Tongue-Tied Sometimes I have to struggle to find a good title for a story or, indeed, find a good story. My friend Gary, who reads and comments on almost every story I write has recently told me that it is only logical that I will run out of things to say and stories to write and I have challenged that. I said that so long as I have breath and can get around and do…
Ghislaine and Chris I have written before about how I met Ghislaine Maxwell thirty-one years ago in both New York City and London. I do not know for certain when she met Jeffrey Epstein, but the New York Times reported that they met in the “early nineties”, so the chances are that I had the opportunity to meet her before she knew Epstein, much less before she went headlong into his sordid kiddy-porn world and…
Freight Forwarding We are in the week after Thanksgiving and it feels, as always, like we are wrapping things up for the year. We are having a few final things done at the house (replacing the flooring in the MBR and Guest Rooms), we are planning our last two trips (one to Joshua Tree for Joshua’s 40th birthday, and the other to NYC to see the kids), Kim is wrapping presents at her wrapping center…
Up Schitt’s Creek I have just started to catch up on the Dan and Eugene Levy cable TV comedy that aired from 2015 – 2020. What prompted it was that I needed a gap-filler TV show to watch while I wait for Kim either before dinner, after dinner or while she is getting her PJs on. I guess I am just more sedentary than Kim because when I sit down for the evening and start…
Shooting the Moon When I was a kid (I’m not sure I have a handle on exactly when), I was given a game called Shooting the Moon. It was one of these wooden table games of coordination that families like to have around during the holidays to keep family members amused in good, healthy activities that help them stay away from mind-numbing TV watching. There must be people out there who make these games up…
Holiday Winds I have a raft of holiday movies that are important to me year after year. I started this “collection” during my last year in college and attribute it all to my pal Mike Parkinson for some reason. I don’t actually remember ever watching Bing Crosby and Danny Kaye in White Christmas with Mike, but that’s the movie that started it all for me. I remember going to a long-since defunct restaurant called Turbacks…
Playing Chicken As the seasons change and cooler weather is starting to get interspersed with the normally warm days, my back hillside work is grinding to a halt. It is leaving a definite gap in my daily activities which I am not so ready to abandon just yet. Well, that led to my buying an eight-foot tall chicken. Sounds logical, right? It did to me anyway and I ordered up this huge metal sculpture for…
The Next Generation They say now that humans first appeared on earth some 300,000 years ago. They seem to have “scientifically” estimated that Adam and Eve came on the scene about 150,000 years ago (I have no idea how that calculation is even possible). The last ice age started about 12,000 years ago right after a comet of significant proportions hit the earth about 1,000 years prior. They say this was an extinction-level event that…
Alternative Facts Today I got an email from my Department Chair (in Finance) at University of San Diego. He asked me if I would be willing to add a half of a course to my Spring 2022 schedule. It seems there is a need in the Masters of Finance program for someone to teach one half of a short course on Alternatives. There is an existing professor of real estate finance who will teach half…
Hazy and Lazy I make no apologies for it. I have had a lazy streak in me my whole life. I tend to think it is caused by my not inconsiderable bulk and Newton’s First Law of Motion that a body in motion tends to stay in motion and a body at rest tends to stay at rest. And the bigger the body, the more energy it takes to keep it in motion and once…