Peter D.

BOOKS...no commercials

2011-09-24T17:02:00.000-07:00

I spent a few hours of fun this week reading titles of 1000 best and/or famous books bringing back good memories trying to recall where I was when I read them...some of them I read as a young kid when we didn't have TV growing up in Montreal; some in college, but most at home as a dad while the kids were crying their heads off...reading is a wonderful distraction from real life especially when your spouse takes care of them. Why did I do this exercise? Because for the past six months I’ve been on a reading kick and been devouring novels and short stories like they’re going out of style. Being semi-retired has its benefits sometimes.

Some of my old favorites include Jules Verne (Twenty Thousand Leagues under the Sea), Alexander Dumas (The Count of Monte Christo), Herman Melville (Moby Dick), Agatha Christie (and Then There Were None), and Robert Lewis Stevenson (Treasure Island).
Lately I’ve found several on-line sites offering free or very inexpensive e-Books for my Kindle. Kindle-ing is a great way to go...while reviewing tons of books I saw many authors and books I’ve always wanted to read but have never gotten around to reading.

I've read about 95 of those thousand famous books. Years ago I began reading best sellers like James Patterson, Dean Koontz, Clive Cussler, John Grisham, Mary Higgins Clark, Stephen King and about a dozen others who’s latest books I have a hard time staying away from…I don’t hardly have yard work to do anymore, the house needs a bit of painting here and there and I hope to one day paint something...I don’t think anyone can read 8 hours a day but reading is a nice way to spend a few hours (a few time a day) and I’m not going to stop reading these favorites. (A home office can be a real curse for readers)

But I’ve always had a desire to read some of the early 20th and late 19th century authors...when I watch an old movie from a book by one of these authors or if I don’t have a good answer to (A question really) to Jeopardy 20th century authors’ category it makes me want to read these people.
As I was reading the list of 1000 I jotted down authors' names and book titles that wrung a bell for me...just about everybody’s heard of these authors or books:
The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald,
Catch 22 by Joseph Heller (I did see the movie and liked it),
Slaughterhouse 5 by Kurt Vonnegut,
The Sun Also Rises and A Farewell to Arms by Hemingway,
On the Road by Kerouac,
The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger,
Main Street by Sinclair Lewis,
War and Peace by Tolstoy (On second thought it may be a bit too long to keep my attention…I might order the movie from Netflix instead)
Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen
A Tree Grows in Brooklyn by Smith
Herzog by Saul Bellows
Don Quixote by Cervantes

From now on I'll be reading a Hemingway then Patterson...F. Scott Fitzgerald/John Grisham...Jane Austen/Dean Koontz...yup, that’s it……

and so it begins...

2011-09-23T08:04:00.000-07:00

Today is the Autumnal Equinox meaning the day and night will be approximately the same, 12 hours...the sun rose at 6:40 and will set at 6:45...
to put it in more common terms the 'days' are getting shorter...
Get your compass out of your hiking back pack and check its accuracy by watching the sun set due West on the first day of fall in North America...

“You know if you’re from America ...

2011-09-12T16:34:00.000-07:00

Facebook has a new feature that connects people who grew up in the same home town…I haven’t tried it yet because it probably works only for people in the United States…and I only know a few Facebookers from Canada and they’re all way younger than me…

This is how it goes:
You know, if you’re from Terre Haute you…” is the setup and Facebook members take turns reminiscing about things only natives of Terre Haute would know like good pizza joints, schools and teachers they hated or liked, etc.

The truth is I was looking for a blog topic and I liked this one…I’ll call it:

“You know if you’re from America
...you always want fries with that,
...you’ve taken a road trip that lasted at least three days
...you still like Peter Frampton
...you know who Matt Kemp is
...you remember paying $1.00 a gallon for gas
...you remember Little House on the Prairie
...you know all the words to the Brady Bunch theme song
...you know who Bobby Thompson is
...you know the last year the Dodgers won the World Series
...the Cosby Show was one of your old time favorites
...you love apple pie and Chevys
...you love iPods, i-Pads and everything Apple
...you love bar-b-queing in the back yard
...you appreciate the Kindle, savior of trees and book publishing (OK, not all of you)
...you love duct tape and WD-40 to tie things up or loosen them
...you never get tired of the Geico gecko
...you don’t like Le Bron James anymore
...you love your GPS
...you love James Taylor
...you’ve read To Kill a Mockingbird
...you learned yadda, yadda, yadda on Seinfeld
...you’re a blogger...we’re all writers now, uh-oh!
...you’re one of 44% of people who believe in legalizing marijuana
...you feel patriotic eating a hot dog, especially a Dodger Dog
...you’re one who believes in the pursuit of a really great picnic but seldom have one

Ah, the Joys of getting older...WHAT???

2011-09-07T14:55:00.000-07:00

Years and years ago I remember my father saying to me, "Do you know what the advantages are to getting older?" Expecting pearls of wisdom from the lips of the man who had taught me a few things…
I waited for the answer: "Nothing. There is no advantage to getting older at all”.
End of lesson, grasshopper

And all I’d been doing was waiting to get older.

But I found that they were pearls of wisdom after all.

I blog, therefore I am...

2011-08-30T09:25:00.002-07:00

There have been some pretty amazing things going on in my life lately and I can make my blog either accurate or interesting, but I can't make it both.

Have you noticed?

2011-08-24T17:40:00.000-07:00

The other night Posh and I were having a nice meal in a restaurant dining room that was right next to the bar...a few feet away I could see and hear four young men talking about what they had recently bought at department stores and, oh yeah, all four were drinking lite beers...

At a table a bit farther away I could see four young women shooting tequilas and, oh yeah, three of them had tattoos...

It's different out there now...A lot of things have changed and I hadn't really noticed...

THINGS I’LL NEVER DO OR NEVER DO AGAIN

2011-08-22T14:02:00.000-07:00

• Eat 5 banana splits at one setting…did it in high school to win a $5 bet…
• Outrun my grandkids…no sense in even trying
• Do a cartwheel…never could and never will
• Drink gin…it tastes like juniper berries, which is what it is…crappy…
• Go on a roller coaster…not necessarily afraid of heights but afraid of falling and hitting the ground…
• Try to pogo…tried it once when I was a little kid and thought it was stupid and still do…
• Drive cross country…did it a few times…once when family moved to Calif from Canada and again with my immediate family in a motor home…the second time was great…again is not in the cards,
• Think I don’t need sunblock…a sign of old age
• Drink alcohol with any kind of worm in it…yeah, sure!
• Use mascara to hide the gray in my mustache…everyone knew.
• Wear a leisure suite with flared lapels…I looked cool…everyone was doing it…
• Buy a dictionary or thesaurus…who needs these anymore with computers.
• Buy another set of golf clubs…I’ve purchased 5 sets in my life, all were the latest equipment guaranteed to shave 5 strokes off my game…by now I should be shooting in the 70’s…but I ain’t.
• Play video games…never again…never liked them and my 4 year old grandson beats me all the time; I quit.
• Get a tattoo…yeah, right
• Buy a book…if it ain’t a Kindle I ain’t buying it.
• Play solitaire on the computer…I play Spider Solitaire.
• Buy a time share…you can get one for almost free now.
• Buy new hand tools like hammers, saws…I stopped building stuff…I read.
• Load up my BlackBerry with ring tones, wallpaper, games and stuff…when I go out these days I leave it at home…it feels so good.
• Send a message in a bottle…I live too far from the beach
• Hug a tree…I love them but don’t need to hug ‘em.
• Take a cold shower…never had to and never will.
• Go without food for 5 days…why?
• Go to Thailand…ditto
• Scuba dive…it’s why I play golf where nothing’s gonna bite me.
• Walk the Golden Gate Bridge…too high, too long and too windy.
• Have a body part pierced…would be hard deciding which part.
• Hike the Grand Canyon…dumbest thing I ever heard.
• Para sail…another dumb thing…if God wanted us to fly he would have given us wings.

WHO KNEW...

2011-08-10T14:26:00.000-07:00

There's a new babysitting device available to parents and grandparents...it isn't one that will actually take care of your child or grandchild, but one that will surely please him or her and completely serve a useful function as well...talk about a new green thing...
Give up?
A hint...I now work in my home and am deluged daily with adds, junk mail, envelopes and cheap newspapers that I immediately discard in my trash can...
You should have one because it helps keep our planet green(er)...

It's an electric paper shredder!!!

My youngest grand kids totally love (with my overseeing) to drop papers into this marvelous invention and watch it do its thing...I have to watch the littlest guy so he doesn't click the machine in reverse to see the shreds coming out, or pull the lid off and handle the shredded paper like confetti...well, maybe it's not that great a toy...but the grand kids love me the most and that makes it worthwhile...they like shredding with me better than eating grandma's cookies, at least until they're done shredding...

Golf on Television

2011-08-08T19:34:00.000-07:00

Who watches golf on TV ?
Who calls eight friends over and gets a keg of beer and a bottle of Vodka?
Landscape architects, I guess. They sit around the TV, yelling,
"Will you look at that golf path? Pure pea gravel."

'LOL' ME TO DEATH

2011-08-04T14:34:00.000-07:00

I don't know about you but are you tired of seeing LOL on Facebook? I've seen it used too many times, and even in the same sentence...once at the beginning, in the fourth word, in the middle, and at the end...I mean, like, give me a freaken break...say it with words, dumb sh*t...how many times can you really mean you're laughing out loud in a sentence?

You know what else drive me nuts? Facebook one-liners saying "I'm going to breakfast now and it's going to be the greatest day'! REALLY? How often do we all have breakfast and it ain't no freaken big deal...How about telling everyone you just finished eating the best pizza in your life and now you can't decide what you'll have for dessert: a cupcake or a brownie...Really?
Or how about this one...I read it on Facebook a while ago...OK, I DO read Facebook and I post clever, neat and funny stuff on it and I DON'T use LOL...anyhow, I saw one this morning that read "Boohoo...I'm out of French Vanilla coffee creamer...it's gonna be a long day"...really?

How about the geniuses that can't spot that they have the 'Caps Lock' on...do you think they ever read what they just wrote? do you think they have no idea what the backspace button's for? Really freaken clever, eh?
But what I hate even more than all the LOL's are the City Ville requests for virtual crap...what's with people asking for donations to City Ville? I mean, do you have nothing else in the world to do? Do you know how to read? Ever try Goggling something to find out how much you don't know about something? I saw one the other day asking for donations for donuts to feed busy cops! Yup! Really!!!!
Excuse me, but I'm LMMFAO.

Stand by ...

2011-07-22T11:53:00.000-07:00

My blogger account went down last week and it's taken me all this time to get it back up...I've been wanting and needing to post but couldn't do it without changing my existing account and coming up with a totally new one with no past history of all the cool and terrific posts I've written...wouldn't want that to happen...right?
now I have to research all my pre-written blogs filed in 'my documents'...there are sooo many it'll be tough to pick one...

It’s It's already July 15… Holy Cow… how time freaken flies…

2011-07-15T09:20:00.000-07:00

My morning started off at 6:30 by meeting one of my ex-employees, now a consultant, at Panera in Lake Forest...he's an early bird-guy like me ...he’s one of four consultants who do a lot of work for me... I arrived earlier so I could have coffee, a bear claw, they have the best bear claws, and read a few more chapters of book 2 of the Hunger Games while I inhaled the bear claw.
When he got there I bought him coffee and he wanted a spinach quiche...who ever said real men don’t eat them?
After a brief banter...guys don’t chat...we got down to business reviewing the work he’d done this week and the new work I had designed for him to work on.

This has become a new and nifty way for me to work, having business meetings with semi-employees at Panera, Starbucks or Coco’s instead of conference rooms...I’ve been operating like this for four months and I really like it…and why do I like it? I have no health insurance to buy for these people, no vacations or sick days to pay for...and best of all I buy them breakfasts and lunches all the time and they love it...it costs me very little to operate my business and I have no rent or insurance payments on an office...I should have thought of this years ago.

So I reviewed drawings and sketches, said adios and drove home half a mile away...

I’ve begun loving going to work again.

I get by with a little help from my grandson...

2011-07-14T16:38:00.000-07:00

For years I took my car to the local car wash and I remember walking in to pay but first stopping to browse the 5,000 different kinds of air fresheners and 50,000 other neat things for sale…
Some of my favorites:
• 51% of the price of a dozen air fresheners…such a deal, eh? I remember buying only one once with a colorful rainbow motif; when my daughters saw it hanging on my rear view mirror they told me to get rid of it or hang it off the turn signal so no one would think I was…different…I had no idea what the rainbow stood for...I thought about how often they embarrassed me and I never said a word…
• Half off a ‘classic’ shoe polish box with carrying handle, like I want to carry it to the office, with three different flavors of polish, and buffing brush…
• 25% off a ‘classic’ shoe stand for the closet that could hold 20 pairs of shoes and can be assembled without tools…
• Beautiful pictures of soft leather shoes called Shoe-be-Doo’s, important in allowing mature feet to breathe…that’s exactly what the sign said; hard to forget…the shoes all looked like they were made for Italian tap dancers…
Friday Freebies:
1. A card section with special offers like 100 free B & W business cards from Staples with the offer expiring on Saturday…
2. A free Crest toothpaste kit from Oprah’s TV network when you filled out a survey after watching her show but you had to be a woman…
3. Buy one waffle and get one free at the Waffle Shoppe with coupon expiring Saturday…
• A nice section of paperback books that always caught my attention; including John Grisham, Harry Potter and a classic section of books by famous dead authors like Alexander Dumas (The Count of Monte Christo), the Bronte Sisters, Robert Lewis Stevenson and Herman Melville.
• A deserted shoe shine stand was on the wall next to the check out counter…I’ve been there dozens of times but I’ve never seen the shoe shine guy…I thought a few times about getting a Bronte Sister book to browse on the stand until my car was done, but I never did. Now I’m too cheap to buy a car wash and I do a better job and it’s more fun when I wash it in my driveway with my 4 year old grandson Elijah. When we're done washing we sit in the back of the car (SUV) and eat cookies, drink milk and read our books...

Sunny in Palm Springs...

2011-07-02T15:22:00.000-07:00

My three grand daughters are avid readers...the oldest, Allison is 28; Sunny, the middle one is 11 years old...the youngest of the three, Thea,is 9 and lives in San Mateo and I know she reads a lot but I don't communicate with her like I do the other two...I more than frequently text both Sunny and Allison and below is an excerpt from Sunny's most recent text to me. Last week her family moved to Palm Springs and we've been texting every day since she left... She has an i-Pad with a downloaded Kindle app and loves it...and I love her for loving it...

Allison loaned me the first book (a hard copy) of the Hunger Games trilogy and after reading it I in turn loaned it to Sunny...after she finished it Sunny could hardly wait to get the Kindle editions of book two and three; and she did.

Saturday afternoon I texted her inquiring if she was finished reading the
third book and this is what she texted back to me a few minutes later:

"Papa, I've been reading every minute since I downloaded it yesterday at Starbucks across the street from our new apartment and I'm almost done...I'm on page 377 of 396...aaahhhh...I don't want to finish it.........OH POO! aaahhhhahahahahahahhhh I finished it..oh my Lord it is so friggin amazing...aaahhhh the ending is so intense I'm tearing up and I'm going to scream...it's not sad...it's just so intense...like seriously, the last 10 words are so intense...READ IT NOW!!!!"

Not just another fish story...

2011-06-30T22:52:00.000-07:00

Yesterday was the first day in a year and a half I didn’t spend time pretending to catch fish, cleaning, gutting and cooking them with shrimp, clams, vegetables and whatever happened to be in our refrigerator that would taste good in our pseudo-bouillabaisse soup. In the past I could almost taste the fish, shrimp and clams as we sipped the soup and dunked French bread. Occasionally my assistant cook (I forgot what they’re called on cooking shows) would toss in a handful of hot pepper and he’d laugh his head off when I burnt my tongue and had difficulty speaking for a few minutes. The assistant cook would then hand me a giant glass of water to cool my taste buds off.

The little guy moved to Palm Springs earlier this week with his Mom, Dad and big sister Sunny. Almost every morning Elijah would come to my room and take me to the walk-in closet, turn off the light because how could we pretend to be deep sea fishing if we were looking at shirts and shoes instead of clouds and waves. One of the first things he’d do is hand out fishing poles; a macho big one for him and what he would call a Barbie-girl pole for me…the little guy has a sense of humor.
We’d bait our lines and cast our poles out, and naturally he casted the farthest…he’d get a nibble or two then reel in what he called ‘a big sucker’.

We’re going to Palm Springs in a few weeks and I already know that he has a walk-in closet in his bedroom…I’m packing my gear and we’ll have a blast… I’m bringing candy bars and Popsicles so we don’t have to eat dumb-ass fish again.

Cool and wet and good...

2011-06-28T18:03:00.000-07:00

I've been burned in the past by hot temperatures in Palm Desert and Palm Springs when we were supervising construction of projects back in 2004 up to 2007...but I have never, ever been in temperatures in the 120's; unless the thermometer in my car is off and it ain't, I saw 128 in the car around 3 in the afternoon...so, what did I do to keep the car cooler? I drove around the apartment project to a dark and shady corner of the site where we had helped move Sarah and her family...I ran back at a blistering hot speed to the apartment knowing it would be worth it when we got back in the car in a few hours.

When we first drove into Palm Desert on Hi-way 111 yesterday morning everything looked hot and dusty...and it was hot and dusty, hot? like it was hot in the car with the AC turned on to max...when we drove thru the center of town it was noticeably semi-vacant...only a few old-folks with umbrellas going to Starbucks for iced lattes...young people were nowhere to be seen...I wondered where they could be...working? maybe, but maybe none of them lived around here...yeah, that was probably it...

We spent several hours emptying the U-Haul truck of a household full of stuff...we got hungry as might be expected and thirsty...we drank water all day and I was elected to go on a food run...I literally ran to my car...well, not at full speed trying to get out of the sun as soon as I could, and finally made as I clicked it unlocked...
Surprise, surprise...I turned the motor on and looked down at a 113 degree reading on the dial...113 in the shade...Holy Hell is what it was...

Looking back and from now on when we visit Sarah (it will be winter) no...we won't even look at the temp gauge...it will be cooler not knowing how hot it is...you know what I mean?

But in the end helping Sarah get into a new home was quite satisfying and the apartment happens to be only one block from her Native Foods store she'll be managing...life will be good...oh yeah, did I mention her apartment has 4 pool and jacuzzi areas and her unit has one at the foot of the stairs to her front door...life might be hot but it will be cool and wet and good too...

Follow the reader…

2011-06-21T16:53:00.000-07:00

A few days after she bought an i-Pad (with her own money) our grand daughter Sunny down loaded, for free, the Kindle app for it…and then for $7.00 she bought the second book of The Hunger Games trilogy and began reading it on her new electro gadget… she had just finished reading the first book her cousin Allison Hibbard had loaned her: a real book with paper pages and she couldn’t hardly wait to start reading Catching Fire, the next installment on Kindle like she’d seen me doing for weeks. The 11 year old has hardly stopped reading.

The school year ends today and it's sad she hasn’t read too much at home for the past few days because she’s been busy after school and on the phone saying goodbye to her friends…and even sadder, Aliso School is closing down permanently and Sunny’s classmates will be going to one of three schools next semester; the saddest is that Sunny’s family is moving to the Desert next week where she’ll be attending 6th grade Middle school in September. We’ve spent a lot of time together and I will totally miss my reading companion. We've promised each other to do a lot of e-mailing.

walking to work…

2011-06-12T14:55:00.000-07:00

A few months ago I opened up a branch office in Lake Fores intending to stay home a day or two per week to save a few bucks on gas, and have a home office like millions of people in America. And I loved it.

Even though all my employees are now outside consultants who draw our company plans on AutoCAD I still design by hand with ink pens, magic markers on trace paper and vellum…many of the newer and younger project manager clients I have have hardly seen plans drawn by hand…they’re used to seeing computer-drawn exhibits that don’t have a very good conceptual or preliminary design appearance…most of these new people love to hold, roll up and feel the plans…it’s good to be an old timer sometimes… after my clients approve the designs I meet my ‘employees’ at Starbucks so they can begin transferring the plans to computer.

We’ve had two storage places ever since we sold our five bedroom home.The kids moved away and came back and moved away again and came back again…some came back then went away to college or got married…one traveled to Europe and came back…we sold the house when the last one left…I thought about not telling them where we were going to be living but I was out-voted by the mother…
we moved into a two bedroom mobile home in a great location, with lakes and ponds and a tennis court right across the street near a community club house with a swimming pool where I take the grand kids to swim on weekends…I Jacuzzi on weekdays… some of our daughters had a hard time with us living in this senior community…they think of us as trailer-trash. After all I've done for them.

I’ve been going to the storage place once or twice a week to pick up things that I need but often bring them back the next day because my office space is our master bedroom with a bed and dresser, and a drawing board with a computer and printer on it… there’s a TV in there too so I can draw plans, watch golf and baseball games and write proposals, send and receive e-mails, and Google a lot of stuff…it’s a good place to do a lot of reading (have I mentioned I have a Kindle now?) while most of the family watches the 56 inch TV in the living room…Mine’s a 21 inch TV that works quite well from three feet away.

I love my new work space, but I don’t like sitting in the room all day, so as the new office janitor I do a little vacuuming, and then yard work or washing the car…
hopefully the economy will pick up soon but I am not going back to Riverside…working here for the past few months has been encouraging… there’s plenty of office space available now within a mile or two…I’ll be able to come home for lunch to keep making my wife nuts like I’m doing now. I’ll find a place close enough to bicycle to work or, wouldn’t it be nice, to really walk to work?

King and Kindle---Kool

2011-06-03T19:10:00.000-07:00

I have to wrap up what I started yesterday...that Kindle Post about Stephen King's novel, UR...this morning I woke up very early, made some coffee and sat down to begin reading the book I downloaded from the sky yesterday...It wasn't my first Kindle read; that was John Grisham's The Confession; but it was one of the best in a long time...well, not that my other reads were not fun, but Stephen King is an author that makes it difficult to stop reading...

This story is totally vintage Stephen King even tho he spent a good part of the story explaining how the Kindle works, what it can and can't do; I learned a few things about my Kindle like having the thing read aloud to me, which I didn't try to do because I've always hated anyone reading to me...and I don't mean I hated the reader, and I will never, ever turn the feature on, unless I develop blindness in which case I will call Dr. Kevorkian, oh wait, he died yesterday, so I'll have to shoot myself...

The story is about how a college professor orders a Kindle and how he learns to use it... he discovers some unusual features in his that King has a way of doing in his stories...but that's another story...by the way, this one's way too short...I read for about two hours before the family got up, three cups of coffee later I had to stop reading and, er, go to a job site...we'll be starting a new project next week and I needed to take a few photos of the site before we begin designing...I thought about bringing my Kindle along and stopping for lunch at Denny's to read, but I thought it best to get back home to eat and save a few bucks...

It was late this afternoon when I got back to finishing the book and it only took me a few more hours to do it...I wasn't the most fatherly or grandfatherly guy today because I was too impressed with my Kindle and the story...I think King must have adored his Kindle and wrote the story as a love letter...
It's one of the best $2.99's I've spent lately...

"THE KING STILL RULES."

2011-06-02T21:20:00.000-07:00

Ever since I received a Kindle for my birthday I’ve been buying book after book on Amazon.com, with literally hundreds of books available for free or very little.

Stephen King has graced us kindle owners with a bit of surprise.
He writes: “You invested/wasted $2.99 on about 4 hours of reading time. You did NOT invest/waste $5 on a movie at the theater. You did NOT get in your car. And therefore you were NOT killed in a fiery crash with a drunk. You are now in a different Ur and have 20 or 50 more years to invest/waste.”
This is the message from this first E-book on a fictional E-book.

Following is a compilation of reviews for his novel UR:
After a mild mannered college professor orders a Kindle, he is met with a pink Kindle that downloads books not only from Amazon.com, but from Urs. Each of the more than 10 million Urs seem to represent a different reality where authors have written different books. "UR" -- is slightly odd shorthand for "universe" -- a delightful little gem that is King's welcome to E-books, with his own patented way of turning an object into a source of fantasy or terror. It's also his take on the parallel worlds idea that advances that there is an infinite number of universes. One version is that every action splits off THIS universe into the next one. Ever wanted to read the unpublished Hemingway book, or six Poe novels?

Reviews, continued:
I read in bed at night, and I thought, hmm...I'm reading a book about a man who bought a Kindle on my Kindle! How strange is that? I'd call it a long short story and not the best one King has written; however, the enjoyment came from the novelty and King's always magical plots involving human beings in all their diversity. I loved it.
It's not very long, and it's a tightly written tale that will have you looking very carefully at your Kindle's "Experimental" menu.

I downloaded this book today and it arrived wirelessly in less than 30 seconds. Every day or two I get free or almost free books on Amazon.com. In a little over a month I’ve acquired 22 books…The Kindle will hold thousands, or at least hundreds; I have to find out one of these days…I like being able to carry several books with me …I never know when I might get tired of reading a certain book and want to switch to a Sherlock Holmes or a Mark Twain short story…I haven’t read this one yet but I thought for kindle readers and Stephen King lovers you should know about it.

Cellaholic appraisal…

2011-05-24T19:27:00.000-07:00

A few months ago my daughters Julie and Gina invited me to the AT&T store to buy a new BlackBerry… They insisted I get a one made in this century – the one I had was Ancient and bought years ago and it served me well, but it was slow, had no camera and took forever to Google anything or get Dodger scores, not that Dodger scores matter much to me anymore, or at least so far this season…funny thing tho, I thought my Ancient was an excellent phone as I could send and receive my office emails and have access to phone numbers and addresses with the greatest of ease…but it was not a cool phone…
But it was going to be one of my many birthday gifts and I was tired of the girls and friends laughing at my old cell phone; so they picked me up and drove me to the Lake Forest BlackBerry store.

The sales person who greeted us, a teenage-looking salesperson looked at my BlackBerry and chuckled, but in a nice way…I was expecting a generation gap problem because I don’t think he’d ever seen one that old and motioned for a few sales people to come over and see this relic of the previous century… the Chuckler was dressed nicely, had a shirt and tie on that made me think he just might know what he’s doing…after talking for a few minutes the girls told him about me and how they didn’t want people to laugh at me anymore; he asked me if I had a Facebook account or if I tweeted…I said yes to the Facebook and no to the tweet … I later found out he asked me because of the different applications the new phone could have that my old phone couldn’t… he took me over to the displays and the girls helped me select the new phone…after I picked out a cool looking phone the Chuckster took my old one and walked to the back room to transfer phone numbers, addresses and e-mail addresses...he came back saying he couldn’t get my office or personal e-mail addresses installed; he tried for quite a long time to do it but was unsuccessful…he said I could go on-line and probably get it taken care of...I knew I couldn’t do it myself at home, but thought one of my daughters could do it… they tried and tried but to this day I can’t get e-mails on the new phone…

But now that I’m working out of the house and not having to drive to Riverside to my office and I’m not gone from home that long anymore... I can surprisingly be away from emails for hours and not go nuts like I used to…when I go out to dinner now I sometimes purposely leave the phone at home…it’s kind of neat not being paranoid about missing calls or emails…when I do bring it with me I get more Facebook beeps than I ever thought possible… what can I do?…I have a lot of friends and they love me…I will go back soon to the AT&T store and see if they can add my email addresses; I know I may have to switch to a different BlackBerry model. But enough is enough…I need my e-mails as soon as they’re sent…I’m in business and have to be able to reply to e-mails fairly quickly…if I have to select a non-BlackBerry phone I guess I’ll have to.

2011-05-23T13:14:00.000-07:00

AND THEN THERE WERE NONE...

St. Thomas More Catholic Church in Montreal was a large concrete and stone building. It was not a warm and welcoming place. It looked nice when a lot of candles were lit…I had to go there every Sunday or face mortal sins condemning me to hell if I died before going to confession. There were priests and nuns all over the place, nuns holding rosaries clinking away as they moved around, almost appearing to glide as they walked around; you couldn’t see their feet as they watched and silently demanded silence of the congregation, especially children. Nuns were scary. They could scare the hell out of you simply by looking at you…In those days they wore habits with giant hats that flared out like airplane wings; have you ever seen the flying nun on TV? The hats made them look menacing.

As a kid I was an altar boy, from around the 4th grade until I went to high school…I don’t think they allowed teenage boys to be altar boys or maybe because the high school was not part of the same parish…but I remember kneeling at the altar during Mass mumbling out responses in Latin trying to be louder than the other alter boy. There was an air of discipline to what we did and there was a high level of precision. Some of us were just 7 or 8 years of age and exercising this discipline and precision for an hour or hour-and-a-half was all the more amazing. It also showed that such an age was not too young to learn discipline. The priest would give us the eye if we forgot our lines or if we were slow in responding. Nuns, priests and mothers were good at the eye thing. The reason altar boys were invented was to give wine and water to the priest and ring hand-held bells during communion time…the bells were the fun part.

I remember waking up very early on weekday mornings, putting on furry slippers before stepping on the freezing linoleum floors; nobody had wall to wall carpeting in those days…my Mom bought the slippers and as long as none of my friends saw them and they kept our feet warm it was OK…or home was heated with radiators that took hours to make the house warm. I doubt if thermostats had been invented yet. My Mom would make me warm breakfasts before I headed out the door and walked to St. Thomas’ to do my altar boy thing. I often wondered what would happen if I didn’t show up, if the priest would even care; I don’t remember ever attending Mass with my parents where there was only one altar boy…
If the other boy showed up the priest would have someone to pour wine in the silver chalice and water into a silver bowl to wash his hands so he could raise the host with clean fingers at communion time. But what if the other boy never showed up? Could the priest say Mass without altar boys? Could one of the ladies of the altar society help out with the wine and water? Probably not allowed. What would the parishioners do if no Mass was said that morning? Would they complain to the Bishop? Would they have to wait for the 8:00 AM mass? If they missed mass would they all go to hell? No, because going to a weekday mass wasn’t obligatory. Mainly old people and nuns went to that early mass. When Mass was over I walked to school three or four blocks away and waited for the first bell to start classes.

Meanwhile back in California when my parents were alive we’d take them to Easter and Christmas services at St Nicholas Catholic Church and I saw that women were active as altar helpers. I don’t recall seeing any altar boys. The day of the altar boy is probably over because unlike urban cities where the church was in a residential neighborhood the churches in the suburbs are miles from residential areas and the altar boys would need rides to church that would pose additional problems for parents…maybe that’s why older women are now altar boys…and because the mass is no longer said in Latin those ladies don’t need much training. There’s no more bell-ringing. The thrill is gone.

Hanging at Nordstom's...

2011-05-17T10:45:00.000-07:00

I was sitting around the men’s shoe department at Nordstrom’s one morning while the girls were shopping and noticed a few things about men who buy shoes. There was this oldish guy (60-ish) wearing dark blue Bermuda shorts with unmatched socks, one dark blue one brown…he tried on tan colored Top Siders that looked like a nice pair of shoes, but the socks make him look like a blind man in an old movie…I had to laugh to myself as it reminded me of me sometimes... Another younger man came in with his very young wife or girlfriend, it was hard to see if they were wearing wedding bands, although she had on a pile of jewelry that sparkled as the lights hit her…plenty of diamonds on this woman…he had on a pair of almost brand new running shoes with yellow stripes …he was trying on blue striped running shoes that his little lady had picked out for him… he bought the blue pair and he wore them as they walked out of the shoe department…I almost asked the clerk what size the yellow ones were but didn’t as he threw them in a trash can…

It's on Fathers' Day...

2011-05-14T17:01:00.000-07:00

It's one of my favorite holidays of the year...including Christmas, Cinco de Mayo, St. Patrick's Day and my wife's, children's and grand children's birthdays...these are great days for giving, receiving and eating...
But just last month another holiday was celebrated...a gigantic birthday for me when I received so much and so many things...I don't need or want a single thing for Fathers' Day coming up next month...

Fathers' Day is always on the same weekend as the U.S. Open Golf Tournament and what I'd like to do this year is stay home to watch the game on Sunday, all day, until a winner is declared probably around 5:00 PM.

So, my dear children, if you're reading this, I'd like a gift by joining me to watch the game...golfing grandchildren are especially welcome...
I'll be heading over to Bevmo the day before to pick up some delicious stuff:
cashews
pistachios
potato chips
a thing or two of dip
six packs of Sam Adams, Sprite and Diet Cokes
Swiss cheese and crackers
a large jar of cocktail olives with pimentos in case there's some celebrating to do... with a martini...
fixings for chili dogs if one of you knows how to cook them...I have no clue...let me know...
and I hope to pick up a six pack of chocolate golf balls or something else golfy and chocolaty...

Remember...no gifts...no sugar-free treats...no funny tee shirts...and no 'worlds greatest grandfather' coffee mugs...

That darned Catholic Church...

2011-05-10T21:20:00.000-07:00

In my previous blog I wrote of a list of forbidden books first published by the Catholic Church in 1559 with the aim of protecting the faith and morals of Catholics. It was meant to save us from reading immoral books or works with theological errors or works that in any way posed a threat to the power of the Church. I did some research on this peculiar list and found interesting facts.

Scientific books were plentiful in those early days, books by Galileo, Kepler and Copernicus were judged to have errors in that these astronomers wrote falsely that the sun was the center of the solar system and not the earth as the Church incorrectly claimed.

The first Index banned all books by Martin Luther, Calvin and other protestant reformers. Translating books in other than Latin were banned. Harriet Beecher Stowe's Uncle Tom's Cabin showed the Church's narrow mindedness as it was not condemned because it was available only in English and because English was a barbarian language and only Protestants spoke it and all Protestants were going to hell anyway. Even my sweet old Mom, God rest her soul, believed all Protestants went to hell or actually, only Catholics went to heaven. When Harriet's book was translated into Italian, Spanish and French it became dangerous, another of my Mom's favorite words. Harriet was perceived to be spreading Protestant poison.

The Roman Inquisition and Index of Forbidden Books did not represent the best chapters in Catholic history. Updates of the infamous index were added repeatedly until it's 20th edition in 1948 but was finally abolished in 1966 by Pope Paul VI, created originally by Pope Paul IV.

No bookmarks needed...

2011-05-05T12:19:00.000-07:00

A month ago I celebrated a big birthday and was gifted a big present...an e-book, the Kindle...it was given to me by my children, grandchildren and friends; and to make the gift even better I found half a dozen Amazon gift cards with it allowing me to buy books on-line...

I'd been thinking about buying an e-book for several months but couldn't decide whether to go Kindle or Nook...my mind was happily made up for me...I've been in the process of getting rid of books on shelves in more than one room in our house...I took some to the public library and Goodwill but I still have a stack of a dozen or more books on my desk waiting to go somewhere...

I recently re-joined the public library and found my favorite section...the section of books in large print... I'm not getting any younger and large print helps old guys like me...well, with the Kindle I am able to adjust the fonts to my preference as well as adjusting the word spacing...no more library except to take my 11 year old grand daughter there so she can continue reading her favorite authors too...but, public libraries may be in the e-book lending business soon and I may be able to read best sellers for free...

Amazon.com sells best selling books for $25 and up, but e-books go from $5 to $15...such a deal...but the happiest thing I've found is being able to get free books, and I mean thousands of free classic books by the world's best authors...I immediately bought a few best sellers and a few free ones...I discovered the Kindle will hold hundreds of books and I plan on loading it up with dozens of free classics I've been wanting to read for years...I'll do it because I can...

In the past few weeks I've experimented with options on the Kindle like switching from book to book to see what would happen...would I lose my place or what...well, as if by magic when I stopped reading a book, went to another then went back to the first, my place had been saved...how do it know? No bookmarks needed and it's even possible to write notes in the margins of the books...I love this thing...

I'm currently reading The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexander Dumas because I thought I had read it when I was in either high school or college; I recently was flipping channels on TV and just missed watching the movie...so I decided I had nothing to lose by getting the free book...I started reading it and discovered I don't remember much about it...I knew it was about a man falsely imprisoned for a dozen years or more finally escaping and beginning to hunt down the men who sent him there...so far I've read about a third of the book and I love it...it is somewhat similar to two other books written by Dumas, the Man in the Iron Mask and the Three Musketeers which I will get next for free...the curious thing about all three of these is at the time I was in high school they were on the Vatican Index of Forbidden Books, books considered by the Catholic Church to be sensual, heretical or romantic...I didn't know it at the time...the key 'ingredient' of the Count of Monte Cristo is revenge...strictly forbidden maybe unless you're Italian or a member of the Mafia or Cardinals and priests who must have read the forbidden books going back two hundred years...I Googled the Index to discover it was abandoned in 1966, after my high school and college days...I will post a blog about the Index soon because it so very interesting; I discovered some of the forbidden books included astronomer Galileo for writing that our solar system revolved around the sun and not the earth as the Church said and Victor Hugo for The Hunchback of Notre Dame and Les Miserables...

Things to do if you're bored...

2011-04-22T16:32:00.000-07:00

Scare Stephen King
Give your cat a Mohawk
Run around in squares
Think of quadruple entendres
Speak in acronyms
Exorcise a ghost
Exercise a ghost
Be a monk for a day
Make up words that start with ex
Go to a bar and ask for a Molotov cocktail
Translate Shakespeare into English

Directions? I don't need no stinking directions....

2011-04-14T22:05:00.000-07:00

In March of 2007 I posted my first blog...today the count was at 307 posts...this is No. 308...that's about 77 per year and I'm proud of that...did you know my daughter Julie has probably posted ten times that amount?

My birthday was a few weeks ago and the family threw a party for me and about 100 of my closest friends and relatives...yeah, I even have relatives who are friends...it was a happy day and one I'll remember forever...I saw almost all the people I care about and all the people who care about me were there...

I received tons of gifts including gift cards to some of my favorite restaurants as well as to Barnes & Noble and Amazon which came in very handy as I was gifted a Kindle e-book from my daughters...it was something I had hoped to receive...I'd been thinking about buying one for several months especially after spending time cleaning out bookshelves taking books to the library and Goodwill...

The neat thing about Kindle is that books are available for about 1/3 the price of hard copies, including N.Y. Times best sellers...books range from a few bucks up to around $12...on top of all that there are I think 12,000 books available for free...yup, for free...books like Black Beauty, Robinson Crusoe, the Holy Bible, all of Charles Dickens, Mark Twain, Edgar Allen Poe, all the old classics, like, bunches of books...

When I tried to register the Kindle I had a little trouble and called my grand daughter Allison, who is a genius with computers and also owns a Kindle... she came over and helped me set it up...she made it look easy and before I knew it I was reading a few hours after purchasing a new Clive Cussler novel for myself and a Mary Higgins Clark for Mrs.D. ..I also picked up a free Count of Monte Cristo that I read when I was 12 years old...

I love the options on the device enabling me to kick up the font size and even the word spacing on a page...I did that a few times until I found the combinations I liked...and, it automatically bookmarks where you stop reading...a few times I switched from Cussler to Alexander Dumas' Count just to see if I could do it and it worked like magic...it's a piece of cake to operate and I can't wait to read, read, read...the Kindle is about the size of a pocket book, weighs less than a real book and is much easier to hold...turning pages forward or backward is simple...it's even possible to write notes in the margins like a real book but I don't care to find out how to do it...

I originally thought I now could sit in our TV room with Mrs. D. to read in the semi-darkness but no...surprisingly there is no light emitted from the pages...I would need to sit near a lamp to read...this afternoon I picked up Sunny at school and while I waited in my car I noticed I could read the e-book with sunlight reflecting directly on it...just like the commercials...it really is the coolest thing...

With the three or four Barnes and Noble gift cards we took a trip there today and I bought a hard copy of Mary Higgins' book so Mrs. D. can start reading it...it'll be a long time before she can borrow my birthday gift to read it on the Kindle...in the next few days I'm going to look at the 'free' list again and set up my library in it...I don't know how many books it can hold but I'm going to find out...can I delete the books after reading them? I don't know...I think I can pass the books on to other Kindle readers...it's probably time I read the directions ...but then I'll have to stop reading my books and I don't want to stop...it's way too much fun...
Thanks Julie, Gina, Debby, Leesa and Sarah...

Whooping it up for a week...

2011-04-11T16:21:00.000-07:00

For the entire past week my family and friends have kept on celebrating my birthday with more dinners, more gifts and a baseball game...all these made turning the big 7-0 a lot easier to take than a 'normal' birthday...

I mean, I had birthday cakes, birthday wines, birthday Stolichnaya vodkas and birthday restaurant gift cards and birthday Amazon and Barnes and Nobel Kindle gift cards...
I am so tired today after having been driven and dined in San Diego while watching the Dodgers get beaten by the Padres, which we'll have to get used to as 2011 Dodger fans have little hope of finishing better than maybe third place in the Western Division of the National League...

But what a great day yesterday was...the weatherpeople predicted a coldish day but it was 65 to 70 degrees and sunny and warm all day in the circular confines of Petco Park...it makes Dodger Stadium look like a slum...it is a FANtastic park easy to get around, plenty of restrooms for old guys, hot dogs twice as large and better tasting than Dodger dogs and elevators going up and down from the street...
Beside driving there, my daughter Julie procured some outrageous seats almost behind home plate slightly on the first base side and about 15 rows up from the field...
The game had no Dodger highlights only Padre happy moments...good for them...the fans around our seats, and we had Dodger hats and gear on, applauded me when my name appeared on the scoreboard announcing 'happy 70th birthday to Pete Di Lallo' when my two daughters and grand daughter started clapping and yelling happy birthday Dad and Papa...
On our way into the park I semi-jokingly asked a few ushers if we were safe in our Dodger gear as they patted me on the back saying these were Padre fans and not like the fans who almost killed a Giant fan last week in Los Angeles...

it was a cold and stormy night...

2011-03-22T16:39:00.000-07:00

A few days ago I took a ride to the library, the same one where all those people couldn't wait to talk to me last time I was there, but this time I brought Sunny along...she's my 11 year old grand daughter who's been living with us for a year or so...I took her there a few weeks before when I returned a few books I'd borrowed... she was anxious to check the place out after reading my last blog...we had fun looking at all the people, most of them there to borrow books like we were....she and I had borrowed a few books each and yesterday we returned them and started looking for more...I made it over to the large print fiction section and I left her by the young adults shelves...
we met a few times at the table and chairs in between to check out what we had selected...I spent an hour or so beforehand researching books for young girls between the ages of 10 and 14 or so and came up with a list of a few dozen of the most recommended ones...Thanks to Google I was able to print the titles, authors and short descriptions of the stories of most of them...
Since she's been living with us I've noticed not only that she's an A student but she reads almost every day...not much of a TV watcher except for a few shows like Glee, The Mentalist and Modern Family...she's a kind of kid who does her homework the minute she gets home from school...
When I'm reading she usually comes over to see what page I'm on and a little while later checks back to see my progress...she loves to keep track of the number of pages I read in a day...
I was happy to pick up Joe Torre's The Yankee Years along with a James Patterson book called London Bridges...she found a Judy Blume book and another the title which I can't remember..she is a little different than I am in that she says she often picks out books by their covers...I told her the one about not judging by the cover, and all that, but she stood fast with the book she selected, about a young girl who's father is running for governor...
After we checked the books out she was reading the governor book as we walked to my car in the parking lot and kept reading it all the way home...what a great kid...she's a lot like her cousin Allison who also reads avidly and with whom I exchange books...

Fun on Friday...

2011-03-04T16:25:00.000-08:00

Today I signed up, again, at the O.C. Library in Lake Forest, after not having walked in there for several decades…I remember taking our kids there when they were young, sitting around reading a while and then taking books home…No… I mis-remembered…it was their mother who did it most of the time while I worked…I took them occasionally on weekends...

As I walked to the check-out desk the lady there told me I had to go stand on the red carpet and wait my turn…there were six or seven people in front of me…most of them were around my age; a few started talking to me…I hate talking to people but I was nice and answered them in as few words as possible like, yes, no, OK, sometimes, never, fiction, best sellers, I hate audio books, I can’t stand people reading to me… I wanted to tell them there’s no talking in the library…

Finally it was my turn… I have to remind myself this isn’t a Barnes and Nobel and the employees work for the County and are not always in a hurry to go anywhere…I told the nice lady we once had a card but it was years ago and we didn’t have it anymore…she looked up my name but didn’t find it in the computer… I showed her my picture I.D. and she reminded me that I had a big birthday coming up soon…I filled out a form with my name and address and when I wrote my e-mail address she said she was happy for me because few people my age had a computer and the library could email me with important messages, like, ‘your books are overdue dummy’… I wanted to tell her to shut the hell up and to just give me the freaken card…she said the card normally cost $2.00 but she was waiving the fee…thanks a lot lady…then she said being old has it’s advantages…I didn’t say a word but she was getting on my nerves…I signed the card and when I asked her where the fiction department was she was quick to point out that it was right next to the LARGE PRINT section…the bitch…

I found a couple of books, checked them out finding out that non-best-sellers can be borrowed for three weeks…I left the building, got in the car, turned off the radio and silently drove home.

I couldn't have said it better myself...

2011-03-02T07:29:00.000-08:00

Odds of catching a foul ball at a MLB game...

2011-02-27T14:32:00.000-08:00

As I sit watching the second pre-season game of the year between the Dodgers and Angels, in Arizona, a game being attended by Julie Hibbard and two of my nieces, Robin and Sherrie who are sitting in the third row behind the Dodger dugout, I've often wondered what the odds are...

I did a quick research and found out that it's totally dependent on where you are sitting...(no kidding) I found that the areas with the highest probability are in the lower deck down the right and left field lines between third base and the foul pole . Maybe 10,000 fans sit in those areas at any particular game, and say 20 foul balls hit each game in those areas would yield a 1 in 500 chance.

THE ODDS: If you went to every home game for a team for five or six years your odds would be about even.

As Julie has experienced , going to the ballpark early before the game starts you have a good chance of catching a ball during batting practice...

Cultural Differences....explained:

2011-02-27T11:14:00.000-08:00

On a chain of beautiful deserted islands in the middle of South Pacific, the following people are stranded:
* Two Italian men and one Italian woman.
* Two French men and one French woman.
* Two German men and one German woman
* Two Greek men and one Greek woman.
* Two British men and one British woman.
* Two Bulgarian men and one Bulgarian woman.
* Two Japanese men and one Japanese woman.
* Two Chinese men and one Chinese woman.
* Two Irish men and one Irish woman.
* Two American men and one American woman.

One month later, on these absolutely stunning deserted islands in the middle of nowhere, the following things have occurred:

* One Italian man killed the other Italian man for the Italian woman.
* The two French men and the French woman are living happily together in a ménage Ã trois.
* The two German men have a strict weekly schedule of alternating visits with the German woman.
* The two Greek men are sleeping together and the Greek woman is cooking and cleaning for them.
* The two British men are waiting for someone to introduce them to the British woman.
* The two Bulgarian men took one look at the Bulgarian woman and started swimming to another island...
* the two Japanese have faxed Tokyo and are awaiting instructions.
* The two Chinese men have set up a pharmacy, liquor store, restaurant, and laundry, and have gotten the woman pregnant in order to supply more employees for their stores.
* The two Irish men divided the island into north and south and set up a distillery. They do not remember if sex is in the picture because it gets somewhat foggy after a few pints of coconut whisky. However, they are satisfied because the British are not having any fun...
* The two American men are contemplating suicide, because the American woman will not shut up and complains relentlessly about her body, the true nature of feminism, what the sun is doing to her skin, how she can do anything they can do, the necessity of fulfillment, the equal division of household chores, how sand and palm trees make her look fat, how her last boyfriend respected her opinion and treated her nicer than they do, and how her relationship with her mother is the root cause of all her problems, and why didn't they bring a damn cell phone so they could call 911 and get them all rescued off this forsaken deserted island in the middle of freaking nowhere so she can get her nails done and go shopping.

2011-02-10T09:20:00.000-08:00

A few of my favorite comics...

2011-02-09T17:46:00.000-08:00

And Happy Valentine's to the girls...

Can you see me now?

2011-01-30T20:39:00.000-08:00

I’ve been working at home for three or four weeks having fun and a good time with Elijah, my almost 4 year old grandson who’s living with us.

We play together a lot and one of Eli’s favorite games is for us to sit in our walk-in closet, in the dark, taking pretend trips on boats, airplanes, cars and motorcycles, sometimes stopping to eat his favorite foods, ice cream sundaes, corn dogs and macaroni and cheese …each of us takes turns driving…we learn to drive when we go on green light, slow down on yellows and stop on the red lights…once in a while he’ll pretend to do the cooking and make whatever we had for breakfast, lunch or dinner earlier…

Sometimes he’ll want to play big bad wolf or little red riding hood; we take turns being the wolf …in the dark he has fun making wolf noises and most of all he likes to say he isn’t afraid of the dark…

I remember teaching my daughters not to be afraid of the dark by taking them into the garage, turning off the light, walking around by feeling the car and work bench and getting safely back to the door …OK, you’re probably thinking what a weird dad or grandpa I am, but as a little kid when my dad babysat us he played hide and go seek with me and my sister, and when we were ‘it’ and his turn to hide he’d hide behind a door, turn off all the lights and scare the crap out of us when we walked into rooms…we were maybe around three years old and my sister hated him for years later…when I got married and had children I told myself to teach my kids not be afraid of the dark.

Elijah and I do other things beside hide in the closet…we have terrific times at the park where he rides his two-wheel Skoot bike, plays on swings and snacks on ice cream, candy and other junk I buy on the way to the park…I’ll try to remember to bring carrots and healthy stuff one of these days…

Its fun getting him tuckered out ready for a nap when we get home…once in a while I join him in a snooze too but it’s usually a good time for me to do some work…

I love being a grandpa, much more so these days than years ago when my wife took care of some of our other grand kids…back then I got back from work after they left and I hardly saw them…

I like working at home…and I owe it all to the great recession.

Who would have guessed?

DAWN OF THE CRONY

2011-01-28T00:21:00.001-08:00

For too many years I’ve had piles of candles on my birthday cakes but always less than the right number…I’ve never had a cake large enough…On my last l birthday I found 6 candles on one side of the cake and 9 on the other…even that was like a baby inferno.

It’s going to get worse…the big 7-0 is sneaking up on me.

In a few months I’ll be turning 70 and I’ve never felt better even tho I drive over a parking lot curb once in a while. I remember my Dad turning 70 and I thought wow, he’s an old guy. Now 70 doesn’t feel that old anymore and I don’t feel like I’m 70 unless I look in the mirror; and I rarely do that except to work on my comb-over and I won’t be doing that for too much long either.

I’ve always known that if I lived long enough I would be 70. I can hardly remember my other big birthdays like 40, 50 and 60 but I’ll never forget this one if I make it to my birthday. Turning 70’s been foremost in my mind for a long time and I began writing this early for my own satisfaction in case I croak before.

In the L.A. Times obituaries I read too often that people my age die of ‘natural causes’ all the time; sometimes no disease is mentioned. It’s scary reading about people dieing for no other cause than being old. I’m going to love getting birthday wishes from my undead friends.

I’ve always been a car lover and in recent years totally new models have come out: cross-overs, SUV’s, hybrids and smart-cars. I’ve always taken pride in knowing car names but have you noticed how many of them now have just initials or logos making it almost impossible to know what kind they are? What makes me know I’m getting old is seeing cars that have unusual and unbelievable equipment on them like backing-up rear-view-TV’s, even some that park themselves... it's not hard to handle GPS’s and CD players with dozens of speakers all over. My favorite are DVD’s that keep children quietly occupied. We have a DVD player in our car and the grand kids love to watch movies on long trips... we love the quietness. The only thing that hasn’t changed is: “Are we there yet and how many more miles?”

I’m thinking of buying an E-book so I can sit in the living room with my wife while she watches TV; with it I could read James Patterson and Clive Cussler best sellers without turning on a bright light.

The other day I spent a few hours in a used book store and bought a bunch of paperbacks…a few of them will be hard to read because of small font sizes; I’m told that with E-books the font size can be adjusted… I could get used to that… but I have to do some hard thinking before buying one.
There’s a lot of pleasure in reading traditional books because I like their smell and feel and I like to high-light and jot notes in the margins…plus they make good doorstops.
(Note: The used book store is behind Coco’s restaurant in Laguna Hills...when you buy two books at half the cover price the third book is free…such a deal!)

I’ve been blessed to have worked for and with great people since I began my business, are you ready for this, in 1971. I still have clients who have been good friends for years… I even have relatives I can call friends. (And it’s not because most of them live in Montreal.)

I’m thankful for having played golf with the best golf pals a guy can have. Being older you have to put more work into golf, like hitting the practice range a few times a week and I know that, but mentally I don’t want to keep doing that anymore. Maybe that’s why I love to read more and more... sitting outside in the shade, sipping lemonade and reading a book is very cool and almost as much fun for me as golf used to be.

Joining me in celebrating 70^th birthdays are Ringo Starr, Bob Dylan, Paul Simon, Paul Mc Cartney and Mick Jagger who is reported to have said several grandchildren ago: “I’d rather be dead than sing ‘Satisfaction’ at 45”.

This is the year that I’ll be getting rid of a lot of stuff… I’m ready to acknowledge I have too much and I need to live more simply. I’ll celebrate my upcoming birthday with family and friends and have a nice quiet dinner…well, maybe not that quiet…It’s the year in which I’ll dance to my own songs.

It’ll be the celebration of my entering life as an official old Crony…

Gloria Steinem said it best on her 70^th birthday:

”This one has a ring of mortality”.

What next?

2011-01-07T10:30:00.000-08:00

A good question...

2010-12-26T13:29:00.000-08:00

This one is too true too...

This would be funny if it were not true...

2010-12-26T11:19:00.000-08:00

GOLFING TALE

2010-12-16T21:32:00.000-08:00

Off the seventh tee, Joe sliced his shot deep into a wooded ravine. He took his eight iron and clambered down the embankment in search of his lost ball.

After many long minutes of hacking at the underbrush, he spotted something glistening in the leaves. As he drew nearer, he discovered that it was an eight iron in the hands of a skeleton!

Joe immediately called out to his friend, "Jack, I've got trouble down here!"

"What's the matter?" Jack asked from the edge of the ravine.

"Bring me my wedge," Joe shouted. "You can't get out of here with an eight iron.

FROM NOW ON…

2010-12-07T10:39:00.000-08:00

Last week I hauled furniture and equipment from my Riverside office and moved it to my home in Lake Forest…a few months after the great recession began I started downsizing because my workload was substantially reduced so the cost of doing business had to be lowered…

Even though I had some ongoing work I had to let some of my employees go and I converted them to consultants…I offered them work on a contract basis and they were glad to oblige… for me that meant no more paying sick leave, vacations or health insurance…

Laying off employees is very sad when you know spouses and children…I am still very sad to have created hardship for employees who were also my friends with whom we played golf, drank a few beers and ate lunches together…but as a business owner I had to do what I had to do… the move will save paying office rent, insurance, phones, faxes and internet fees as well as plenty of gas on a 78 mile round trip from Lake Forest…for years I drove the Toll Road saving 11 miles, nasty traffic and 30 minutes each way, but the cost was too much to keep up…taking the 5 Frwy to the 55 to the 91 takes much longer with traffic usually bumper to bumper…
From now on I will not miss this ride…

From now on I’ll be working in an office a few steps away from a queen size bed… the room features family photos, a computer, a printer, a paper shredder and a bookcase…I expect it’s gonna be fun… but that’s only if there’ll be work, and that remains to be seen… I can watch TV and listen to my I-Pod while working without disturbing anyone who may not like Eric Clapton or B. B. King…

From what I read the housing situation will not improve much in 2011 with so many unsold houses remaining to be sold…2012 is the earliest expected housing recovery to begin…my landscape architectural business is based on the housing industry which has almost ceased to exist in the past few years… golf development services have also taken a big hit… I may have to take an early retirement even though I’m hardly ready…I always thought retirement meant playing golf a few times a week, taking extended vacations and sitting around drinking martinis and reading best sellers…

From now on this office will be ‘open’ from 8 to 5 and I will be dressed for work every day…I will not work in pajamas… after hours an occasional computer could be kicked on in the middle of the night when good design ideas wake me up that will be saved for future projects…for coffee breaks I can see myself drinking more coffee than ever before and probably snacking a lot…I also see my self taking vacuuming, dish washing and plant watering breaks…

From now on I’m taking an early morning walk as soon as I get up…Starbucks is only a mile from here but there’s also a donut shop a half mile away…I’ll be going there for coffee!!!

SUNNY DELIGHT...

2010-10-29T16:35:00.000-07:00

This 5th grader, our grand daughter, was voted Aliso Grade school secretary yesterday...she is totally stoked and can hardly wait for the first school meeting...her entire family and all her friends are so proud of her and we all know she will do an outstanding job...

GIANT FANS SHOULD BE THANKING DODGER FANS

2010-10-29T10:56:00.000-07:00

The World Series began last Wednesday in the Giants stadium thanks to Jonathon Broxton who saved this year's All Star game giving the National League home field advantage...Really? Jonathon Broxton? Yup...Up to this year the American league has had home field advantage since 2003...I believe it was the last game Broxton didn't screw up like he did for almost all the remainder of the games he tried to save for the Dodgers...
the Giants won the first two games against the Texas Rangers and not a single word of thanks...
I'm not sure the Rangers could have won two games in Arlington Stadium but we'll never know...

ELI WASN'T KIDDING...

2010-10-26T12:17:00.000-07:00

As often as I can I take my three and a half year old grandson Elijah to the park with his three wheeler or sometimes with his two wheeled scooter...
The last time we went I stopped at seven-eleven for a bottle of water and as I approached the cooler to get a bottle he spotted the ice cream 'push-ups' in a case next to the cooler...I bought him one with the promise he wouldn't open it until we got to the park...but he couldn't wait and opened it on the way there, made a mess on my seats that were fortunately leather...not a big deal...
so the other day as Eli and I went to pick up Sunny at school we passed by the same seven-eleven and he asked if I could stop and get him a push-up...not wanting to go thru that again and because we didn't want to keep Sunny waiting at school I told him I had no money, which he didn't understand and kept on asking and asking and asking as I kept on saying no, no...
Finally he said: "Can we go by and just LOOK at the push-ups?"
The kid is a genius...we paid seven-eleven a visit after picking Sunny up...

The Buffalo Theory

2010-10-25T15:19:00.000-07:00

One afternoon at Cheers, Cliff Claven was explaining something to his buddy Norm...

Here's how it went:

"Well ya see, Norm, it's like this... A herd of buffalo can only move as fast as the slowest buffalo. And when the herd is hunted, it is the slowest and weakest ones at the back that are killed first. This natural selection is good for the herd as a whole, because the general speed and health of the whole group keeps improving by the regular killing of the weakest members. In much the same way, the human brain can only operate as fast as the slowest brain cells. Excessive intake of alcohol, as we know, kills brain cells. But naturally, it attacks the slowest and weakest brain cells first.. In this way, regular consumption of beer eliminates the weaker brain cells, making the brain a faster and more efficient machine. That's why you always feel smarter after a few beers."

Homer Simpson Catholic?

2010-10-20T11:44:00.000-07:00

The Simpsons got a blessing from the Vatican...when I thought I've heard just about everything the Catholic Church has done they're saying that beer drinking, donut-loving Homer and his son Bart are Catholics!!!

The church also claims that parents shouldn't be afraid to let their kids watch the show...My own children haven't let their young kids watch the show because of its violence and, well, you know how it is if you watch the show...hilarious most of the time but not really a family show for little impressionable children...

In addition the Vatican wrote that a study by a Jesuit priest about a 2005 Simpson's episode called "The Father, Son and the Holy Guest Star" is among the TV shows for kids in which Christian Faith and religion and questions about God are recurring themes. The Simpsons always pray before meals and in their own way believe in the beyond...The Catholic Church drives me nuts sometimes...

CPR switch: Chest presses first, then give breaths

2010-10-18T14:05:00.000-07:00

CPR switch: Chest presses first, then give breaths

DALLAS – New guidelines out Monday switch up the steps for CPR, telling rescuers to start with hard, fast chest presses before giving mouth-to-mouth. The change puts "the simplest step first" for traditional CPR.

In recent years, CPR guidance has been revised to put more emphasis on chest pushes for sudden cardiac arrest. In 2008, the heart group said untrained bystanders or those unwilling to do rescue breaths could do hands-only CPR until paramedics arrive or a defibrillator is used to restore a normal heart beat. Now, the group says everyone from professionals to bystanders who use standard CPR should begin with chest compressions instead of opening the victim's airway and breathing into their mouth first.

it wasn't the road conditions....

2010-10-14T16:04:00.000-07:00

I was driving back from Hemet this afternoon and decided to post this blog as soon as I got home...I couldn't wait to write about frustrations I had on the road today...

A few days ago my car's ignition switch took a dump and had to get towed to the Volvo dealer by AAA...that's not Alcoholics Anonymous...I have a 'premium' card meaning they'll tow me as far as 100 miles instead of the usual 7 or 8, they'll rent me a car for a day while the car is being repaired and pay for one night's lodging if I'm out of town...I took the rent-a-car option at Enterprise where they loaned me a basic white Chevy pickup truck that was already there in the parking lot and it looked good to me...it had a six cylinder engine and I liked the thought of getting good mileage driving to work in Riverside...it had four doors which would be handy if I decided to pick up any hitchhikers...it had been 15 years since I drove a pickup and I was kinda looking forward to it....

As I was leaving the parking lot the Volvo guy (who knows me well for having the car serviced regularly) called to say the needed part was not in stock and had to be ordered from Sweden or Detroit (I think Ford makes Volvos now) and would take two or three days maybe longer to arrive...I wasn't thrilled with the news and had no choice but to call Enterprise and tell them I'd need the rental longer than expected.

OK, so I'm driving the truck, like for the third day in a row, all the while thinking about how I miss my SUV with controls on the steering wheel for radio volume and changing stations and for cruise control...it's been over 4 years since I had to reach the radio dial to turn to Jim Rome...what a pain....I mean leaning over with my eyes off the road for who knows how long...earlier today I was all set up to pass a pokey driver on the freeway and hit the gas but was sadly reminded this truck did not have Volvo turbo power... it has ZERO passing power and I had to fall back into the slow lane...very embarrassing...the Chevy doesn't have a GPS either so I can't afford to get lost...my Volvo affords me the thought that if I'm lost in the middle of L.A. and can't figure out which way north is I can click a button and find my way to the I-5freeway ...
And, would you believe there's no slot to insert an Eric Clapton CD?? there's probably an FM switch somewhere but who listens to music on FM?

But one more miserable defect in this cheap ass truck is not having controls for adjusting the side view mirrors from inside...you have to role the windows down and do it by hand...hard to freaken believe ain't it?

II don't remember my score...

2010-10-11T13:02:00.000-07:00

It was the perfect fall day when our friend Klaus planned on flying us to Palm Desert on a four passenger awesome propeller driven airplane he had bought a few weeks before… not a jet like you might see these days… it was going to be an outstanding day of golf, and flying there and back in a matter of minutes was a heck of a lot better than driving two hours each way…he was a landscape contractor with a lucrative business and he frequently flew to the desert to oversee his projects, some of which our firm had designed…There would be a total of four of us, forty-ish old guys at the time, four good golf friends …we played golf, ate, laughed and traveled together on golfing vacations, but we’d never gone together before on a private plane…

I’m not a big fan of flying even though I had flown on private planes several times before with clients and even once with Klaus when I had flown commercial to Stockton but flew back to Fullerton with him from there…I had flown there to oversee the installation his company had completed on one of our projects ..

That day he planned to land at Fullerton airport, which is not the keenest or safest place to land because there is no tower there, no radio contact with flight controllers, only a wind-sock to show wind direction… a freaken wind-sock!!! had I know before about the restrictions at Fullerton airport I might have taken Air Cal back to Orange County airport but I reluctantly accepted the ride; even landing after sunset was not permitted…after Klaus made a few passes around the airport looking for other approaching aircraft we landed on a super short landing strip that ended a few feet from Commonwealth Avenue…all the while Klaus was laughing like the Red Baron…I had forgotten he lived in Fullerton and this was his home airport…

We met at Orange County airport…in those days it was a small airport that had been a drag strip in the 50’s… Klaus’ plane was parked near other private planes and after loading our golf clubs he had us walk around the plane with him checking tires, the wings and I suppose, propellers and flaps which all seemed to be in the right places…we had been instructed to pack lightly as he said he’d never flown with four guys and their clubs before and didn’t want to overload the plane…not a good feeling…we hoped he was kidding…he even had told us to bring as few golf balls as possible even though we were going to play at a course called the Lakes…most guys carry at least a dozen balls when they play…did you know golf balls are like eggs and you have to buy a dozen every week? We settled on six each and knew we could always borrow some or buy more at the course that day…

The flight was semi-uneventful except for the portion of the flight over the mountains near Palm Springs but it was bumpy and spooky…the Red Baron laughed a lot that day...we all did...I don't recall what anyone shot that day but I know it wasn't close to par...we don't remember scores when we don't break 80...

Key to happiness...location, location, location....

2010-10-05T14:13:00.000-07:00

Keep in mind that in real estate, determining the best place to build anything, a house, shopping center, golf course or whatever, location is key...

A friend will be on a plane headed to Lake Forest from his home city, Montreal, and he'll be reading an article about where you live being connected to the possibility of having mental distress...could it be?

He'll also be thinking about the author of that article, probably living and working in Los Angeles reviewing surveys on mental health, to discover that people living in, say, Hawaii have less stress and depression than people living in, say, freaken freezing Montreal...

DUH!!!

Stogies and bogeys...

2010-10-01T15:05:00.000-07:00

A few years ago I played golf at least once a week and sometimes twice; getting together with clients who were my old golf buds was the thing to do...we usually went out early in the morning and tried to make it back to our offices by noon...we didn't eat lunch afterwards and hardly touched a martini...only once in while, well, a few times, OK, if we played fairly quickly and could have a drink and make it back to work by 1:00, we'd have a drink, just one...

During that time there were few better places to enjoy a good cigar than out on the golf course. It was a great way to forget about the fact that we were playing behind four of the slowest golfers in the world that were showing no sign of letting us play through anytime soon. Wrapping our lips around that stogie and breathing in that smooth breath of smoke also helped us forget that club we just wrapped around a tree...not me, well, only once in my life and it was an accident, well, not really, it was an old club and I always wanted to see what would happen...it wrapped around the tree and it was worth it...

I developed a detached retina a few years ago, as well as double vision which kept me from playing golf...heck, I couldn't even drive much less putt...I don't smoke anymore and haven't played golf for a few years...I don't miss the cigars but I sure do miss hitting that little white ball...when the economy improves we're all going out there again and maybe once in a while have a cheap cigar...

BON JOUR ET BIENVENUE MARIO....

2010-09-27T11:29:00.000-07:00

In a week or two we'll be visited by 'Mario of Montreal', as I alliteratively call him, one of my many second cousins, one who comes to California most often, and one of my favorites...we are really anxious to see him to enjoy his great attitude and California fun loving ways..

One of his favorite things to do here is to sit on the beach and watch sunsets in Laguna, eat at Fuddruckers in Lake Forest, and shop at the swap meet in Orange County...he's worked at Di Lallo Burgers in Montreal for many years making him an accomplished cook...

In between doing his favorite things he'll do his thing for us...a few years ago he put together an incredible Sheppard's pie and, of course, a few Di Lallo Burger extravaganzas with the whole family...I can already taste those hot peppers...

He's not coming to Orange County directly from Montreal but going to Las Vegas first...just about all our relatives stop there before coming here... in the past Mario's gone there first then rented a car and drove to Orange County...right now the weather in his town has been in the 50's with too much rain...he'll be more than ready to leave Canada, visit Las Vegas to gamble a little, eat at the Rio Hotel Carnival World Buffet, one of my favorites, then cruise in a Mustang convertible with the top down, no matter how cold it may be, to Orange County...

I'm looking forward to all the fun during his stay especially visiting the swap meet which I haven't been to since last time he was here...they had a great used books section that hopfully is still there, as well as some good places where we bought fruit and veggies and a lot of other stuff I didn't know I needed...I love acting like a tourist there but I'll be walking around with a hat and sunglasses in case I bump into someone who knows me!!!

Sign of the times...

2010-09-23T09:43:00.000-07:00

Luxury car maker Bentley is recalling 820 cars worldwide over fears that its famous "Winged B" hood ornament could injure people in an accident because it might not properly retract.

Bentley Motors' European head office in Berlin said Thursday the recall affects 620 cars in the United States and Canada and 200 in Europe who added the raised hood ornament as an option on Arnage, Brooklands and Azure models made between October 2006 and March 2009.

but what about beige and mauve?

2010-09-14T10:54:00.000-07:00

Young guys drive Camaros, soccer moms drive mini-vans and rich snobs drive Bentleys...we usually associate types of cars with certain types of people but do we really know who's behind the wheel? I associate Volvos with safety and Porsches with speed...but what about what the car color says?
According to a survey in Great Britain, certain colors indicate certain personalities but I think they're generalities although in some cases quite true when I think of some of my friends and relatives...but I ain't telling because in case you're a relative or friend who's reading this, well, you know who you are...

Black: aggressive personality, rebel...I know a few
Silver: cool, calm but may be a loner...could be
Green: Reactive...my car is light green, does that count?
Yellow: idealistic...like a Lambo?
Blue: introspective, reflective and cautious...not for everyone
Red: someone full of energy and pizazz...gotta be true
White: status seeker, gregarious...I had no idea
Cream: contained and controlled...who would have guessed

If you buy a new car and pick out the color and options you want, the color can send some serious messages...if you're buying a used car you may be stuck with whatever color based on price and options already on the car...but then again, you may just love that used car because of the color...be careful out there....

What's the point of being old if you can't bitch and gripe...

2010-09-13T11:01:00.000-07:00

You think because you’re in the country you can speed all over the place…

Last week I was following a couple of cars on Hiway 74 driving east past Hemet going to San Jacinto about 11 miles from where I was…74 is the same road as Ortega Hiway over the hill from San Juan Capistrano…it’s a four lane highway with a dirt median and two lanes going in each direction…the speed limit was 45 mph but the cars I was following were only going…wait for it…12 miles per hour…driving side by side with neither one having ever looked in their rear view mirrors…I tailgated them for half a minute but backed off…

The world needs to set a fine for driving too slow, the cause of a lot of frustration for the drivers behind…it wasn’t just the two cars I was following but others who took their places as they came to intersections and turned off …there seemed to be a lot of retired looking people driving older cars and pickups that all looked happy as they chatted and smiled at each other…probably going to the market or local bars…I only had a chance to pass a few of them…I had a meeting to attend with about thirty minutes to get there…I got there with five minutes to spare…you figure out my average speed…driving 11 miles in 25 minutes?

Ironically, after the meeting on my way back to the office, I was able to drive at a nice speed and it was pleasant… getting there earlier wasn’t half the fun as it should have been…

BACK TO KARMA

2010-09-07T10:25:00.000-07:00

I couldn't pass up posting this perfect cartoon ...I wish I'd have found it when I posted my Stephan King, The Stand Karma blog a few days ago...

LABOR DAY

2010-09-07T10:00:00.000-07:00

END OF SUMMER
END OF BASEBALL SEASON
BEGINNING OF FOOTBALL SEASON
OPPOSITE OF MEMORIAL DAY
SHOULD IT BE CALLED OPPOSITE DAY?

Once upon a time we had annual pool parties for friends and relatives on Memorial Day and Labor Day…I wish we could have had one this weekend and called it Summer’s End Labor Day…if we did it again everyone would have to wear a black item of clothing because fashion dictates white is not appropriate after Labor Day…our daughters are quite fashionable and I want to stay in their good graces…and we have to wear clothes that match…
We’d use black decorations

On Memorial Day everyone would have to wear a white item…
And we’d decorate in white…

If we were to call it Opposite Day all guests would have to bring and build their own food I’d fire up the grill let them Bar B Que their own burgers, beans, corn and stuff…

But because summer doesn’t officially end calendar-wise until mid September and we if were throwing that pool party today I’d have pitchers of margaritas, and forget about Opposite Day and cook …

· Rib-eye steaks marinated overnight…

· Corn on the cob with Chile lime butter …

· German potato salad …

· Watermelon, strawberries and yogurt for refreshment…

· Emeril’s Mississippi mud cake…

· Plenty of coffee…

At noon on Labor Day Monday I didn’t have a clue what we’d have for dinner that night and it wasn’t half as good as we would have had if we had another pool party…ah! The good old days…

IT WAS KARMA

2010-09-05T08:35:00.000-07:00

It was a little after noon on Saturday, I was watching golf, kicking back in my comfy reading chair with a cup of coffee planning to finish reading The Stand on this holiday weekend... during a commercial, like I always do, I hit my clicker to check out baseball scores when the Sci-Fi channel popped up showing four consecutive two hour TV episodes of Stephan King's The Stand!!!...from noon until eight!!!Holy Mackerel!!!

Call it chance, fate, luck, coincidence or kismet, but I was on page 375 of the 1100 plus page book and....well, I didn't click back to golf and had to watch it for a few minutes...Stephan co-produced the movie and followed the book quite closely...but Hey, I couldn't help myself...what would you have done?...the faceless characters I'd been reading came to life...I watched the whole thing, ate lunch, dinner and snacked in front of the tube FOR EIGHT HOURS IN A ROW?????...what the hell was I thinking?
It was seriously one of the funnest days I've had in a long time...I don't see myself ever doing something like that again...and I don't think I'll watch any TV today...I'm gonna do a little yard work, take a few naps and write e-mails...

Love it or never mind…

2010-09-01T11:37:00.000-07:00

While cleaning out a bookshelf in our den the other day to make room for some newer ones I had just finished reading I came upon The Stand…it brought back so many great memories of my first reading it that I pulled it aside and decided to re-read it…I seldom read the same book twice but I thought this one might keep me busy for a week or two…it also saves me a few bucks instead of buying new books...our grand daughter Sunny, who’s become quite the reader herself, was amazed at its gigantic size and immediately looked at the last page to see how many pages were there … it looks like it’s printed in 10 point type and totals over 1100 pages…
make that a month’s worth of reading…

I brought the book along on our long-weekend trip up north a few days ago and read a few chapters but it’s the most fun reading during my lunch at the office and while semi-watching the Dodgers on TV who have no chance of going anywhere this year…

This novel, one of Stephan King’s most popular, is the story about a man-made plague wiping out 99-44/100 % of the world’s population with only a handful of survivors remaining, a good group led by Mother Abagail who leads them in dreams and the other by Randall Flagg, the dark man, who leads the bad guys…not knowing why, the survivors undertake a mission of going to Boulder, Colorado…they don’t know it’s for a meeting of Good vs. Evil….

I read this book in the early 90’s and saw the TV movie , but the book was so much better; I find that books are always better than the movie…I am re-enjoying this one because I love the way Stephan King writes…

If you love to read this is a wonderful book…if you don't ...well, never mind…

A BASEBALL INQUISITION

2010-08-26T14:56:00.000-07:00

It's hard to believe that Roger Clemens will be arraigned this Monday for allegedly lying to Congress about the use of steroids...those of us who saw him pitch loved this guy, even if he pitched for the Yankees...Hey? How about we indict Congress for lying to the American people?...both political parties...what about the other half of players who used steroids?

Congress should stay the hell out of baseball and be figuring out ways to improve our economy, how to get housing back on its feet, how to get small businesses running again and employing people...it's a baseball issue...let Major League Baseball decide if he should be kept out of the Hall of Fame along with Barry and the other boys....

And who cares? The Dodgers still suck!

LOVING THE LATEST LINGO...

2010-08-22T11:33:00.000-07:00

The Oxford dictionary's newest words... some words hard to believe, some words most interesting and a few words that don't mean what you think...

It's early on Sunday and baseball games haven't started, golf tournaments are barely underway and I just finished reading the Sunday L.A. Times , so I'm spending a little time browsing the internet, the latest word replacing surfing and I'm discovering the words of the year are 'un-friend' and 'de-friend'...if you're a facebooker you know what it means...
other newest words...

chillax - telling someone to chill out and relax...
paywall - a web term blocking access to a website to be reviewed by paid up subscribers only...
vuvuzella - the horn instrument buzzing in the stands during World Soccer...
LBD - little black dress...
staycation - not travelling outside your city, state or country for vacation...
cheeseball - a person lacking in taste or style...
blamestorming - finding someone to blame for a mistake...
gaydar - a gay person's ability to find another gay...
grrrl - a young woman regarded as strange and aggressive in her attitude to men or her sexuality...
threequel - the 3rd film, book or event in a series...can fourquel be far behind?
screenager - persons in their teens or twenties with aptitudes for computers...
ego-surfing - searching the internet for your own name or website...
meatspace - the physical world, as opposed to virtual...
benjamin - $100 bill...

words that don't mean what you think...
irregardless - means nothing, not a word, regardless says it all...
peruse - means the opposite of skimming or browsing thru a book... it means to read with care...

What is it?

2010-08-16T13:54:00.000-07:00

As a young kid I could name just about any car on the road…OK…it helped that there was just one body type of each car, and not like today when there are probably ten types of Fords and ten types of Chevy’s…

I have an ongoing thing with Sunny, my 10 year old grand daughter, when ever we’re driving together…I’ve been pointing out names of cars along with their logos and she’s learned a few of the easy ones, like Mustang with the galloping stallion, Toyota with it’s easily recognizable logo, the cool Beamer badge and the awesome VW badge which hasn’t changed since day one…Chevy logos are easy to spot but the type of car is not easy to identify...

There are fewer and fewer cars these days with actual names on the rear end…manufacturers have gone to logos and initials like CRX and we’re supposed to know what kind of car we’re following…some of the cars we’ve see were total puzzlements…

It isn’t easy at it once was when there was one four door, two door or convertible Ford, Chevy, Dodge, Pontiac, Buick

Or ‘gone with the wind cars’ like Hudson, Studebaker, Nash, Rambler, De Soto and Packard...

Dodgers' Dog Days…

2010-08-16T13:18:00.000-07:00

It's the approaching end of summer, days will be getting shorter, it's almost the beginning of football season and one month away from the start of hockey season …

The Dodgers are 10 games out with too many good teams in their division…they've had bad luck beating teams in other divisions... they have hardly a chance of playing more than 162 games this year…I hope I’m wrong, but with their lack of good pitching and hitting it looks like when the playoffs begin next month and the World Series in October the Dodgers will be watching the games on TV too, playing golf and vacationing themselves…

It's the cruelest time...

My favorite daughter...

2010-08-12T17:54:00.001-07:00

(Don't tell the others, ok?)

Who’s your grand-daddy?

2010-08-12T14:33:00.000-07:00

Kids expect a lot from their grandparents – love, snacks, but mostly a lot of attention, plus chocolate chip cookies… no no… wait… cookies are from grandmas…

I took the day off yesterday and took my 3 and a half year old grandson Ely to the park, and as I was strapping him into the back seat he said:” This is gonna be a good day”…WOW, got me right thru the heart…didn’t know it was that easy to make the kid happy…I tossed his tricycle into the trunk and took off…

On the drive to the park I stopped at a 7-11 for a bottle of water… I had to bring him in, even tho the checkout stand was about 10 feet from where I could see my parked car…as we walked to the cooler to get the water he spotted an orange ‘push-up’ and ‘made’ me buy it… telling him he had to wait until we got to the park to open it didn’t work… he opened it in the car and in about ten seconds it started dripping …then I remembered it’s the reason I bought leather seats…

We made it to the park where he threw the leaking empty-push up in a trash can as he three-wheeled up the concrete walk…
I parked myself under a shade tree as he began digging holes in the sand…we were both sorry I had forgotten to bring his beach bucket and shovel…I know a grandma wouldn’t have forgotten those…
After playing on the swings he climbed up a ladder to the slide only to discover it was burning hot…in park design slides should be facing north and east to keep the afternoon sun off…this slide was facing south and west…bummer of a design...

A young man with his dog walked by and Ely asked him what the dog’s name was…the guy said Scooter…he said that was a funny name for a dog…by then we had polished off the water and he was getting warm and had to take a pee…HOLD IT I yelled!!!I had to stop the kid from whizzing in the sand box and decided it was a good time to head back home…on the way back he ‘made’ me stop at McDonald's for a chicken nugget happy meal and a toy…
We had a great time there as his happy meal toy was a Captain Marvel figure with a shield…the shield had a blue star on it, but he called it a Frisbee…
I’m taking him swimming this weekend hoping he can have another good day…I know I will…

GOOD NEW / BAD NEWS

2010-08-10T12:18:00.000-07:00

Good news: I’m super stoked that Teemu Selanne will play for the Ducks one more year…he’s 40 years young and destined for the hall of fame…when he's on the ice he makes things happen...

Bad news: The Gulf oil spill has tainted crabs and similar delicious creatures... Gulf food will remain unhealthy to eat for a long time…one of my favorite pastimes used to be eating Gulf of Mexico oysters and garlic bread (while sipping Vodka shooters) after a day of downhill skiing with my family…I no longer downhill ski and have to kiss off the oysters…I haven't given up the shooters...

Good news: Steven Slater, the Jet Blue flight attendant who went semi-postal yesterday, was released on bail today, even though he was suspended by his employer…but I think he’ll go free after the details of his ‘rampage’ are cleared up…if you haven’t heard about this guy yet you don’t watch the news, read newspapers or listen to the radio…good for you…

Good news: Tiger Woods is preparing for the PGA this weekend, the year’s final major golf tournament, by playing with a swing coach on the course… it’s not the same watching golf on TV when he doesn’t contend…I hope he does well…Sean Foley, the swing coach, is also helping other golfers…when asked if he was working with Tiger he said he wouldn’t say but there was a possibility…at a probable $1,000/hour I wouldn't say a thing either...

Bad news: The weather here in Riverside continues to be in the 90’s every day with hot winds blowing…it’s a far cry from Lake Forest where light breezes blow with temperatures in the 80’s…in the late afternoon when I get into my car to head home, the thermometer in my car usually reads well over 100 degrees and it takes a good half an hour for the car to cool down…weather is forecasted to get even hotter this week…the Inland Empire sucks big time…

Good news: Our grand daughter Sunny created her own blog a few days ago and has already posted twice…this soon to be fifth grader is super comfortable with a computer, has exceptional writing skills and is an excellent photographer like her mother…the good genes get passed down, don't they?

BEGONE. BOOKS

2010-08-07T10:26:00.000-07:00

MAN OF THE HOUSE
By Chris Erskine
This is taken from the LA Times Saturday morning Home section...for me, Chris Erskine is one of the best writers on their staff...I especially loved the following very timely article today and had to pass it on...you are gonna love this...

They say these Kindles and other electronic reading gizmo's will replace books one of these days, and to that I say, "NOT SOON ENOUGH!"
I am all for that. I can never get paperbacks or hardcovers to work. They won't hold a charge, and they're so hard to reboot.
The other day, I was trying to upgrade a cherished old copy of "The Great Gatsby" and I couldn't get the install to go. Then it froze up on me. I mean, it wouldn't do anything, this stupid book. It wouldn't upload, it wouldn't download. It just sat there. Seriously, the traditional book must be the dumbest, most antiquated thing ever.
Yep, books blow. It seems only right that they have no future, for their past is so mixed. A book never changed the world. Oh, there was the Bible, sure, and Shakespeare wrote some stuff that might've advanced love and language, so what? Surely "Tom Sawyer" was pretty good in its day, but children change and so should books.
There was also, if I remember, "Mein Kampf," which didn't really do the world much good, not to mention any of the crud Nicholas Sparks ever wrote. See, books aren't only obsolete. Many can be harmful. I actually can't wait to see them go.
Know what I really hate? Days like this — warm August afternoons by a lake or an ocean, when there's a gnat floating in your margarita, both of you comatose. On a perfect day like this, how do many people spend the time? They ruin it with books.
Fitzgerald and Conroy, Updike and King. Those are just some of the writers to be wary of. John Irving? I've wasted weeks of my life reading his novels, cover to cover to cover to cover.
Here's more good news: If we don't need hardcover books, soon we will no longer need bookstores, or those annoying old libraries where, if you're not careful, you end up whiling away an entire day.
Ever spent a rainy afternoon in a library or a bookstore? There's nothing worse. As a young man, I was once seduced in a bookstore. Her name was Jane Smiley. I loved her. She didn't even know I existed. That's the heartbreak of books.
Perhaps worse than libraries or bookstores are those homes lined with books. I've rented summer cottages just brimming with books. Do people really think that's appealing? Really, a home full of books is no home at all.
What happens in such a place is that you start browsing till you find a title you just can't resist. You'll crack open the book, and it'll smell a little musty, like the forest after a good rain. And, if you're really unlucky, its binding will crackle like an old set of stairs.
You know what'll happen next? You'll sack out on the couch or on an Adirondack chair in the yard, and you'll get lost in this book. The next thing you'll know, the whole day is ruined.
Yep, a book can go anywhere — the beach, the bathroom, the moon. They are so low-tech they can ingest salt or sand or sunscreen and still keep right on working. No company would ever support that kind of lame technology. Imagine producing a product that would still work in 100 years. That would just be stupid. Who could make money like that?
Obviously, a book is an awful, out-of-date thing. I have no patience with them, the way they steal our attention and clutter up our lives forever. To be rid of them is the best possible outcome.
In fact, here's what these soon-to-be-gone books remind me of: They remind me of oysters, another simple-stupid thing that evolution left behind. Oysters are just ridiculously succulent rocks. And books are just ridiculously succulent trees (but with a few more pearls).
So, yeah, it's a no-brainer to get rid of books; we're actually lucky to see them go. Good riddance, books. Please take those lousy oysters with you.
chris.erskine@latimes.com

AN EXCELLENT ANALOGY

2010-08-04T09:49:00.000-07:00

The owner of the Phoenix Suns basketball team, Robert Sarver, opposes AZ's new immigration laws. Arizona's Governor, Jan Brewer, released the following statement in response to Sarver's criticism of the new law:

"What if the owners of the Suns discovered that hordes of people were sneaking into games without paying? What if they had a good idea who the gate-crashers are, but the ushers and security personnel were not allowed to ask these folks to produce their ticket stubs, thus non-paying attendees couldn't be ejected. Furthermore, what if Suns' ownership was expected to provide those who sneaked in with complimentary eats and drink? And what if, on those days when a gate-crasher became ill or injured, the Suns had to provide free medical care and shelter?" -Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer

from a retired friend

2010-08-02T12:39:00.000-07:00

Sometimes, I'll watch a movie that I watched when I was younger and suddenly realize I had no idea what the heck was going on when I first saw it.

I would rather carry 10 plastic grocery bags in each hand than take 2 trips to bring groceries in.

The only time I look forward to a red light is when I'm trying to finish a text.

I have a hard time deciphering the fine line between boredom and hunger.

How many times is it appropriate to say "What?" before you just nod and smile because you still didn't hear or understand a word they said?

I love the sense of camaraderie when an entire line of cars team up to prevent an A-hole from cutting in at the front. Stay strong, brothers and sisters!

it happens a lot...

2010-07-20T13:25:00.000-07:00

Whenever I feel like posting a blog I’ll find a snack or candy bar, and after eating it, if that doesn’t help to get ideas, well then, it doesn’t really matter…I figured I tried and get back to work… today I looked up some of my past blogs, had a few laughs when I found one about having a hard time finding topics to post…it happens a lot…

When I think of good blog topics I jot them down in a notebook I keep for phone messages and other important stuff… or if I get a good blog thought while driving I’ll call my office and leave a message for myself…and more often than I’d like to admit, most of the topics are lame…it happens a lot...

If I’m at home I look in the refrigerator and it’s usually bare of good snack stuff to eat…we have a few extra people living with us right now, including little Elijah, three years old who likes to open the refrigerator door, and stand there looking in with his finger on his cheek saying “Let me see?”…I check the pantry for pop tarts but they’re usually gone…I look for Ritz crackers and if I find some we’re probably out of peanut butter…if we have peanut butter we’re out of crackers …and there’s never any cookies in my house…every once in a while we’ll buy a few candy bars and stash them in the cabinet but there are no more good hiding places…it happens a lot...

If I’m at the office, where I write almost all my blogs, I’ll open the refrigerator and look for my candy bars …there’s always one right there with my name on the warning “DO NOT TOUCH THESE” …people at my office have never stolen one…once in a while I find a dollar bill or two but no one ever has taken the last one…and I take a candy bar back to my desk and slowly savor it piece by piece by piece…sometimes topics come to mind…

Today I am at the office and let me tell ya, it’s impossible to get upset about not blogging when you’re eating chocolate….

AHHH…

THE ROYAL AND ANCIENT....

2010-07-16T13:02:00.000-07:00

Major golf tournaments for me are as much fun to watch as World Series baseball games...especially the British Open which is now under way at the Royal and Ancient Golf Course at St. Andrews, Scotland…there are four major golf tournaments each year but this one is at one of the most exciting, unusual and scenic locations, as this course is the ‘Home of Golf’ where the game was played 600 years ago…as the photos illustrate it's not a conventional California golf course but is what is called a links course...hardly any trees, plenty of little hills and swales, tall grasses, shrubbery and very deep sand bunkers that originated as natural holes in the ground dug out further and used by domestic farm animals as protection from the harsh winds and rain...there's hardly a flat space on the entire course...if you shoot in the 80's on a conventional course you're likely to shoot 110 here but have the time of your life, so much the better if you carry a flask of whiskey in your bag...it's said that a fifth of whiskey has 18 shots in it and the game which originally had 22 holes was changed to 18...

It is a real test of golf for today’s champions as this year’s tournament celebrates its 150th anniversary...

The golf course began as a single course, but as it gained popularity as a golf destination the demand grew so high that a second course was built, and now seven courses are available, three clubhouses, golf shops and practice centers…St. Andrews is the largest golf complex in Europe and a fitting place for people to play at all levels from beginner to professional…it’s the local peoples’ course too as an unusual thing about the old course is that it is closed on Sundays to let the course rest…on some Sundays the course turns into a park for all the townspeople who come out to stroll, picnic and enjoy the grounds…

What I especially like about this tournament is that with the time difference I can watch it on TV at 4:00 AM in the mornings as well as catch highlights when I get home at night…on Saturday and Sunday I can watch it all morning and still have almost the whole day left to do other things, like watch baseball games…

CAN YOU FORGIVE ME?

2010-07-12T14:57:00.000-07:00

After posting a semi-anti soccer blog the other day I’m taking back a few of my comments…I take back all the bad stuff I said...

First of all, I watched the entire game Sunday between Spain and the Netherlands and enjoyed the heck out of it…I was especially happy for the time out at half time to get a sandwich and a beer…before the game I spent a few minutes on -line getting answers to soccer questions I had, like what off-sides is, and what do yellow and red cards mean and what are the penalties…

Explanations of off-sides were long and hard to understand and were on several pages but I got the drift…it made a huge difference in my enjoyment of the game even though I thought some of the players faked injuries when a penalty could be called and most of the time it seemed to work for them…in ice hockey if a player intentionally hits the puck out of the arena he’s penalized but in soccer it’s common practice to kick the ball out of bounds…

Not that I’m a big soccer fan now but I liked Spain’s philosophy by passing, passing and more passing until the goal came…Spain can now brag about being the No. 1 (futball) sporting nation of 2010…with Italy’s triumph in 2006 this Spanish win means back to back titles for Europe…

The Netherlands came very close to becoming the little nation that could…

I can hardly wait for Brazil 2014…

KNOWING THE NEW NEWS....

2010-07-12T13:55:00.000-07:00

Good news for a change...I found something interesting on Yahoo today...

Gasoline pump prices should stay in a fairly narrow range this summer, putting less strain on family budgets for summer driving trips and commutes to work.

The national average for a gallon of unleaded regular was $2.715 Monday, according to AAA, Wright Express and Oil Price Information Service. That's down almost a penny from a week ago and 17.8 cents higher than a year ago.

In its weekly report on pump prices released Monday, the Energy Department's Energy Information Administration said the national average for retail gasoline was $2.718 for a gallon of regular. California drivers paid the most, at $3.11 a gallon, while motorists in Gulf Coast states paid the least at an average of $2.56 a gallon.

Analysts don't expect a big change in pump prices in the next four to six weeks unless something unexpected happens, like a hurricane in the Gulf of Mexico that could crimp supplies or a big jump in oil prices.

WANT TO SAVE A FEW BUCKS?

2010-07-09T15:39:00.000-07:00

Somehow they classified me as a senior citizen before I officially became one...I began receiving AARP monthly magazine the instant I turned 50 and not at 65 like I thought would be official...
So, one afternoon I'm sitting in front of the tube watching a golf match and I pick up the magazine because I left the book I was reading in the car and start skimming thru it and got interested in an article labeled 99 ways to save dollars...hey, I noticed articles on health, shopping, taxes, insurance, home, travel and cars, and I start jotting down the ones that I thought would make a good blog...not 99 ways of interesting stuff but I was particularly interested in things that young and semi-young people would appreciate...I don't think any senior citizens read my blog, if they do they've been too lame to comment or maybe they don't like my stuff...well, to heck with those old people...

Lower your thermostat...each degree that you drop, you cut your bill by 3%...
Fix that dripping faucet...
Shower quickly and get a low-flow shower head...
Guys if you use a razor to shave fill the bowl with water to rinse it off instead of leaving the faucet on ...
When brushing your teeth the same thing applies...shut of the water while you're brushing...it saves a lot of water on an annual basis...
Sell your books...at cash4books.net or sellbackyourbook.com...I checked online and discovered most of my oldest and favorite books were leather bound special editions and not wanted... I listed a few of dozens of best sellers I have laying around but they were not wanted either...but you may have good ones taking up space...it only took me a few minutes to find out...I'll donate to my library soon...
Go online to book airline tickets...almost all airlines add a hefty surcharge if you book by phone or at a ticket counter...
Flying with extra luggage?...ship it ahead using fedex.com or ups.com Most airlines charge $25 extra for a second bag or charge more if your bag is heavier than what they consider normal...you can calculate whether shipping makes sense for you...
Just 10 seconds of idling your car's engine uses as much gas as restarting it...2 minutes uses enough fuel to drive one mile...
Wait 24 hours before you buy anything that costs more than $100...If you still want it the next day, buy it...Most of the time you'll forget what it was...

PENNIES FROM HEAVEN

2010-07-07T10:59:00.000-07:00

A shifty-eyed Italian hi way working coin sweeper

Some people are calling it the ‘miracle of the coins’ because it happened in Italy…

I like most things Italian like the food, the pope, the church, Italian cars, Leonardo, Florence and Campobasso, the town where my Dad was born… and I liked reading about…

the rear doors of a truck carrying $2.5 million in euro coins overturned opening its rear doors with 10,000 euro coins spilling out… that’s about $12,500… It brought hi way traffic to a screeching halt…it's said Italian cars can stop on a euro...

The truck was carrying coins from the Italian mint to local banks…not strangely enough the driver and a passenger were slightly injured but nobody noticed until the police arrived…

Don’t you love it when people hit the jackpot?

THE BEAUTY OF THE GAME

2010-07-06T13:35:00.000-07:00

Looking at sports magazines or newspaper sports pages I read how a sport that America doesn’t play as well as the rest of the world is dull and boring…I’ve watch two or three World Cup soccer games in the past few weeks and realize that not every soccer game is fun to watch…I’m a baseball fan but it’s not that much fun watching last place teams play…at least in baseball games a few commercial breaks are tossed in while in soccer the ‘action’ is non-stop and you have to pay attention for 45 minutes in a row…and to have to listen to those vuvuzella horns all that time is a real pain…

To make matters worse I don’t like that soccer games sometimes end in ties…I want a loser and a winner, not equality…there’s no equality in sports unless you’re a last place team, and who wants to watch them…besides I don’t understand the rules of soccer other than you can’t touch the ball with your hands…but what about off-sides and what are those cards for that the referee hands out to the players? I’ve been thinking of asking my two local grandsons who have played the game but they have no interest in even watching the World Cup games…

If I wanted to learn more about soccer I’d go to a sports bar, pound a few beers and get into the crowd noise and probably discover that soccer is not boring after all…but Nah, I ain’t gonna go…

2010-06-30T14:45:00.000-07:00

As a former Catholic I can’t help but spend an hour or so every week searching out Catholic or Pope stories on line…I had no intentions of writing anything but today I can’t help it…probably another mortal sin on my soul…Catholic guilt never goes away…

The Pope is expected to name a new papal delegate who will take care of the Legionnaires of Christ, a special order who’s primary job is to bring new men to the priesthood…But the Legionnaires are plagued with scandal…After years of denial, the order admitted last year that its founder, Rev. Marciel Maciel, had sexually abused seminarians and had fathered a child…it now says he had at least three children…probably the ladies of the Altar Society were to blame...

You know what really gets me? Even as allegations against the reverend grew, the Legionnaires had long been favored by the then Pope John II for its success in bringing in new seminarians! Just this past week 26 new Legionnaires were ordained in Rome, which goes to prove that the scandal hasn’t completely taken away the Order’s ability to attract new men to the priesthood…

As a former Catholic I’ve just about lost complete faith in the Church’s leadership and I’m coming close to losing my faith completely…let me warn you if you see me, don’t stand too close…I’m keeping an eye out for lighting bolts from the sky…

Meanwhile the present Pope, Benedict XVI, is wrapping up his Vatican business, yes business, before going on vacation for the rest of the summer at the papal retreat in Castel Gandolfo in the southern hills of Rome…it’s the lovely little summer place pictured above…

Rosary Warriors

2010-06-28T14:07:00.000-07:00

Almost every night my mother would fall asleep in her bed holding her beads, stressing to us the importance of faith and the rosary...
Would you believe that now real men pray the rosary?

Almost all Catholic men once thought praying the rosary was for old ladies and funerals …but it’s not gender specific or for funerals anymore because now beads are available in the forms of soccer balls, basket balls, footballs and even hockey pucks…no joke...this is a great invention...

They’re called sports rosaries…fathers and mothers of youngsters can gift their children with these and the kids can use them without feeling out of place and be more like their great grandmothers...

They can be purchased at realmenpraytherosary.org and I hope they’re available with golf balls…

SUMMER SOLSTICE

2010-06-21T10:07:00.000-07:00

Throughout history this day has sparked ancient celebrations all over the world…

In Egypt the Great Pyramids were built so that the solstice sunset, when viewed from the Sphinx, sets precisely between two of the pyramids…

The Incas celebrated it with a ceremony which included food offerings and sacrifices of animals and maybe people…

The famous Stonehenge in England has been associated with the summer and winter solstice for centuries...the Druids loved to watch the sun rise over the Heel Stone, which stands just outside the stone circles...I'm not sure what they did after the sun rose... they probably had a picnic...

Today is the first day of summer and has the longest daylight hours of the year as a result of the earth’s north-south axis tilt relative to the sun…we all know that the angle causes different amounts of sunlight to reach different areas of the planet…in the Southern hemisphere it’s the winter solstice…good stuff to know…

OK, if there are any Druids reading this, they know summer solstice rituals can be performed by meditating, praying and chanting mantras in the sunlight or indoors over a set of lit candles…the candles must be lit or it won’t work…the purpose of this ritual is to renew, release and enhance external physical manifestations…I’m not sure what this means...

For me, today is the day I could tee off around 5:00 PM and get 18 holes in before dark…

FATHER’S DAY SPECIALS

2010-06-14T15:26:00.000-07:00

Sushi and sashimi

Drive up Highway 1 in a convertible 911

A Long straight drive on the first hole

Short putts for par

Baseball,

Watching Golf,

Oysters,

Steamed Clams,

Lobster

Hockey

Getting up early, reading the LA Times with a few cups of coffee

Reading the next best seller

Fresh made corn tortillas at El Torito

Shrimp cocktail

Toasted tuna sandwich with avocado on sourdough

Garlic bread, ciopino and vodka

Sourdough bread and wine

A full tank of gas and a just-washed car

MILLENIALS

2010-06-10T13:37:00.000-07:00

I often wonder why my 10 year old grand daughter Sunny, who’s been living with us for a while, isn’t outside playing hopscotch or riding her bike…can it be because kids her age, and many of her 4^th grade friends are into electronics of all kinds?

Yup! I read an article today and discovered she’s one of those kids under 12 sometimes called millenials, generation next-ers or the net-generation who have computers, cell phones, digital cameras, Nintendo wireless DS Wi-Fi games and the new i-Pod Touch…they have a comfort level with different races, ethnicities and cultures, something baby boomers and generation X-ers didn’t always have…and, this generation is likely to be in debt partly because getting a college degree is important to them…Sunny has already asked me what it costs to go to college and how to get scholarships…at her age I was interested in getting a new baseball glove, playing hockey and watching TV…

In ten or so years she’ll be questioning her parents, and after graduating from college, get a job, work side by side with 60 year olds and not be afraid to ask her employers what the heck those old people are doing there…

The Absurd Gardener

2010-06-07T14:52:00.000-07:00

From Southwest Trees and Turf Magazine, a monthly landscape magazine… I don’t normally read the magazine in detail but today I forgot to bring my book to read during lunch…I had to share these with you…

In this month’s issue the absurd gardener answers burning questions from the community…

Dear Absurd Gardener,

I have just moved to Las Vegas and am interested in attracting emus to my garden. I saw them at the zoo and think they are just darling. What kinds of plants do you recommend?

Sincerely, Celia Cilliosus

Dear Celia,

You might try an emu bush, native to Australia. It has nice tubular flowers in red, orange and yellow. Though the local birds do seem to like it, I cannot say for sure if it works for emus. Even if it did there remains another problem. I don’t think there are any wild emus in Las Vegas. I can also say that you are not even close to any major emu migration routes. Come to think of it, I don’t think emus migrate. Since they don’t fly and they don’t normally swim and Australia being a considerable commute from Las Vegas, well, you do catch my drift. Even if you planted a garden paradise for emus it could be a long wait.

Dear Absurd Gardner,

I have a problem with the cacti in my front yard. They are situated in a nice, low-lying grassy area with plenty of shade. (If you know cacti you know where this one is going)

The soil is a rich clay and holds the water quite well and all the cacti are on a sprinkler irrigation system that is timed for every other day.

I have been fertilizing them every two weeks but they have not grown at all in over two years. What’s worse they have all turned black and are bending over like little old men. (I resemble that remark), and they smell just awful. Should I bring them back to the nursery for a refund?

Clyde Clewless

Dear Clyde,

What you smell is rot…big time. Your cacti are all dead. You have succeeded brilliantly in creating the most inhospitable conditions imaginable for cacti. I can only marvel that they lasted for so long. Please promise me that you will never buy another cactus as long as you shall live.

PLANET TRIPLE PLAY

2010-06-03T13:32:00.000-07:00

Saturn, Mars and Venus appear together

If you live in the northern hemisphere, go out any night this week an hour or so after sunset and look at the western sky to catch a planetary triple play starring Venus, Saturn and Mars.

The first thing skywatchers will see — weather permitting — is the brilliant planet Venus slightly north of west, in the constellation Gemini... Look for Gemini's twin first magnitude stars, Pollux and Castor, just above Venus.

As the sky gets darker, the planet Mars can be spotted to Venus' left as it appears in the constellation Leo very close to the bright, first magnitude star Regulus... Further still to the left will be Saturn shining in the western part of the constellation Virgo.

The three should be visible for a few months as they get both further and closer to earth's orbit...a good pair of binoculars will be more helpful then than now as the planets will appear to be closer together...

E BOOKS ANYONE?

2010-06-01T14:02:00.000-07:00

Today I got an email from Barnes and Noble, to which I am a member and can get an extra 15% off of purchases, telling to me about their new BN Nook! …an electronic book with ‘page’ sizes roughly 5” X 7” and selling for $259…they promise one million titles including classic novels like Sherlock Holmes, Alice in Wonderland, Charles Darwin, Tom Sawyer, Huck Finn and Moby Dick…

I googled other E Books and came up with the following comparison of prices and page sizes…I’d love nothing hardly better than to be able to click on a current best seller or a classic book or newspaper or golf magazine and read like crazy…not having to worry about storing the books or recycling newspapers and magazines would be neat…I would love being able to share books with others ...the prices for Barnes and Noble best sellers are around $15.00 compared to $25.00 for paper, with most books selling for around $10.00…the Classics sell for $1.99 each!

· Amazon Kindle 2 $259 8”X5”

· Amazon Kindle DX $498 10”x7”

· Sony PRS 700 $199 5”x61/2”

Right now I like the Barnes and Noble Nook…

Some of these are better than others in that some will let you buy from almost anywhere while others are limited…some have books able to be borrowed and loaned while some can’t…some are easier to read and some are too pricey for me…hopefully prices will go down soon, the best e-books will rise to the surface and the recession will go away…

WINO WISDOM

2010-05-25T10:53:00.000-07:00

I read today that moderate drinking may help protect against the onset of Alzheimer's disease among otherwise healthy people, a Spanish news service reported...
Don't you just love the Spanish?
Women who don't smoke appear to gain the most benefit from alcohol consumption...is that good news or what?
Having it straight up with a twist is the way to go...
I don't know if foo-foo drinks count but name me one thing better than knowing wine is good for you...

2010-05-18T19:39:00.000-07:00

HAPPY 39TH BIRTHDAY JULIE HIBBARD

FROM AUNT JACKIE

2010-05-15T16:51:00.000-07:00

"Things don't change...you change the way of looking...that's all"...

Arvol Looking Horse

I WAS BATTLING BLOGGERS BLOCK UNTIL...

2010-05-12T13:38:00.000-07:00

the other day during my 'break' at the office I stumbled on a Yahoo news articles about the most popular and unique spellings of baby names...
I especially noticed a few comments that blew me away....

I loved the last sentence of the following article:
"Hi, I was hoping to have a baby girl that I could name Brooklyn Nicole but just found out that we're having a boy (this will be my fourth boy). I'm excited but am looking for a unique name like Brooklyn for a boy. My 1st 3 sons’ names are all biblical (Joshua, Jeremiah, & Daniel) and I want to change it up a bit for this fourth one. Any ideas?
Someone please use Brooklyn Nicole for me since I can't, lol. :)"

This one makes me wonder how old the person writing is:
well, I named my first born Sky Raizen, Sky meaning... well, Sky. and raizen came from a japanese manga "yu yu hakusho" where Raizen is the father of the main character who is one of the 3 kings of the underworld. just thought putting Sky and Raizen together sounded nice. for my second baby boy on the way I'm thinking of Cloud Hunter."

A lastly:
"I need a name for my unborn baby girl! I need to find the most UNIQUE name ever!
my boyfriend and I are considering the following... (they are kinda in alphabetical order)...(KINDA?)
They are all different, so tell me what you think!"
Jenique Ferisha
Hammie Anne
Ufama Mufasa
Enriquia Jane
Lilayla Resha
Ki'Nahla
Annabelle Belize
Darwin Alisha
Eminitrude Colby-Jack
Falafellita DeGrande
D'Shana Jill
Sky Harbor (isn't there an airport with this name?)
Lauren Molly (where did this one come from?)
Nilly O'Harrington
Prudence La'Crusha
Queen Janey
Rielee
Saphie
Trisha Talbut
Wanda Lola
Xaivia

New twist on baby names?
Can a child's name mold its destiny?

"BOOK 'EM DANNO"

2010-05-05T14:31:00.000-07:00

I had to pass this article on to all you baseball fans, especially Julie...
so often we've seen people running on to the field at baseball games but this one could teach future runners a lesson...

A 34-year-old man who ran on the field at a Phillie's game to chants of "Tase him!" has been charged with marijuana possession, criminal mischief, disorderly conduct and other counts.

Police say a fan hopped over the left-field fence at Citizens Bank Park in Philadelphia and ran along the warning track in the top of the ninth inning Tuesday, one day after a teenager was tasered in the outfield.

The crowd booed and some chanted "Tase him!" Philadelphia fans are not the nicest in the league...

In the wake of Monday's encounter, police are considering whether officers should get involved in on-field chases. What do you think? How about tasering?

A17-year-old boy who was tasered Monday, is facing defiant trespass, resisting arrest and disorderly conduct charges.

SNEAKING OUT

2010-05-03T14:57:00.000-07:00

The fanciest book I’ve read lately is Great Expectations…I’ve had the ‘leather lined 100 best books ever written’ book for years and even though it’s one of the shortest books written by Charles Dickens, I had never read it…I finished it in about a week and even tho Charles is hard to read for the first hundred pages or so after a while I got the hang of his sentence structure and funny old English spelling…

I’ve been trying to save a few bucks by reading books I’ve had laying around and on the bookshelf for years…I remember reading David Copperfield, Oliver Twist and A Tale of Two Cities before without too much trouble…reading novels by current popular authors has made it difficult and not as much fun to read the inspiring Dickens…

Allison loaned me a few books that I zapped thru and my lovely bride bought me a Sue Grafton novel last week that I devoured…’Trespassing’ was easy to read and was a good story…her books are named from A to T so far...this one is the 20th in the series but I'll wait a while to read the first 19...

Over the weekend we snuck out to Target and I hung out in the books section while Bum was shopping for whatever and bought two books: “The 9^th Judgment”, by James Patterson and the latest by Mary Higgins Clark “The Shadow of Your Smile” for Bum…it felt good to get the books at 30% off…I started reading mine at lunch today and it was hard to put down....

We snuck out that same day with a hankering to eat garlic fries and a burger but never made it there…instead we ate at The Soup Plantation on the way and enjoyed a healthier meal…except for the penne pasta soaking in lemon sauce and capers…holy cow that was good…I started with a salad piled high in the plate and I didn’t feel too guilty eating one plate of pasta…and it was for sure better for me than the garlic fries would have been…

YOUNG LEONARDO

2010-04-29T18:13:00.000-07:00

The other day I drove grand daughter Sunny home from 4th grade as she talked about Leonardo da Vinci...her 4th grade class had been studying him and his works for the past week and she was really impressed with all his inventions, art and sculptures...she talked about him for 15 minutes without stopping...

Sunny's acts more like a 30 year old most of the time with her knowledge and interests but occasionally she acts like the 10 year old she is...I love this kid!

But she was surprised to learn Leonardo was born 400 years ago and I asked her how long ago she thought he lived and she said: "I guessed he was born around 1960"...

QUICK, EASY AND FREE

2010-04-22T10:11:00.000-07:00

A few days ago someone who stumbled on one of my recent blogs asked what enjoyment I get from blogging...

I answered the pleasure was because blogging is quick, easy, and free...

The feel of expressing my ideas, opinions and photos beats the hell out of doing almost anything else...and at my semi-ripe old age houses, cars clothes and other traditional ways of expressing myself are no longer the best tools for the job...

I know I can be happy without looking for that perfect old Porsche...(almost)

THE DMV MADE SIMPLE

2010-04-20T12:08:00.000-07:00

I was ready to jump thru hoops and bring medication for anti depressants as I stood in line at 7:30 AM outside the DMV office in Laguna Hills…Would I be another of their victims?

Already a line of a hundred people in front of me and the place wasn’t even open yet…and not a smiling face in the bunch…I fit in well with these grumpy people…

By 9:00 a.m. I made it inside to the ‘start-here’ counter where the semi-smiling clerk attached a sticker with # G-050 to my license renewal letter (dated renew on or before April 3, 2009) and told me to wait for my number to be called…meanwhile the line inside and outside the place kept on getting longer and longer…there probably was over 200 people already standing and sitting around…my number was marked with a G as a voice on a TV screen called out the next number…I heard B’s, C’s and D’s called before the G’s started… I went there expecting to wait for hours and they didn’t disappoint…

My number was called around 10:30…

I was over a year late in renewing... having had detached retina surgery late in 2008 and then cataract surgery a few months before my license was due for renewal I could not think of getting renewed if I couldn’t pass the vision test… I had double vision and could not drive…I spent almost all of 2009 going to eye experts trying to find a fix…none was ever found even tho my double vision gradually lessened each month…a month ago I got new glasses and I was determined to make them work for me…many early mornings I woke up thinking I was going to the DMV and had to try to explain why I was a year late in renewing…but I chickened out not wanting to fail the tests…should I have brought along letters from my Eye-Docs or what? I took sample on-line tests and read the book over and over again…I thought I was ready…

I heard: “G-050, go to window 14”……When I got to window 14 the nice lady was smiling as she looked over my overdue notice…but she never said a word about my being a year late…she took my $32 and had me sign and verify some new forms…she asked me to read lines of letters from the vision chart above her head, which I surprisingly did easily, then she told me to go to window 22, the last window, stand in line, get photo’d, fingerprinted and take a written test…I wrote out the multiple choice answers to 25 questions and took it back to desk 22, dropped it in a basket, went to the restroom and then waited for my name to be called…another nice lady called out my name…in seconds I was standing there in front of her…she congratulated me for getting a 100% correct score and said I was the first of the day…yippee for me…after 4 and a half hours I went out to my car and drove home as a licensed very happy smiling guy…it was a piece o' cake!

THE LAST SARDINE

2010-04-14T13:37:00.000-07:00

The lone surviving sardine plant in eastern Maine shut down this week after a century of operation. The intensely fishy smell of sardines has been the smell of money for workers in Maine who have snipped heads off, de-gutted, sliced and packed the small silver fish in billions of cans...
Sardines are not one species of fish. Instead they are any of dozens of small, oily, cold water fish that are part of the herring family... I find them yummy with crackers and a beer as a snack. My Dad ate them in tomato sauce, with Chile peppers and mustard and taught me to love them too...
Sardines are still available in supermarkets selling for around $1 a can...I'll remind my lovely wife to pick up a few cans to put in my lunches...they are a tasty treat with sandwiches... not as sandwiches like my Dad used to eat but on the side...
Sardinistas are formulating plans in hopes of returning the lonely sardine to the American palate as they are high in beneficial omega-3 acids and are among the healthiest seafoods around...

THE BACKYARDIGANS

2010-03-31T18:20:00.000-07:00

If you've never heard of the Backyardigans your life is dull, or you work too much, or have no children between the ages of 2 and 5... or you may be like me having a 3 year old grandson named Eli and we watch this Television show diligently almost every evening right before dinner...we laugh and dance together for a half hour and totally love it...

It's a brilliant animated musical adventure series aimed at young kids and it's one of my favorites, along with the Big Band Theory and Modern Family...OK, I'm no TV 'Addicto' but I watch a few shows...

The characters, the Backyardigans, are five young 'kid' animals...a penguin named Pablo, a moose named Tyrone, there's Uniqua and Austin unidentified animals and Tasha the hippo...
As the play in their back yards their imaginations take them (a walking distance away for them) to far away jungles with volcanoes, Hawaiian beaches with awesome surfer dudes, Texas cattle drives with horses and ho-downs. These little guys sing and dance their ways in and out of danger every single time with their adventures always happily ending by walking next door to their own back yards.

2010-03-17T11:24:00.000-07:00

Good attitudes and aptitudes reign over experience.

SITTING TOO MUCH!

2010-01-20T13:52:00.000-08:00

This morning after most of my work was completed I could have gone for a walk; but instead I chose to write about this article I read on Yahoo...it caught my eye when I saw the next line: sitting can be deadly...holy cow and mackerel...

It tells that too much sitting can be disastrous, that genes regulating glucose and fat in our bodies can be lessened by exercising and that is much more affective practiced several times a day...I'm not sure about glucose but fat I can relate to...

This article mentioned that Canadians have a death rate unsurpassed my almost all people...I was born up there where it snows for 8 months when we rarely walked quickly, got to school walking super slow in 3 feet of snow, not at an exercise level...in the summer we spent a lot time eating burgers at my uncle's store...

We knew hardly any other sports so we couldn't play hockey for 4 months...
I blame my parents for the shape I'm still in!

GLOBAL WARMING!!!SO?

2009-12-14T15:41:00.000-08:00

What if it turns out that climate change is all a big hoax and we create a better world for nothing?

I’ve asked myself that ironic question for a while… why are scientists not able to begin talking on a productive level that leaves the bickering behind so we could get started on the gigantic task of cleaning up the mess we’ve been helping to make…

A final conclusion on the climate debate doesn’t have to be reached to begin replacing 19^th and 20^th century technologies…it’s time to clean up our act and create a better world…whether global warming is a hoax or not.