The Show Must Go On I am sitting on a redeye flight to New York, headed to a show tonight that Kim is singing in. She has been invited to sing at the Cabaret Convention at Rose Hall of Jazz at Lincoln Center. It’s only one song and its a duet with her pal Lennie (accompanied by Steven), which is a long-time flying configuration for her performances, but it is Lincoln Center and it doesn’t…
Being of Service When Kim joined the Hidden Meadows Women’s Club, she did so because she very much wanted to make more friends in the local community. She came back from the first meeting with a positive report that she felt there were many potential new friends to be had in the Club. One of the first things she did was to volunteer to have the next meeting of the group at our house. It…
The Boys Are Back in Town Unlike Fred MacMurray, I do not have three sons (aka My Three Sons, the Americana TV series that ran throughout the 1960’s), but I do have two sons and they are just about all I can handle. They are two dramatically different individuals separated by thirteen years and two separate mothers. I can triangulate a few traits that they each have based on their mothers’ characteristics, but I would…
Water on the Brain We live in one of the only counties in California that tends not to have too many water restrictions. That’s good for me and especially good for my garden. I’ve spent a lot of time and a fair bit of money getting my irrigation up to snuff with its 25 zones and four programs with different watering frequencies and all zones having heir own watering duration. It’s not a perfect bespoke…
What’s Up With Pumpkins? When I was growing up, Halloween was a very special kids’ holiday, mostly because of Trick-or-Treat, but also because of the pageantry of the costumes and the fun and spooky events and parties. It really is a kid’s paradise, and at the center of it all is the ubiquitous jack-o-lantern, which are created as another special event of carving pumpkins on the kitchen table. From my youth, you had two choices…
Prickly Neck Do you know that feeling when the angel of death passes over you and something happens to make you feel kinda weird as the specter of the infinity of time brushes by? I just finished a motorcycle ride of 1,600 miles across northern Spain and I had only one close call when some oncoming idiot came around a curve in the mountains too hot to handle and drifted a few feet into my…
Gastronomique Delight We have all noticed since being here in Spain that it stays dark in the mornings until quite late. In fact, I see that sunrise this morning is not until 8:21am. Of course, on the other end of the day, that means that it gets dark much later than one might expect, today for example sunset here is not until 7:57pm, which seems late for October. In NYC right now, sunrise is 6:56am…
End of the Trail Ahhh, the lovely Pyrenees. I’ve been to Spain many times, but never to the Pyrenees or Basque Country. As for the Pyrenees, they seem to me to be a combination of bits of Switzerland, the Tyrol, the Dolomites and the Maritime Alps all rolled into one. They are at once verdant and sweet valleys and craggy and dramatic rock outcroppings. The views at every turn are spectacular and I suspect we…
Infrastructure Fantasy Yesterday, as we rode through the countryside north of Barcelona up into the Pyrenees Mountain area, it was hard to miss how lovely it all was. Yes, the weather was perfect, which for a motorcycle tour is paramount, but there was also the issue of the roads. The first half of the journey sort of went from urban to industrial (I didn’t really see so much of what we think of as suburban,…
Meanwhile, Back in the School Cafeteria Sometimes an entire group of people can be in such a good mood that they lose themselves to a situation and just have a great time in an odd circumstance. Today was really the start of our motorcycle ride through the Pyrenees. We are actually going from Barcelona up into the Pyrenees and then up to the Basque Country to trek across the top of the Spanish coastline, called…