Month: April 2019

There are a number of things in life that straight – out confuse me.  Their purpose, function, and intent confound my intellectual capacities. For example, adding salt to chocolate. What are we doing here?  Can’t chocolate stand fully and completely on its own?  In a rare few instances, other flavors can be added because they’re sweet or compliment – like mint, caramel, even peanut butter or coffee.  But that’s about it.  Salt is clearly a seasoning for meats, in particular burgers, a bit with pepper in mashed potatoes.  Some may wish to add it to the boiling water for pasta, but after that, we’re done here. A while ago, a friend gave us some specialty chocolate candies with sea salt.  There were great boulders of salt perched atop the chocolate.  All I could taste was the salt.  What were the masters of chocolate-making thinking? Continue reading “I Don’t Understand . . . . .”

My faithful readers will recall a blog a few weeks back in which I outlined things that make me smile. Those are the slices of life that give us pleasure and satisfaction.  Well, on the flip side are those instances that do the opposite – the bits and pieces that lead us to “what were they thinking?”  Here are some items and situations that either provoke eye-rolling or cause is to recoil in disgust.  If I’m being overly sensitive, you’re probably right so don’t bother pointing it out. Continue reading “That’s Disgusting!”

On a recent morning, I went into a variety store to purchase some lottery tickets.  Next to the counter was a rack of red “Make America Great Again” caps.  I walked out of the store, not really because the sentiment was offensive, but more because of who and what it represents.  For some, it’s a line in the sand, but for others, it represents unbridled fear and divisive rhetoric that’s driving decisions that aren’t in America’s collective best interests.  Those decisions and policies are neither reflective nor thoughtful – they’re knee-jerk reactions to perceived injustices. That got me to thinking about where we’ve come and where we’re going. Continue reading “How to Make America Truly Great”

I’m in.  Not really sure how to get started here, but I fully embrace the concept that I would somehow be able to influence the thoughts, habits, and branding of millions of people and get paid truck-loads of cash in the process.  This came to my attention as I saw that one celebrity’s daughter is an “Instagram Influencer”.   I hadn’t really understood how that works, and full disclosure, I still don’t.  People actually pay to hear what she has to say? Is that like the Kardashians, who don’t have any appreciably marketable skills yet still end up on television and in magazines all the time?  And the famous daughter is like, what, 19?  And she got a crew scholarship to USC, despite not having ever been on anything less than a forty-foot sailboat.  How cool is that?  I can just see her asking “What do these big paddles do?” at the first practice, or informing the coach that “Riding backwards makes me nauseous”. Continue reading “Becoming An “Influencer””

Was it not Benjamin Franklin who wrote about the inevitability of death and taxes?  I think so, but what he neglected to mention was that taxes are the usually the more painful of the two. This year was more exciting, because in addition to our own revised taxes, our daughter moved, changed jobs, and has gone back to school.  Federal taxes along with a nice assortment of taxes in two locales. That’s the trifecta of joy and anxiety. Continue reading “Death and Taxes”