Category Archives: General

Entertaining

The earliest recollection I have of entertaining is a cooperative luncheon in my first year at law school shortly before classes had begun for the fall semester. I met someone who distinguished himself by knowing how to cook, a talent which until then I had succeeded to avoid by living in circumstances where meals had always been provided to me (boarding school and residential university). My new acquaintance and I collected vegetables and brown rice from the local grocery store.  I remember the production being very tasty. Because he did the cooking my only contribution was the premises (the unimpressive kitchen at the law fraternity Domus Legis).

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Let’s talk cars!

Not everyone gets excited about cars.  Though I most certainly do. If for example I’m in a physician’s waiting room nervously drumming my fingers on my knee, my attention is instantly drawn to a magazine about cars. I go for it! Doesn’t matter that many of the specialty car magazines are about collector cars or antique cars or sports cars. Almost anything to do with cars is fine by me (including the proliferation of tire advertisements).  I confess my personal preference is for late model cars but I never turn down a look at vintage sheet metal from the American automobile industry.

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Surprise Day!

In anticipation of my annual physical check-up my physician told me to have some routine blood tests. It isn’t necessarily a surprise to have walked into Life Labs this morning, had my blood withdrawn, then walked out and driven back home in under an hour.  But you have to admit it is pretty good; and it stands for the value of living in this small town with these social conveniences so readily accessible.  We can walk to everything here, bank, baker, doctor, dentist, grocery store and hospital.  It never ceases to surprise me because it reinforces how clever we are to live here, to awaken to a sunrise over a meadow, to be free of urban traffic and to have all those amenities I mentioned.

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Thanksgiving Sunday (October 9, 2016)

What a sublime autumn Sunday! I don’t even feel shameful for having lolled in the huge mahogany bed under layers of lambswool and goose feather down until almost ten o’clock this morning.  We hadn’t yet turned on the heat this year and the place was decidedly chilly from the cold air blowing through the open windows and billowing the sheers.

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The places I’ve lived

Before I went to boarding school at the age of fourteen years I lived with my parents and my sister in a house. Oddly I cannot recall any specifics of accommodation while living with my parents (except that I once had an aquarium). But since I left home, I can clearly recall the detail of every place I’ve lived.  I tell people that I am a “cave dweller” because my habitations have been on a microscopic scale.

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Nice guys finish last

While I won’t say that I insist on winning at all cost, I certainly resile from being mistreated or poorly treated.  Regrettably my sense of fairness is distorted by what must to some appear to be a deep-seated psychological defect or inadequacy (you know, the sort of paranoia which attends people who have a “massive inferiority complex” or maybe even just a childish incapacity to accommodate criticism of any scope or degree).

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Religion (an exchange of ideas)

October 2, 2016

Hello, Michael!

I don’t expect you to read this (literary composition “The Toothbrush”) in its entirety but it might at least qualify as bathroom literature.

Bill

PS Some time when you’re feeling especially enthusiastic I would value a summary of your religiosity (I use that horrid word because I want to avoid ascribing a strictly traditional gloss to your thinking although I am of course prepared to hear that you are a traditionalist if such is the case).

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