Thursday, December 27, 2012

The Day After

Christmas was pretty much a wash this year. The weather was miserable and their were numerous road closures and flooding.I stayed put and went to mass early on in the day and spent the rest of the time Skyping or calling my family.

The 26th was a better story. I drove into S.F. around noon and stopped in the Castro to see if my Sister's store was open ( it wasn't ). Supplies are needed at this point for my painted rock business and this store has them.After feeding a parking meter a buck -fifty, I ended up in a bagel shop having a Jalapeno bagel with cream cheese and lox ( yum ).

Then I drove up the hill to my Sister's house where most of the family was to meet to celebrate my grandniece's fifth birthday.The only person there at the time was my brother-in-law Ernie, who was busy preparing some Sweet and Sour pork for dinner that evening. Right around three, the rest of the crew showed up. My niece and her son, Liam came in from Hawaii. My other niece Marian, along with her husband Colby and their kids, Balin and Cooper were present. Then their were the other cousins which included Camille,Mila,Mico,Jack and Maisy were there after having been ice skating at the Yerba Buena Center with the parents of these little people; Namely Ian, Edward, Mary Kay, Antonella,Colby and Marian. The elders were Martha,Ernie,Hamish,Rita and myself.

Just for the record,we were all treated well and Cooper was very pleased with many of the gifts she received.

Friday, December 21, 2012

Oh blah dee, Oh blah dah

Hearing about our economy plummeting over a “Fiscal Cliff” sounds a lot more plausible than the world ending. Besides, with six more hours to go, it looks like another 24 hours may even be within the realm of possibility.

I think the Beatles had it right in their song, “Oh blah dee,Oh blah dah” that is, that life does go on.The Mayans were predicting that we would be entering a new state of consciousness and that their calendar was not really foretelling a harbinger of doom.

Admittedly, I was kind of entertaining the idea of a big catastrophe,but being a timid soul about those sorts of things, I digress.It is so much better to think that the world is entering a new age of Peace, Love and Understanding.

Being a child of the sixties,I still subscribe to the notion that foretold a new age where harmony,sympathy and understanding with mystic-crystal revelations would be the order of the day! A song by the vocal group The Fifth Dimension called ”Aquarius” was teasing us on into something new, better and different than those stodgy old Nixonian years. The musical “Hair” lent some credence to this overal vision by having it included in their Broadway show.

Okay, color me a hippy idealist, but those hipsters taught me to have a heart and enjoy the joyous times that were to be had in San Francisco during the 1967 summer of Love.In many ways I still try to live the dream, but reality will ultimately ground you whether you like it or not.

By the way, the image below was created in Photoshop awhile back (more like 2002 rather than 1967), but still looks like something from that earlier era.What can I say? Once an aspiring hippy…

Now an aging Beatnik.

Wednesday, December 12, 2012

Vegas Odds

It is an hour away from my sixty second birthday.Which, by the way, is December the Thirteenth, not December 21st.I better get to enjoy my birthday before the Mayans predict my future a little more than a week from now.

I don't think the world is going to end on Dec. 21st, but the world as we know it will end (and begin again) in the same moment. Like the Beatles sang in their song, "Oh Blah Dee, Oh Blah Dah" life goes on.Since time is man-made anyway, who really believes that it is going to run out?

Perhaps it will

I am fairly certain that my body will eventually decompose and that my memory won't matter nearly as much as I had hoped it would; Except when I'm sitting around trying to recall what the standard view of the world was, is, or is going to be. The only reason for this is to have a nice chat with my new friends, if their are any.

Now what are the odds of that?