Normal Is As Normal Does Yesterday, Kim and I decided at noon to go to see a movie at 1:50 in the afternoon. That’s the sort of thing we might have done two years ago on a Saturday while living in Manhattan. But yesterday was Thursday and we are still living under a COVID cloud. So, to begin with, we are retired and do not have jobs that keep us occupied Monday through Friday. We…
The Simple Life My friend Gary is always telling me that I live a more active life than he could stand. Kim has often wondered why I do all that I do. While that may have been true at one point, I’m not so sure that’s the case any more. I still work at things and I still write a lot, but I really am a man of leisure these days and I am getting…
The Hallowed Halls I am once again sitting here in the hallway of a building on the campus of the University of San Diego, where I am an adjunct professor in the graduate business program. When I was at Cornell’s graduate business school for ten years, I was not alone as an adjunct professor, but it was not like here. I do not know, nor do I plan to investigate the exact balance between full-time…
Calico Cats Quandry I currently subscribe to global news feeds including NYT, WAPO, WSJ and FT, but also read New Yorker, Esquire, Vanity Fair and NatGeo. Oh, very relevantly, I also read the monthly AARP Bulletin. When Apple News feeds me something I can’t read without subscribing, I generally pass and just absorb the headline. I also use Prime, Netflix, AppleTV, HBO Max and Hulu for subscription videos. I will ignore the social media subscriptions…
Chasing Projects My back hillside is finished. My Garden is done and perhaps overdone. My patio area is complete. My games area is ready and waiting. Even my Fairy Garden is set until the next change of season. What then to do with my abundance of time, enthusiasm and need for accomplishment? I guess I now have to rely on three sources of new projects. The obvious first one is to consider what I can…
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…
Chamber of Commerce Weather In December 2011, Kim, youngest son Thomas and I took a road trip. We flew into San Francisco, rented a car and began a West Coast odyssey to find a new home for the future. I had sold my Park City home in 2007 during the worst moments of the Bear Stearns hedge fund debacle. That was not a home that I felt particularly attached to. I had bought the monster…
Our Pieces of Peace Kim and I differ greatly in some ways and are very much alike in others. If I had to define the demarcation, I would say that we differ in the things that motivate our souls, but are very much alike in the things that motivate our hearts. Let me explain that a bit. I am choosing to define soul as that which most defines how we choose to spend our time…
On Mechanization On another wet day on the hillside, I am pondering the mechanization of my gardening efforts. I will start with a simple commentary on manual versus automated work. It is true that I can get a strong Mexican laborer’s back for the day for $160. That’s $20/hr plus lunch and transportation for eight hours of work. Let’s keep this simple and talk about moving mulch or stone (as in smaller rocks and pebbles)…