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: 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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“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…
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Suzanne and the Jolly Schlepper on Holiday
The AirBnB listing for the apartment said that it was a fourth floor walk-up, but the comments on AirBnB warned us that it was more like five floors. It was five, and it…
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2014: a great vacation in Europe, and then some!
Another year done, as Charlie delicately reminded me recently. I was trying to help him recognize a girl he knew whom I had met, and told him that her hair color was…
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2013: me and the boys
Happy Holidays, everyone!! It’s been a solitary year here. I don’t say lonely, because with the possible exception of holidays built around families, I’m having a fine time – so many little…
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Happy Birthday NextSpace!
Santa Cruz Mayor Ryan Coonerty is a chocoholic, as am I. We both work at NextSpace Santa Cruz, Ryan for PredPol, an interesting start-up that uses technology to help police forces do…
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When bankruptcy doesn’t work.
On Monday morning, August 1, 2011, Nick (my oldest) arrived at work to be told that he was being laid off immediately and would not be paid the last month’s salary of…
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2012: car crash, court date and colonoscopy!
You know that you’re getting old when the McCartney featured in the Queen’s New Year’s honors list is named Stella. Stella? Oh, that’s right, Sir Paul’s daughter, honored for services to British…
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For the dear departed: Vi Warrington and Angela Hodgetts
Aunty Vi died in England in April this year, and her son Ron had arranged a memorial service for her in August. She was mum’s last surviving sibling. That was it: a…