What About Bob? I have now met Bob three times. He is a local electrician who is 62-years old and he has come to the house once to install an outlet in the Master Bath to accommodate a new bidet we wanted to install, once to install nine LED outdoor security lights and today to install a ceiling outlet box for a Big Ass Fan I have bought to put in the study. Bob would…
My Garage Seat I am becoming a man of new interests. When I started working in late June, 1976 it was a mere two months before I got engaged to be married. Our wedding was just after Thanksgiving. By February we had bought a house. It was a nice little starter house with three bedrooms and a bath upstairs and a kitchen, living room, dining room, den and half bath downstairs. As a starter house,…
Sprinting Forward Every family needs dynamic tension I suppose. I am proud to be a part of a family that likes to speak its own mind and is never short on opinions. And those opinions are not restricted to politics or the goings on around the community and world. They also extend into what we are all doing all on our own. No one is a bigger target than me and here is why I…
Secrets of the Digital Universe I feel I owe you all some resolution on several unanswered mysteries that have been plaguing me for the past few months. I have found over the past fifty years that the old medical school adage to “think horses, not zebras” is more true than not and and serves us well when trying to solve mysteries. The complicated conspiracy theory of the dead neighbor having set up a ruse to…
Escape From New York I have always loved the 1981 John Carpenter film (he wrote it and directed it) starring Kurt Russell and portraying the dystopic city which has become a Federal maximum-security prison (the only one in the country) allowed to self-govern and headed by Isaac Hayes with Ernest Borgnine running around giving people cab rides in his old Checker. Russell plays one of the great movie characters of all time, Snake Plissken with…
Finding the Warmth Today it was overcast to start what will likely be a fine day. An overcast day always makes me want to jump in the hot tub in the morning. I have my spa app set up to have my spa warmed and ready from 7am to 9am. I would guess I go in three or four days a week during those hours. Other days I go in later and just manually turn…
Home Ownership They say that pride of ownership means everything and I sometimes understand that and at other times ponder its wisdom. It has always appealed to me to think that this life is all about dust to dust and that in the long run, none of us own anything other than the love we give and the love we take with us. Everything else is flotsam and jetsam. I know that some families like…
A Fortnight of Sunlight Twenty years ago, Peter Mayle and his wife spent a year “retiring” from their overcast British lifestyle (he had been a British Mad Man) by buying and renovating a house in Provence. He was already a writer, but his best-selling book A Year in Provence established him at a late stage in life (his 60’s) as a prominent and popular writer. I both loved the book and loved the whole romantic…
Homeward Bound My hone out here in San Diego got its name from my favorite movie. I used to have mixed feelings about naming my homes because it seemed pretentious and very egotistical. But then I came to make my peace with the issue on the theory that these homes were all about family to me and the ability to gather with them and lend them to them and even host my close friends. So…
This Little Piggy Stayed Home Today, like most days, I called up Jeff to see what was going on in his life. I am in the habit of calling Jeff every day for several reasons. First of all, he’s one of the few men of my age that I know around here, second, he is generally my go-to guy for stuff around the house because he knows the house and he is generally a font…