Let me start from the beginning. I put on a new set of clothes—I suppose I should call it an outfit—to go into the office. It was khaki slacks, a blue dress shirt, and a thin vest to keep me warm. Yesterday was quite hot and today was about 30 degrees colder and we even got some hail. I walked into the my office feeling like a million bucks and as I opened my email I saw a message congratulating me on landing an interview for a job I’m very interested in. Then I got the news that my dad was being released from the hospital today and I could go pick him up. He spent a few days in the hospital but is doing very well now. This was one fantastic day so I promised myself a bottle of wine when I finally made it back home.

So I uncorked a bottle of a 2016 Muga Selección Especial Rioja. I paid about $45 for it a few weeks ago—more expensive than my usual, but certainly nothing to write home about. I was at Total Wine and saw this Muga bottle and looked through my old messages on my phone. Wasn’t this the bottle a former friend of mine once told me was his favorite? It was. I was curious but not excited. I met this friend in Madrid years ago at the suggestion of a mutual professor. We had dinner and toured Madrid and continued our friendship for a few years after that. But boy was he a pretentious fucking asshole when it came to food and wine. So I bought the bottle to see what it was all about and tonight I had two glasses of it. Damn, the motherfucker was right! It is one of the best wines I’ve ever had. I am cringing as I write this, but I am now a Muga fan.

I should have probably played the lottery today because even the wine I wanted to hate turned out to be outstanding.

I can’t remember the number of times I’ve written on here about productivity and I would get annoyed reading someone write about it over and over. Today, however, was one of my good days on the productivity front so I will take the liberty of giving myself a virtual pat on the back in the form of this post. To round out my productivity-focused day, I will end it here and read my book on organization before going to sleep. 🙂

We had some very strong winds these last couple of days and last night was the last of it. The highest recorded wind speed in my immediate are was 78 miles per hour and 140 miles per hour up in the mountains. These were what we locally refer to as the Santa Ana winds—offshore winds that come in from the desert and speed up as they force their way around the mountains and down the passes. Some sources say that these winds were originally called Satanás winds (from the Spanish word for satan). They are definitely some hellish winds. In the summer they tend to fuel the wildfires, and other time like this weekend they bring down several trees and power lines.

They make driving a little more difficult and make you weary of tall trees. However, my mind being the way that it is had me imagining myself on some far off alien world with fierce windstorms and I was taking shelter inside some research facility as the winds howled outside. Not unlike what you see in those research outposts in Antarctica. That’s one experience I would have like to have had. Living on that continent for one year and see the sun circle around you just above the horizon during the peak of summer and to see the days where no day ever comes. It fascinates me think of places on earth that can be that otherworldly.

Today is just one of those days where I really have nothing interesting to write about. It was normal, uneventful and I love it that way. The most exciting thing is probably the new portable folding keyboard I had delivered today. It’s about as long as an iPhone and not much wider when folded and can be paired with up to three devices. I mainly got it to use with my iPad for quick I bought a new hight adjustable stand for. The whole set up now looks like a tiny iMac. The keyboard also has a built-in trackpad. I can now fold everything and pack lightly. For even more portability, I can pack only my new keyboard since I can also use it with my phone. There are so many people that use their phone to reply to emails, but not me. 80-year-old me (at least I feel that way in these cases) prefers a full physical keyboard. Now I can reply to everything to my heart’s content without having to suffer through the software keyboard.

So there you go. I’ve typed this all using my new keyboard. I should probably take a picture, but it’s late and I don’t want to turn the lights on.

I’ve obviously been terrible at keeping up with my writing, but I swear I have a rough draft for each of the days that I’ve missed. I’m just looking for a quiet opportunity to plug away.

I decided to publish today’s before the other ones because I stumbled upon a piece of poetry that I identify with so well. There are few things I love more than being a nobody. I always strive to attract as little attention to myself as possible and be lost in a corner somewhere.

The pandemic has in as sense gotten a bit worse. The number of cases has skyrocketed, but the silver lining is the vaccines and the less sever Omicron. Although sometimes I feel that all of this can be false hope as the available information is always changing. So with this in mind, we braved a day trip to Las Vegas to eat at a buffet.

I remember I used to hate the drive to Las Vegas when I was little because it was such a boring landscape especially at night. Then as I became older I learned to appreciate the desert landscape. The huge mostly virgin expanses during the day and the beautiful abyss during the night with a blanket of stars above.

We stopped at this rest stop to take advantage of the free charging and of course to use the restrooms. I love this rest stop because there is nothing else around it in the desert except for the road.

And finally we made it to the buffet, Bacchanal, at Caesar’s palace. The price for the buffet is a little pricey, but well worth it if you eat a lot of the awesome food it has to offer. To get our money’s worth, we had a very light breakfast and fasted for the rest of the day to make sure we arrived HUNGRY.