Bemused Boomer

Winter in the desert is activity time. We do all the outdoor things we've been dreaming about while huddled around our air conditioners ...

I usually hate trying to do anything fancy on bank sites--like redeem my "reward" points. But Christmas is almost here and my mone...

This post will soon be a guest post on another blog. I'll announce which one when it is done.  

Yesterday's paper said three million gallons of crude oil in the SS Montebello is gone. Vanished during the 70 years the torpedoed ship ...

I disconnected my TV cable about a month ago. Feeling pleased with myself, I looked forward to the many hours I would have to write, to thin...

I was born in the first wave of Baby Boomers. I grew up in coastal Southern California where the leftovers of war were being surplussed and ...

I knew the 9/11 ten-year anniversary TV coverage was going to be gut-wrenching, but I had to watch some of it. I'd never seen the 9/11 M...

This poor girl let her love of fermented apples get the best of her. This pose is not very ladylike--it's not even very mooselike. She ...

Did any of you used to carry a DayTimer and a gold Cross pen? It was the height of cool in the 80s and early 90s if you were a professional ...

I've decided the ads in my newspaper encouraging me to pay lots of money to get rid of the purple lines on my upper legs have it all wro...

I love Verizon FIOS, I really do. I've been using it for two years and it's been mostly reliable. It's very fast. The customer s...

What are we looking at here? A raggedy prescription bottle and a tiny wedding cake? Remnants from my recycle bin? Oh, would that we were. Th...

The Desert Sun is my local newspaper here in the desert. It's a skinny little thing, especially in summer after the snowbirds leave and...

I watched highlights of the Royal Wedding in London and was charmed. Everyone loves a Princess, especially one with a handsome Prince at her...

I think Pooh Bear has nicer bees than I do. A.A. Milne wrote about bees who live in hives they've built themselves, and they only seem t...

Darn. Another Saturday morning full of unrealized good intentions. My short list had at least four semi-important items to be completed by 1...

I should stop going to lectures about the geology of the Coachella Valley. I don't think they're good for my high blood pressure. In...

If you want to be labeled uncool, just talk about something you're proud of from the 70s. Such an odd era, when guys dressed in ruffled ...

I just finished a short story for my Writers' Guild annual short story contest. The exercise taught me at least one important thing: I...

I thought 24/7 shopping from home was the coolest thing ever. And it probably is, for normal people--a category to which I appear not to bel...

Sometime in the 1970s, a young guy named Uri Geller got a lot of press for his apparent ability to bend spoons with the power of his mind,...

I like stories about history. And stories about dogs. Getting both in one story while drinking my morning coffee is better than having a dou...

Who gets depressed watching the Rose Parade? Usually nobody--until this year. The Alzheimer's Association and Pfizer may have created a ...

I took my wedding ring off about a year ago. Sometimes, when I felt sad or vulnerable or lonely, I put it back on for a few days. But mostly...

We've all experienced it: the waiting room with the little chairs pushed up against each other, leaving even less room between humans th...

Being in my gated retirement community is like living at the edge of an ocean. No waves, of course, (we have that hot, dry desert thing goin...

The story about the couple who were jet skiing on Falcon Lake on the U.S./Mexico border sent me into paroxysms of bemusement for two reasons...

My purse was stolen tonight. It was ancient but beloved, dilapidated but functional, and I'd been debating whether to try to find a new ...

When you live in a planned retirement community, all the houses and yards are almost fanatically groomed. Not because people are in accord a...

We were refugees from the brutal heat of the desert, so my little dog and I required very little in the way of entertainment from the friend...

Am I the only one who noticed the weirdness in this picture of the world's most laughable Russian "spies?" Maybe everyone else...

OK, I've been told I'd better blog or you'll all think I'm dead. I'm not dead, but I'm definitely living in an alter...

I spent the last two hours crying and reading What to Eat with IBD, a book by by Tracie Dalessandro, MS RD CDN (and IBD sufferer herself) ....