Category: Daft Musings

Kelly and I (and briefly, Neil) have come down with some nasty respiratory bug. Maybe it’s influenza, maybe bronchitis, maybe pneumonia, but whatever it is, it is keeping us down, exhausted, and coughing like seals. My anti-sicknessroutine have consisted of raw garlic; hot water with lemon, honey, and fenugreek; zinc mouthspray; loads of orange juice;…

Thanks to this book, Neil and I watched the 1994 movie Speed for his physics lesson today. As a physics lesson, the movie is absurdly amusing. If you don’t know the movie, the general premise is that a madman, unhappy with his pension plan, has placed a bomb on a public transit bus, and once…

As previous posts have shown, I have a psychologically tortured relationship with Costco. I loathe the conceit that everything there is a bargain, but for the exact same commercial goods found elsewhere, they are often cheaper than Amazon. Their dairy prices compete with those at Smart & Final, so I will buy milk and eggs…

Last year, Peter surprised me as we ventured out to get our new Christmas tree with the suggestion that we get a fake one instead. He’d bought a fake one the year before for his office, so that the janitor wouldn’t suffer additional work in constantly vacuuming up fallen pine needles. I had had a…

I’m not an economist, but the Fed’s recent decision to unleash (that, virtually print) more U.S. dollars into the world economy–termed qualitative easing 2, or QE2 for short– really caused me to fret. Now, the idea, as far as I understand it, is that we need more inflation in order to have an full economic…

The day after labor day, Peter and I awoke to a rude surprise. Peter stepped outside to go off to his consulting job at 5 am (both of have learned to start early and work long on consulting gigs), only to find out his car had been stolen–right out of our own driveway. To say…

I have been at war with fiend squirrel for almost two years now. Each year, I plant a summer garden, eagerly looking forward to the fresh tomatoes and pumpkins I’ll have come late summer. And every year, as I go out to pick the tomatoes, I find little bite marks, left by my nemesis. Last…

I decided to vote early this year. I wanted to get it over with, as politicians, pundits, and sadly, even friends, are getting shriller and openly adamant about this mid-term election. This way, when I’m pushed, I can just say I already voted, and there’s no “October surprise” that’s going to effect what I did…

My mathematics- and puzzle-loving son Neil was looking forward to the Martin Gardner Celebration of Mind, a posthumous Gathering-for-Gardner-like event held worldwide for what would have been Gardner’s 96th birthday. Our local event was at Stanford, and as seems to be a personal pattern of mine, the first thing I did was find a party…