to one’s roots and family ancestry, a joyous revisiting of the wonders of the natural world. For someone like me that has spent…
I know I wrote about the healthcare system in America recently, so please don’t read too much into the fact that today I’m writing about medicine. It is purely coincidental…I think. It just so happens that meds are on my mind for all sorts of reasons. I will start with the most personal of those. I am expecting the delivery of two prescriptions today and I am in short enough supply of those two so…
It was the Star that led the way. In the vast expanse of the night sky, where countless stars twinkled like diamonds scattered across dark velvet, one star shone with exceptional brilliance. This was no ordinary star – it was a divine beacon, placed in the heavens for a singular purpose. Far to the east, in lands of ancient wisdom and learning where men and a few token women gather in Congressional chambers to do…
Given that we live in the county that occupies the bottom of California, just above the Mexican border at Tijuana, we find ourselves regularly heading north and debating the best way to do that. For reasons I can guess at, but cannot really explain, we do not head south into Mexico…ever. We used to go down to Cabo San Lucas with some regularity and I used to visit the west coast of Mexico mainland with…