Paul Shoul and I are planning a May trip to Helsinki, Finland. Fortunately, we’ll be there right in time for Restaurant Week. This is a really great idea, considering how many people I’ve met in my life who harbor hopes as budding restauranteurs or food truck operators. From the Helsinki […]
Do you go from despair to delight, back and forth up and down and sideways? I am startled this week by how great I feel, how optimistic and positive I feel. This contrasts mightily with two weeks ago when I was fretting about the weather, felt down and depressed about […]
When I met Cinda Jones at a party on New Year’s Eve, she was very happy to talk about her nascent Mill District and the new businesses that would be opening up there in 2015. Today we ate at the new restaurant that occupies the second half of the Trolley […]
To me there’s nothing better than getting back home to my very comfortable and familiar routine. No matter how much fun I have on a trip and no matter how relieved I might have been to bask in the balmy temperatures of California, just waking up at my usual time […]
If you’ve ever wandered through San Francisco’s Chinatown, you probably did what we did last time. We had no idea where to go, what to see, and ended up in a souvenir shop with no clue about what to see or do. We wanted to know more about the history […]
Morro Bay is a long protected body of water with a big sand bar that keeps the ferocious Pacific breakers away. It’s teeming with bird and mammal life and the waters in the bay are clean enough to raise oysters in. We got a chance to see the bay up […]
Mark Tognazzini knows his way around a fish–any kind of fish. He’s a fisherman who lands big King salmon off the California coast in his fishing boat, and when it’s time to come to shore, he emails his loyal following in the town of Morro Bay California and all of […]
Oceano Dunes State Vehicular Recreational Area in California’s Central coast looks like a busy street, except that it’s an actual beach and nearly every vehicle is a large 4×4 truck pulling a long camper. We joined another couple for a beach excursion in a 1987 Humvee, painted desert brown, built […]
We drove four hours south from San Mateo yesterday through the agricultural heart of America, Salinas Valley, through towns like Soledad and and Atascatero, where few of the signs were in English. It was Mexican farm laborer country, and all around us were the vast fields where our nation’s vegetables […]
Gazing out at the crisp white snow and the icicles that hang from all the roofs, boy it’s sure time to get out of here. After speaking with my daughter and grandchildren from their 80 degree vacation spot in the Dominican Republic on Facetime, seeing the sun hitting her face […]
Last week’s snowstorms brought out a host of questions, such as, what do airlines do to get staff to the airports and keep their planes safe during storms. In the WSJ, I read a story about how Delta Air Lines set up a ‘war room’ and used their own planes […]
I have begun to truly appreciate the creature comforts, enjoying the spaciousness of my bathroom, and the thick comfortable piles of my hotel style bath towels. I like that things are sturdy and well made, I am in my house so much because of work here, that I’ve come to […]