The Harvest

The backyard harvest is starting to come in. I'm picking tomatoes faster than we can eat them. Those two strange looking yellow baseballs are actually Lemon Cucumbers. They are quite delicious. Those tomatoes are HUGE and are from the better best boy family.

Is That a Chicken?

On Dena and I's walk the other morning we ran across the strangest sight.....a chicken strutting down the street. Dena, being Dena, chased him (her?) into this parking lot. As a reminder, we are in the heart of Los Angeles here, not Idaho.

A Good Lesson

Often it's challenging to start a project or task that seems daunting in any number of ways; either too large to fathom, it's going to be difficult, or you are not too sure how to tackle it. I heard one of Michael Josephson's commentaries the other day and I thought how poignant it was. Let me preface this by saying that I do not agree with his politics but I do appreciate his effort in the Character Counts arena.

Here is the commentary:

Chris’s parents were proud of him when he graduated from college. But it’s been six months and he hasn’t gotten a job yet. In fact, he hasn’t even looked seriously. He has no idea what he wants to do and is thinking of grad school.
He’s living at home with his parents and things are getting tense, especially with his father, who says he’s lazy and afraid to enter the real world.
Chris thinks his dad is unreasonable. After all, you’re only young once and he needs some space. During a recent argument, Chris said, “I’m not you, Dad. I have my own way of doing things. I want a job I enjoy.”
His dad replied, “That’s a nice idea, but in the end they call it ‘work’ because it’s about making a productive living – not having fun.”
There are many youngsters like Chris who are having trouble getting started and becoming self-reliant. Some, like Peter Pan, just don’t want to grow up. Some are afraid of making a wrong decision or of being rejected. Others are victims of what psychologists call “magical thinking.” They believe when the time is right, everything will fall into place. So they wait for opportunity to come knocking or until they feel inspired or excited enough to take the next step.
Unfortunately, it doesn’t always work that way. What’s crucial is to begin. Things happen and opportunities appear most often when we’re moving, not standing still.
Momentum is vital. Basic physics stipulates that it’s easier to alter the course of a moving object than to start movement initially. In the end, it’s not really about finding yourself. It’s about making yourself.

The first steps are the hardest, but the key to success in anything is getting started.

Celebrity Deaths

Perhaps Michael Jackson should have a funeral everyday in Los Angeles. Despite all the doom and gloom or perhaps because of it, the traffic in downtown Los Angeles and all over the downtown LA - Hollywood area has been a dream. I'm pretty sure there is more traffic in the skies over the staples center than there is on the ground. From my office I can hear the constant beating of rotor blades and can see the vultures circling. I count 10 right now and I don't even have a clear view of the Staples Center.

For some reason at my office they watched the live feed in the conference room. A waste of bandwidth if you ask me. When I walked in to address a complaint of too much buffering Mariah Carey was singing. Is she tone deaf? It sounded like a cat in heat.

Alas, another star is gone. I'm sure we haven't seen the last death of a wealthy, famous, drug addicted, abused star and I'm sure we haven't heard the last of the Michael Jackson's drama. Just like cockroaches, nothing can kill the media, except maybe George Bush. He did a pretty good job of muzzling them during his tyrannical reign.