We almost live as close to Los Angeles as we do to San Diego. I think if it weren’t for the traffic in the LA basin, we might think of Los Angeles as our nearby city. Occasionally, and especially when we plan international travel, we look at the flights coming and going from LAX. It always surprises me when we can’t do considerably better either in terms of schedule or price flying out of LAX…
When things go sideways, its important to step back and keep things in perspective. I suspect this is really about maintaining emotional and psychological balance so that not every setback sends us to the cliff edge contemplating jumping off. This is an exercise we all must master in our lives if we are to soldier on in the face of adversity, and as the old saying goes, into every life a little bit of rain…
Mud-puddle has always been a word or word contraction that I have always liked for some reason. It was the great novelist Sinclair Lewis, America’s first Nobel Laureate for literature as well as Pulitzer Prize writer, who won those accolades “for his vigorous and graphic art of description” when he described in his first and most famous novel, Main Street, the confines of small town American life, with its “mud–puddles and ragged weeds by the…
Last night was the second of two shows put on this weekend by Kim’s Encore Vocal Group. They do two Main Stage shows twice per year and several smaller shows in between. This is the second show they have put on at the Grand Ritz Theater in Escondido. They did last year’s fall show there as well. All of their shows have a theme, which guides the selection of songs and give the cast a…
For years now, I have thought to myself that I simply don’t understand why people listen to podcasts. Meanwhile podcasting has grown to become one of the most profitable mediums (to the podcaster) with the most audience appeal and an absolute influence on the political scene. It is now being said that Joe Rogan single-handedly won this election for Trump by swaying 11-15 million listeners (mostly young males) to the Trump camp, thanks to his…
Last night I got a one hour massage from my massage therapist who has come to my home for perhaps eight years. I paid him for my regular two hour massage. My long history with this guy, a very soft-spoken man who grew up in the valley to the east where the more hardened folks of this area reside. It’s ranch country and they are ranch-strong, which I suppose is a lot like being farm-strong.…
You will probably never hear me talk about life on this hilltop any other way than I have. I love our hilltop and feel that we chose our property exceedingly well twelve years ago. The last five years of living here full time have done nothing but reinforce that view (pun intended). But now something has changed about life on the hilltop. Imbedded in any hilltop living is an overt or subtle sense of superiority.…
Out here on this hilltop, November is an unpredictable month. I can remember a stormy November with 17 days of torrential rain which almost made my flat roof unserviceable. This year it is more normal with a hint of evening rain on one or two days , but mostly clear skies, like we have had for the past many months. It’s been very dry overall for a long time…so say my succulents. With daytime high…
When did they stop making bootstraps part of our daily ritual? I have recently become a devotee of Claude, the AI bot from Anthropic. It tells me, “From what I understand, the literal bootstrap (the tab or loop on boots used to pull them on) has never entirely gone “out of fashion” – they remain functional features on many types of boots today, particularly Western/cowboy boots. If you’re referring to the saying “pull yourself up…
I’ve had some strange dreams lately. I really don’t know what to make of them, so I’m doing my best to ignore them. As is usually the case, I only remember dreams if I wake up in the middle of one. Disturbing images are not so incomprehensible, but sorting out what motivates some dreams gets very hard. Why would you dream of someone you long ago made peace with? Especially if that dream consists of…