All By Myself

The wife left for her week-long road trip Monday afternoon.  The pic below is how I showed up for yesterday’s video call with the FC boys.  I told them I had been crying since she departed, and I didn’t want them to see me that way. I could also throw in the line about waiting by the front window for her to return, but I’ve played this meme to death on previous posts and won’t use it again until the next time she goes away.  Hey, it’s not like I’m getting paid to write this crap.

Did you see the heartwarming Father’s Day message from Trump? He used it to call out losers and RINOs.  There was also news that he wanted to use the DOJ to have SNL stop teasing him.  I don’t think the framers would approve of that one.  We have a lucid president now, but most political news still bums me out, starting with the sclerotic Senate.  If we can flip a couple seats in ’22, we may get on the right path. I’ll provide one more tidbit before I change the subject.  I saw that Seb Gorka was harassing mask wearers at the post office, asking them why they were wearing one.  One wag responded that he would have told him, “Because I don’t want anybody to think I’m a Republican”.

I spoke with The Wig last week.  He mentioned feeding me blog ideas, but quite frankly, I have not seen any evidence of that since he brought up the Gurzanski / Clooback contretemps, so you can toss him a little blame if this post is boring you.  His brother does ping me occasionally on the FB IM with juicy tidbits.  We’ve discussed Bennifer 2.0 at length.  But The Wig is providing SB1 with some lodging in Chicago next month, so I got no real beef. We’ll be visiting the Wigs at their new Richmond home come August.  He buys and sells real estate about as often as I trim my beard.

My sister and I are in it to win it.  Our old man liked to play the ponies, but sis and I roll the dice in the options market.  We had a big hit recently on Zscaler but lost some on Crowdstrike.  We have a very meticulous approach.  We check who has an earnings report coming up, look at our horoscope, and then purchase some puts or calls.  Netflix is our next quest, and things have been looking good on that one.  I might chicken out and dump my calls before earnings if it keeps going up.  I do this mainly so my kids don’t end up with too much dough when I croak. I was going to make a “boomer cash” joke at their expense on FB but decided that might lack decorum.

I told my personable trainer that he was going to get a blog mention.  He’s not a blog aficionado, but maybe I can get him on board by saying something nice.  He gave me a T-bone a few months ago.  I froze it since the wife is off red meat.  I pulled it out recently and grilled it up.  Due to all the jerked chicken I cooked at Charlie’s party, I had quite the flare up.  The T-bone was well charred but still came out great.  I got three meals out of it, having it with salad and homemade bleu cheese dressing for two lunches.  I was also motivated to clean my grill, so PT continues to be a motivator.

There’s been some Foster City news lately.  The Chron article below is a good one.  SB1 could not get past the paywall, and he asked me if I support our local paper.  I said I do not, but I am trying to convince several hedge funds to buy The Chronicle, fire everyone, and sell it off for parts.  Even closer to home was the trash fire on Grebe.  If I had known about it in real time I would have gone over to gawk.  Regarding that last one, I first became aware of myself in Foster City in August 1994.

https://www.sfchronicle.com/projects/2021/san-francisco-bay-area-sea-level-rise-2021/foster-city/

https://www.facebook.com/FosterCityPolice/posts/10159111815494318

https://patch.com/california/fostercity/amp/cal/20210621/1078954/meditation-becoming-aware-of-oneself-in-foster-city

High and Dry

People are abandoning me left and right.  #1 headed to the East Coast, just because he hasn’t seen his SB1 for a year and a half.  I asked him if he wouldn’t rather spend quality time under my pergola, and the answer was a big NO. He threw me a sop by inviting me for a butter chicken dinner next Friday, but I may hold a grudge.  This event was supposed to take place at his SF abode, but he invited himself over to The Belgian’s house instead, which suits me fine, as it will allow me to luxuriate in his hot tub.  This will be a pure bachelor event, as his wife has headed to, wait for it, Belgium.

Come Monday – a great tune by the way – the wife heads out for a week.  She and Charlie are driving to Mass, where Charlie will be residing.  My wife will take it as far as St. Louis, where she will be replaced by Katie, who will get her the rest of the way.  I suggested they take a visit to see these folks while they’re out there, but to be careful.  They are armed and clueless.

So with the wife gone for a week, I may focus a little more on the blog, which means you could see a post or two this week.  My goal is to get the hit count into the high single digits.

Happy Father’s Day to all the fathers out there, or to harken back to my 5/12/07 post, those that act in a fatherly capacity.

From the Desk of DJ

I may have been one for May, but this blog is still flourishing after 15 years.  People are clamoring for more, meaning the Wig and #1 both busted my chops for sparse recent production, whereas Trump’s just shut down after a month because it was getting only slightly more hits than mine. Maybe Trump will bring it back when he is reinstated as POTUS in August.

Since my last post we’ve been to Paso Robles and Tahoe.  Paso was with TCG and Katie and Tahoe was hosted by them.  They remarked that they really enjoyed spending so much time with me.

Paso was quite nice.  I heard it compared to Napa, circa 1980.  We had a very upbeat driver for our big wine tasting day, and she estimated that there are 350 wineries in the area.  We hit Eberle, Booker, and Calcareous that day.  All our hosts were cordial and knowledgeable, making for pleasant visits.  We went to Justin the day before for lunch and tasting and joined their wine club.

We stayed at the Paso Robles Inn. My wife said the crew next door kept her up one night, but I was apparently dead to the world, sleeping in every day.  I stayed in the room one day as the others went to the pool, so I missed the opportunity to meet a nice drunk couple that chatted them up.  They said they were patrons of the nearby Rodeo Bar.  I suggested to TCG that we start our next day there with a couple shots of Popov, but we got lattes instead.

We sampled several local breakfast eateries and were not disappointed with the piles of food they provided, which allowed us to subsist on light lunches.  We had dinners at Thomas Hill Organics, BL Brasserie, and Il Cortile.  We can recommend them all, but we saved the best for last at Il Cortile, with generous cocktails, great service and fine food.

Wine dominated but we did spend a little time at the Firestone Walker Taproom, the makers of 805.  We tried a few flights, most of which were good, but we didn’t care for one.  It might have been the Blueberry Mint Cobbler or the Cocoanut Stout.  I appreciate creativity as much as the next guy, but c’mon people!

We spent a couple weeks at the FC hideout before heading to Tahoe last Thursday. Thursday night was a fun event with some folks we had just met along with TCG’s neighbors and #2.  We all made a personalized pizza, which TCG cooked up in his portable pizza oven, which can hit 900 degrees plus.  This evening featured the TCG and DJ show, which has a two-drink minimum.  We kept the crowd in stitches, at least in our own minds.  Charlie walked into this party at the end, which is akin to being unceremoniously dumped into a foreign country.

#1 and Barbie arrived on Friday and The Hoteliers on Saturday.  I still need to get a bar name for Mrs. Hotelier.  We went out on the boat several times.  #2 just got a new boat so along with Katie’s boat we had enough room for the entire crew.  We hit a few rough patches and Barbie started talking about her coccyx.  We did lunch at Gar Woods, where we had some excitement when two waitstaff collided and dropped their trays.  The clean-up crew had it fixed in no time and #1 got a free drink because he got a little splashed on the back.

We split dinners between the TCG and #2 abodes. The mac and cheese I made was sandwiched between #1’s taco bar and butter chicken.  For our last dinner, TCG let me pick out one the Booker wines he purchased in Paso.  I chose the Tempranillo and decanted it.  It was quite good, and I asked if I could take another home with me.  Permission denied.

We are now back home and getting ready for a busy weekend. The girl comes home tonight with her girlfriend and we’re having a pizza party Friday with Mashie, Unc, my sister and LA.  Saturday night is a going away party for Charlie, who is heading to Massachusetts.  Sunday is a wedding shower for The Hotelier’s daughter. Monday, we rest.

We got the sad news yesterday that The Wig’s dad – father, grandfather, great-grandfather - passed away at 96.  I met him several times and he was quite the physical specimen, weightlifting into his 70s.  RIP Ernie.