i have not written much lately, spent a lot of time thinking. It occurred to me that old men like me think too much. The thinking reduced my motivation to write here. Another demotivating factor was wrestling with writing my next sea story as it will cover a year of my life that was an escape from reality when some really good things happened and some really not-considered good things happened but were good for me (think Mae West). Good or bad, that one year probably had more impact on my life than any year since, except when i met Maureen, another life changer. So today, i have written a lengthy post. i was musing. Old men are good for musing.

As is my habit, i sat on our patio late Friday afternoon even though it was cloudy portending rain a bit later. It was quiet. I put Jackie Gleason’s music on the Bluetooth, a progress blessing for me while i find a great deal of the other progress annoying, intrusive, and fearful knowing how many algorithms think they know who i am and what i want. NOT!

I returned to my peace and contemplated. A hummingbird with white and yellow markings underneath his tail fed on the four-foot-high Mexican sage nearby, the blooms a deep purple. I thought of my more than friend, Jim Hicks, who enjoys yanking my chain about my engagement with hummingbirds. Maureen was cooking yet another delicious concoction of vegetables and rice – hmm, is rice a vegetable? – recognizing she would not include sausage or barbeque and accepting that it was good for me. She is always concerned about what’s good for me, and that is a lovely attribute to have in my love.

I considered the past week. It was good, always would have been better with my daughters or siblings, but that is my fate for living in this paradise i call the Southwest corner.

I started to write a post but decided to watch my Padres. When i turned on the television, or whatever they are calling it now, the game was delayed due to rain, can you imagine in Los Angeles even. Knowing i wasn’t going to start watching a ball game that would start after nine or later, i decided to read for the evening and turn in early. You see, this stubborn old man, watched these two baseball teams the previous evening. The Padres tied it in the seventh inning. Maureen, who doesn’t enjoy the tenseness of tight games in the late evenings, retired to the bedroom to read and fall asleep.

I have the long-standing edict of watching every game of every sport because as Yogi Berra said, “It ain’t over ‘til it’s over.” But i had violated my own edict the week before when i angrily snapped off the remote (that’s a hand-held gizmo that controls the television from afar, or at least as far from the television to the sofa, or in my case, my non-reclining club chair) when the Padres went down by eight runs in the fourth inning. When i awoke the next morning, the Padres had come back and won the game 9-8.

So, Friday night, i gritted my teeth, fairly sure the mighty Dodgers would prevail, and stuck with it. The Padres won in the eleventh inning, 8-7. My edict proved correct…again.

But when the game was delayed, the old man was tired, beat. i can no longer rebound like i used to do. I hit the rack. My thoughts about a post rested with me.

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This morning, i arose early, just after five. The insipid regulation of Daylight Savings Time for once worked for me. When i went out to get the Sunday newspaper, i saw it had rained a piddlin’ bit during the night. Crevasses had standing water; the was damp. What captured me though was the eastern sky. The precursors of day were creeping over the ridge of hills and Mount Miguel. Pink and white hues claimed the fringe of the horizon. Above that was what could be the deepest blue i have ever encountered, which is rather amazing considering how many daybreaks i saw on morning watches on the bridge of a ship. Toward the west, the sky’s color was what one would expect that time of morning. i thought of taking a photo, but i knew it could not capture what i saw.

That deep blue, though, held me in her arms, i walked further out, all the way into the middle of our street, captured, wondering many things.

I returned to the house, The New York Times in hand. I brewed Maureen’s coffee, setting out the frother, the 787 different liquids, syrups, condiments, and chocolates for Maureen to mix her special brew. I ground my whole beans, placing the grounds into the French press. I stowed the evening’s wash from the drying rack. I set the table just for Maureen. I had decided to skip breakfast, my altered version of the interrupted fasting diet, most likely another futile attempt to lose about twenty pounds as i love my steak, burgers, sausage, and of course, sweets.

And i sat down in my home office among my collection of memories and began this just under two hours ago, intermittently resting with a game of spider solitaire, the daily crossword, and a short poem of Robert Penn Warren.

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A week ago, a bunch of good folks from Maureen’s career in office interiors, met in Carlsbad – i admire the beach communities north of San Diego proper, but it’s a hard roundtrip with today’s traffic   not usually visited. It was lunch at a great pizza place. These people are vibrant and caring. Toward the end, i struck up a conversation with Mack Langstrom. I had earlier learned the two of us share a love of country music. We discussed it in depth. I told him about two of my favorites, the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band album “Will the Circle Be Unbroken.” The band had somehow talked many of the great Nashville country music stars to gather and collaborate on a three LP set of just flat great country music.

I also mentioned Tim O’Brien’s album “Fiddler’s Green.” I saw Tim at the Station Inn in Nashville back when it was an isolated Breeko block venue amongst small run-down businesses and gravel parking lots, long, long before it became the new Nashville high-rise condos and hoity-toity shops and dining one can find in any fashionable city nowadays. Tim

and his mandolin played country Irish influenced music. It blew me away.

Now i have a friend in the Southwest corner who also likes country music. I hope one day i can hook him up with Alan and Jim Hicks, Cy Fraser, Billy Parsons, and others from my college days who are also country music fans (mostly bluegrass, Amy Beth Hale).

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i am looking forward to tomorrow’s lunch. Maureen and i will meet Craig and Joan Augsberger in Point Loma. Craig is the guy who loaned me that book i wrote about earlier that Joshua Slocum wrote “Sailing Along Around the World” in the late 1890s.

i will be loaning him a book i value. It’s the first in a series of an American story of the sea, The Shores of Tripoli by James L. Haley. It is a companion to the British sea stories written by Patrick O’Brian, including Captain and Commander. I have read the second in Haley’s series, The Darker Sea, and intend to read the next after concluding Joseph Conrad’s Typhoon.

Just getting my sea story kicks, i guess.

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It is a Sunday mid-morning now. The Southwest corner is preening its April best. We plan for a nice lunch at Maureen’s go-to bread bakery downtown.

And a good day to ye all.