For people of a certain age and temperament, there is a wonderful Chris Farley and David Spade movie called Tommy Boy, made in 1995. The duo are on an epic roadtrip to sell brake pads and Tommy (Farley) has a hard time containing his natural exuberance. Spade, on the other hand is a cynical young man who finds everything Tommy does as some combination of distasteful and idiotic. In one scene, Tommy is trying to…
On this early July morning, Kim was getting her morning coffee and, sure as June Gloom goes away by July 1, so the Argentine red ants that have marched their way up from Patagonia have returned for another summer of fun, watching Kim pull out the stops with all her anti-ant programs. Kim will not kill a spider, but she gives no quarter to ants. They are her mortal enemy because ants impugn her good…
Today is our first activity day of summer vacation with our grandkids. One of the things we like to do every year is go to the San Diego County fair at the Del Mar fairgrounds. Like much of California, San Diego County is truly a blend of urban coastal elite areas with expensive homes overlooking the Pacific Ocean and rural ranch country where cattle and coyotes are still the main topics of conversation. In between…
When we are kids, we revel in having fun. The world revolves around having fun at the early stages of life. You can see the instinct clearly in Buddy, who is still a young dog at three. When he wakes up in the morning, all he wants to do is play. He will come up to our faces in bed and try to convince us that its time to get up to play. He is…
In a few weeks Kim is heading off for her 50th high school reunion in Wabash, Indiana, her home town and where she spent the first 20 years of her life. Kim is not only connected to Wabash for family reasons…though she has very little family left there now, but also because it’s where her musical roots began. Over the years that Kim and I have been together, she went back to Wabash twice to…
Do you know the Saturday Night Live (SNL) skits with Kristen Wiig as a part of the “Lawrence Welk Show” sketch series? However connected I might have been to the “Lawrence Welk Show” in my grade school days in Wisconsin, I feel more connected to Lawrence now since our hilltop is directly above the Lawrence Welk Resort (now owned by Marriott as a timeshare) that sits adjacent to Rt. 15 between Temecula and Escondido on…
On this past Sunday night, the night of Father’s Day, we had tickets to see the next LaJolla Playhouse play in the season’s rotation. As season ticket-holders, we see them all, and quite frankly, they do a good job of attracting good new productions that almost all feel like they have a shot of getting to the big time, even though few probably do. Our friends Dulcinea and Bill, who live in LaJolla, are also…
About 30 years ago, I was at a Cornell recognition function (I believe it was a Presidents Club gathering) in New York City, and a pleasant young woman came up to me wearing a badge that identified her as part of the development office at the University. Nothing about that was unusual because this sort of function always had lots of development officers schmoozing alumni like me. What was different was that she told me…
My oldest son Roger shares my initials. I am Richard Albert and he is Roger Andrew. We have always figured that there was some benefit in sharing the same initials since monogrammed things like satchels and miscellaneous leather goods always look good wearing some intergenerational aging. We also both like the toughness and rugged image of the curled horned beast that protects the heard and roams the mountainside. I have to take responsibility for carrying…
The combination of our first-half 2026 travel break and my rebuilding closet has caused me to rethink and reprovision my travel gear. Kim replaced her old suitcase set with Away luggage (our go-to brand these days), and while I had replace my carry-on, it was time after fifteen years to replace my larger checked bag before our Rhine cruise departure in late August. While doing that, I decided that I needed a different knapsack. To…