Moonrise Madneess It’s 5:30pm and I am enjoying a long-overdue hot tub soak. I’m not sure why I don’t go in whenever I want, but I have a system now where the tub filter goes on every day at 1pm and circulates until 4pm. If I want to go in and I want it warmer than ambient air temperature, I have to hit a toggle on my cell phone app, It can’t really get much…
Stucco! Stucco! Stucco! With a nod to Richard Fleischer’s 1970 iconic hit movie, Tora!Tora!Tora!, that won acclaim for its special effects and realistic warlike cinematography, I feel the need to wrap up my tale of stucco with regard to my Hobbit House since I have flip-flopped more than HGTV and the DIY (now Magnolia) Network combined. Given how many homes out here on the chaparral are stucco construction and the number of immigrants who pride…
Common Learning I am sitting in an atrium on the University of San Diego campus in the building in which my course on Law, Policy and Ethics is assigned to meet. The building is called the Learning Commons and I am happy to report that at 6:40pm on a Wednesday night, there seems to be a lot of activity. This is distinctly different from last semester, when my course met in the Joan Kroc Institute…
Always Something Who says retirement is easy? There should be little or no stress, right? That should certainly be the case with a casual fun project like my Hobbit House. My MO is optimism. As that pertains to projects around the property, that translates into a sense that everything is easy and quite doable, so what’s the problem? While I have been aware of this can-do attitude tendency, I do find myself slipping easily into…
Out of Reach In the process of building my Hobbit House, I had decided to farm out the stucco work, originally to Handy Brad, who has done some stucco work around the place, and more recently to one of a couple guys who answered Handy Brad’s ad on the Next Door app. That seemed to both Handy Brad and me as the sensible thing to do since Stucco may not be that hard to do,…
A Dry Wind During high school, I lived in Rome, Italy. When most people think of Italy they think of great food, the treasures of Florence and the Medici, the days of Marcus Aurelius and his views of Virtūs et Honos (Strength and Honor), the betrayals of Julius Caesar as made famous by William Shakespeare, the petrified and frozen-in-time inhabitants of Pompeii and perhaps the Nastro Azurro ads of some George Clooney look-alike getting off…
Case Study I have four guest lecturers for my ethics class this semester that I am teaching and I find the story around them interesting. My quandaries have to do with how I chose them, how they responded and how they are handling the task at hand. To begin with one of my friends, Michael the Mad Welshman, who lectured in my Advanced Corporate Finance course last semester, took note of the fact (mostly just…
The Tempest and the Tinsmith I guess I haven’t yet really figured out the seasons here on this hillside. Back east there was a higher degree of familiarity about what February, March or April meant when it came to the events of nature. It would be hard to say that there is more variability out here, but I guess I would say that the stability of the weather out here makes what little variability we…
On the Cusp My world today seems balanced on the cusp. Sometimes that just happens to us all, but I am really feeling it today for one reason or another. To begin with, I start my Spring Semester class on business ethics tonight. It is something I have aspired to teach for some time and now its about to begin. I am going for my second Pickleball lesson today with Kim and have my own…
A Loud Knock on the Door Things are closing in, at last, on our friend Donald Trump, and it’s about time. Trump has gotten away with “murder” for over thirty years. His impunity knows no bounds. But sooner or later even The Great Houdini tried one trick too many and found his burst appendix did him in on Halloween. I, like many, have been amazed at how much one arrogant and egocentric man could get…