Getting Hosed Our property on our little hilltop is a 2.5 acre trapezoid with several hundred feet of frontage on Quail View Drive (Kim swears she sees a covey of quail quite often on the driveway, but you can’t prove that by me). The property goes more-or-less straight back from the road on both sides, a bit further on the south side than the north, thereby creating the trapezoidal shape. In the front, the hill…
This Little Piggy Stayed Home Today, like most days, I called up Jeff to see what was going on in his life. I am in the habit of calling Jeff every day for several reasons. First of all, he’s one of the few men of my age that I know around here, second, he is generally my go-to guy for stuff around the house because he knows the house and he is generally a font…
Festivus In 1997 the outrageously successful sitcom, Seinfeld, aired it’s 166th episode, the tenth episode of its ninth and final season. I think it is fair to suggest that that timing indicates that Seinfeld was at its peak audience viewership by that time. As with all Seinfeld episodes, there were multiple subplots which came together in the end of the episode with some humorous and mostly intertwined resolution. The episode was called “The Strike” because…
The Institution of Lunch It’s midday on Sunday and its an overcast day out here in northern San Diego County. I just got a text (actually a What’sAp text) from my friend and colleague in Palermo. He sent me pictures of his first family outing in the car for nine weeks of the nationally imposed lockdown. The picture was of the Carabinieri stopping the car to ask questions and search it. He said most shops…
A Hitch in the Ointment Mixed metaphors are a wonderful thing. People who use them are usually not the sharpest cookie in the jar. Take Donald Trump….please (apologies to Henny Youngman). He’s never metaphor that he didn’t like and he uses them so much that it’s hard to tell which he feels are intentionally doubled up and which he doesn’t even realize are metaphorical. And it’s not like he has a problem distinguishing between metaphors…
The Big Ass Effect Before you get too excited, let me explain that yesterday I hosted a Zoomathon for my American Flyers Motorcycle Club, who formally celebrates its Silver (25th!) Anniversary this month. There were eighteen participating callers with a total of thirty-four attendees plus two (Nik and Charlene) who I inadvertently left out in the Zoom waiting room, failing to admit them after I had admitted three tranches of other entrants waiting. Oops. I…
Needless Mark-up I hear that Neiman Marcus is likely to declare bankruptcy soon as the latest signal that the retail business sector is the next in what promises to be an ongoing array of zombie business segments in the new normal. This morning I heard a retail analyst talking about it. He was actually quite balanced about it all. Clearly Neiman Marcus is an iconic brand that has been around for 113 years. It originated…
Haircuttery I think of my quarantine as having started after returning prematurely from New York and having swung and missed on my trip to London (a trip, I might add, which would have been a complete waste of time and effort because that expert witness case settled favorably). I flew back to San Diego on Wednesday, March 10th with a prickly feeling on the back of my neck like I had just escaped the Coronavirus.…
The Man with the Pan You all know by now that I am the proud owner of a like-new 2019 BMW R1250GS Adventure motorcycle. You also may recall that I am still stumbling around with the registration process out here in California (or even in New York for that matter) given the COVID-19 closure of all DMV facilities. Given what we all know to be the experience at whatever DMV we go to, it will…
The Ass in the Hat The sun did not shine, it was too wet to play, so we stay in the house all that cold, cold, wet day. I sat there with Kim. We sat there we two, and I said ‘how I wish we had something to do.’ And then something went BUMP! How that bump made us jump! And we saw him! The Ass in the Hat. And he said to us, ‘why…