Month: December 2025

Sundry Sunday

Looking north-east from the Evergreen area of San Jose. (Click to embiggen)

I looked at the title of this post and realized that the two words in it differ only in one letter. Funny, isn’t it? It’s going to be a sunny Sunday. Funny and sunny rhyme. I’m quite the wordsmith today. Which reminds me that I learned William Wordsmith’s 1804 poem Daffodils by heart in middle school and can still recite it by heart. Its final lines are the best:

“And then my heart with pleasure fills
And dances with the daffodils.”

So, what’s happening? Yesterday Courtenay drove down from Oakland to visit for a bit. Hadn’t seen her since January. She had tales of woe. Got fired from her job a few days ago; car’s leaking oil and could set her back a few thousand in repairs; husband and teenage son are tearing around the house breaking stuff; bills to pay; neighbors are being jerks, etc. But she’s a good sport and laughs it off.

You can take the girl out of Toledo, Ohio but you cannot take the Toledo, Ohio out of the girl, is what they say. Continue reading “Sundry Sunday”

Thomas Schelling

Sunnyvale Public Library (c. 1995) Click to embiggen

Life is a random draw. Much of life is contingent and it’s like a random walk with many unpredictable twists and turns. Many unforeseen events have taken me down roads that I had no inkling about even a few months before I embarked on an adventure. One of those lucky turns happened around 33 years ago.

I was at the Sunnyvale Public Library, waiting in line to check out a few books. SPL was close to home. I would go there a few times a month. While waiting to check out books, I randomly picked up a book from a sorting cart. It was titled “Micromotives and Macrobehavior.” I glanced at a few paragraphs and decided to borrow the book.

That evening, I started reading the book. In a day, I had read the book. I found it fascinating. The author, it turned out, was someone named Thomas Schelling. He was an economist. It dawned on me for the first time that I was an economist. Until that point, I had not only not known what economics was but I had no idea that I was actually an economist.

A few months later, I was telling about that to a friend of mine, VA, in Palo Alto. He said, “Hey, I think you should get a Ph.D. in economics!” That planted a seed. Continue reading “Thomas Schelling”

Wine and Bread

I love homemade bread, and I love red wines. I am partial to the cabernet sauvignon, merlot and pinot noir varieties. The first two are from the Bordeaux and the third from the Burgundy regions of France. They are also great places to visit, as I did many years ago.

My close friend and host — A in San Jose — occasionally bakes bread at home. A few days ago, we had some fresh out of the oven bread with Kerrygold Irish butter (from Costco, where else!) and paired it with some cabernet sauvignon (probably from Trader Joe’s.) The picture of the bread and wine appears at the top of this post. Click to embiggen. Continue reading “Wine and Bread”