Image by Emslichter from Pixabay

My road to Beetlemania began in 1957 in my small hometown of Redding, CA. That’s when the VW Beetle caught America’s attention, especially mine. That’s also the fateful year my dad traded in my mom’s favorite car ever, a beautiful 2-tone, flesh and white, 1956 Ford hardtop with a high-powered V8 engine, for a new VW Beetle with a soft-top sunroof. She never forgave him for that. [Read more…]

My buddy Andy lost his battle to recover from a massive stroke he suffered this past summer. He put up a good fight. It was just too much to overcome. [Read more…]

My dashboard thermometer said 118 degrees at 2:00 PM today (July 11), so I figured it was time to bite the bullet and break out my driving gloves. [Read more…]

No other words are necessary. Read on for true wisdom of the ages.

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Don’t you miss the good old-fashioned “BAM! – PSSSST” blowout from tires of yore? Yeah, me, too. [Read more…]

Just arriving at the half-way point on January 20th. Looking forward to the NEXT seven decades being even better than the first. I am who I want to be, I do what I want to do, and I have what I want to have. [Read more…]

My loving sweetheart got me another really cool gift this Christmas. She must be psychic. I have always wanted one of these babies. Now I have one! [Read more…]

Just thinking about and appreciating all the veterans in my family today: grandfather, father, daughter, uncle, nephew. And classmates from the 1960s. And friends. And fellow Rotarians. And fellow Toastmasters. And former colleagues. The list is extensive. Today is a great day for celebrating them and their contributions to society. [Read more…]

Yay! I won! (I think. Maybe. Sort of. We’ll see.) It was a spine-chilling experience to get an email from The Mighty Google that my websites – all 14 blogs, plus my Rotary club blog – got blacklisted due to all the malware and malicious code on them. You never, ever, ever want to piss off The Mighty Google. [Read more…]

Oh, those jokesters in North Korea are at it again. Apparently they haven’t updated their school physics textbooks since before 1952. North Korea’s announcement that they have tested an H-bomb has physicists around the world chortling in their beer. (Yes, my fellow geeks … we can, indeed, chortle in our beer.) [Read more…]

Hey, guys … do you really need 1.6 gallons of water to flush down a few ounces of pee? Probably not. Even more so if you still have an old-fashioned (now illegal) 3.5 gallon tank smuggled in from Canada. [Read more…]

Never in my half-century of studying plants have I seen what I saw on this morning’s dog walk. Bees were visiting and collecting pollen from bermuda grass! These must be desperate times for bees. [Read more…]

Buster the cat proudly brought in his second roof rat. Live. After a bit of excited screaming and teeth-gnashing (by Eve) and barking (by the dogs), we were all in a great mood for bedtime, as you can imagine. [Read more…]

Just found out about a new verb – to decrapify – while absorbing abuse from my new laptop. According to UrbanDictionary.com, it means to remove crap or unnecessary items from something, i.e., pre-installed software on a new computer. [Read more…]