Oy. Melatonin. You know the stuff. Available in any health food shop, it's supposedly great for jet lag. And it is relatively good for getting one back in a standard sleep cycle, let us say. Problem is, I travel just enough to sort of forget. I must have been taking melatonin since my January return from the UK, deciding that to ensure that I continued to sleep well through February, April, and so on…right into the premarital zone of June…why not keep taking the stuff? Apparently there are all Read more [...]

"They didn't want to jump into my basket." Jane is speaking of carrots. As she speaks I hear, as though for the first time, her particular turn of phrase. As well as this particular turn of events. For events have turned out marvelously. That may be because nothing is happening. We are happening. Pembrokeshire is happening all around us, and we are more or less just along for the touristic ride. As for Jane's way of referring to vegetables, ours is not to reason why. Ours is to enjoy. She always Read more [...]

Real time. Watch out for it. In fact, watch out for real anything. This very morning Elisheva, currently my absolute favorite rabbi, explained that a Jewish wedding without a ketubah...well, it isn't quite Jewish. The wedding agreement being intrinsic to the experience. I thought about this weighty matter and hit upon the only contemporary solution: a virtual ketubah. Elisheva smiled wanly. What the hell. It's a serious matter, if you're presiding over a wedding. Let alone being the groom. Having Read more [...]

Perhaps it's permanent, whatever effect emanates from this conjunction of mind-boggling events. Which really amount to very little. Some weather. Little problem with the phone. Honestly, it's not life in Dhaka, is it? No, it's life in a leafy California high-tech executive suburb. And one shouldn't complain. But one does. And yet one doesn't. That is the strange thing. First, we have the swooning effects of heat on the quadriplegic. Then we have the AT&T U-verse. They are inseparable, these two. Read more [...]

Summertime, and the livin' is easier with the temperature in the warm zone, rather than the hot. Yes, the neurologically compromised aren't terribly fond of the heat. Perspiration founders in hot weather, leaving the body high and dry. High in temperature, low in evaporative moisture. Screwed, in other words. But those other words are no longer necessary, for it is now summer in the way summer should be summer. Pleasant. No better summertime reading than Carl Hiaasen, I always say. Particularly Read more [...]

One good thing about Nob Hill, it has, like other hills, altitude. Attitude also, but one expects that. What one doesn't expect on this sweltering Bay Area afternoon is a breeze. And here it is, in the city of St. Francis, actual airflow. Jane has parked her Honda in the cheapest car park available for blocks, meaning that for a mere $35 we will spend a few hours here high on the hill. High on the hog also, the Fairmont Hotel being known for that sort of thing. There are plenty of people in the Read more [...]