Our 16 year-old Rav4 had 220,000 miles, and was still running strong, but the clutch was finally showing signs of wear so we decided to look into a new car.
We wanted to go electric, so we surveyed the current state of the technology, keeping in mind we only have one car and so it had to cover all of our needs.
You basically have three choices of electric vehicles today…
Continue reading →For the last six weeks I’ve been in VA taking care of sick parents. VA is an interesting place. The capital, Richmond, is divided by the James River. Although your history books will tell you VA was a southern state the truth is that on the north side of the James River the people think of themselves as Northerners. On the south side, people speak with a twang. As I was often on both sides of the river, I’ve made a list of what I hate and love about the South. So here goes:
Continue reading →A month ago today, the adventurer, Barnaby Conrad, left us behind.
You may have known Barnaby as a bullfighter in Mexico, Spain, and Peru. Or you may have known him as a portrait painter. Or you may have known him as personal secretary to Nobel laureate Sinclair Lewis. Or you may have known him as author of 35 books. Maybe you knew him as owner of the El Matador nightclub in San Francisco. Or perhaps, like me, you knew him as the co-founder of the Santa Barbara Writers Conference.
Continue reading →There is a lot of ongoing discussion about healthcare in this country, and we have all had our personal experiences with it, good or bad. But aside from all the political debate, I always thought there was a crucial discussion missing, and it is the one about prices.
Coming from a country where the raw unsubsidized healthcare prices are easily 5 to 10 times cheaper than here for the exact same quality of care, I was always astonished that it never really came up in any of the debates. These are always about the structure and who will pay for what, but never adress what looked to me like the core issue, The Prices!
Of course along the way over the last 10+ years, and after many medical bills, I started to have some ideas of my own…
So I was thrilled when recently Time Magazine published a report called “Why medical bills are killing us” stating within the first few paragraphs:
Continue reading →Uck. Slippery snakes. Eweeee. I hear you.
Snakes aren’t sexy unless you’re born under the Chinese sign of the snake. Then you might be very, very sexy. Let’s not forget the snake is the universal symbol of sexuality.
Finding your target audience is like being the new kid in high school and having to make friends. You can hide out and wait for friends to find you or you can put yourself out there and using trial and error, find the kids who have the most in common with you.
Being cave dwellers, we writers prefer the first method. We believe that if we just write a good story the readers will come. Write it, they will come.
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