Sushiyama Sushi is, contrary to popular opinion, originally a Chinese dish and not a Japanese dish. The Chinese first discovered the appealing flavors of combining fermented rice and salted (not cooked) fish, which were introduced for practical reasons of keeping the food bacteria-free. They first did this in about 200 B.C. and in another 1,000 years, the concept found its way across the Sea of Japan and onto the menu of the upper class residents…
Better Betty Management Kim is away this week. Betty is confused. Betty is always a little bit confused, but she is especially confused this week. On a normal day when she is not sleeping, she will wander from here to there in the house with a modicum of purpose, seeking something I presume to be Kim’s presence. It reassures her that Kim is nearby. Lots of people, including Kim, anthropomorphize that as Betty’s love for…
Is It Thursday Yet? That is the name of the show Kim and I went to last night at the La Jolla Playhouse. I have no compunction about using someone else’s title for my story title since I do not try to commercialize these stories and am simply following a path that has me telling my readers about things I find interesting. I found this play we went to unexpectedly interesting, and Kim found it…
CostCo to the Rescue As I have previously explained, my hilltop pal Mike is a real devotee of CostCo, along with about 119 million other people on the planet. That all makes CostCo the third largest retailer in America behind Walmart and Amazon. When I think I need something right away, I go online to Amazon and try for the same-day delivery program. I just did that for my favorite shampoo yesterday (false alarm, I…
Control Yourself I am exploring a side of life that comes up every so often. It is that strange balancing act we all do between keeping busy and being busy. Keeping busy is a good thing that has many benefits including the fulfillment of some purpose and an identification that we are adding value in some way to the world. Being busy sounds like an excuse right from the get-go and generally envisages a state…
The Dance Card Gets Filled The notion of a dance card started in the Eighteenth Century, but it really came into vogue in Nineteenth Century Vienna. I always thought of it in regard to Gone With The Wind with the young Scarlett O’Hara with a small booklet looped to her wrist where the evening ballroom dances were listed and next to which she could write the names of the many beaus and potential suitors that…
Our Gypsy Blood I am somewhere in season five of following the travails of Thomas Shelby and his family of Peaky Blinders. I recognize that I am a full decade behind in finding fascination in this series, but I am enjoying it nonetheless. The story covers the fifteen years after WWI in Birmingham, England and follows the rise of a larcenous and unscrupulous family as they work their way through the roaring twenties dealing with…
And the Hits Just Keep On Coming It was shaping up like a bit of a horse race between Jack Smith and Fani Willis as to who was going to criminally indict Donald Trump first for his purported attempts to overturn the 2020 election results. In the past few days there has been a lot of speculation about Willis, the District Attorney for Fulton County, Georgia, and just how ready she was to bring her…
The Framers’ View I just saw Eric Holder, the ex-Attorney General under Barack Obama, responding to a question about all of the Donald Trump indictments and pending legal actions. That is the sort of question that is being asked of many many people these days, whether they are ex-government officials or just cable news pundits. One of the things that we have all been thinking about for the past six or seven years is the…
Is the Bloom Off the Rose? I am sitting on our patio this sunny late July morning and there is a slight breeze from the east. I am doing what I always do in the morning if I am not rushing off to do something or go somewhere, I am trying hard to be in the moment and feel what I feel around me. I like the patio in the morning and in the late…