Seriously Irreverent Musings

Category: Uncategorized (Page 1 of 4)

Emergence

For the past four years, I have spent most of my time—living, working and playing—within the four walls of my house. It has become a cocoon, one I leave less often than I should. For a while, cocooning was novel. Then it struck me as kinda funny. Something to make a joke about. Something I named hermatitis. Then it stopped being funny. Now it’s worrying me.

I have never been the most outgoing guy, but at least I was going out, leaving my house frequently, seeing other people on a regular basis. That changed with the start of Covid. Obviously, I was not alone. The whole country was in lockdown.

Pam, my saint of a wife, and I adhered to the rules of lockdown—mostly. We defined our lockdown bubble to include the market and our older daughter’s house, which Pam made sure we visited every week. We saw one other couple on a social basis every month or so, always sitting outside. Other than that, we were housebound, meaning we stopped going to work, the gym, concerts, movies and restaurants, and stopped seeing the remainder of our friends. I stopped seeing my cronies from the Porsche Club, as I no longer went to Porche Club events, including Cars and Coffees and organized backroads drives. Hell, I even stopped going to Luftgetkült, the granddaddy of all air-cooled Porsche shows and the one I had had my cars displayed in for several years.

I accepted the lockdown limitations with equanimity—not the cause, just the result. I took to them easily, like a duck takes to water, like a hot knife cutting through butter. Lockdown enabled me to simplify my life, as I no longer traveled for work, left at zero dark thirty to exercise at Equinox, fought traffic or waited at restaurants.

There was even an unexpected, though much appreciated, upside to the lockdown: We had more time to spend with our children and grandchild.

I tried using food delivery services a couple of times when lockdown started because I was leery of going to the market. I was nonplussed by the results, though, and I decided to risk going to the market. I minimized that risk by going Sunday mornings, leaving my house before seven. I felt comfortable, as the market was empty at that time. Interestingly, I noticed the same shoppers and workers in the store each week and began speaking to them, wearing a mask and keeping a safe distance. I learned the names of the produce guy and the checker. I talked to them more than I spoke to many of my friends. They became my de facto cronies, as I had few others. I would laugh to myself about the absurdity of my situation, thinking how comfortable I was with the lockdown, loving not leaving my cocoon, telling people I had hermatitis, the fake disease I created to describe my behavior.

The lockdown ended after about a year, enabling me to do more. I left the house slightly more often. I was no longer concerned about getting Covid because I was vaccinated, had had myriad booster shots, and had not contracted it, even though Pam had had it twice. Pam and I saw a few more people. We ate at more restaurants, though usually outside. We went on vacation. I kept going to the market on early Sunday mornings. The produce guy and the checker continued to be my cronies.

I fell into a rut-like existence. Each week had the same cadence. Each week felt like a groundhog week, with very few changes from the prior one. I lost the desire or need to return to my prior lifestyle. Maybe it was just inertia, maybe it was something worse, but I continued to exist primarily within the confines of my four walls.

My Porsches kept collecting bird shit in my driveway and dust in my garage. I rarely felt the urge to use or clean them. I am shocked that I have driven my 2015 Porshe Cayman GTS, my supposed daily driver, fewer than three thousand miles in more than four years. I buy gas for it every two or three months, and I think it spends more time recharging its battery while it sits idling in my driveway than it does on the road. My feet have covered more miles than it has.

I spend my workdays staring at my computer, looking at spreadsheets or people on Zoom calls. I eat lunch by myself almost every day, which has the upside of enabling me to save money and keep my diet clean. I never call anyone to go out, though I will grudgingly go if I get an invitation, which my friend, Jeff, gives me every month or so, invitations that usually require me to clean one of my Porsches.

Until recently, it felt comfortable. Now it concerns me, as I live like a fucking hermit, and it’s not so funny anymore.

Worse, as seventy is the next mile marker on my road trip through life, I feel like I am squandering my remaining quality time, which is dwindling at an alarming rate. I feel it’s time to emerge from my cocoon, leave my house, relegate the produce guy and checker from crony to acquaintance status and, most importantly, find new cronies.

Thankfully, I have a few potential cronies in mind, but I will have to pay a pretty penny to elevate them to crony status. At a time when I want to reduce my workload, thereby reducing our income, and when Pam is set to retire, further reducing our income… and when I should be husbanding cash… I plan to spend more money, rent a vacant office in my friend’s suite of offices—a suite he shares with two other guys who I know and have skied with for years, and who can return to crony status overnight. On the surface, this office space is a waste of money. It’s not like I need an office—I don’t—but I need cronies, and I need to get out more.

I would like to take credit for the plan, but I can’t. I owe it all to John. Last month, I called him to wish him a happy birthday. He was hanging out at the beach with his wife on the big island. After I delivered his birthday wishes and got caught up on his vacation, he asked me if my ears were burning. With some trepidation, I asked, “Why?” Laughing, he told me that he and his office mates had discussed asking me to rent their vacant office. I got the sense they thought—somewhat appropriately—that it would be difficult to pry me out of my cocoon.

John, who I have known for over fifty years and is more like a brother, is the consummate salesman. His first part-time job was selling Yellow Page ads. How many people could do that? He could… and was good at it. He knows how to push, prod, cajole, deflect, all the while staying on the right side of the line, stopping just short of being irritating. I knew this was important to him and would be his current raison d’être, his sales pitch du jour.

As we spoke, John dropped into sales mode, telling me to think about it. No pressure. Sure. He pointed out why it was a win-win-win situation. He needed an office mate. Pam needed me out of the house after retirement. And, most importantly, I needed to get the fuck on with my life. He was right, and I knew I would do it, but I wanted him to work for it. So, I said, “Thanks. You make good points. I’ll think about it. Talk to you later.”

We talked again before he got back. Of course, the conversation revolved around the vacant office. I heard all about the win-win-win. Not to mention the lack of pressure. Sure. I remained non-committal, enjoying the process.

The following Sunday morning John drove up and parked in front of my house, unannounced and uninvited, but not unwanted. I didn’t realize he was out there, sitting in a Guards Red Porsche 911 GT3, the one he babysits for his son-in-law, the one with the racing bucket seats that are so hard to get in and out of, the one he wants me to drive.

Instead of knocking on my door, he chose to call me. When the phone rang, I was in the bathroom, bent over the sink brushing my teeth. If the water hadn’t been running, I would have heard the sublime exhaust note of the Porsche. Spewing toothpaste, I answered his call on my Apple watch. The connection was not great, but I heard well enough to converse with him, “You’re where? You want me to do what? Drive the GT3? Sure, but I need to get out of my pajamas and finish cleaning my teeth. It will take me a couple of minutes.”

Pam, possibly overhearing our conversation, but more likely hearing the Porsche, went outside to say hello. I should have known she would. When I was heading to the front door, I yelled, “I am going to drive the GT3.” I got no response and did not see her, so I went outside.

Pam was leaning over with her head in the open passenger window. She was laughing. I knew I was the subject of her laughter. I knew John had told her it was in her best interest if I rented the office, that the last thing she needed in retirement was to have me underfoot. He knew she would support his cause. I knew it, too. Game over.

She stood up as I approached, smirking as she said, “Have a nice drive!”

I did.

the belly of the

It strikes me kinda funny that after 50 years I am choosing to return to the belly of the beast. I define the beast as a UCLA writing class, the last one of which I took began in January 1974, the second quarter of my freshman year. That class was the dreaded, at least to me, English Composition class, a requirement for all students, a class in which I was lucky to earn a “C,” and a class in which my writing was subjected to ridicule by the TA on numerous occasions. Yeah, those comments still rankle and my psyche still bears the scars.

The reason I took that class during the winter quarter was that UCLA deemed my skills in English, specifically with respect to writing, to be too weak to allow me to take English Composition without first taking the Subject A English class as a prerequisite, a class I never even got credit for taking, as it was deemed remedial and not worthy of counting towards anyone’s degree. I never understood why UCLA opted to name the class Subject A. I would have thought a better title would have been Subject D (for dummies) or Subject R (for remedial) or some other equally demeaning title. I must have done okay in the class, though, because UCLA let me into English Composition afterwards.

In case I have not made this abundantly clear, I did not like to write at that stage of my life. Frankly, I could not conceive of a future in which I ever would. I chose to become a math/computer science major because I thought it would enable me to avoid writing one page more than absolutely necessary while earning my degree. I did not think too hard about the choice. I selected it when I was at orientation, a month or so prior to entering UCLA. It took me all of a minute to make the decision and check if off on the form. I knew I was pretty good at math, but I had never written a computer program, so it was a somewhat risky option. It’s not like math or computer science graduates made much money back then. So I did not pick it for the job opportunities. During my four undergraduate years, I never once thought of changing it. It turned out to be a smart decision made, to a large extent, based on a stupid reason.

So here I sit, 50 years later, having just signed up to take a writing class at UCLA Extension. I realize it is not part of the UCLA undergraduate curriculum, but that distinction does not matter to me, as this class still has an instructor, it still has assignments, and I still perceive it as returning to the belly of the beast. Ironically, this time I am choosing to enroll. Thanks to the ravages of inflation, I am choosing to pay more for this single class than what my family paid for tuition for my entire first year at UCLA. I want to take it. I am interested in it. Dare I say it, I am taking it because I have developed a passion for writing.

What the hell? How did this happen? What ended my desire to avoid writing? When did writing become one of my hobbies, an enjoyable way to pass the time without having to watch tv, peruse social media, or, God forbid, play golf. When did I discover that my brain felt good while I was writing? That writing was fun. That I liked filling a blank screen with words. The simple answer is, “I have no idea.” And, frankly, I have no need to know.

That does not mean that I am completely comfortable with taking a writing class. even one at UCLA Extension. Far from it. Now, I write when I feel like it. I write when I have something I want to say. I write to tell stories that are meaningful to me. I write to make myself happy. Taking a class may force me to add structure to my writing, to write more often than I wish to, to write to meet the expectations of others, to write about subjects of which I do not care. In short, it may make writing less of a hobby and more like work. I hope that does not happen.

Thankfully, I do not have too long to dwell on any of those thoughts, as the class starts next week. Soon, I will be firmly ensconced back in the belly of the beast, hoping to escape it without any more ridicule or scarring of my psyche.

Neoannophobia

it’s the end of the year, and I know it. I think I feel fine, but at my age, who’s to say what’s lurking right around the corner. I guess time will tell, but that does not alleviate my year end concerns.

I find myself in a rather introspective mood in dealing with my bout of neoannophobia, or fear of the new year. Fueling my thoughts were the Grateful Dead, specifically a live version of Ramble On Rose which was recorded at Winterland during the final show at the legendary venue before it closed on December 31, 1978, to make room for condos and a Burger King.

I am not sure what led me to listen to Rose, as it is not a song I listen to often, and frankly, I am not much of a Deadhead. I, however, realize that the lyrics are damn near perfect for year-end phobia driven musings, as I was trying to get mentally prepared to enter 2024. So perfect, that I had to replay Rose several times, thereby extending my retrospection.

Somewhat predictably, my curiosity about Winterland did not stop with Rose, and I somehow ended up listening to The Band, another group I do not listen to often. Now the The Last Waltz concert, with its bluesy, Americana feel, downloaded in lossless audio, is playing on my KEF wireless speakers, as I tap the keys on my keyboard and ruminate about 2023.

At 68, soon to be 69, I have yet to bow to the realities of my exalted age, but I am standing somewhat less vertically than ever before. I spent 2023 working, though at a lesser rate. I am still running my fractional CFO consulting business and enjoying it. I spent 2023 working out, averaging between five and six workout days per week, focusing on maintaining muscle mass, balance and flexibility so I can still get off the toilet and walk without assistance. So far, it’s working, as I ran about two miles on my tread this morning without falling off. I’ll have to see what happens in 2024.

A couple of highlights of 2023 included the 50-year anniversary of the night Pam and I attended our Senior Prom and 2023 also included the night we attended our 50th high school reunion. The former passed without too much fanfare and the latter was a hoot. The biggest issue I had there was reading name tags, as the font in which the names were printed was tiny and headshots from 50 years ago were not too useful in helping me recognize the faces of the people at which I was peering.

Our kids and grandkids are doing well, and we get to see them often, as we all still live in LA.

After a whole Covid pandemic full of procrastination, Pam and I decided 2023 was the year to bite the bullet and do most of the maintenance on our house that we had been deferring, including redoing our 90+ year old front hardscape and driveway, redoing our 20+ year old kitchen, replacing our rotting 90+ year old living room windows and repainting the outside of our house. Yeah, it cost a pretty penny, but it was worth it, even though we had to pay twice to have the outside painted, as we hated the first color we chose. We had no choice, as Pam thought it looked like baby diarrhea. Sadly, she was not wrong. We have a few more things to do, but I am pretty sure they can wait. If they can’t, we sure can, possibly until 2025.

So much for the highlights of 2023. Unfortunately, there are a couple of lowlights that portend a tumultuous 2024. The cork-like buoyancy of Donald Trump continues to cast a pall over 2024 and calls into question the mental state that exists in our country. The abject assininity of the Progressive Left continues to demonstrate just how much we have to fear from them as well. Now that I am on Medicare, I have to endure the infamous donut hole in my health care coverage. Unfortunately, I have to endure it in politics, too, as none of my candidates will ever get their party’s nomination. Which of course, leaves me wondering if I will ever collect my social security, something I may have foolishly been deferring for the past couple of years.

Of course, I dread 2024 for a couple of other reasons, not the least of which is the splintering of the Pac 12, a conference I have followed since the 1960s, and it makes me feel like my splintering is destined to be right behind it. Additionally, Pam is retiring in mid-2024, which will be great for her, so Iam happy about that. I still have to come to grips with how I want to spend my quality time remaining, and while that is weighing on me, I can put it off for now. Of course, I have yet to identify any New Year resolutions I want to make for 2024.

As I listen to The Last Waltz playing on my KEFs, Neil Young just sat-in with The Band for a version of Helpless. Seems sort of fitting.

Happy New Year!?

Walking the Walk

All it took was a simple act of kindness and a desire to help others for my wife, Pam, to improve the lives of total strangers during their time of crisis. At the outset, Pam had no idea what would transpire after she acted kindly and compassionately.

I do not know if Beverly Hills is unique, but it has a Human Relations Commission. The mission of the commission is to foster and enhance civility, respect and kindness in the community. Pam was appointed to the commission by the Beverly Hills City Council a year ago. The commission is important to her. She believes in it and wants to make a difference. The actions she took during Thanksgiving week proves just how much she belongs on the commission, how lucky Beverly Hills is to have her as a resident, and how grateful I am to be married to her.

During the afternoon on Monday preceding Thanksgiving Day, Pam was at work in the BHUSD District Offices, where she is the Executive Assistant to the Superintendent. She works on the ground floor, and her office has windows, enabling her to see outside. A skinny young man, somewhere in his mid-20s, carrying a plastic market bag with food and in obvious distress, knocked on the window, asking if he could come in and use the restroom. Pam said, “Sure.” Then she got up, let him in, pointed in the direction of the bathroom and went back to her desk.

Pam’s boss, Michael, the Superintendent, asked Pam, “Who is that guy?” Pam replied, “Just a guy I let use the bathroom. He seemed to really need it.”

Sometime later, the man reappeared, waved goodbye and left. At that point Pam went to check the bathroom and noted that the man had left his food. Pam and Michael also noted that a laptop had been left outside the building in front of Pam’s office. As they did not know whose laptop it was, they assumed it was a student’s.

Then Michael, who is also a very caring person, and Pam reviewed the security footage and noted that the laptop was left by the man Pam had let use the bathroom. For some reason, they were not able to start the laptop. Pam and Michael left the food bag and the laptop outside the office building Monday night, hoping the man would return and retrieve them.

Early Tuesday morning, the bag and laptop were still outside, and the security guard brought them in and left them on the desk outside Pam’s office. Pam and a co-worker took the laptop and tried once again to turn it on. This time it started, but the laptop was password protected. Pam could not login, but she noted that a picture of a man and a woman with their names displayed were visible on the screen. The man in the picture was not the man who used the bathroom.

Curious, and wondering if the laptop was stolen or if it belonged to the man who used the bathroom, Pam jotted down the names on the login screen and began googling them. Surprisingly, Pam found a hit on the woman’s name. The woman and her husband, the man in the picture, lived in Seattle. Additionally, Pam found a landline phone number for them. So, she dialed the number, hoping it would be answered, but thinking it was unlikely to be, as no one answers landlines anymore.

When a woman unexpectedly answered, Pam immediately said, “Hi, my name is Pam. Please do not hang up.” Pam went on to introduce herself and explain how she got the phone number and why she was calling.

After Pam had described the man, the woman began to sob. Through her sobs she said, “Oh my god. That is my son’s laptop. He has some mental health issues, and he ran away from us a couple of days ago. We do not know where he is now, but we were able to ping his computer over the weekend and could tell he was at Saks in Beverly Hills.” Pam told the woman what she knew and what had transpired.

At this point, Pam began to feel terrible, both for the family and herself, because she had no idea where the man was, either. Pam hoped the man would return for his possessions, but he did not. Pam, thinking the man was homeless, went over to Roxbury Park later in the day and asked the Park Rangers if they had seen the man. They hadn’t.

On Wednesday afternoon, Pam texted the woman to let her know that she was still looking for the man and had visited Roxbury Park multiple times but had not found him. The woman said that she and her husband had been in the car for 20 hours and were driving to Beverly Hills and would arrive Wednesday evening. Their plan was to file a missing person report. They also hoped to visit Pam’s office on Monday, after the holiday was over, to review the security footage.

Pam texted Michael Wednesday night to let him know what was happening. Michael said he would be in the office Friday, even though it was a holiday, and asked Pam to extend an invitation to the woman and her husband to come to the office Friday to view the footage.

On Wednesday night, the Beverly Hills Police Department called Pam and asked her what had transpired so they could verify the woman’s story as part of filing the missing person report.

On Thursday Pam continued to cruise by Roxbury Park, hoping to see the man, but she did not.

On Friday, Pam and Michael met the woman and her husband at the district offices and learned that the LAX Airport Police had located the man and were able to contact the woman because of the missing person report. Though the man did not want to return home on Friday, the woman and her husband were able to see the man and try to convince him to return home, something he did not do until Monday.

Pam’s selfless and caring acts played a huge role in enabling the family to be reunited. The actions she took and the care she had for the people involved was inspiring to everyone.

Of course, her actions came as no surprise to me, as they just reinforced my belief that she is, and always will be, a saint.

Making Lemonades

With all due respect to Pete Seger, for the past couple of decades I have been asking myself, “Where have all the Golden Delicious Gone?”

My earliest apple fixation was with the Golden Delicious apple cultivar. Its taste profile just resonated with me. It was not too hard. It was not too soft. It was not too sweet. It was not too tart. Its skin was not too thin. Its skin was not too thick. For me, it was damn near perfect.

I ate them throughout the 60s, 70s, 80s and most of the 90s. They were easy to find at the market with their distinctive yellow skin. At some point, they started getting to the market while they still had green skin, a sign that they were picked before they were ripe and then stored. No matter how long I let the green ones sit at home, they never ripened into a yellow color and they never tasted right. Needless to say, I was not fixated on eating them. I did not like them at all, and I had a hard time finding any other apple cultivar that I did like.

It is sort of odd that I couldn’t find an apple to eat. There are over 7,500 cultivars of apples, with about 90 or so in commercial production, meaning that there was a high probability that I would find one I liked. Sadly, until recently, I never could. In fact, I just skipped eating apples altogether, unless I ate some Granny Smiths I had put into an apple pie.

I used to listen with envy as Pam and Kimberly discussed apples. What they liked. What they didn’t. I don’t remember if Shelby contributed to the conversations because all I remember about Shelby eating apples is her spitting out a mouthful of apple as she exclaimed, “Ugh, that sucks!” I could never contribute except to complain about the lack of yellow Golden Delicious apples in the store.

To some extent, the Golden Delicious cultivar was a freak of nature. It was found in the 1890s in the eastern US as a chance seedling of either a Grimes Golden or a Golden Reinette cultivar. It was wildly popular in the early 1900s and maintained its popularity for decades. It is still one of the top 15 apple cultivars in production. It just does not get to the market in a state I will eat.

Many other apple cultivars are based on the Golden Delicious, including the Jonagold, Gala, Mutsu, Pink Lady, and Ambrosia, Opal apples, to name a few. It shocks me that I do not really enjoy any of these varieties. But I just don’t.

One day last year while I was at the market during apple season, I happened to spot a yellow apple. I always look at the yellow apples, hoping against hope that they are Golden Delicious. Generally, the yellow ones I see are the dreaded Opal apples. To me, Opals are just a tease. With their mellow yellow coloring they look like I will like to eat them but their texture and taste are off-putting to me. On that day as a looked at the yellow apples on display and read the sign, I noted it did not say Opal. Instead, it read Lemonade, a variety I had never seen before. Smiling broadly, I bought some.

It’s a good thing I did because they come closer to meeting my Golden Delicious apple expectations than any other cultivar I have ever tried. I really enjoyed them.

It turns out that, unsurprisingly, Lemonades are descendants of Golden Delicious apples. They were cultivated by crossing a Royal Gala and a Braeburn cultivar. Braeburns were created by crossing a Granny Smith and a Lady Hamilton cultivar. The Royal Gala was created by crossing a Kidd’s Orange Red and a Golden Delicious cultivar.

The Lemonade was first cultivated in New Zealand in the early 2000s. As far as I can tell, it first made its way to the States last year when I saw them. As far as I am concerned, it was about time they got here, and I salute the company that is importing them.

So, I am back to eating apples. They are still Golden Delicious, sort of. They just have a weird name.

…Easy Feeling

I had a great time last night. It was a more impactful night for me than it was for Pam, but she thoroughly enjoyed it, too. On the surface, it was a simple gathering in a Santa Monica brew pub, but the surface is not adequate to articulate the impact the evening had on me. There were not more than 15 or so of us, nestled around a table amidst a throng of young(er) strangers having a wonderful time, but that was enough, enabling us to enjoy a couple of hours of nostalgic memories.

I woke up this morning with the Eagles Peaceful Easy Feeling on my mind, something I have never done before, and, most likely, something I will never do again. As I pondered why the song was on a continuous loop inside my head, I realized how perfectly it summed up how I felt last night.

I was at peace. I was carefree. I was happy. Despite the turmoil of the world and the daily grind of life, I was able to relax and be fully present for several hours. Even though I had not seen many of them for decades and even though I may not see many of them again, I was able to completely focus on them, on what they were doing, on what they have done, and on our shared memories of the time we spent together in elementary school way more than 50 years ago.

I am glad I experienced it. It was a more intimate, more intense version of what Pam and I will experience tonight as we attend our 50th high school reunion. We will have a great time tonight, but it will not evoke, nor could it evoke, the depth of feelings that I felt last night and carried over to today.

When songs stick in my head, I usually listen to them and then listen to various covers of them. Generally, it does not take me long to find a great cover. This morning was different. Because I was so focused on feelings and memories of the past, the covers were jarring instead of soothing. I found myself replaying the original between playing the covers, something I never do.

At first, I was surprised by this. The more I thought about it, though, the more I understood why. I had to hear the original, nothing else could work.

$35.95

I bought a dozen bagels and eight ounces of whipped cream cheese at a bagel store in Beverly Hills earlier this morning. It was a jarring experience, as the cash register indicated I had just spent $35.95. At that amount, there was no way I was adding a tip to my purchase. Sorry.

I knew it would be expensive when I walked in, but I swear that the price had gone up by 10% since I last bought a dozen bagels and cream cheese at the same place about three months ago. Shocking.

Generally, I delude myself into believing I am reasonably insulated from the ravages of inflation. I sometimes shake my head at the cost of UberEats or DoorDash when I get food delivered, but our dinners vary, both in restaurant selection and item selection, so I do not really notice individual price changes.

I do not drive much, so I rarely buy gas and do not notice the prices.

I go to the market every week, but I generally spend the same amount. Of course, that may have more to do with what I buy or if the manufacturers’ reduced the amount of food in the packaging than it does to the absence of a change in prices.

My solar panels cover my electricity costs, even when we charge Pam’s car at home, so I do not notice utility rate changes, though I did almost lose my mind over the amount of my gas bill in January, but that was pretty much a one-time event.

So most of my purchases are random enough that I do not notice price changes. But every now and then, like when I buy racks of ribs or briskets or pretty much anything at Bristol Farms, I do, and the price increases hit home. Hard.

As I have written about before, I like to live my life in a rut. I like consistency and routine. I do the same things on the same day of each week. Week in. Week out. I do not vary my routine often. I also do not buy bagels often, and I only bought them this morning because Kimberly asked for them.

One of my Sunday morning activities is to go to the market. I have been going to the same market for the 35 years Pam and I have been living back in Beverly Hills. It is the same market that I went to with my mom during the 1960s and early 1970s. Yup. Week in. Week out. Rut-like in the extreme.

If I go to get bagels, I get them after I leave the market. The store is right up the street. Close by but it causes me to turn left instead of right when I leave the market. As with the market, I have been going to the same bagel place for years. It was owned by Larry King while he was alive. Now it is owned by someone else. The ownership change did not affect the bagels and cream cheese sold there. They are still the same. They have never been inexpensive, but the current prices are ridiculous.

One of my weekly Saturday morning activities is to download all our checking account and credit card transactions into Quicken. I have been doing this for years. Needless to say, I have captured a lot of transactions arising from the purchase of bagels. After I got home and before I cut a bagel and slathered the whipped cream cheese on it, I got curious and decided to look back at how much bagels used to cost.

I opened Quicken on my computer, searched for the transactions on my AmEx card that were for buying bagels in Beverly Hills. It was a good thing that I had not started eating when I looked, as I noted that at the onset of Covid I was paying a paltry $21.06 for the same dozen bagels and container of cream cheese, after adjusting for the tip, which I was still giving then. If I had been chewing on a bagel as I read, I would have gagged when I realized the price had increased almost $15. Whoa.

At that point I reached for my trusty HP12C calculator. I have been using HP calculators since business school, some 44 years ago. I love the reverse Polish notation required to use them, which eliminates the need for entering parenthesis, making them more efficient. It also makes them somewhat immune to theft in much the same way a manual transmission makes a car harder to smash and grab.

In any event, I powered up my 12C, punched in a few numbers, sans parenthesis of course, and quickly determined that bagel and cream cheese prices have gone up over 70% in three and a half years, or about 20% per year. Damn.

I can only imagine how high interest rates would go if the Fed used the bagel and cream cheese price index to calculate the inflation rate. Ouch.

With that thought, I decided it was time to stop chewing over the cost of bagels in my mind. It was way past time to put one in my mouth and chew on it for real. Thankfully, I had not lost my appetite.

Bitter and Sweet

I am in a bittersweet mood, and I blame it on Clifford, though it was not his fault. He was just the unintentional catalyst that put me into my nostalgic state this morning, but to be fair, I would have been in it soon enough anyway.

I met Clifford in September 1960 when I began going to Horace Mann School for kindergarten. His presence filled a room. He was an outgoing, blonde kid who, ironically, had a big dog, though the dog was not red (duh). Everyone in my kindergarten class knew Clifford, even though he was in the other class.

Despite only interacting with Clifford a handful of times in the 50 years since we graduated from Beverly Hills High School, my memories of Clifford remain as bright fixtures in my mind. He was the quarterback on our Horace Mann School flag football team. I was his left end. When we speak, he only mentions the catches I made. Thankfully, he omits talking about the ones I didn’t make. Those were good times and most likely account for why I feel like I still know him well to this day.

As bright as my memory of Clifford is, it is not as bright as my memory of Jill, the girl who I had not met before and whose hand I held 63 years ago when I walked into my kindergarten classroom for the first time. We were not good friends in either elementary or high school, but, hey, holding hands can leave a seriously indelible impression. Just think of the Beatles.

My memory of her may also be enhanced by the chance, yet somewhat pre-ordained, meeting we had in a Berkeley motel parking lot as we were both dropping off our kids to begin their college experience at the University of California.

Over the past couple of weeks, Ellen, another of our Horace Mann School classmates, and Clifford have been reaching out to me to help them organize an informal elementary school meetup the evening before our 50th high school reunion.

Clifford called me this morning to talk about who might or might not be coming to our meetup and to the reunion. When Clifford called, I was chewing on a piece of rye toast while sitting in my den, which due to the ongoing remodeling of our kitchen, is also serving as our breakfast room.

Of course, I put the call on speakerphone when I answered, even though I had the replay of the Amsterdam Formula 1 race blaring from the TV. He either didn’t mind or couldn’t hear it. For some reason, Pam, my saint of a wife who was also in the den, didn’t bother to admonish me to turn it off.

Pam graduated from high school with Clifford and me and was listening to our conversation. When Clifford started saying he was having issues locating many of our Horace Mann classmates and it became clear that neither Clifford nor I could remember a good number of the names of the kids in our class, Pam, being the packrat she is, sprang into action, grabbing my 1969 Horace Mann yearbook off one of the bookshelves in the den and locating whatever lists of contact information she had from our prior reunions. I knew I had the yearbook, and I knew it was somewhere in the den, but it felt like too much work to search for it. It never ceases to amaze me that Pam knows where everything is while I only have a general idea.

I started scanning the yearbook, focusing on each of the 95 faces and names that made up our eighth grade graduating class. The last time I looked at it was probably 10 years ago. My perusal of it at that time did not generate the feelings I was feeling this morning.

I realize it is pretty normal to lose touch with classmates as time goes by, but as I looked and looked, it was quite evident that I had lost touch with over 95% of them. Some had moved away. Sadly, some had passed away. Some had lost interest in being found. Sure, I still speak with a couple of them somewhat regularly. Sure, I interact with a handful of them on social media, and that should count for something, I guess. But those facts did nothing to quelch my feelings, which I think were spawned more by the stark reality of the passage of a great amount of time than anything else.

Every sweet face on that page was filled with youthful energy and the joy of moving on in life. We were still young and generally naive. While we were beginning to grow apart as we aged, we still had way more in common than not. We were early in our march to adulthood, and we couldn’t wait for it to happen.

Well, a lot has happened since then, almost an entire lifetime worth of stuff. Stuff that I am yearning to learn more about, as I think I am finally enough of an adult to make that stuff more meaningful to know.

Purged

Pam and I knew it was time to fix our kitchen. While we are never exactly on trend, we knew our kitchen was dated. I mean, it has wood cabinets and green granite. I think it is damn near perfect the way it is, but even I knew it needed updating for functional and cosmetic reasons. Pam just wanted it clean and new and white. So, we decided it was time to deal with it. That was over three years ago.

It started as a simple refresh, repainting our existing cabinets and keeping our flooring and most of our appliances. We got quotes and bought some new cabinet hardware at the end of February 2020, right before COVID. That put a hard stop on our plans. We thought about restarting it about 18 months ago. We put a stop to that restart once we realized the supply chain issues were still too severe. We waited until early this year to really get going. We got a new contractor. We got new quotes. Along the way, we got the might as wells and dropped the refresh and turned it into a full-blown redo. Of course, the budget when up exponentially. So here we are on the eve of destruction. Literally.

We have spent the past couple of days purging our kitchen, dumping old stuff and moving all the remaining stuff into other rooms and the garage as we prepare for our remodel, which begins tomorrow.

It was sort of shocking when we started opening up kitchen drawers and cabinets. We found items that expired in the early 2000s. We had to clean the pantry, which still had some of our un- or partially-consumed food items we bought, but did not really want or need, during the height of the hoarding days of COVID. We laughed at the pots, pans and utensils that we found that have not been used in decades but were lurking deep in drawers. It was like a reverse treasure hunt. Every unused item just added to the time it took us to purge the kitchen.

In theory, our remodel should be simple. In theory, it should not take more than six weeks or so. In theory, we should not drastically exceed our most recently increased exponential budget. In theory, we know what to expect, as we did a much more complicated version of this over two decades ago, at a time when we had kids living in the house. I hope the theory is right.

I mean, we are not moving or altering any walls. We will be replacing our current cabinets, counter tops, backsplashes and flooring. Due to code changes, we will be ripping out our drywall in order to redo the kitchen wiring. We are adding some HVAC ducts in the kitchen walls. We are moving some plumbing and changing our overhead lighting. We are putting in new appliances, including the built in griddle on our range top that Pam thinks is my ultimate boondoggle. Simple stuff. We will have at least one inspection. We have spent an eon deciding on our counter tops, backsplashes and floors. We have selected and bought our new appliances. Everything else has been ordered and is either in stock or arriving soon, except for the backsplash tile which is on backorder for at least a month. We are good to go. Simple. Right?

We think we have come to grips with life without a kitchen. In theory, we have it all figured out. Our kitchen table is in our den, along with our microwave, coffee maker and coffee bean burr grinder. A spare bathroom has our slow cooker and toaster oven. The contractor says our refrigerator and washer and dryer will be usable. All we are missing is our cooktop, ovens, dishwasher and insinkerator, which we use a lot less often than we used to use now that we are trying to do more composting per city decree. We got this covered. Really.

Tomorrow, they start demolishing the kitchen. By tomorrow night, we will testing our planning and preparation, not to mention our patience.

Dad’s Lights

Another Father’s Day. Pam, my saint of a wife, took good care of me. This year marked a return to doing more normal Father’s Day stuff. Breakfast at Porta Via in Beverly Hills. Followed by a stroll down Rodeo Drive to look at the classic cars that are on display every Father’s Day.

While Pam was happy at brunch, inching our way down a crowded Rodeo drive gawking at cars we most likely have seen before was no fun for her. I appreciate her sacrifice for my benefit. If I am lucky, I may be able to get her to ride shotgun in my 89 Porsche 911 Carrera Targa this afternoon when we drive to Shelby’s to see the grandkids. I probably shouldn’t press my luck, though.

The car selection this year was really varied. We saw everything from old to new. We saw sports cars and sedans. We saw hot rods and SUVs. Surprisingly, there was a large collection of 1950s Cadillacs, a brand that I used to enjoy.

Shockingly, the highlight of the show for me was not the smallish collection of Porsches, though there were some really nice ones, but the 1959 Cadillac, the model with the fins on each side and the iconic twin horizontal taillights on each fin.

The 59 on Rodeo Drive was white. The same color as the one my dad owned. My dad owned a four-door sedan. The one on Rodeo Drive was a convertible. It didn’t matter to me. Just seeing the one today brought back a host of memories.

The 59 was the last nice car my dad owned. He bought it because his business partner, who could not drive, wanted it. He bought it before my mom started losing large sums of money gambling. Frankly, I think he was more comfortable in his pickup trucks with manual steering and brakes and the 3-on-the-tree manual transmissions than he ever was with the fins and twin taillights, power steering and brakes and automatic transmission. Personally, I liked the fins and taillights and the air conditioning in the Cadillac.

That is not to say that my dad did not like cars. He did. He just like functional ones more than stylish ones. He was a child of the depression after all.

My dad was not good at spending money on himself, mainly because he spent all his money funding my mom’s gambling habit and raising my sister and me. He was generous to a fault, always putting everyone else’s needs before his own. He was happy just having a family, something he never expected. I did not understand that growing up but really appreciate it now.

My dad was a bachelor for a long time. He got married at 39 and had me when he was 40, which in 1955 was really old to have a first child. I was three or four when he got the 59, old enough to be fascinated by the taillights. He married my mom thinking she could not have kids. I was a life changing surprise for him. One that he cherished.

My dad was always there for me. He could not have done more for me or my sister. The only times I lost my temper with him were when he let my mother’s gambling run amok. I thought he could control it. I thought wrong, but I still blamed him for it. Maybe I shouldn’t have.

So, Dad, I spent the morning thinking about being a dad. Once I saw the 59, I spent a couple of hours remembering and appreciating you. You would have loved spending the late afternoon with us when we visit our grandkids. Happy Father’s Day. Love ya.

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