The Honor Of A Lifetime

Afternoons at the movies

Fun trips to the arcade

The mall and the big toy store

Action figures galore

Games in the park on sunny Saturdays

Pizza and salad for lunch 

Watching TV and dinner with the folks

Precious time with your great-grandmother

Trips into the city

To see the dinosaurs

That haunt the grand museum

And dominate the floor

The boardwalk in New Jersey

The Skeeball and the games

Eating our favorite pizza 

After playing in the waves

Winning lots of tickets

And trading them for prizes

Watching sunburned people 

In all shapes and sizes

Our trips down to Virginia 

And Washington, DC

Monuments and museums

That meant the world to me

Back to New York City

The Statue Of Liberty 

The view from the Empire State Building

As far as they eye can see

Wall Street and Broadway

Times Square and Fifth Avenue

The Metropolitan Museum

And Lincoln Center, too

The Phantom Of The Opera

A show that must be seen

And the films that we enjoyed 

On the IMAX movie screen

Then on to wider travels

Adventures in California

The beauty of the Southwest

Utah and Arizona

The boat to Alcatraz Island

Walking the Golden Gate Bridge

Heading south to the San Diego Zoo

And stopping by Legoland, too

Driving through the desert

At a hundred twenty-two degrees

Enjoying the majestic Big Sur Coast

High up over pounding seas

The bright lights of Las Vegas

That impressive magic show

Grand Canyon and Monument Valley

Places every soul should know

There were some characters along the way

Leroy, the crazy guide

The psycho killer pizza man

And the creepy French Crèpe guy

The latter was in Paris

Where we enjoyed summer days

At the Louvre and the Eiffel Tower

Memorable in so many ways

London and Cambridge and Stratford

The bus trip to Stonehenge

The lakes and mountains of Switzerland

Where the beauty never ends

Touring the Highlands of Scotland

Getting soaked in the rain

Standing stones and ruined castles

I’d do it all over again

Delightful dinners in Salzburg

Mozart’s quiet city

On the banks of the Danube

Where the hillside views are pretty

Visiting St. Peter’s

And the many wonders of Rome

The indescribable beauty of Venice

Stays with you when you come home

These adventures we took together 

Every one a joy and an honor

But the honor of my lifetime

Is being your proud father

Happy Birthday, Michael!

Action

When I look at what I have accomplished, I see action. When I think about what didn’t get done, I see delays and excuses.

Flying Cars

Where is that flying car in a suitcase that I was supposed to have in the 21st Century?

Good And Bad

I’m tired of bad things that happen and good things that don’t. Can’t they switch?

Bill Gates

Bill Gates is 5 years older than I am and $132 billion richer. No problem! I have five years to catch up.

AOC

AOC raised $5 million for Texas! God bless her!

Surviving Mondays

On to my second double espresso by 10 am... Surviving Mondays 

3 Steps

When you program a computer to perform a task that requires three steps, it will do each step in order and will always follow the same sequence.

Step 1

Step 2 

Step 3

If you ask human beings to do a three-step task, some people will do all of the steps in order.

Some people will skip Step 1 thinking that it’s too simple and therefore a waste of their time.

Some people will skip ahead to Step 3 because they want to go straight to “the good part.”

Some people will work on Step 1 indefinitely, because they want it to be perfect before they move on to Step 2. 

Some people will skip a step because it involves an activity that they don’t like to do. They might substitute another action or get someone else to do that step for them.

Some people will complete Step 1 feeling very confident, because it was easy for them. When they find that Step 2 is more challenging, they’ll decided that doing these steps is “just not for them,” and they will never try the steps again.

Some people, when encountering a challenging step, will set the entire activity aside. If they come back to it at a later date, they might find that the steps were not as difficult as they thought.

Some people will execute all of the steps, but they won’t finish any of them thoroughly. They’ll take credit for completing the job, even though they didn’t really accomplish the goal.

Some people will executed the steps in a different sequence.

Some will invent their own way of getting the job done, either because they envision a better solution, or because they don’t like to follow instructions.

Some will declare that the entire exercise is pointless because some product or service already does this, and they’ll refuse to do any of the steps.

What about you? Do you identify with any of these descriptions? Can you think of a different approach to the problem? If you were hiring someone to do a job, which approach would you look for in your candidates? Or would you program a machine to do it?

Bold

I can’t read your mind. That’s why I ask bold questions. You can’t read mine. That’s why I make bold statements.

Surprising Parallels

I like parallel lines. I notice them everywhere. I’m drawn to their graceful symmetry. Sometimes, I skew them with perspective. It’s the way that I see things.

A Very Monk Morning

I felt like Monk this morning. I took the water filtering pitcher apart, scrubbed and soaked all of the parts, and then I cleaned the espresso machine. Next thing you know, I’ll be polishing doorknobs.

Groundhog Day

It’s Groundhog Day!

I woke up this morning, and it seemed like we were still in the pandemic. And there was another impeachment. And Tom Brady was going to the Super Bowl for, like, the tenth time!

How crazy is that? Wake me when it’s over...