You Guys Playin’ Cards? There is a great scene from the the classic movie, National Lampoon’s Animal House, where the new pledge, Kent Dorfman (a.k.a. Flounder) ,who comes into the fraternity as a legacy based on the membership of his older brother, walks into the house and sees a group of upperclassmen at the poker table and says, “Hi guys……you guys playin’ cards?” It’s a showstopper because its the moment that Flounder establishes himself as…
A Room Without a View This week we are hopping from one roadway hotel to the next. Tuesday night was in the Holiday Inn Express in Richfield, Utah. It is right next to Rt. 70 and part of a highway exit dedicated to Rt. 70 travelers. Everything you need is within a hundred yards; a gas station, a minimart, a McDonalds and slightly better restaurant for those preferring not-so-fast food. The hotel has dug itself…
Susie and Pete We had dinner last night at Susie and Pete’s house in Wabash, Indiana, Kim’s old home town. Kim and Betty even stayed there last night since the Charley Creek Inn, in downtown Wabash is not so pet-friendly. Gary and Oswaldo and I stayed at the Charley Creek Inn, which, despite it’s uncharacteristically unfriendly approach to Betty, is an old, turn-of-the-prior-century hotel, restored with love and a refined eye for detail into a…
The Blue Origin of Life This morning I am reading articles that are making me simply pop with enthusiasm to write stories. Thus is the burden of a fertile and inquisitive mind since we are destined to depart on our cross-country road trip as soon as Kim finished her ablutions. It was a strange last night at home since Betty Poop has a case of explosive diarrhea which seems to have been brought on by…
Party Time I am sitting here at party-central this weekend. It’s almost 2pm and we have an open house from 3-6pm where we are expecting 40-50 people in total. Yesterday we had about thirty people for brother-in-law Bennett’s 70th birthday party. Yesterday was a fully catered party with what had to be the most California healthy menu I’ve ever seen. They called it a “Mediterranean Menu”, so I will know now what that means, lots…
The Girls at the Beach The other day Kim asked me if I thought my sisters would like to have a copy of a picture she found of the two of them in our mother’s hands, standing at the beach. Out mother had her hair being whipped about by the coastal breeze and the girls looked somewhat less than as exuberant as her. Kathy, the eldest, with her dark pixie haircut was looking up at…
The Silver Lining Script I am going to declare right up-front that I have “borrowed” this title from a combination of two sources. There is the 2012 movie Silver Linings Playbook from David O. Russell, staring Bradley Cooper, Jennifer Lawrence and Robert De Niro. That told the story of a slightly mentally ill man who moves home with his parents and tries to get over a bad marriage by entering a dance competition with a…
Hilltop Still-life I have started to pack for our trip East next week. Truth be told, I already sent a box of clothes to Ithaca so that we don’t have to lug so much back and forth in the car. God knows, I have enough summer clothes out here since it is summer all year long as I see it. Putting a week’s worth of roadtrip clothes in a leather satchel took all of ten…
Calling in the Cavalry When I decided to move out here to San Diego about two years ago, I spoke with Kim and we decided to just put a stake in the ground. I said we should move out at the end of 2019, which meant we should extend our lease on our apartment in New York for only eight months instead of twelve months. When I spoke to the rental company I expected some…
The Eclectic Home A few years ago we visited two homes on either coast of the country. One was the New York condominium apartment of a an old colleague and the other was a friend’s condo out here in the West. Both homes had something in common, they were as lovely and well-decorated as a model home on HGTV might be, but they both equally lacked any soul. They didn’t looked lived-in. Indeed, both were…