I continue my zero-dollar days with a listen at the Hardly Strictly Bluegrass Festival. Billionaire and philanthropist Warren Hellman kicked off this music festival 14 years ago with the bluegrass music he enjoyed. He hosted his concert in San Francisco’s Golden Gate Park at the warm beginning of October. Admission …
San Francisco heats up unexpectedly in the beginning of October to eighty degrees, so I grab a towel and bike to Baker Beach. I feel obligated to sit in the sand. Beaching is what the unemployed do on a Thursday afternoon, right? If I were working, I would long enviously …
Let’s get this out of the way. In the course of my long life, I have taken LSD. Several times. Tens of times. As advertised, LSD does have strong hallucinatory effects but after a couple days these effects dissipate completely and are not permanent. If my resting brain works differently …
Dear Greg gave me for my birthday the greatest gift ever: a slim book titled, “Build iOS Games with Sprite Kit” by Penn and Smith. Perhaps not your cup of earl grey, this instructional guide may close a loop opened thirty years ago. My brothers and I (mis)spent our youths …
When you are older than 30, no one will plan your birthday – either you do nothing or you decide how you want to spend your birthday. I turned an auspicious 42 on Thursday, September 25. I took ten people to Yosemite Valley to camp for the weekend. Because we …
Bucket list Many years ago, I wrote a bucket list. I expected long pages of wishes, but the list totaled a mere 53 items. Since drafting the bucket list, I have accomplished some items and plan for more. On my 42nd birthday, I reconsider that bucket list and draft a …
Optimism I turn 42 today and feel happy about life, my life in particular. As much as I try to lead everyone else’s lives, I have deliberately blazed my path. If life is a salad bar, I heaped my plate with all the foods. I have lived abroad three times, …
Pessimism Yesterday was the first day of fall. I turn 42 tomorrow. Like the New Year, birthdays for me are weigh points. As I add one to my age, I realize that life, my life, is finite and time is precious. When I told AJ, “we’re all getting older,” he …
San Francisco has figured out that creativity pays. The Folsom Street Fetish Fair is the second highest grossing tourist event in San Francisco after Gay Pride, another creative street fair. Detractors denigrate the sleazy Folsom Fair as the highest gross, but nonetheless thousands of aberrant people within the city, around …
Before winter snows in the high Sierras, Greg, Jason, Tom and I took one last camping trip. The four of us tented for three cold nights over a mid-October weekend at 6,700 feet in Lassen National Park. Saturday, we hiked over twelve miles past waterfalls, meadows, and lakes to the volcanic …