Full Moon in Scorpio

Santa Barbara, California

Billy and I left LA early Sunday morning so that we could arrive here in Santa Barbara in time to attend Mass at Mission Santa Barbara. This mission, called The Queen of the Missions, was built about a decade after Carmel Mission. It's parrish is under the Franciscan order. I had heard that it has a wondrous Parrish Choir.

Billy just plain loves Santa Barbara. I am less enamorado, though I think it is very pretty. And you can't beat the weather which seems to always be seventy-five degrees and sunny. And there is lots to do here. But still . . .

Since 1998 we have gone to Kona, to the Kona Village, for every and all of my birthdays except 1999 when I made an ill-fated decision that we should go to Santa Fe. Don't get me wrong. Santa Fe was lovely, and we both fell in love with it. The food was spectacular, and there was a lot to do there. But it was freaking COLD -- 29 degrees the night that we celebrated my birthday. On that walk home from Santacafe to Inn of the Anasazi, which was just a few short blocks, I could feel the stone cold of the pavement through my shoes. Something I remember from being in Rome once in late November when I was a teenager. Something I do not like at all.

After that Santa Fe foot freeze, I vowed to spend all the rest of my birthdays at The Kona Village. And, I believe that it was the very next trip, in 2000, when we met Sandra and John. That was when the trouble started. The trouble we caused, that is. Somewhere along the line I had picked up a fateful sentence spoken to me earlier by a waiter on a cruise ship. I had hesitated to take a glass of champagne with me as I was leaving a dining room. Go ahead, Ishmael (really -- an unbearably attractive Turkish man named Ishmael) said, It's your ship! Sandra and I used this over and over again at The Village -- enough so that we quickly came to believe it. It was our Village -- at least for the 7-8 days that we were there together. And I suppose we did sometimes stretch the outer limits of vacation entitlement. I so miss that!

But, currently, there is no Kona Village. And, Santa Barbara is not a bad place to celebrate. We spent our twentieth wedding anniversary here; a rainy weekend staying at the San Ysidro Ranch in a cottage with two fireplaces. We must have burnt through a cord of wood. I'm certain they lost money on us. This time we are at The Canary Hotel -- right in town within walking distance to just about everything. 

I have celebrated thirteen birthdays at the Kona Village Resort. Last year, after the tsunami had washed away all traces of those celebrations and knocked our hale off its foundation and the resort off the map, we took off for John and Sandra's house on the eastern shore of Lake Tahoe and celebrated my birthday there. It was a perfect and lovely celebration in their beautiful home with the lake right outside their windows and a table set in harvest theme. Home, in a different place and different way, but good.

This year, on Sunday night, we watched the Giants clinch the World Series in a four-game sweep. There we were, once again, sitting in an out of town bar (the one in our hotel), perched on barstools watching the Giants run away with another game. This one being the finish of the World Series. We drank martinis, ate shisito peppers (perfect for pre-Halloween goulishness since about one out of seven are blisteringly hot while the rest are tasty and mild), and a prosciutto and shaved asparagus flatbread. I resisted an almost overwhelming temptation to order oysters, as I have a rather ridiculous agreement with myself that I won't eat risky foods when I am on vacation. Though, frankly, neither oysters nor sushi seem that risky to me anymore. In retrospect, I should have just gone for it.

I celebrated my birthday by shopping up and down State Street. We ate lunch outdoors at a little cafe, and dinner at another one. We had cocktails in the bar at the hotel.  We now knew our bartender, Brett, by name, and had learned that he is a Dodgers fan. We're good at this getting-to-know-you thing when it comes to bartenders. Later, after dinner, we were walking back to the hotel down State Street. Most of the businesses were closed, and we saw no one else strolling. As we were crossing the street, I heard the opening refrain of one of my favorite salsa song: Yo No Se Manana by Luis Enrique. And it was loud! No other sounds on the street but this song, which just happens to be the ringtone on my phone. When we passed in front of the patio of a restaurant that was now closed, we saw the staff cleaning up. They had the music cranked -- a salsa version of whistling while you work. What are the odds of that song in that place on that night?

Meanwhile, while we were having all this fun in sunny Santa Barbara, Hurricane Sandy was brewing and blowing on the Eastern seaboard. A vast crushing mass of a storm. My friend, Max, texted from Connecticut to say that they were ok, but that it was a massive assault. He sent me a photo of a sign at his local Starbucks offering free water to the victims of the storm. The sign had a heart drawn on the bottom of it. Times like this can bring out the best in people and communities.

I've always known that I share my birthday with the infamous Black Tuesday when the stock market crashed in 1929. It's a volatile time of year, and this year, there was a full moon on my birthday. I am a Scorpio. And, there was a full moon on the first day of Scorpio on the night when I lost two close friends in a car accident in Pacheco Pass. I know that I've written this before. But that doesn't stop me from again writing that we buried Larry on a Monday, and Ray on Tuesday. The following day was my eighteenth birthday. It's been a long time, but I will never pass a birthday without thinking of them both.

The odds are that sometime, through the course of your life, something bad is going to happen in conjunction with your birthday. I feel I've had more than my share including a birthday spent at a hospital when my dad had been admitted into the intensive care unit. My dad survived that bout. And the next one. But not the final one. Still, I went on to celebrate many wildly happy birthdays in Kona; one at Glenbrook, plus the chilly one in Santa Fe, and this one in Santa Barbara. The weather was beautiful, sunny and mild, and I feel profound gratitude that we were lucky enough to enjoy it.

Meanwhile, Max's family is one of millions of households currently without power. And the devastation is still under assessment. This was big. Call me superstitious, but I believe that a full moon in Scorpio should never be underestimated. You must trust me about this. Thank you for reading my blog. And East Coasters: you will know many more mananas. Hang in there . . .

Three Thousand Hits

Carmel-by-the-Sea, California

Here we are, back in Carmel. While September is not a usual time for us to go to Carmel, at least not in a decade or so, the past few years have been so different and complicated in so many ways, that we find ourselves not traveling afar as we have in the past. So this year, we are once again spending extended time in one of our favorite places. And that's ok. While we listen with some envy to stories about our friends' travels; while I eye the Silversea and Radisson cruise line brochures that come to our home with a small sense of yearning; while I long, long to feel the way I do while we have spent time at The Kona Village; it's just not our time to do that. It's our time to stay fairly close to our Los Angeles home, close to my mom, close to our business. And so here we are.

It does feel like home to me, even though we're not in the same house we rented for so many years. It's our second stay here at this house, and it is a really nice one. I've gotten used to being on the opposite side of town from where we have always rented; I've gotten used to the odd fact that this house doesn't seem to have a name (no street addresses or mail delivery in town so all houses are named, or so I thought); I've gotten used to the push-button fireplace which altered my opinion that those things are cheezy. It looks very much like a real fire-in-the-fireplace. And if we need what Billy calls a true Carmel smell, there is a wood-burning fireplace in the living room.

This house has an outside patio with a table surrounded by flowers and trees. It has a barbecue. But the weather has been foggy and cool since we got here on Sept 1st. I remarked that Carmel doesn't know it's September yet, as the foggy days of summer seem to have lingered on. But the house is warm and cozy, and the town is Carmel. And so we begin our process of winding down and getting recharged up for the rest of the year.

Lest I lose you all (all one or two of you reading this), I should try to refrain from listing the reasons why the past couple of years have been hard. Last year, at this time, we were rehabbing our rental property after it was trashed by a tenant. Billy was doing all the grunt work and heavy lifting, as he has done two other times in the past three years during which time we have twice moved my mom. Then there was that pesky economic thing which reigned terror on all small business owners, which is what we are. But life is more stable now. It's just that we're both a little older and a little more spent.

I commented to many people, and probably wrote it in a previous post (available here in limited quantities), that I got through this past year with the help of salsa dance, an unseasonable taste for Guinness beer, and baseball. That's Dodgers baseball. The Dodgers helped me along by coming out strong at the beginning of the season, after the heinous McCourts sold them to a consortium which included Magic Johnson. Our boys in blue played with verve and joy through April and May. Then there were injuries. They dropped a lead which I will recall (without checking) was about nine games. They were barely at the top of their division going into the All-Star break. After much back and forth, they had regained that slim lead, and then. And then. The Giants smoked us through a three-game series last month. Now we are 4.5 games back of the Giants, and Billy and I are heading to San Francisco today to watch tomorrow's game at AT&T Park. Looking forward to it. Nervous. Excited. Go Dodgers (like win, before I have a heart attack)!

Meanwhile, my blog is nearing another pinnacle, and once again, it is occurring while I am in Carmel, where it began. I will pass 3000 hits this weekend, which should make me feel a little bit like a blogger all star. I just looked at the Dodgers' stats and, they have a combined 1167 hits this season as of Sept 4th. And I want to guess that I've seen about 1100 of them, either on television or at Dodger Stadium. Looking forward to a few more over the weekend, before we return to Carmel and I settle in to write a boatload (a McCovey Cove reference, get it?) of blog posts. In the meantime, in-between time, ain't we had fun? Ok, maybe fun is too strong a word. But I do thank you for joining me on my writing journey by reading my blog -- especially if you've looked at it more than once. I implore you to leave a message on any post that speaks to you. And I hope you will enjoy the next three thousand. I haven't said it all yet. You must trust me about this.

I do need to repeat the comment that I'm not sure if there are three thousand of you who have each read my blog once, or one of you who has hit on it three thousand times (you know who you are, LOL. For the rest of you: see post entitled The Monogram available here at newly reduced prices). Regardless, I thank you, one or all. And for the love of heaven, GO DODGERS!!!

Other Cities Only Make Me Love You Best

Los Angeles, California

We flew home from Kona through San Francisco on November 1st. Just after take-off, our pilot announced that he was going to try to pick up a radio station broadcasting the fifth game of the World Series. If he was able to do this, he would patch it through so that we could listen to the game through our earphones. He was finally successful at doing this around the fourth inning. It was a crackly transmission, but it got better as we proceeded towards the mainland.

Now for those of you who don't have a wide bandwidth when it comes to baseball, I should probably provide the back story that the two teams competing in the World Series were the San Francisco Giants (yea!) and the Texas Rangers (boo!). Game five was crucial to the Rangers. If they lost, the Giants would clinch the World Series. And, again, we were on a plane bound for San Francisco. Presumably, a lot of the passengers were heading home. So, although we were way up in the air, we were ostensibly in Giants' territory, and would be until we caught our connecting flight home to Los Angeles (necessitated by the elimination of our usual direct flight from LAX to Kona. This is probably more information than you need to know, but you know how I am about parentheticals).


When the Giants finally scored, scattered applause broke out throughout the plane. When Wilson (who had come in at the bottom of the ninth in relief) threw his final strike-out, most, if not all, of the passengers applauded. It was cool. When we landed in San Francisco about ninety minutes later, they were already hawking Giants World Champions tee-shirts. Now, I was all for the Giants winning the series, as you've probably figured out by the above parenthetical commentary. You see, currently in Los Angeles, we don't really have a baseball team. We have a baseball divorce. I could fill you in on the divorce proceedings of the owners of the Los Angeles Dodgers, but really, it is all too dismal. So, if you're interested in this tawdry mess, google the Dodgers and/or the McCourts. Suffice it to say that once the Dodgers finished circling the drain this season, we started looking at what was going on with the Giants. I was hoping for a Giants/Yankees series, but somehow the Rangers took the Yankees out. And then there were two.


I was for the Giants all through postseason. You see, though I am from Los Angeles, born and raised, and represent the third-generation in my family who were born in Southern California; while I've always known that there is this huge San Francisco/LA rivalry, and that San Francisco totally disses us for stealing their water . . . I like San Francisco. Enough so, that I almost got married there (though not to Billy, and the less said about that situation the better). Plus, my dad grew up in Palo Alto, and we always spent a lot of time up in the Bay Area. I've got friends there. And I've always had a great time when visiting the city.

So, I was thoroughly enjoying all this San Francisco revelry. It even reminded me of a trip Billy and I took in the early 90s. Billy had received a bonus, which funded a long weekend to San Francisco, where we celebrated his birthday. It was one of those trips where magic was to be found at every turn.


Although we had rented a car, we never took it out of the hotel garage until it was time to return to the airport. We walked a lot, used public transportation during the day, and took taxis at night. We had some memorable meals at restaurants including Postrio, which was in the Prescott Hotel where we were staying. We listened to a pianist playing Gershwin and Cole Porter tunes until early morning at the Redwood Room in the Clift Hotel.


Our favorite day was Saturday when, after breakfast at the hotel, we walked a short distance to Union Square to shop. At F.A.O. Schwartz, we purchased The Amazing 8-Ball -- our first in what would become a long line of them, purchasing them both as replacements and gifts. Afterwards, we caught the BART over to Embarcadero Center. Then we began to walk. We walked all the way down Battery to Embarcadero, stopping for lunch at Il Fornaio. Then we walked some more, past the piers and the wharf, all the way to Ghirardelli Square. Eventually, we caught the Hyde Street cable car and rode it back to Union Square. By this time, we'd been gone all day, and had probably walked way beyond a 10K. Our feet were sore, but more pressing than that . . . we were thirsty.


We fell into the hotel and hung a quick right into the bar, where we sat down on bar stools and ordered two Red Tail Ales. The bartender who took our order informed us that the restaurant bar was hosting a private event that evening for MTV. We were welcome to have a drink while the bartenders were setting up for the party, but soon after they would be closing their doors to the public at large. That was fine with us. We just needed enough time to have a beer . . . or two.


I gazed down into my glass of cloudy, unfiltered ale, marveling at the blessed relief of being off my feet, and frankly, out of my shoes. Meanwhile, Billy got out the 8-Ball we had purchased earlier in the day. He began turning it over, checking out responses presumably to unverbalized questions. It drew the bartenders like moths to a flame.


"Oh look," one of them exclaimed. "An 8-Ball!" We had now collected three bartenders.


"Ask a question," Billy suggested.

One of them volunteered, "Am I going to get out of here before midnight tonight?"

Billy turned the 8-Ball over, and read "Don't count on it."


"OK," another guy said. "I've got one. Is Madonna going to be at this party tonight?"

Billy flipped the ball over. "Ask again later."


The third bartender leaned in. "If Madonna is here, am I going to get lucky with her tonight?"


A quick flip. "Signs point to yes," Billy read. We all laughed.

The first bartender said to Billy, "Now you ask one."


Billy paused, then spoke slowly. "What are the chances of us getting a free round in this bar?"

Billy turned over the 8-Ball, then handed it to the first bartender who read it out loud.

"Outlook good!"

Two of them laughed, then moved away down the bar to get back to work. But, the first bartender turned quickly to the refrigerator where he took out two Red Tail Ales and opened them. Turning back, he plunked them down on the bar in front of us. The other two guys looked back at him.

"Hey," he said. "You don't f#@! with the 8-Ball."

We never did hear whether Madonna made it to the party that night. But, if she did, we're sure our bartender got lucky. The 8-Ball had spoken. Thank you for reading my blog. I knew you would. I asked the 8-Ball about it.

Kona Honu

Kona, Hawaii

I'm going to start you right off with this recipe so that you can run and make a couple of these, then settle in to read this remarkable story. Seriously.

Mai Tais

2      ounces dark Bacardi rum
1/2  cup pineapple juice
1/2  cup orange juice
2      tablespoons lime juice
2      tablespoons Cointreau
2      ounces Meyer's rum

Combine first five ingredients. Pour into two large glasses over ice. Float one ounce of Meyer's rum on top. Do insert a pineapple spear into the glass, or better yet, a paper umbrella.


2 servings


Aloha! We are at the Kona Village Resort with Sandra and John. This is the twelfth year out of the last thirteen years that we have celebrated my birthday there with them. Remind me to write about the year that I decided I wanted to go to Santa Fe instead. Good food. Freezing cold. But I digress.


I think that Sandra and John are the most beloved, or maybe just infamous, of returnees to the Village. They have vacationed there over fifty times (and yes, I got that statistic right). Their first visit was back in the early years just before 1970, when you could only gain access to the Village by small plane, as the road was not yet cut through. S & J are infinitely generous, loads of fun, and game for just about anything. We used to call them our “same time, next year” friends, because we never saw them between trips to KVR. The beauty in this was that we always picked up with an easy familiarity when we met again each year. But we can no longer call them that, because we have gone on to spend time with them in Tahiti, Panama, Rancho Santa Fe, Napa, Las Vegas, and, of course, Carmel and Lake Tahoe.

This year, we left LA during baseball playoff season once again, and with the Giants being contenders, I am reminded of the World Series of 2002, when we watched the last game of the series at the Village. Billy and I had arrived on the day that the final Angels/Giants match was being played. As we checked in, the game had just begun. Tad, one of the two bellmen, drove us in the resort cart to our hale (see below), where we dropped off our luggage, and quickly changed clothes.

“Dude!” Tad had said to Billy. “Put some shorts on!”

Then, he drove us to the nether regions of the resort, where we had been told that a TV had been set up. This was a bit surprising, since the Village’s hales have no TVs (radios, telephones, etc.). We had considered going AWOL to The Four Seasons next door, where we were sure to find all kinds of technological advances, including televised baseball. But, no need.

Tad dropped us off at Hale Ho'okipa, a large partially covered area on one end of the lagoon, which is used for luaus. It is the largest structure on the Village premises, as the luau is a weekly event that is open to people not staying at the resort. A great place for an extremely large celebration, I thought, as we hurried inside. I expected to see a large group of fans, sitting before a wide screen television, drinks in hand provided by the bar located there. To my surprise, as we rounded the corner and into Hale Ho'okipa, we were met by the scene of two middle-aged men, both in baseball caps, sitting on polyvinyl picnic chairs, in front of a TV that looked to have about a 20” screen. It was balanced on a metal stand which looked like it came from the audio-visual department of my junior high school. Where was everyone?

One of the men, who turned out to be Barry, the dentist, looked up as we approached,

“Who are you guys for?”

I responded, borrowing Sandra’s line referring to their having gone to rival colleges (Stanford and Cal), “We’re a mixed marriage.”

“Yeah?” Barry said. “Well then, one of you is three-to-one.” That would be Billy, the alien Angels fan.

We introduced ourselves, then settled down into the white plastic chairs that looked like they came from the outdoor department at Target (ok, one last, nit-picking point about the ambiance). Shortly after we settled in, the other Giants booster, John, told us that that he was a little concerned about getting back to his hale. While on the road to Hale Ho'okipa, using the quickest trail alongside the lagoon, he had been set upon by the black swans who had nipped at his ankles. These swans, now deported from the Village, were notoriously mean-spirited, and were possibly Angels' fans.

After reassuring John that we would all protect him from the swans, we continued to watch the game with Barry and John. Barry thoughtfully made a beer run to the Shipwreck Bar, convincing whoever was bartending to charge a full six-pack of Kona Longboard Lager to his account. Over beer and baseball, we learned that John had attended Stanford (like Sandra), and Barry, like Sandra's John, had gone to Cal. I told them that they should meet John and Sandra -- especially after learning that Baseball John (this is getting confusing, isn't it?) and his wife were returning to KVR after a long absence. But they, too, were longtime returnees.

And, they did meet John and Sandra. Within a few days we were a loosely-knit group, coming together in various combinations at meals and, natch, in the Bora Bora Bar. It was like camp, all over again, except with martinis. All this fun and frivolity culminated on at midnight on Halloween when we all drank champagne on the beach, then reclined on the sand, watching a meteor shower in the brilliant Hawaiian night sky. But, I'm getting ahead of my story.

We spend our days at the Village under a four-poled palapa-roofed beach structure. It houses two lounge chairs -- and that’s all. These few structures dot the beach, and are spaced far apart -- far enough, I’ve often said facetiously, to have an argument or sex in relative privacy. The privacy on this trip was increased by the reduced guest population at the resort. When we arrived, the total guest count out of a possible 300, was around sixty. We lunatics were truly running the asylum.

During our week together at the Village, Baseball John and his wife, Sue, who hadn’t been at the KVR in recent years, were amazed by the sight of the large sea turtles on the beach. These honu (see below) make their way, moving laboriously and resting frequently, up out of the water to take long naps in the afternoon sun-warmed sand. The trail behind them is marked by a pattern made by their flippers, which they use to slowly propel themselves forward. It looks almost like an imprint left by tire tread. We had first seen this some years back, but it had never occurred on our early trips. We had taken tons of pictures of these turtles on previous trips. But, for the past few years, we had become accustomed to the sight of the many turtles we had seen slumbering on the sand. Business as usual.

On Halloween, Billy and I were alternately reading and napping the afternoon away on our lounge chairs. There had been an event the night before which had opened the Village up to the public -- a rare thing at our quiet Village except on Luau Fridays. And this event had opened up the bar for free drinks. So, we had celebrated, staying up late, and then celebrating some more.

Also, on that previous day, a hurricane in the Pacific had caused high waves, which had washed up all around us on our lounges. So, on this next day as we napped, the sand around our lounges was still wet from the prior day’s high waves and tides. Something we had never experienced in all of our past stays.

At first, when I was awakened by an unsettling shift of the ground under my lounge chair, I thought I had been dreaming. I fell back asleep. The next few thumps that woke me felt like small earth tremors. And as these convinced me that what I was feeling was no post-party hallucination, I decided to lift the towel that was draped over my lounge, and peek underneath. All I saw was an immensity of reptilian flesh. Dropping the towel, I jumped to the very top of my lounge, sitting on my haunches, hanging ten on the lounge rail.

“Billy! Billy!!” I shook his arm, waking him. “What’s under my lounge?”

Billy sleepily lifted the towel on his side of my lounge, then slowly lowered it again.

“Mr. Turtle,” he said, languidly.

Indeed. One of the large sea turtles had worked its way up the beach and right between the runners of my lounge. From there, while I was sleeping, he had proceeded under my lounge until he hit the crossbar which supported the adjustable part of the lounge. Every so often he attempted to advance further, creating the small tremors and thumps that had awakened me. But alas, he was stuck. In between tries, he evidently napped along with us. The three of us had become a unique Village ohana (see below).

My trepidation at having a honu, which was about the size of a large dinner platter, subletting in the basement of my lounge did subside. We were in Kona. Live and let live (the mai tais support this philosophy). So, we all settled back to our naps.

Before we left the beach, we lifted the lounge to allow the honu to turn around (they don’t do reverse well). Then, we left our new friend who now had a roof over his shell.

Initially I don't think people believed this story. But at the Bora Bora Bar that night, guests who had walked up the beach in the late afternoon told us that they had seen the chevron-shaped tracks leading right out of the water and under the lounge -- my lounge for the week that I am there. And they also saw the subsequent tracks back to the sea.

That palapa-roofed structure became my happy place. Whenever I have tried meditation or just to muster up a calming visualization, I put myself back there feeling the breeze on my skin, smelling the sweet Kona ocean air while relaxing on my lounge. And, without fail, I always remember to put a turtle underneath it all. Mahalo for reading my blog.

hale: house (in this case, guest cottage)
honu: sea turtle
ohana: family
mahalo: gracias