Mini-Gypsy Tour Photoblog

Here’s a photoblog of my recent mini-gypsy tour of the Salton Sea and Death Valley, 12-15 November 2015, with my friends and fellow Goldwingers Ed and Steve. Thursday morning in Tucson was sunny but cold, and I was dressed for it. I wore long johns under my pants and a zip-in thermal liner under the leather jacket. I wore a silk […]

Air-Minded: Vliegbasis Soesterberg

I don’t know when Veterans Day turned into Veterans Week, but it has, so I don’t feel too bad posting a little of my own veteran history one day early. In the late 1970s and early 1980s, I was stationed at Soesterberg Air Base in the Netherlands, a brand new F-15 Eagle pilot in the 32nd […]

A Breezy Sunday

Gosh, how long’s it been since I last suggested cops should stop tasing, beating, and killing people for no reason? Feels like months. Actually it’s been weeks, which is a long time for me. It’s not that I’ve given up; it’s more like everyone knows what I think anyway, and nothing I say is going to change the […]

Paul’s Book Reviews: Horror/Fantasy, Nonfiction, Science Fiction

“People are masks, with masks under those masks, and masks under those, and down you go.” — David Mitchell, Slade House Slade House David Mitchell Slade House is a companion (not exactly a sequel) to Mitchell’s previous novel The Bone Clocks, but it is a more compact and to-the-point story, as readable as anything Mitchell has written. Like […]

Thursday Bag o’ Stars & Hearts

Half my friends say they hate Twitter. Half say they don’t get it. Either way, only a few use it. That right there differentiates Twitter from Facebook. I go to Facebook to find out what friends are up to and to tell them what I’m up to. I go to Twitter for information. It’s useful in a […]

Friday Bag o’ Tricks

It’s Hallowe’en, aka All Hallows’ Evening, the eve of the Western Christian feast of All Hallows’ Day, which begins the three days of Allhallowtide, the time in the liturgical year dedicated to remembering the dead, including saints, martyrs, and all the faithful departed believers (I swiped this info from Wikipedia). Honestly, I have no idea how the Mike Huckabees […]

Squeezing Ambergris

The new trailer’s home, parked behind the new fence we had built to screen it from view. I’m fighting the urge to hook it to the new truck and drive around for no reason. There’ll be plenty of occasions to use it, and soon. Donna says I’ve had my birthday and Christmas, not just this year but all the […]

Tuesday Moto MX

A sure sign of getting old is confusion over repurposed abbreviations. I no longer know what people mean when they say CRM or CSA—or even CIA. I used to teach CRM—crew resource management—to USAF fighter pilots, but that’s not what computer people mean by CRM. People tell me they get their veggies and fruits from the […]