The Leader of the Pack It’s July 4th, Independence Day, and I am thinking about packs of people and how they interact with one another. I wrote yesterday about my transition from working guy to retired guy and I know that these are not unusual thoughts for a man of my age, but that does not prevent me from thinking that I can somehow express them in new, interesting or possibly even unique ways. I…
Working It When I started college, I began as an engineering student at Cornell, one of the best engineering schools in the U.S. Like so many young men, I tended to show stronger grades and test scores for math and science than for verbal. That and a romantic sense of manly endeavors in the engineering world made me think that I wanted to be a civil or perhaps operations engineer. I actually did well in…
Passing Through Our drive to New York City today went pretty much as expected. On a Sunday morning in June, the week-ending population of New York usually doesn’t set out on the roads until the afternoon. That means we expected that our morning drive from the country to the city would be light traffic. That was the case right up until we got to that mess of a set of tangled roadways around Jersey City…
Post-Pandemic Parenting I am sitting here in the most bucolic of spots on my deck in Ithaca. The view across my pool in this bright sunshiny June morning (73 with a high predicted of 78) makes this a pretty ideal place to hang out under the awning and umbrella shade. To take a moment to describe the scene, the pool is surrounded by a substantial white picket fence (as is the deck a few feet…
Sneaking Into New York City Today is Father’s Day according to convention in the United States that begun, more or less, in 1910. A Day for honoring fathers has been a part of Western culture since the Middle Ages. Mothers have been honored formally in the U.S. since about the same time as fathers in the Unites States, but more broadly, mothers have been held on a pedestal for at least one day of the…
Party Time I am sitting here at party-central this weekend. It’s almost 2pm and we have an open house from 3-6pm where we are expecting 40-50 people in total. Yesterday we had about thirty people for brother-in-law Bennett’s 70th birthday party. Yesterday was a fully catered party with what had to be the most California healthy menu I’ve ever seen. They called it a “Mediterranean Menu”, so I will know now what that means, lots…
Life Interrupted Whenever I have to fly somewhere and I have a choice, I always choose to fly earlier rather than later. Some people don’t want to be rushed on departure but I don’t want to hang around all day before leaving. I simply feel better getting to where I am going and then relaxing. I can’t seem to relax so well before going, but only after arriving. I’m sure it is like being a…
Hey, Neighbor When I started writing about selling yesterday, I did so to lead into a story about canvassing my neighborhood selling the idea of a gathering we are planning. When I write, I have a general direction I head off towards, but I purposefully allow myself the flexibility to wander wherever my thoughts take me. In the case of yesterday’s story about selling, I got to my daily word limit before I had had…
Bubbling in the Shade When I bought this house on the hilltop it was January of 2012. I saw it on Christmas morning, 2011 from astride my motorcycle (only from the bottom of the driveway since I was sheepish of interrupting the seller’s holiday), went to contract on December 28th, finally had my sister the architect do a walk-through with a phone video camera and closed on the sale on January 30th, my 58th birthday.…
Becalmed In a seafaring sense, being becalmed is a bad thing. Remaining motionless due to a lack of wind is something every sailor dreads since it leaves him at the mercy of the currents and tides with no ability to set his course and make progress. In retirement the objective (at least for me) is to adjust to a state of being becalmed and liking it. Even if we are not working at all, we…