The phone rang while I was in the shower. That was unusual. Neither Sunshine nor I was often called at home, more likely at the office, and early morning calls just didn’t…
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Gabi and Charlie’s Civil Wedding
And here’s a postscript.
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Of Tax Evasion and Crypto-Skullduggery!
Sean Gilligan is a “crypto bro.” A software engineer, he has been evangelizing crypto-currencies and the blockchains they inhabit since 2013, and investing in crypto as long. He has also been sanctioned…
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2022: the Circle of Life
I turned 70 in December, a multifaceted event. On the plus side, I’m still here, having outlived both parents, and on the minus, well, what exactly am I writing about now?! It…
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Yale Law 40th reunion!
My 40th class reunion in October 2022 should have been an exciting prospect, but Yale Law School has been in the news recently, the national news, and in the wrong way. Living…
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Carol . . . has returned to the stars:” text from Adrian
Apologetically, Adrian asked Lisa and me to drive him home early from the wake. It was all too much – the photos of his dead wife circulating, her family and friends chatting…
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2021: Seenagers Ride Again!!
You know how you create a picture of yourself over the years, a kind of tableau of your past, in your own mind if in no-one else’s? I do that a lot,…
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2020: Dodging Bullets
Before the virus showed its stuff, we did make it to the Elvis Costello concert in Sunderland, northeast England, on March 3. Third row tickets explained the choice of venue, and the…
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Pandemic wedding, road-trip honeymoon
“When you realize you want to spend the rest of your life with somebody, you want the rest of your life to start as soon as possible.” Remember that? “When Harry met…
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M. Sean Gilligan: Parental Alienator?
During a marital dispute on April 12, 2019, M. Sean Gilligan lost his temper with his wife Lisa Valenzuela and wrenched her wrists. Instead of taking her to the emergency room, as…
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Road Trips with Caution
Covid-19 became real for Lisa and me on the morning of March 12, as we arrived at Roissy, Paris’s main airport, to check in for our Air France flight to San Francisco.…
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2019: Seenager alert!
Isn’t that a great word? Seenager, a cross between a senior and a teenager. That has been me this year. I only realized it when I first heard the word, in November,…
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How Charlie thanked his dad.
I was in front of my bathroom mirror in the Scotts Valley condo, as I was first thing most mornings. The view in 2011 was pretty much what I was getting used…
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The making of a deadbeat mom
When Marie-Helene and I first got together, I rescued her from a deadbeat dad: not hers, her then partner. His name is Pierre, and he is Daphne and Alban’s father. Marie-Helene’s clever…
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2018: Karma!
I have studiously avoided our divorce during the last few years of these annual updates. The topic is depressing, for me and the children as much as for you, and there are…
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How Vicki Parry REALLY screwed up!
I trusted my divorce lawyer, Vicki Parry, to assure the well-being of my children and my own (and their) financial future. A lawyer myself, why did I delegate to another lawyer delicate…
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Solihull School: “Darkness on the Edge of Town”
The most miserable year of my life was the year I spent as a boarder at Solihull School, 1966. I wrote about it in too much detail elsewhere: how dreadfully I missed my…
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2017: Not getting any older!
In December of 2017 I turned 65. This means, officially, that I am getting old. I am not. I may have reached the age of the “old age pensioner” of my youth,…
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French Startup Sleazes
This post is a warning to Paris’s abundant startup techies: you can’t always trust your employers! Disclosure: the techie here is my son Nick. Keep reading for a variety of tricks used…
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Dating After 60!
So the first thing that you should know is that sometimes others assert that I have poor filters and am a little too honest. This is one context when that quality might…
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The Tarpaulin on the RV’s Roof
I lived with and under that tarpaulin for maybe seven months. Obviously, I did not want to move into the RV in the first place. I’m an RV fan, but for travel…
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2016: how does it feel?
I was sitting at the bar in Oswald’s, one of Santa Cruz’s nicer restaurants, chatting and flirting. This was during the year’s gap between girlfriends, sometime during the summer. First a woman…
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A Hike in the High Sierra
I did reach the top of Mount Tallac, the craggy mountain that dominates the Southwest shore of Lake Tahoe. But only just. The last few hundred vertical feet had been very hard,…
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Nick’s 30th Birthday
Nick came home for his 30th birthday. At least, I feel like it’s his home here in California, although his mother makes her home in Paris, and he spent half his childhood…
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2015: ch- ch- ch- changes!
It’s Christmas Day, an incredibly beautiful day here in Santa Cruz after the wind and rain of the last few days. As we drove home, the air was clearer and brighter than…
