Viz-a-Visa One of my responsibilities now that we are in the New Year is to get all our ducks in a row for our trip to Southeast Asia that we are taking next month. To be honest, most of the legwork in terms of the bookings and arrangements have already been done with great diligence by Mike. Mike also paved the path on the entry visas for all six countries we will be visiting (Singapore,…
The Comfort of Analysis In the expert witness business there are four basic functions that one must be able to handle. The first involves reading large quantities of evidence, testimony and reports. I have never been a particularly fast reader. I didn’t get glasses until I was in fourth grade. For some reason, my mother didn’t notice my vision deficiency until it was quite debilitating in school. I just could not see what was on…
It’s Tomplicated I read this morning that Tommy Smothers died. We all remember him and his brother Dickie from their Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour variety TV show during the 1960’s, but I have now learned so much more about him from his obituary. I met Tommy Smothers once on some random airplane ride where he got seated in the window seat next to my aisle seat. Luckily, it was a first class seat, so I…
Busy Buddy Our lives have been changed in the past two weeks, and as often the case with people who get new pets, it is almost all due to Buddy. In a nutshell, Buddy is a five-pound ball of energy, trying hard to run with the big dogs. He sleeps like a champ since he is still very much a puppy of only 14 months, but once he wakes up he is on the go.…
Reprising My Year This week is almost always a moment of reflection as the year winds down and thoughts about the new year come to mind. Reflection is an important element of learning and we are never too old to learn, so I have decided to look back upon my year in 2023 and consider what exactly are the highlights worth reprising and thereby memorializing to help me sort out how to do better in…
The Aftermath We had 25 for Christmas dinner yesterday. We were supposed to be 29, but due to a touch of child illness, we were down 4 soldiers. Every one of those attendees is a member of our immediate family and their significant others. 7 have Kim’s blood. 8 have my blood. That means 10 are significant others of those 15. If we literally had all of my and Kim’s blood relatives and others, we…
Ho Ho Ho, Motherfucker Most of you will remember that line from what some consider to be the best Christmas movie of all time, the classic Bruce Willis Die Hard. The original was made in 1988 based on the novel Nothing Lasts Forever, written in 1979. Well, the Die Hard series tried to disprove that with no less than four sequels, Die Hard 2 (1990), Die Hard with a Vengeance (1995), Live Free or Die…
The Quiet Moments I am currently running about seven or eight days ahead of myself with my daily story writing. i go through cycles when I am ahead like this and when I am chasing my tail to get out a story to meet my daily morning deadline. Lately I have tended towards running ahead by as few as two or three days to a maximum of ten days. I don’t like to get too…
The Mail The movie The Postman, starring Kevin Costner, got broadly dissed when it was released. That was in 1997 and looking at its IMDb Metascore of 29, I think its fair to say that it also hasn’t aged particularly well. Nonetheless, I’m, generally a fan of Costner’s and I really quite like the movie. I think what I like most about the movie is what it says about civilization as we know it. It…
Das Boat Narrative nonfiction is a particularly pleasing form of writing to me. Many people would agree that there are more than enough true stories to fill our imaginations and that we don’t need fiction to lift our hearts. I have never been particularly good at writing fiction. I don’t think its a lack of imagination, but rather a lack of interest in factionalizing from scratch. I have been known to embellish a story to…