Author: hkraushaar (Page 4 of 15)

Mingo Star

April 17, 2021 / hkraushaar

For the first time in 15 months Pam and I were about to leave our house for an overnight trip. It was a scary time, not because we were leaving the house in the middle of a pandemic, but because we were going on a vacation with the extended family.

For some reason, Shelby had decided that the best way to celebrate Portia’s second birthday was with a four day-stay at a resort-like house in the middle of Palm Springs. I worried about the house being too crowded with all of us. There was going to be a lot of us, including Shelby, Bryan, Portia and Nana (Portia-speak for Bryan’s mom, Karen), Glam (Portia-speak for Pam), Mi-Mi (Portia-speak for Kimberly) and Glump (Portia-speak for me). In addition, Shelby had invited one of Bryan’s stepmoms, Sue, and her husband, Chet, who had flown into LA from Louisville the day before.

So on Saturday morning Kim came over, and she and Pam proceeded to load the car while I procrastinated as long as possible. Eventually, I was out of excuses, and Pam decided it was time for me to take the dog out for a last visit to the tree before he was escorted into the back seat of Pam’s car. Yes, the family vacation included pets. Jake, our Golden Retriever, and Stassi, Shelby’s Golden Doodle, whose combined weight was about 150 pounds, were both attending the big event. Thankfully, Jake was the only pet driving with us, and Shelby assured me that the house she had rented was more than large enough to handle all of us including the pets. I was a tad skeptical.

Generally, I do not really like to procrastinate, but I had a good reason this time, and that reason had nothing to do with my normal curmudgeon-like tendencies. Shelby and her family were driving with Stassi in the van they rented for the occasion, and Chet and Sue were driving separately. We would not be able to get into the property until Shelby met with the property manager. So I was timing our departure to ensure that we arrived in Palm Springs no earlier than one minute after Shelby arrived there. As we entered the house about five minutes after they did, I think I did a perfect amount of procrastination. Of course, they would have arrived about ten minutes earlier, but Portia had a bout of car sickness on the way, the cleanup of which delayed them. I told Pam and Kim that I had factored the probability of that event into my procrastination model. They wisely opted to ignore me as I gloated about the perfection of my procrastination.

It turned out Shelby was right. The house was spectacular and there was room for all of as, as well as the dogs.

But enough about the house and the family. We were all there for Portia, and Portia was there for Mingo. For the past couple of months Portia had been talking about this thing called Mingo, Portia-speak for the blow up flamingo that would be in the pool. Pam had ordered Mingo as well as a bunch of mini-Mingos, so Portia was happy to see all of them in the pool

On Sunday afternoon, Shelby had organized a party for Portia. It was quite an event. We were all there, as was Portia’s friend and neighbor, Alexander, who coincidently was born on same day as Portia, and his family. The party had a Moana theme, as Portia has seen the film countless times. The party was a great success, and we all had a good time.

The rest of the trip was great, too. It was fun to catch up with Sue and Chet, as we do not see them very often. Shockingly, the dogs behaved really well, and, frankly, my grumpy self had nothing to grump about. Oh well, there is always next year.

Return of Cronyism

March 28, 2021 / hkraushaar

After 13 months of a Covid-filled void, I saw a portion of my cronies again, and I may have found a new one or two. For months I have been pining about the fact that the only cronies I have seen during Covid have been the people who work at the market and the bagel store. While I will keep them as cronies going forward, they will no longer be the only ones in my life.

Yesterday, I took my Porsche Rhodium Silver Cayman GTS to see its brethren. While there, I saw my PCA LA cronies, or at least a subset of them. My Cayman was ecstatic, as I drove it about 70 miles round trip to breakfast and back, all at freeway speeds. It has been cranky, because it has just been sitting in my driveway like a patient pet for so many months. It has been serviced twice since Covid began, but each time the dealer sent a flatbed to pick it up and return it. So this was the most exercise it has had in forever.

It was also the most I have driven in forever. It felt good to drive and listen to loud music and chill.

It felt better to see my cronies. They had been out of sight for so long, I lost sight of how much I missed the simple act of seeing them, their cars, and relaxing over a culinarily imperfect breakfast. Yesterday reminded me of what I had been missing.

We met at Stonehaus in Westlake Village. It is set up really well for a Covid, socially distanced cars and coffee. The parking lot is large and was cordoned off for our cars. The eating area was spacious with a good number of socially distanced tables that were large enough for us to sit in a socially distanced manner. Breakfast was really relaxing, as the eating area overlooked a small vineyard. The coffee was good. The breakfast burrito, well, it was inexpensive, prepared en masse and edible, but I didn’t go for the food anyway.

I went to see cronies, and I did. I am glad they are back in my life. I hope they can continue to be.

Dread Lifting

March 19, 2021 / hkraushaar

As I sit here writing this, almost every muscle in my body has been letting me know it exists. Except for my calves, each muscle was heavily used this morning. For a guy who just turned 66 it is a great feeling. Heck, for a guy at any age it would be a great feeling.

More interesting, at least to me, is how I got my muscles to speak this loudly. Louder than they used to scream in the early 00s when I was still doing Masters Swimming. I am excited that I feel this way now. The fact that I was able to generate this muscular cacophony while barefoot and in the privacy of my home during a pandemic is just icing on the cake.

I have always loved to exercise. Yeah, I’m a freak that way. Since I was 19, some 47 or so years ago, I have consistently worked out. During that timespan two themes emerged: I love cardio, and I hate weights, so much so that I avoided lifting them for most of those years. And if I did lift them, I just faked my way through a few meaningless sets.

But no amount of cardio would leave me feeling like this. It takes weights, the very things I profess to hate to lift. Huh? What about my life script? What changed?

My workout this morning consisted of exercises that require lower body pulling. Seven months ago, before I got my Tonal, I would not have understood what those words meant. Now, I do. They mean doing exercises that are centered around using the backs of my legs and my glutes to straighten my body. Exercises like deadlifts, or dreadlifts, as I used to think of them. My work out this morning was riddled with them.

For people who have worked out with private trainers this may not be a big deal. For me it was mind boggling. I mean, until I got Tonal, I had not done deadlifts since I was a High School Sophomore, and I probably did them wrong then. I would have never done them at Equinox. They represented everything I was afraid of while weight lifting. They required technique, lots of technique. They were the epitome of scary. Just the thought of doing them could cause an injury. Just trying them could leave me a twitch away from locking my back up for life. Or so I thought.

Yet I did a whole bunch of them today. My muscles are singing with fatigue, and I am brimming with excitement about it. WTF? How could I find myself in this position? The answer is simple: Tonal.

The rest of my family and most of my closest friends are pretty much sick of me Tonal talking. I do it so often that it has become ridiculous, if not downright obnoxious. No doubt about it. But that is okay, at least for me.

I just completed day 19 of a 31 day group program orchestrated by Coach Liz, one of the cadre of amazingly good coaches at Tonal. My sister, Arlene, who resides in Northern California, is doing it with me. It makes it more fun. But it is the program and support that provides the framework and the majority of the fun. I am surprised as I think to myself, “I am so happy I will have the opportunity to redo this workout one more time before the program ends.”

Shockingly, in seven short months I have re-written my exercise life script and now focus on weights over cardio. Talk about an old dog and a new trick. It’s just not supposed to happen. Yet it did.

I did not expect this when Tonal showed up and was attached to the wall in our spare bedroom. My plan was to use it to enable me to cut the cord to Equinox and do a modicum of weight lifting at home. All the while I thought I would keep faking my way through weight lifting exercises in between the days I ran. Boy, was I wrong.

The device is spectacular in form and function. I can do a practically unlimited series of movements, working out just about every muscle in my body. What’s more interesting, though, is that Tonal brings technology to weight lifting. It uses digital weights, which make free weights look like buggy whips did during the dawn of the age of the auto. It has modes that enable it to alter the resistance at various points in the movement. It also measures everything I do. It captures the weight I lift, the range of motion I use and the power I apply to each rep. It create graphs of all this in real time. It also remembers everything, letting me know, somewhat sporadically, if I have achieved a personal best in one or more of those categories. I am slowly getting into all this data as I get more into lifting.

Tonal’s capabilities are somewhat mind boggling, but more important, at least to me, was the knowledge, coaching and community that came with it That is what provided me with the support, motivation and education I needed to embrace lifting weights and to learn how to do it properly. That was the key to taking the dread out of my dreadlift, to unlocking the deadlifter that still resided within me. The deadlifter I had no idea was there.

Not The Water

February 28, 2021 / hkraushaar

I spent about an hour and a half in my totally analog 89 Carrera this morning, only once reminding myself that I do not have anti-lock brakes. I freely admit that I am spoiled by the unbelievably effective braking systems in modern cars, like in my 2015 Cayman GTS, enabling me to brake way too late without recourse or remorse. Not so in my 89.

I like early weekend drives up PCH. I have been driving on it for 50 years, and I enjoy it as much now as I did when I was sixteen. Yes, the sights have changed. Yes, the number of cars has increased. Yes, the number of motorcycles has increased. Yes, the number of bicyclists has increased. But the feeling of peace and the relaxation I get when driving by the water is still there, as long as it is daylight and especially if the sun is shining, as it was this morning.

These drives are mind clearing, but sometimes tire screeching. This morning I was driving along in my mental fugue, ruminating on a host of things, ranging from bourbon to vaccinations to the state of Covid affairs, when I noticed that the light at Temescal changed.

I was too far from the intersection to keep going and too close to stop without locking up my wheels. Sadly, I have done this enough times to know when the lockups will occur. Happily, I have done this enough times to just enjoy the feeling of skidding to a stop. Thankfully, I did not have to endure the smell of burnt rubber, though I think that had more to do with the direction the wind was blowing than to the absence of the smell itself.

After the screeching stopped, with the nose of my car only partially into the crosswalk, I began to ruminate again. We have been living with the Covid restrictions for just about a year. In some respects it feels like a lifetime. As I have written about before, my inner hermit has been ruling my life, only releasing its grip on me sporadically. But that is changing.

Pam and I are fully vaccinated, each having received two doses of the Pfizer vaccine. It is getting more and more likely that the people we come into contact with are vaccinated, too, meaning that the likelihood of getting infected or passing the infection along is getting lower all the time, which leaves me wondering when to press reset and begin to lead a more normal life. It also leaves me fighting with my inner hermit, which is quite content with the status quo.

As I passed Malibu, Paradise Cove and Zuma and pulled into the Trancas Market parking lot, my favorite Jimmy Dale Gilmore song began on my iPod. Yes, I still have an iPod. Actually, I have two, one in each of my cars, mainly because I love special purpose devices. But that is neither here nor there.

Jimmy Dale Gilmore is an alt-Country, Americana artist from Texas who is about as non-commercial as an artist can be, at least here in West Los Angeles, though Pam and I did see him and Dave Alvin perform at the Troubadour a couple of years ago.

Jimmy Dale spent most of the 70s in an ashram in Colorado, which must have provided him with the perspective to write the lyrics for Just a Wave, Not the Water, a ballad about a failed love affair in which the dumpee was reminded over and over again in the refrain that he was just a wave passing through the life of the dumper.

Entering my hermit state was easy. It was legislated and it felt right, despite the economic carnage that occurred. Now the US is opening up. The tide is leaning towards restoring our ability to act normally, even if we have to do so masked. Schools are opening. Sports are returning. We can eat outside. But the future is not clear. It is highly likely that the case count, which has been dropping over the past few weeks, will go the other way again.

So there I sat, listening to Jimmy Dale wax poetically about coming to terms with the end of a relationship. So there I sat, waiting to go into the Trancas Market to buy some tea for Kimberly, something that I could have bought at Pavilions about a mile from my house when I was there early this morning. So there I sat, wondering if it was time to treat Covid as the wave, not the water.

I think it will be very soon.

Oily Bubbles

January 29, 2021 / hkraushaar

With all due respect to Don Ho and Leon Pober:

Oily Bubbles in the saline
Make me feel happy
Will make me feel fine

For possibly the first time in my life I was full of oily bubbles. To be precise the oily bubbles in my body were really lipid nanoparticles. As these particles were wrapped around a whole bunch of messenger RNA molecules, I was happy and going to feel fine because the messenger RNA molecules are the cornerstone of the Pfizer vaccine, and I received my first injection the other day.

As I sit here writing this, my trusty oily bubbles, aka lipid nanoparticles, have randomly bumped into other cells and released a whole bunch of messenger RNA, eventually leading the other cells to build spike proteins and destroying the messenger RNA.

The spike proteins were the goal. As the cells died or if some of the spike proteins poked out of the cell walls before they died, my body realized that it was under attack and began to mount a defense. I know this because my arm hurt for about 24 hours after I received my shot.

I am no scientist and, frankly, I never took a biology class in school, so I find it more than slightly humorous that I am even typing these words. But, hey, my arm muscle, not the bone, was killing me.

The mere fact that I received a vaccine so early in the vaccination process is a testament to two things: My advanced age and my saint of a wife. As I have written about before, Pam, the saintly one, is rather adept at getting things on the internet.

The reality is that anyone can shop and buy things on the internet, but Pam has a knack for getting things that are hard to come by, like concert tickets, pretty consistently. I have no idea how she does it. Generally, it has been a good thing, but, ironically, her greatest coup with respect to getting concert tickets, snagging unbelievably good Adele seats at Staples just before the ticket website crashed, was for a show we cared about the least. I am not complaining, though, as that show gave me something to complain about for months.

Pam started scouring the internet for vaccination appointments earlier in the month when Ralphs offered appointments to get vaccinated in their stores. Pam’s friends, Daryn and Candace, were successful in getting appointments, so Pam dove in to the Ralphs site and eventually snagged some appointments for us at a market in a scary part of town. Appointments that, thankfully, we were never going to need.

When the county began offering vaccinations at the Forum, Pam and I thought it would be a good place to get the vaccines. It was close, and it was not as large as Dodger Stadium. In addition, we have seen numerous shows at the Forum since they refitted it for concerts, and Pam has always gotten us good seats there, so we felt good about trying. As we never buy Dodger tickets or see shows there, Dodger Stadium was off limits.

At first we were hopeful. Pam logged on to the site and thought she had an appointment, but the site crashed before she could complete the process. I tried to log on, too, but got nowhere. We waited for the new appointments that were to become available the following week, and despite the fact that our other friends were getting appointments, we got nowhere yet again.

Though I was less hopeful, Pam was not to be deterred. After dinner last Sunday, Pam tried again to get a reservation at the Forum. Shockingly, she did. It was for the following Friday. She said, “Harry, get on your computer and log into the county site. There are reservations open at the Forum!” Needless to say, I logged in and noted that nothing was available. Big surprise.

As I mentioned earlier, Pam is a saint. She is also never content with getting beaten by a web site. So she ignored my frustrated cries of dismay and logged back into the county site, this time for me. Next thing I knew I heard her say, “Harry, I can get you an appointment on Thursday! Do you want it? Or should I try to get one on Friday so we can go together?”

Being the Debbie Downer and realist that I am, I told her to snag the Thursday reservation while it was available. She did. Then she tried to go back in and get one for her on Thursday or one for me on Friday, but there were none to be had.

So I got my vaccination Thursday. It was pretty easy, as the county has the vaccination process working much better than the web site. Interestingly, I received an email from Ralphs just after I got back from getting my vaccine letting me know that they were cancelling my vaccination appointment in their store in the scary part of town. I just smiled.

Funky Day

January 2, 2021 / hkraushaar

You know, I didn’t think it would happen. I really didn’t. In hindsight, I should have predicted it, but I didn’t. Throughout the holiday season, I had been upbeat, happy even. I assumed I would get through New Years without a hitch in my giddy-up. I was wrong.

I had every right to be optimistic. I had been living through Covid affected holidays throughout the fall and early winter, and, frankly, I had taken the Covidization of each of them in stride.

It began with Halloween. I hate Halloween night. Not because I hate candy, but because I hate giving it away. Yeah, I’m a grump. So what. It is just wrong to part with candy. When the doorbell rings on Halloween, it makes Jake, our Golden Retriever, bark up a storm. Plus, the trick or treaters never know when to stop, even if we turn all the lights off in the front of the house. When Beverly Hills banned trick or treating, I smiled and went out and bought some candy I could keep and eat.

It continued with Thanksgiving, which actually felt pretty normal. I admit to having a love-hate relationship with Thanksgiving. It’s a lot of work, but it’s a lot of fun. Bryan still made the drinks. I still made the turkey, gravy, various side dishes and the apple pie. Pam still made the mashed potatoes, yams and string beans. Shelby stepped up bigtime and made the dressing, and Lois still brought the See’s candy. We all still ate like pigs. Sure, we had a smaller crowd. Sure, we missed having Pam’s sister, Andrea, and her family (Jeffrey, Brandon and Rachael) and having Pam’s brother, Mitch, and his husband, Dale, at the table. Sure, we missed going to Steve and Linda’s, along with our friends David and Daryn and all the kids, for post Thanksgiving dinner dessert. But so much of it remained the same that it still felt like Thanksgiving.

Christmas Eve and Christmas Day also felt pretty normal. As usual, Shelby and Bryan hosted us for a wonderful dinner on Christmas Eve, and we spent the day with them on Christmas Day. Nothing unusual except for the fact that Karen, Bryan’s mom, was with us, which only enhanced the holiday.

So there I was, metaphorically rounding third and heading for home, about to celebrate the last holiday of the season: New Years. I knew it would be different from the ghosts of New Years’ past, but I smugly thought I could handle it. To reiterate: I was wrong.

Pam and I have never been big New Year’s Eve celebrants. Over the years, we have had fun doing lots of group activities ranging from pajama parties to Polaroid scavenger hunts to movies and dinners on New Year’s Eve, all enjoyable. For the past couple of years, we have had an early dinner with John and Kris, usually at Porta Via in Beverly Hills, and then we would head home to see the ball drop in Time Square at midnight New York time. Not thrilling, but nice and very enjoyable, and it leaves us feeling great on New Year’s Day.

This year we went to Shelby’s for New Year’s Eve dinner. She did a great job, making lobster mac and cheese, salt crusted branzino, and spinach. We drank champagne. We reveled in the joy of listening to Portia try to blow her brains out with her noise maker. Sadly, none of that mattered.

What mattered was that I could not go to Porta Via. I could not sit on Canon Drive, sipping an old fashioned made with rye, watching people walk and cars drive by. I could not listen to strangers blowing their horns or watch them wearing their hats. I could not generate that ersatz feeling of excitement which is a requirement on New Year’s Eve.

We watched Andy and Anderson from Times Square on the TV. But I did not enjoy that either, as watching it felt more like watching an episode of Watch What Happens Live than like watching a New Year’s Eve special, mainly because looking at an empty Times Square was starkly depressing and very abnormal.

What did matter was that for the first time in the holiday season, I slumped into a funk. I went to bed that way, and I awoke that way. Every thing was just off, and I had the very real feeling that I was not about to feel normal anytime soon.

For more than a decade, we have spent New Year’s Day in Jeff and Lauren’s den, sitting on Jeff’s couch, feasting on football, Chinese chicken salad, BBQ chicken sandwiches, Lauren’s coffee cake and Pam’s chocolate chip cookies. Adding to the coziness of the day, Jeff has always tried to get us drunk by plying us with rounds of scotch, tequila and bourbon, with the occasional Bailey’s shiver thrown in for good measure. Kim, Shelby and Bryan show up, as do John and Kris and others. It has always been a great way to start the year. But not this year.

So I puttered around the house on New Year’s Day morning, knowing almost of that was not going to happen. Pam was making chocolate chip cookies, but that did not alter my mood, even though I knew I would be enjoying them. Nothing felt right. I did not know what to do with myself.

The Rose Parade had been cancelled. Even though I never watch more than 20 seconds of it, that hit me hard. So hard that I started flipping through the tv channels. hoping to find a replay of last year’s Rose Parade, a spectacle that in normal times I avoid because I find it about as exciting as watching a major league baseball game.

Compounding the absence of the parade and deepening my funk, I realized that I had no interest in watching a gaggle of college football bowl games this year, mainly because I have been disinclined to watch college sports during Covid, as I feel that the players are taking way too much risk without reasonable compensation.

Then I thought about the Rose Bowl and my funk hit its peak. The Rose Bowl. The granddaddy of all bowl games. A fixture in Pasadena for over a century. A game I have been to a couple of times and watched about 60 times. A game that belongs in Southern California. A game that should be played in the waning sunlight and long shadows of a gorgeous January afternoon in an outdoor stadium ringed by snow covered mountains. That was not going to happen this year, either. At least not in Pasadena. As one of the most heart wrenching Covid compromises, the Rose Bowl was going to be played in Texas, indoors at AT&T Stadium in Arlington, the land of Ted Cruz, one of the politicians I most despise, and a state that is siphoning off many of California’s best companies, as California sinks deeper into the morass of progressive liberalism.

About midday, we all trundled off to Shelby’s for the afternoon. It was beautiful out. Another in a long string of picture postcard New Years’ days. Pam drove. Kim sat in the backseat complaining every time she hit one of the same bumps she hits every time we drove to Shelby’s. I sat in the passenger seat feeling off. With all due respect to Robert Earl Keen, I felt like I had a hole in my soul where the wind was blowing through.

Karen was generously treating us to New Year’s Day lunch, which we picked up from Nate N Als in Beverly Hills. I expected it would be good, and it was, but I was still mired in my funk, as I thought of Jeff’s sofa, Bailey’s shivers and Lauren’s coffee cake, along with everything else I would be missing.

Just when I least expected it, Bryan played the Scrabble card. He is a smart guy. He has been buying various games to play during Covid. Some fun. Some not. He even bought a chess board, hoping Shelby would play with him, but that is another story altogether.

Shelby and Kimberly had never played Scrabble. Bryan had. I played as a kid, and then I amused myself by playing it on my iPad to pass the time for a period of time, but I had not played for over a year. As we finished lunch and Portia went grudgingly off to her crib, Bryan pulled out the Scrabble board and the tiles. After a long discussion about rules and strategy and how to score without a computer, Bryan, Shelby, Kimberly and I began playing.

We played for over an hour, maybe closer to two hours. It provided me with a chance to focus on something I was doing, not on what I was missing. Kimberly, who hates word games, preferring logic and math puzzles instead, surprised us all by coming from behind on the last round and winning. I did not care who won. When the game ended, my funk was gone and my soul was whole.

Suddenly, I was looking forward to the rest of the weekend, as Portia was going to be staying with us for the next two days. On the way back home, with Pam driving and Kimberly and Portia in the backseat, I sat in the passenger seat and wondered if we had started any new New Years traditions.

Home Bound

December 20, 2020 / hkraushaar

We went to Shelby’s yesterday, the one place we go to other than the market on a regular basis in 2020. The highlight of the visit was watching Portia decorate the Christmas cookies she and Nana (Karen, Bryan’s mom, who is here from Kentucky) made earlier in the day. Portia did the decorating with the help of Nana, Glam (Pam, who wants to be called Grammy, but Portia can only say Glam), Mimi (Kimberly, who Portia calls Mimi), and, of course, Shelby (Portia’s mom). We will see them again on Christmas Eve and Christmas day, having celebrated Hanukah with them the week earlier.

When we go to Shelby’s we feel somewhat normal, going somewhere and not thinking about COVID, something that has happened all too infrequently this year. Clearly, we miss leading our normal life, seeing friends, going to restaurants, listening to live music, going to the movies, or just relaxing, but not as much as I would have expected.

We have been living the life of COVID for nine months. Long enough for memories of our past activities to dissolve into the recesses of our fading, geriatric minds. Long enough to gestate a human. More than long enough for me to adapt to it.

As I sit here writing this, I am riding a wave of La Nina spawned, drought enhancing sunshine in Los Angeles. I long for clouds and rain. Partly, because we need it, but also for any reason other than COVID not to venture outside. That is not going to happen anytime soon.

As 2020 draws to its inexorable close, I have been reflecting on it. I am essentially home, not homeward, bound, and I am embracing it all too readily. Apparently, I am letting my inner hermit flag fly, the part of me that eschews the rest of the world. Sometimes I wonder if my virus induced exile from the outside world will remain my normal state post COVID, as I actually enjoy my hermit lifestyle. Well most of it, anyway.

I freely admit that I am extremely lucky. Part of what has enabled me to adapt so readily to my new reality is that I have a great family.

Pam is smart enough, or tolerant enough, of my quirks to just ignore them. COVID has practically eliminated my Porsche related activities, and, hence, comments and stories, which has made that easier on her. Though to some extent they have been replaced by my incessant comments about my Tonal, the newest toy in my life.

Kim, who is stuck here until COVID ends, generally ignores my quirks until she feels she has to rip the crap out of me for being weird, her way of dealing with my irritating habits and reminding me she loves me. I am lucky she still readily accepts my advice when she needs it, playing the plaintive Ddddadddddddyyyy card when necessary, and gladly consuming my meals when I cook them for her.

I see Shelby, Portia and Bryan weekly, though Pam sees them more often than that. Getting the chance to spend time with Portia, watching her grow and learn and begin to embrace her terrible twos, has been the highlight of the year for me. I like it when she says, “Glump, do this.” Or, “Glump, do that.” My chosen monicker is Grumpy, but she calls me Glump. I admit it is fun being bossed around by a 20 month old.

I am able to work from home. My 20 year old threadbare, dust impregnated, bargain basement desk chair has become my COVID equivalent of a La-Z-Boy recliner, albeit less comfortably. My 27 inch 4K computer monitor is my fixed window to the world, though my TVs, iPhone and iPad also fill that role to some extent. Shockingly, that seems to be sufficient, as I sit in front of my computer, even when I have no work to do. Somehow it feels comforting and natural to just sit in my chair, despite my glutes falling asleep while doing so.

When COVID started I bemoaned the lack of new TV programming. As I have written about before, I have always been a die-hard consumer of Network TV pablum. I used to enjoy watching without being engaged or stressed or educated. NCIS has been my go to show for years, though SWAT had been giving it a run for its money late last year. Since COVID, I have spent hours watching programming with Pam on services I rarely had used before. Shows that I never would have seen without COVID. A lot of it was garbage. Right down there with the Real Housewives and the Bachelor, but some of it was good, really good actually, a fact that should scare the hell out of Network TV, as I actually had no idea there were new episodes of NCIS and SWAT until four weeks after their seasons started.

The other area that has helped me adapt to our new normal has been my ability to continue to exercise. I have been running outside for the past nine months, something I have not done in decades, and I truly love it. Additionally, I invested in a Tonal to enable me to lift weights in the comfort of my house. It was a life changing purchase, as I love the machine and have found a whole new community of supportive, non-political posters on Facebook. Another unintended, but thoroughly appreciated, by-product of the Tonal was that it has given me a chance to rekindle my somewhat stagnant, long-distance relationship with my sister, Arlene, who also bought one. We have been chatting like teenagers on a weekly basis about this coach’s program or the degree of difficulty of that exercise.

In the decades I worked out prior to COVID, I never spent much time in exercise classes, preferring to do my own thing on my own terms and avoiding all the class based drama at Equinox. I have to admit that I find it a tad disconcerting that I am becoming a groupie of several Tonal coaches, going as far as referring to them as my senseis.

I do not physically interact with anyone else other than my brief dialogs with my cronies who work at the market and bagel store and the occasional person delivering the new items we have purchased or those that come here to provide a quote for some home improvement we want to make. I think I actually amazed Kim and Shelby recently when I spoke about the conversation about parsnips I had with Ron, the produce guy I know at Pavilions.

So 2020 is winding down, and here I sit. At my desk. Something I do daily. My glutes falling asleep in my threadbare, dust impregnated, bargain basement chair, as I stare at my window to the world. Today was not much different from yesterday or the day before. This week was not much different from the week before. This month was not much different from the month before. It is just the same broken record. Month in month out.

My inner hermit loves being embraced. It loves that I have adapted to being homebound and that I am living the COVID life. Of course, it also fearfully wonders how long it will take me to banish it sometime next year. I wish I knew.

Happy Holidays

It’s an Ollo-nly World

October 31, 2020 / hkraushaar

In my ongoing quest to prove to myself that I am not an agorophiac, I ventured out again for a drive in my 89 Targa this morning. I headed up PCH towards Malibu, as I like to drive by the ocean. Along the way, I randomly started thinking about daylight savings time, as tonight we fall back to regular time.

This was a really bad idea. Thinking about it, I realized for the first time that daylight savings time is a misnomer. We do not save daylight when we move our clocks forward. We actually spend more time in daylight, which left me wondering why it was not called daylight spending time. I pondered this as I drove, eventually forsaking this line of thought as it was somewhat fruitless, and I was getting hungry.

Still heading north, I decided to stop at the McDonald’s just south of the Malibu pier to get some takeout. Shockingly, I really like the coffee at McDonald’s, which given my disdain for the coffee at most restaurants is kind of odd. I am also somewhat uncomfortable going into fast food places during Covid, but I do like the coffee, so I pulled into the parking lot.

As I did, I noticed a person who has been experiencing homelessness for a long time leaning against the outside wall right next to the door. As I was parking and debating whether I could weather the germ storm I would encounter while walking by him, I noticed another person experiencing a similar amount of homelessness going in the door to McDonald’s. I am embarrassed to say that despite my feelings of pity for both of them, there was no way I was going to go into McDonald’s, despite of the quality of the coffee inside, leaving me with the issue of where to get some food.

Continuing north, I decided to pull into the parking lot of Ollo, a restaurant just south of Pepperdine. I have not been to Ollo since Covid began. I used to eat there about four times per year with my Porsche Club cronies. We would hang out in the parking lot, ogling all the other cars and then go in to eat. As there were usually about 40 of us, we took up most of the restaurant and made quite a bit of noise.

I pulled into the lot, noting with a pang of sadness the lack of familiar cars and faces. I did relish the ease of finding a parking space, though. As I sat in my car, I threw my agorophobiac tendencies to the ocean breeze and decided to actually eat at Ollo, not just get takeout. To put this in perspective, I have not actually eaten at a restaurant in over seven months.

With no small amount of trepidation, I walked in and asked for a table for one. It was empty inside, which was no surprise, and the patio, where I was going to be sitting, was not too crowded.

So I stayed and ate, a little bit lonely and all the while noting the stillness of the place and pondering why we call it daylight savings time.

Lufting Back

October 10, 2020 / hkraushaar

I really did not like this picture when I took it in May, 2019, mainly because it was too busy, too chaotic, with no central focus. I took it at Luftgekühlt 6, the premier air-cooled Porsche show in the world, which was held on the backlot of Universal Studios.

I like looking at it much more now because it speaks volumes about what we have given up. It is an uplifting view of the past, of a carefree time that I hope we see again soon.

My friend, Mark, and I took my Guards Red 89 Carrera to the event, It looked great, as it was freshly coiffed for a very public appearance.

We arrived early in the morning, along with all the other air-cooled Porsches that were going to park on the backlot.

Mark is connected with a Capital C so we were able to go to the Petersen pre-event festivities, hang out with Patrick Long, the creator of the event and world-class Porsche race car driver and unbelievably nice guy, and eat backstage with the Luft crew.

All in all it was a fantastic day. Mark and I had a great time. The backlot will never look that good again, as there were air-cooled Porsches in every nook and cranny and entire backlot streets were jammed with parked Porsches.

As we were getting ready to leave, I took one last picture of my Carrera. I thought it was a unique opportunity to capture the essence of the day, without other parked Porsches or people milling around to muck up my shot, and I doubted I would ever get a similar chance. When I looked at it when I got home, I was disappointed with it. It just did not work, and I felt it was sort of meh.

The picture just did not convey how I felt about that day. The lighting is off. My car looks dull, as its gleam is gone because it had rained a bit. After seeing so many cars and so many people crowding in a small space, my car looks lonely, sitting by itself in front of a drab New York-esque building on the backlot.

Now that we are seven months into Covid-19, my perception of the picture has changed. Now I like it for what it conveys about life for the past seven months. The loneliness of it. The isolation of it. The drabness of it.

Meh sort of works for me now.

Flat Six Musings

October 3, 2020 / hkraushaar

As the percentage of Covid infected among us continues to drop, I have started to re-engage the outside world. A couple of weeks ago, I was worried that I was beginning to become an agoraphiac, as I had not driven my babies in quite some time. I wrote about it and received a nice rasher of shit from my Flat Six (AKA Porsche) cronies, telling me in no uncertain terms to get out and drive. And so I did.

Last weekend I met my friend Mark at the gas station, and then we went for a drive. It was pleasant. Nothing serious. Nothing twisty. Nothing fast. Just a nice drive up the coast. I was in my Cayman, and he was in his 911. Both of us were on our phones with each other, as being the yentas we are, we kibitzed as we drove. We did about 90 miles up and down the coast with a nice stop north of Malibu at Trancas for some coffee and muffins. It was great. It was just what the doctor, if not Eric Garcetti and Barbara Ferrer, ordered. It left me feeling less agoraphobic.

This weekend I decided to do it again. Only this time I went alone, and I drove my 89 Carrera, mainly because I wanted a more visceral experience. We are suffering through a fall Santa Ana wind condition, with daytime temperatures in the 90s and 100s. No matter, as I headed out early Saturday morning with the Targa top off and the hot, Santa Ana winds whipping through the cabin.

I was still not in the mood for a serious drive, so I did most of the same one Mark and I did last weekend, only this time I was not on the phone. Instead, I was focused on the drive, remembering what driver engagement is all about when driving a fully analog car without nannies like traction control, without power assisted anything, and without the dual-clutch automatic transmission that lurks in my Cayman. In short, my focus was on the tachometer, as I shifted my way up and down thru the gears, listening to the sound of the air-cooled flat six as it competed with the wind for my attention. There was not much else on my mind. At least initially.

At some point, driving became automatic. The wind and the engine sound became consistent background noise that soothed me but enabled me to start focusing on other things. Like the conversation I had had with my friend Nick earlier in the week.

Nick is a really smart guy. He is a young entrepreneur driven to be a success. He is also one of the most knowledgeable people I know with respect to world and economic events. We see eye to eye on almost every issue we face as Americans.

Given that we agree on so much, why do we continue to discuss the issues? The answer is simple: We are voting for different presidential candidates. So we discuss the issues to try to find the nuances that lead each of us to our distinctly different choice.

After much thought, I realized that it is not only the individual issues that drive our decisions. Instead, it is our prioritization of each of the issues and the implication of the solution to each issue that leads us to different conclusions, because ultimately it is what each of us fears the most that matters more than what we agree upon. That is why we keep discussing the issues.

The drive back was a blur, as I ruminated about Nick and life in America in 2020. Soon I was nearing the end of the drive on the coast, approaching the McClure Tunnel and the start of Interstate 10 eastbound.

It was time to shift my focus back to driving, but before I did, I though about Nick and our relationship. Nick and I respect each other. We value each other’s opinion and thoughts. We see value in our friendship despite differing political views. We will still have a relationship after all the votes are counted, whichever month that is.

I hope the same can be said for the majority of Americans.

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