Catching Up

Wow, I went 8 days without an original post on this blog. That’s a record for the more than 2.5 years I’ve been blogging. I’m not sure how the blogosphere survived my absence, given that everyone is entitled to my opinion. Still, I think taking a break from the blog made my vacation more complete. And to be honest, I wasn’t paying attention to much going on in the world while I was gone. I occasionally caught some news and looked at a few blogs here and there via my iPhone, but was mostly blissfully ignorant of the goings-on here and around the world.

Here are a few notes from the past week:

I enjoyed much about the beach area of Newport Beach, CA, especially the near perfect weather. The high temperatures were in the mid to upper 70s and lows in the mid 60s with a cool breeze coming off the ocean. There was little humidity. But the weather deal breaker for ever living there permanently is the near total lack of thunderstorms in the area. I can’t imagine never experiencing the beauty of a spring thunderstorm as it moves in.

There was only one time while I was gone that I watched any TV news. That just happened to be the afternoon the bridge collapsed in Minneapolis. As I watched the tragedy unfold, I kept thinking about how neglected the country’s infrastructure really is. Glorious and expensive wars are far more sexy than the mundane infrastructure maintenance. And almost no one, of any political stripe, wants to be on record as supporting tax increases to fund needed updates. Too bad.

I totally missed Tom Snyder’s passing until I got back. I have to second Jerome Prophet’s comments. Snyder was a bit dense at times, especially when interviewing youth pop icons back in the day, but the personal style in which he conducted interviews was very compelling to me. Except for Charlie Rose on PBS, there really isn’t anyone doing good one-on-one interviews the way Snyder did in his day. Snyder had blog that I regularly read before he signed off for good two years ago. I blogged about it here and included an excerpt from his last post. Shortly after that the entire site disappeared.

Vacations, when I take them at all, have become somewhat predictable. I guess it’s part of getting older when there is little mystery left in life. There is the anticipation that builds for a few weeks before. Once the vacation starts, it’s half over within the first 24 hours or so, after which the remaining time zips by faster than the speed of light. Finally, there is the night before going back to work when the sense of dread overwhelms. At that point, I wish I had waited a week because the vacation would just be beginning if I had.

Well, hi-ho, hi-ho, it’s off to work I go.