There’s a famous scene in Caddyshack where the unkempt and quite odd assistant greenskeeper, Carl Spackler (played by Bill Murray), asks to visit the home of the quite wealthy and eccentric Ty Webb (played by Chevy Chase). Spackler asks if Webb has a pool, and Webb famously replies: “I have a pool and a pond. The pond would […]
June 1, 2026
Five years ago, I wrote a post about taking our youngest son to college. Dropping him off was a bigger deal than I thought it would be. It hit us like a ton of bricks as we watched every step of Dawson’s journey from the car to his dorm. We both had a good cry, […]
May 9, 2026
“I don’t know the answer to nothin’ about a blessed thing.” That’s what Mac Sledge, played by my favorite actor of all time, Robert Duvall, said near the end of Tender Mercies, after his daughter was killed in an automobile accident. He’s overwhelmed because he has been blessed with love and simple beauties, and then hurt to […]
March 29, 2026
I lack self-confidence in many arenas. Put me at a party where I don’t know anyone, and I do my best to look invisible. I’ve had a few jobs where I had to act the part of a salesperson, and I have found that I rarely have the hutzpah one needs to repeatedly ask for […]
April 25, 2020
It may have been the most thoughtless senior prank I ever experienced. As a former high school principal, I don’t love senior pranks. Usually, very little thought goes into them, and they end up being destructive, damaging, or time consuming. Occasionally though — and I mean very occasionally — a group of seniors pulls off […]
September 15, 2023
I always appreciate my friend Mikke for his humor, fantasy football banter, and his sense of adventure. But way more than that, I appreciate him because he is a very wise man who has listened and helped me to be my best on numerous occasions. He now serves as an executive coach, and he has […]
September 15, 2022
We had a wedding last weekend. It was perfect. Well, it was as perfect as life these days would allow it to be. Let’s start off with the challenges. First of all, and damn you COVID-19 for still existing, finding a venue for this wedding was stupid crazy hard. Ryan and Yesi scoured Sacramento for […]
Fritz Gilbert
2020
Read: 2024
Non-Fiction, Reading Now
After I finished my first year of retirement, I found this book. Mr. Gilbert’s book is thoughtful and introspective in his analysis and reflections. His advice would be to read this book and start thinking about all of this at least three years before you are considering retiring. I would say that anywhere from one […]
Read: 2022
Non-Fiction, Reading Now
Younger Next Year is a book I keep coming back to. I forget who first turned me on to it, but I read it in my mid-fifties, and it continues to inspire me. The bottom line is that at some point, sometime in our forties or fifties, our bodies want to get old and decay. […]
Roland Merullo
2008
Read: 2023
Fiction, Reading Now, Spirtuality
OK. I love this book. It’s one of the few books I’ve read where, after I finished it, I immediately began reading it a second time. I’ve written about it in two separate blog posts, and I have many friends who have read it and loved it after I suggested it to them. It’s a […]
Marie Kondo
2011
Read: 2018
Education/Leadership, Non-Fiction, Reading Now
I was listening to an architect who specialized in building new schools talk about what classrooms should be. One of his pet peeves was all of the nonsensical and nonpurposeful clutter that occupies many classrooms. He thought that every classroom should contain only those items which are useful for teaching and learning or inspirational for […]
