Into the Wild No, this story is not going to be about Chris McCandless sitting on top of an old bus at the base of Denali waiting to die of hunger. Emile Hirsch played that role well in 2007 and Sean Penn directed it like he himself saw that there was no tomorrow. That story was about a privileged kid who wanted to test himself to the limit and took a journey of enlightenment that…
On Becoming an Elephant When it rains it pours. We’ve all heard that many times in our lives. What hasn’t been so well acknowledged is that when it does rain and therefore does pour, it does so even harder when you have planned a parade or a picnic. My retirement has been in process for twenty months now and the four primary activities I brought to the table to give me at least transitional purpose…
The Dagwood Effect The other day we were going to dinner in Escondido with Winston and Kathleen. Winston is such a great name, for a neighbor especially, since it evokes a person of interest that is both conservative and yet mildly daring at the same time. That description fits our Winston quite well, but more on that later. We drove down to the local Mexican restaurant (there are so very many in the area) that…
Stupid is as Stupid Does In 2020 we were scheduled to go to Spain and Portugal (Barcelona to Porto) for a motorcycle trip in August. Needless to say, by the middle of Spring everyone was unequivocally concerned enough about COVID to unanimously recognize the wisdom of cancelling the trip. We even went so far as to assuage our troubled motorcycling souls by tentatively planning a “post-Pandemic” trip in February to Patagonia. By the time the…
My Worst Nightmare This morning I decided to go to the Market, our local deli, to get a breakfast burrito to share with Candice and an Asahi Bowl for Kim. When I walked in I immediately saw the glass case with the fresh donuts. There was only one person in front of me in line and I stood my respectful six feet away from him while the counter girl finished her tasks and turned to…
Geeks to the Rescue Kim’s ten-year-old desktop computer just died. SHe made an appointment with the Best Buy Geek Squad to come and fix it. While there are probably many different and better IT service providers, I can’t name another one that is as ubiquitous and branded as the Geek Squad. Therefore, she had the resident Geek appointment for this afternoon. Apparently Best Buy has my name on the account so the contact outreach came…
Popeye Work What were the earliest cartoons you remember watching? While at 67 years old, I generally find little difference between me and people of 72 or, for that matter, between me and people of 62. We were all old enough to grow up on the music of the sixties, we all experienced Vietnam one way or another and we all grew to adulthood during the greatest housing boom known to man, We are all…
The Beasts of the Field In the eighteen months I have lived on my hilltop in San Diego, I have gotten used to the critters that inhabit the chaparral. There is a very well defined ecosystem and while I am no zoologist or naturalist, this is how I see it. The baseline are the little ants I see here and there, inside and out. They don’t seem to be around much in the winter months,…
PlatterPuss I’m not certain, but I think one of my neighbors just zinged me. This was from a French woman who lives nearby on our hilltop. From what I can piece together, she and her French husband own and operate a successful online translation company with a catchy name that is a contraction of their French last name. That means she is probably pretty literate and meant exactly what she said in her note to…
The Kabuki of Kabuki I have spent a fair bit of time in Japan (mostly “Blade Runner” Tokyo and a little bit of Kyoto) and I am very fond of the visual imagery of Kabuki theater, but I have never seen a live Kabuki performance, only a short depiction on TV. When I think of Kabuki, I think of guys stomping around for effect in elaborate robes and with dramatic, exaggerated make-up. Kabuki does not…