i sit on our patio. It is 3:33 p.m. in real time, 4:33 in political maneuvering, and 11:33 Greenwich Mean Time, the latter of which is all that matters. It occurs to me that at sea, the critical times are first light to shoot morning stars, twilight to shoot evening stars, noon to shoot the noon fix. The other important times was eight bells, that’s when the watch changed every four hours.

So instead of sun setting about an hour from now, it will set about two hours from now.

i am having a Martin (Thank you, Cyril Vaughn Fraser, Jr.) reflecting. The photo here is one i’ve posted before but it was earlier in the season. You see, the are subtle changes in the seasons of the Southwest corner, not noticed much untill you’ve lived here for about twenty or thity years.

The coral trees have lost their leaves and the corals are beginning to bloom, there are two or three buds on the coral tree in the photo. The lilac colored ice plant is finally beginning to bloom amidst the yellow and the orange. The Coronado (ground hugging kind) of bougainvillea is taking off.

i have had a good day. i fixed a couple of problems with an incredible mountain of technical support after listening to really annoying piano concertos for about 40 minutes. i picked up some Kona whole bean coffee and suffered a near heart attack when i found how much it cost, but what the hell, the aroma can knock you off your feet with goodness.

i chipped some golf balls and, as usual, thought i might have found a secret (Not). i found a photo that took me back to good times: Yosemite’s Command Master Chief, BMCM Weaver with the XO in Rota, Spain, 1983. He was as good as you could get for the liaison between officers and enlisted. Oh Lord, those days were just about perfect.

We’ve gone to the San Diego Air & Space Museum. We have lunched at Panama 66 in the Park among the Museum of Arts sculptures.

And all this leads up to where i am. There are naysayers out there who rant about how awful Californians are. i’m not going to lower myself to argue about that. i am sad that it would be financial disaster for my daughters and their families to move here. Home prices, rent, taxes makes moving here no sense whatsoever. But i was here before the insanity of inflated housing costs and have benefited greatly from it.

i can play golf all year. The Southwest corner has about thirty days a year when it rains. The temperature is a little warm, in the 80’s and low 90’s for a month or so. There are a couple of days of Santa Ana conditions when it can get to the high 90’s, even just around 100, and very dry. As i have noted on many occasions, i have seen a great deal of the world and nearly everywhere has more 10s out of 10 than here. That is because it is relative. There is no place on earth that has more 7s, 8s, and 9s.

As for all of its ills, i long have noted San Diegans denigrate Los Angeles but keep trying to be just like them. Places i love, Nashville, Austin, Seattle, Atlanta, seem to be doing the same, outgrowing their appeal, their uniqueness. Even my home of Lebanon, Tennessee appears to becoming a bedroom, suburb of Nashville.

Once again, i am a lucky man to be living here in a beautiful place with a wonderful wife…

and i’m not leaving.