Riding With Steve In 1963 Steve McQueen made the movie The Great Escape with James Garner, Richard Attenborough, Charles Bronson, James Coburn and David McCallum. It was directed by John Sturges, who made The Magnificent Seven and Old Man and the Sea (the one with Spencer Tracy). It is one of my favorite movies and I’ve seen it over and over again. It was nominated for a number of awards and even won a few…
Mixing & Matching Today I went to the local CVS Pharmacy to get my COVID-19 booster shot. Just yesterday the CDC had followed up on the FDA’s prior day approval of the Moderna and J&J booster shot and added the ability (maybe even as much as a suggestion) that we were allowed to mix and match vaccine manufacturers. I tend to think this was mostly done for the people who had gotten the one-shot J&J…
Thin Skin This morning I did what I occasionally do, which is to go back over the past few weeks of posts to this blog to see what sort of comments have been made. I have one specific reader who has become one of the few commenters and he comments often. His name is Dr, Nicholas Bednarski and he is a nephrologist who lives near my in-laws Sharon and Woo. I met Nick through our…
Stuffed I have just spent the last half hour listening to my lovely Kim writhing in agony after having eaten some tuna fish with low-fat mayonnaise. Kim is trying to get back on her feed, so to speak, after gastric bypass surgery. I know it is still early days (her surgery was three weeks ago today), but she seems to be having a tough time of getting her GI system back into some semblance of…
Sleeping In Sleep is the great restorative. Nature tells us that regular and prolonged periods of rest are important for the wellbeing of the body and mind. And yet who among us has not struggled with sleep? For one, Betty never seems to have a problem. I estimate that she sleeps about ten hours at night since she nods off before us and then pretty much stays down for the duration, with only a rare…
Falling Uphill For months now I have gone up and down the back hill without incident. I am always careful, but parts of the hill are steep and all of it is rocky. What makes it even tougher is that there are parts of the turf that seems to have no substance beneath it. I can’t tell if that is due to gofers or just dryness that has dried out and aerated the earth. I…
The Rug Merchant A few days ago, I got a call from a guy who called himself Tobin. He asked if I remembered him from when we were in Turkey and had bought rugs from him. It seems he is here in Southern California with a truck full of rugs (actually, I have learned that it’s three containers full from which he refills his rugs). He wanted to come over and show us his wares…
A Valuation of Old Town We just had a quick visit from NYC friends Steven and Leslie. I know both from my Bankers Trust days of yore. Steven was a colleague who was a controller and then a CFO of several businesses I ran. Leslie was a central Human Resources professional. We have stayed in touch over the years and, indeed, Steven and I have worked together on other private company ventures. We go back…
Thunder and Lightning In 1972, Chi Coltrane, released her first, and probably her greatest hit called Thunder and Lightning. It is a simple song in terms of the lyrics and about the only thing it says is that “you’re in control”, and who knows what that means except perhaps that no one can control thunder and lightning and it is the ultimate uncontrollable state of nature. We all know that thunder comes from lightning, but…
The Movies I was once introduced to Ron Howard, Opie from The Andy Griffith Show of my youth and the filmmaker of greatest repute of my adult life. His directorial credits include Hillbillies Elegy, The DaVinci Code, Frost/Nixon (Nominated Best Director and Best Picture), Cinderella Man, A Beautiful Mind (Winner Best Director and Best Picture), Apollo 13, Backdraft, Parenthood and Cocoon. There are few people, other than perhaps Rob Reiner, Meathead from All in the…