Michael Rawdon's webjournal
The other big development other than all the cat news from my last entry is that the time arrived this spring for me to take over my Dad s finances, much as I did for my Mom 14 years ago. So I spent a week and a half in the Boston area at the Continue reading "Hotel Life"
Well, it s been a while since I ve written much here, hasn t it? But it s been a busy year, so I ll try to write a bit about what s been going on. Let s start with the cats. Last November we noticed Edison was licking his nether regions and looking pretty uncomfortable. A trip to the vet later Continue reading "Cat Digest"
My sister Katy and her son Ivan came out to visit for the last half a week. They are big fans of the Philadelphia Flyers hockey team, and their main goal was to see them play the San Jose Sharks here on Saturday. Katy says she s only flown once since COVID, and Ivan not at Continue reading "Barbie Day at the Shark Tank"
Last weekend we went to see the new Superman film, and, well, it s the Superman I ve been waiting my whole life to see. I thought every Superman film before this was disappointing in some way, with Superman II being the best of the bunch. I remember seeing Superman: The Movie in the theater and being Continue reading "Superman"
I haven t played Magic the Gathering since last year, and I haven t played my favorite form of Magic, booster draft, since December 2023, during Lost Caverns of Ixalan. This month, I m admitting that I have left the game behind. I got back into Magic in 2006 through an Ice Age draft my friend Subrata put Continue reading "Goodbye, Magic the Gathering"
Debbi and I are back from a trip to Florida for her father s interment and memorial. Her father Jerry was diagnosed with cancer back in 2013. She went back to help out him and her stepmother back then, which I vaguely mentioned at the time. Then in late 2015 we went out to visit them, Continue reading "Memorial in Florida"
A day late posting this. I had a pretty quiet day yesterday. Decided not to take the day off from work and save the vacation day for the future. I got to go to coffee with a long-time colleague whom I haven t seen much in recent years, so that was nice. Catching up on the Continue reading "Fifty-Six"
When I first moved here in 1999, one of the restaurants everyone loved was Frankie Johnny and Luigi Too! They were a traditional Italian restaurant which at the time had a few different locations, but their oldest and primary location was in a cute old building in Mountain View. They had three dining rooms plus Continue reading "RIP FJL"
I haven t been writing much here lately. So much so that I wonder what percentage of my posts lead off with some version of I haven t been writing much here lately . So my 2024, such as it was, has largely been chronicled on social media, mainly Mastodon and Bluesky. We did a little more traveling Continue reading "2024 was Certainly a Year"
Being Generation X, I ve owned music and video on a lot of media formats, and owned a lot of playback equipment. Sometimes I think of writing a post about my opinions on various media formats (spoiler: I loathe vinyl records and always have), but today I m talking about the first Sony Walkman I ever owned. Continue reading "My Walkman"
We re back from a short trip down to Newport Beach a little south of Los Angeles to visit with some friends of Debbi s who were visiting from the east coast. Andrew is a college friend of Debbi s, and he and his wife Mary had gotten a time share by the coast for spring Continue reading "Newport Beach"
Woo, a month and a half since my last post here! I ve been slacking! It s been pretty quiet here, really. As you may have heard, this has been the warmest winter on record in the United States, and we ve noticed this here in NorCal. Since Halloween the lowest overnight low in San Jose, CA was Continue reading "The Warmest Winter"
A little over a year ago I reviewed the first arc of Steven Brust s Vlad Taltos series. A year later, here I am to review the second arc. I don t know that Brust thinks of this series in arcs like this, much less these specific sets of books as the arcs, but the last book Continue reading "Steven Brust: Vlad the Wanderer"
A double-digit birthday , as a friend of mine called it in his birthday wishes today. Also I guess once upon a time a number often associated with retirement, or at least with being old, as it seemed like AARP memberships once really started being pushed at age 55. (I ve been received mail from them for Continue reading "Fifty-Five"
Marvel Snap is on online collectible card game which was publicly released in late 2022. I signed up for it maybe even a little before that when it was still in beta, I don t remember and played it for a month or two in the fall of 2022 because I was looking for Continue reading "Marvel Snap"
I have an on-again, off-again relationship with The New Yorker, and two years after I resubscribed to it, I m letting it lapse again. My last issue is the January 1 8 one, with this cover by Bianca Bagnarelli: As always, it gets harder to keep up with a weekly periodical over time, especially one Continue reading "Goodbye New Yorker, Again"
This year feels like it s been a big maintenance year, which isn t a bad thing, and I feel like we got a lot of stuff done in that space this year. A maintenance year doesn t sound very exciting, but the biggest piece of maintenance was in fact quite exciting: Finishing the almost-2-year-long renovation of our Continue reading "Maintenance Year"
Hobee s is a NorCal breakfast institution. There are other good breakfast places around, but Hobee s has the double threat of also having good lunches, and that s before you get into their yummy coffee cake. Hobee s was founded in Mountain View in 1974 in a former Dairy Belle burger joint. And it turns out the first Continue reading "Farewell, Hobee s Mountain View"
I don t think I can provide a more succinct review of The Marvels than what I posted on Mastodon after we came out of the theater yesterday: #TheMarvels was 1000% better than I’d expected. If you enjoy Marvel movies, you should go see it. And if, like me, you were a big fan of #CaptainMarvel Continue reading "The Marvels"
Aaron s Mahnke s Grim Mild is either a true cottage industry or one of the biggest names in independent podcasting, depending on who you ask maybe they re both! I listen to a bunch of their shows, and have tried a few others; they re not all for me, but some of them one. One of Continue reading "13 Days of Halloween"