A Room Without a View This week we are hopping from one roadway hotel to the next. Tuesday night was in the Holiday Inn Express in Richfield, Utah. It is right next to Rt. 70 and part of a highway exit dedicated to Rt. 70 travelers. Everything you need is within a hundred yards; a gas station, a minimart, a McDonalds and slightly better restaurant for those preferring not-so-fast food. The hotel has dug itself…
Falling to Earth I spent much of my drive yesterday through Utah listening to Ben Rhodes, the DeputyNational Security Advisor to Barack Obama, reading his newest book, After the Fall. It is a set of tremendously insightful vignettes from his post-White House years traveling around the world interacting with consulting clients. The specific theme is that democracy is not so much about to fall apart, but actually has begun the process of falling apart. His…
Susie and Pete We had dinner last night at Susie and Pete’s house in Wabash, Indiana, Kim’s old home town. Kim and Betty even stayed there last night since the Charley Creek Inn, in downtown Wabash is not so pet-friendly. Gary and Oswaldo and I stayed at the Charley Creek Inn, which, despite it’s uncharacteristically unfriendly approach to Betty, is an old, turn-of-the-prior-century hotel, restored with love and a refined eye for detail into a…
The Blue Origin of Life This morning I am reading articles that are making me simply pop with enthusiasm to write stories. Thus is the burden of a fertile and inquisitive mind since we are destined to depart on our cross-country road trip as soon as Kim finished her ablutions. It was a strange last night at home since Betty Poop has a case of explosive diarrhea which seems to have been brought on by…
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…
The Girls at the Beach The other day Kim asked me if I thought my sisters would like to have a copy of a picture she found of the two of them in our mother’s hands, standing at the beach. Out mother had her hair being whipped about by the coastal breeze and the girls looked somewhat less than as exuberant as her. Kathy, the eldest, with her dark pixie haircut was looking up at…
The Silver Lining Script I am going to declare right up-front that I have “borrowed” this title from a combination of two sources. There is the 2012 movie Silver Linings Playbook from David O. Russell, staring Bradley Cooper, Jennifer Lawrence and Robert De Niro. That told the story of a slightly mentally ill man who moves home with his parents and tries to get over a bad marriage by entering a dance competition with a…
What Matters A few weeks ago something popped up on one of my social media feeds or I got a commercial junk email (I don’t remember which) and these specially curated or personalized product offerings looked very familiar to me. There were metal-clad hoses (I have bought three of for from Hammacher Schlemmer over the past year), Gorilla carts (I am the proud owner of one of these back-savers) and outdoor metal sculpture (Lord knows…
The Trump Blog I’ve just realized that in the several months since Donald Trump has left the White House and Joe Biden has taken the helm of our tattered democracy, I have written very little that qualifies as political in content (only two in 2021). I’m sure some of my readers are happy about that and the rest are just satisfied in being less on the edge of their chair every moment with an even-keeled…
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…