Brad Moon Rising I have now given Handy Brad eight months of more or less continuous employment. Assuming an average 35 hour per week, that means I practically have had a full-time staff member most of the year to help me with my projects around the house. Those have included re-stuccoing the back side of the house and deck, re-flashing the deck, power-washing the entire house’s stucco, replacing the utility room outer doors, building concrete…
We’re Not In Kansas Anymore I worry about Kansas. My friend David bought the rights to a recent book about the life of Carry Nation, the hatchet-wielding leader of the temperance movement who was also a Suffragette. He asked me to write a treatment of the book for a possible movie. I did that and ended up learning more about Ms. Nation than I had intended. The project hasn’t gone anywhere just yet, but we’ll…
The Gambit of Life I have begun watching the Netflix series called The Queen’s Gambit. It is a series set, like so many others of interest to me these days, in the 1960’s and it centers around chess. It is the story of a global chess Grandmaster by the name of Beth Harmon who is the orphan of a mathematics professor and a very troubled mother with a great deal of intellect. She is raised…
Perfection Redefined It is a cloudy and mildly rainy day here on the Escondido hilltop. To begin with, what brings all of this to mind this Sunday morning is that I have been awaiting this rain day for over ten days now. I know that by March I will be wondering what I was thinking wishing for rain, but to the best of my recollection, it hasn’t really rained here since April. I know that’s…
Backing Up On Ice Have you ever driven a car or truck with a trailer attached? And did you try to back-up with that trailer attached? I’ll bet almost everyone has at one time or another. It’s challenging the first time and it takes a long time for it to get less challenging. I’m sure a neurologist can explain why our brains are not wired to easily handle doing things in reverse with lots of…
My Heroes At different times of my life I have admired many different people for any number of qualities. When I was four and living in Santa Monica, I remember discussing my heroes of the moment, who were the firemen and policemen of the local forces. The German woman with the Hispanic-sounding first name (Maria) that had come with us from Venezuela to care for my sisters and me, fed into my hero-worship by inviting…
People Are Funny Today, after several business calls with the financing half of my little scientific R&D company team and an email to my expert witness partner explaining that I am imminently qualified as an expert in why a project financing did not get financed for a big African gas project, I decided to take a long overdue motorcycle ride on a nice-not-too-hot afternoon here in Southern California. I know that rain is coming on…
Learning To Be Quiet When I was in college almost fifty years ago, I was a member of a fraternity at Cornell. In those days the University was woefully deficient in undergraduate dormitory housing for upperclassmen. I’m not sure which was the chicken and which was the egg in the equation (without dorms the need for fraternities was greater or with fraternities the demand for dorms was slack). Whichever was the cause and the effect,…
Planning to Plant People are amazed that I have gotten into gardening as I have. I do not find it so amazing, but rather somewhat predictable. While I have owned sixteen homes in my lifetime, three have been apartments in NYC (one with a large terrace that I planted and then replanted by my own design), nine have been vacation homes (two in the Hudson Valley, one in the Hamptons, five for skiing in Utah…
Feel-Good I’ve had a few things wrap up in the last few days and with completion comes evaluation and feedback. When I was in the thick of my working career (actually the relatively early days since I was only just under ten years in), I ran a Division that had use of a company car that I would occasionally drive home for the night. We did not have a full-time parking space, but could keep…