They say there is no such thing as a free lunch, but I am not sure that is true. You know they used to put out a big spread of pickles and salty food “for free,” to encourage the working stiffs to come in and get really thirsty. The additional sales of adult beverages […]

Not a good start to the day. Skies are gray and smell of moisture. The first enotes in the morning queue are about family and money- the inbound ones were written at the end of someone’s day, and my querulous responses are drafted at the beginning of mine, and not caffeinated enough. I should know […]

  I dunno. Maybe there is hope. Some rumblings have emanated from the super-secret Super Committee has precisely nine days to find a $1.2 trillion bucks in budget savings or else a draconian trigger whacks discretionary funding across the Executive branch. Should that happen, the government accounts in Defense and the Intel Community on which […]

So peaceful down on the farm. Heckle is so glad to see me. The grass is neatly trimmed- thanks, Frank!- and town was bustling with pre-pre-seasonal shoppers on the main drag. This is a great circle trip- down I-95 from the Capital, off on the strip-mall chaos in Fredericksburg and west on the Germana Highway, […]

  I am going to head down to the farm on this lovely Fall day. We had a front come through with rain at mid-week and when it cleared out it left all things clean-washed and chill. It is supposed to warm up later, and I want to hang out on the deck and see […]

The moment has passed here in Arlington, the real one. You know what I mean- two minutes of silence observed at the Cenotaph in Whitehall at eleven o’clock sharp, the symbolic moment that the Great War came to an end on the Western Front. A cenotaph is an “empty tomb,” or monument erected in honor of a person, […]

I am so far behind this morning that it seems hardly worth starting. I had a request from son Eric to drive him to Dulles to catch an early flight west and I could not pass up the opportunity to share a little time with him. He won a lottery of some sort and got […]

John-with-an-H strolled into the Willow and took Old Jim’s stool at the Amen Corner. The bar area was ding a brisk business as I organized my notes, and Mac was happily picking at his pomme frites and sipping his happy Hour red. John-with took the iPod buds out of his ears. “I was hoping to […]

“It is Election Day tomorrow,” said Mac as he climbed up on the stool next to me at Willow. “So I did some electing myself.” “What do you mean, Sir?” “I went to my oncologist loaded for bear. I told him that damned medication he had me on wasn’t worth it. I want a glass […]

It was a nice Sunday, weather wise, and the squirrels took advantage of it. They are constructing a nest in the lower branches of the maple that blocks the sun from my balcony high above the pool at Big Pink. One of the little bastards was actually on the balcony this morning, bold as brass […]