In Memoriam to Summer We just went through the Memorial Day weekend and that is traditionally the start of the summer in America. We spent the weekend chasing the warmth of the desert on Saturday, did the Barbecue for friends and family out on the patio on Sunday, and did a bunch of gardening and went to our first summer movie (Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga, the fifth in the Mad Max series….original, Road Warrior,…
Barking Buddy We’ve had Buddy with us now for about five months. He has settled in nicely and we with him. The one thing that is still going on that we want to correct is that the little guy does like to bark. I sort of understand why a 5.5 pound ball of energy might find the need to make himself known by barking, but it seems to be more than that that’s going on.…
This is a story written for me as a late 70th Birthday gift by my younger son, Thomas. I’m both incredibly impressed and moved by this story and am proud to share it with you (with his blessing). It’s longer than my normal story, but well worth the read in my opinion. Please be sure to click through for the epilogue at the end. Mojo Gubbins My dad doesn’t really do gifts. Let me clarify.…
Work/Life Balance Throughout my working career, the subject of work/life balance was a constant. We all know the story of the workaholic that overworks himself to the point of ignoring his familial obligations. He comes home after the kids are asleep, he cancels vacations at the last minute. He leaves all the child rearing to his wife. And he always misses the baseball game or recital of his children. I occasionally suffered from all of…
YOLO It seemed more than coincidental that the first story on today’s New York Times The Morning is an article on the universally prevalent thought process involved in people’s ongoing wrestling match with time and how to use this, their most precious resource. They mentioned the term YOLO in that article and I have to admit that I had to look it up. You Only Live Once is yet another version of my favorite tag…
Western Dreams Like many men my age, I grew up during the cowboy era with the likes of The Lone Ranger, Gunsmoke, Have Gun will Travel, The Rifleman, Bonanza, The Big Valley, Rawhide, Zorro, Maverick, Wagon Train, The Virginian, and even F Troop. If we had dreams in those heady days of the 50s and 60s, they were about being either astronauts or cowboys. I didn’t really think too much about either in a vocational…
Kim’s Big Week Every once in a while I can’t help myself and I must write a story about my lovely Kim, the love of my life. Kim and I met in the summer of 2005. I was six months out of a three year relationship following my second marriage and only days since breaking it off with a woman I had met on match.com. I also met Kim on match.com under circumstances that always…
The Passage of Time Outside on our deck on the wall of the house where there are no windows, we have placed a large 30” metal wall clock. These days, large wall clocks with a certain artistic statement are not so unusual. You can buy one on Wayfair or any manner of online shopping site and have your choice of countless styles. We actually bought this particular clock to hang over the inside front door,…
April Panorama It’s hard to keep a perspective on the weather when you live in a place like San Diego. We are in our fifth year of living full-time on this hilltop and I am generally pretty happy about the weather overall, but more confused than not, especially at this time of year, about what is normal, what is abnormal and what is shifting. I will define the normal/abnormal axis as the cyclical swings of…
The World According to Rich I just had an exchange with my red, but supposedly anti-Trump friend Kevin. This is that text group that I have been engaged with for several years that used to be two Florida residents (read that was them being red in political orientation) and one too blue Californian (blue ex-New Yorker…same thing). We added another friend from Arizona, Steve, who is appropriately purple, less by political leaning and more by…