Chuckay - Part 4: Dinner at Morton's
Chuckay – Part 4: Dinner at Morton’s
Doug and I celebrated my birthday with the traditional at Morton’s The Steakhouse. We have been going to Morton’s for sixteen years now. It was another perfect Chuckay dinner; I always knew that it would be a perfect meal.
Morton’s is becoming more customer oriented and focused on providing a better overall experience. I guess this is a product of the recession that we are having in the United States. Fine dining is expensive and I could tell that guest count was down from a year ago.
Morton’s created a special menu for the event for me. Actually, they just printed “Happy Birthday Charles” across the top of the regular menu. Still, it was a nice touch. Morton’s had one of the hostesses come by our table and take a group photo of use and then the senior staff signed a Happy Birthday greeting for me.
Sweet; but not as sweet as Morton’s Chocolate Cake.
Doug invited his friend Megan to join us and I invited my friend, the International Lady of Mystery or ILoM for short. My friend highly values her privacy so I agreed to her request for anonymity.
Easy enough for me to do.
We all had a wonderful evening. We spent about two and half hours enjoying our meals. The ILoM and I had rib eye steaks. We shared some spinach and mushrooms and that went very well with the steaks.
Doug, breaking with tradition, had a whole lobster. His friend Megan wisely chose a small steak.
I also broke with tradition and shared my dessert with the ILoM. I do that sometimes when the occasion warrants such action.
This was the first time that the ILoM and Megan have been to Morton’s. I do hope they will join us again.
Doug and I had our usual photo taken. The ILoM thought we looked better when we smiled. Doug said that we had to preserve tradition and be serious. Sometimes, you have to bow to tradition because it just makes sense.
Teaching
It looks like I will be teaching only four classes in the coming term. After thinking about my schedule, I have to say it is a good one. I have a morning class on Tuesday, State and Local Government, a morning and evening class, Microeconomics and State and Local Government, on Wednesday and a morning class, Market Research, on Thursday.
This means that I can have a four day weekend anytime that I want or need one.
Perfectomundo.
I will not have to prepare any lecture notes since I have taught all of the classes before. I think I will have to prepare a new lesson plan set for one class; easy enough task for me to complete.
The potential fifth class in the new Paralegal Studies program is still up in the air. I am not certain if they have enough students enrolled in the program to be able to offer the paralegal courses. Any new students who signed up for the program would take the general education courses until they reach the required threshold.
On the plus side, I should have more time to write and post in the blog; whether that actually happens remains to be seen.
I spoke to one of the department chairs today after a staff meeting at school. He said that I was very popular with his students and that they have come to him to specifically request that I teach certain classes for them.
Really neato for me.
I didn’t get the new Paralegal Studies course; it went to a practicing attorney so I don’t feel too badly now. I am highly confident that I will have more opportunities with the program in the coming quarters.
Armed Forces Day
May 16th was Armed Forces’ Day in the United States. I’m not exactly certain why we have this holiday although I should know since I am a veteran.
Armed Forces Day stems from the creation of a unified Department of Defense in 1949. It replaced the individual forces celebrations of their founding in order to more represent the new military force establishment. All of the services have dropped their individual celebrations except the United States Marine Corps. The Marines still celebrate their founding on November 10th.
Semper fi Marines.
Anyway and more to the point, the neighboring city Torrance has one of the largest Armed Forces Day parades in California. I marched in it one year when I was in the Marine Corps Reserve.
Naturally, traffic is a mess. I knew about the parade so I was able to plan my travels around it.
One of the big features of the parade, after the Marines of course, is a flyover by the Navy, Marines, or Air Force. This year was a combined flyover. The parade featured Navy or Marine F/A 18 Super Hornets and an Air Force B-2 bomber. I suppose the Army felt a little embarrassed by the flyover since they only fly helicopters and a helicopter is just not as impressive as a flight of four jet fighters in close formation flying low and fast over the parade route.
The military jets are very noisy and last year I was trying to sleep after I had a round of chemotherapy infusion on the day before. Sleeping was out of the question then as well as yesterday.
I like to think of the sound of the Navy and Marine jets as the sound of freedom.
That works well for me.
Visitors
We had a level week in terms of visitors to the blog. 565 visitors managed to find the blog but they visited far fewer pages at only 784. The country of origin split remains fairly constant at about 35% coming from the United States and the rest coming from everywhere else.
I think that number would shift a bit more if those from Texas were counted as coming from another country. Texans have a state of mind where they often think of themselves as being from another country.
I do appreciate all of you who took time to visit the blog in this past week.
Paulina Garces
My collection of Paulina Garces photos is now at thirty. Great for me. I will run out the remaining and newly downloaded photos and then recycle the presentation so I can make certain that I did not unintentionally exclude any images.
Here are two of the new images.
My Old Fountain Pen
I went to Staples over the weekend to pick up some new folders for my classes next term. While I was there, I checked to see if they had any replacement pen points for my pen. Unfortunately, Staples did not have any replacements for any brand of pen. I could have, of course, purchased a new fountain pen but that would have defeated the whole purpose of getting a replacement.
I think my old pen cost me less than a dollar and, yes, I know that, with inflation, a straight replacement, if one was made any more, would cost much more than a dollar. The whole point of replacing only damaged part is not to spend a lot of money on a new fountain pen that I will only use to sign my name.
I won’t live long enough to wear out a pen that I will only use to sign my name. I used the old pen for note taking and test writing through my undergraduate degree and four graduate degrees. I do not believe that I will become a student at any time in the foreseeable future.
4.7 or 5.0 Richter Scale earthquake
I was shaken and not stirred by an earthquake that happened to pop my area at 8:39 PM and some seconds on Sunday. Fortunately, I am fine and so is the flat. I will have to spend some time tomorrow rearranging some water colors that I have framed. They were all aligned so nicely and now they are all askew. Nothing seems to have fallen from a shelf and that is nice.
The building was hit with a sudden jolt that was followed by a rolling motion. This rolling motion did not last very long. I think the earthquake lasted about 10 or 15 seconds.
The quake was centered about ten miles north by north east of my flat on the Newport Inglewood Fault line. This quake was the first major activity on the northern end of the fault line in over 70 years. The fault lines runs close to my flat and I think it is no more than a few miles away.
But, then, almost all of Southern California is near a fault line.
As is usual in events like this, the local television news readers were in over their heads. One local station kept a closed loop of the seismograph tracing running while the news readers read the latest bulletins. They also exercised less than brilliant judgment in taking telephone calls; this same station took two phones while I was viewing that came from fifty miles away.
Here’s a great local news idea; take calls from people who were closest to the epicenter.
Today, we had either an aftershock of Sunday’s quake or a new quake on the same fault line and at the same epicenter almost. The preliminary estimates placed the earthquake’s magnitude at 4.1 on the Richter Scale.
If it was an aftershock, then it was a big surprise to many including me because there was a 3.5 magnitude aftershock on Sunday about twenty minutes after the first earthquake. Usually, aftershock intensities decline with the passage of time and not increase. On the other hand, if it was a new quake, then the northern end of the Newport Inglewood Fault has just become very active after over seventy years or relative quiet.
Life is becoming interesting for me.
That was my weekend and part of this week.
Be well and stay happy.
Doug and I celebrated my birthday with the traditional at Morton’s The Steakhouse. We have been going to Morton’s for sixteen years now. It was another perfect Chuckay dinner; I always knew that it would be a perfect meal.
Morton’s is becoming more customer oriented and focused on providing a better overall experience. I guess this is a product of the recession that we are having in the United States. Fine dining is expensive and I could tell that guest count was down from a year ago.
Morton’s created a special menu for the event for me. Actually, they just printed “Happy Birthday Charles” across the top of the regular menu. Still, it was a nice touch. Morton’s had one of the hostesses come by our table and take a group photo of use and then the senior staff signed a Happy Birthday greeting for me.
Sweet; but not as sweet as Morton’s Chocolate Cake.
Doug invited his friend Megan to join us and I invited my friend, the International Lady of Mystery or ILoM for short. My friend highly values her privacy so I agreed to her request for anonymity.
Easy enough for me to do.
We all had a wonderful evening. We spent about two and half hours enjoying our meals. The ILoM and I had rib eye steaks. We shared some spinach and mushrooms and that went very well with the steaks.
Doug, breaking with tradition, had a whole lobster. His friend Megan wisely chose a small steak.
I also broke with tradition and shared my dessert with the ILoM. I do that sometimes when the occasion warrants such action.
This was the first time that the ILoM and Megan have been to Morton’s. I do hope they will join us again.
Doug and I had our usual photo taken. The ILoM thought we looked better when we smiled. Doug said that we had to preserve tradition and be serious. Sometimes, you have to bow to tradition because it just makes sense.
Teaching
It looks like I will be teaching only four classes in the coming term. After thinking about my schedule, I have to say it is a good one. I have a morning class on Tuesday, State and Local Government, a morning and evening class, Microeconomics and State and Local Government, on Wednesday and a morning class, Market Research, on Thursday.
This means that I can have a four day weekend anytime that I want or need one.
Perfectomundo.
I will not have to prepare any lecture notes since I have taught all of the classes before. I think I will have to prepare a new lesson plan set for one class; easy enough task for me to complete.
The potential fifth class in the new Paralegal Studies program is still up in the air. I am not certain if they have enough students enrolled in the program to be able to offer the paralegal courses. Any new students who signed up for the program would take the general education courses until they reach the required threshold.
On the plus side, I should have more time to write and post in the blog; whether that actually happens remains to be seen.
I spoke to one of the department chairs today after a staff meeting at school. He said that I was very popular with his students and that they have come to him to specifically request that I teach certain classes for them.
Really neato for me.
I didn’t get the new Paralegal Studies course; it went to a practicing attorney so I don’t feel too badly now. I am highly confident that I will have more opportunities with the program in the coming quarters.
Armed Forces Day
May 16th was Armed Forces’ Day in the United States. I’m not exactly certain why we have this holiday although I should know since I am a veteran.
Armed Forces Day stems from the creation of a unified Department of Defense in 1949. It replaced the individual forces celebrations of their founding in order to more represent the new military force establishment. All of the services have dropped their individual celebrations except the United States Marine Corps. The Marines still celebrate their founding on November 10th.
Semper fi Marines.
Anyway and more to the point, the neighboring city Torrance has one of the largest Armed Forces Day parades in California. I marched in it one year when I was in the Marine Corps Reserve.
Naturally, traffic is a mess. I knew about the parade so I was able to plan my travels around it.
One of the big features of the parade, after the Marines of course, is a flyover by the Navy, Marines, or Air Force. This year was a combined flyover. The parade featured Navy or Marine F/A 18 Super Hornets and an Air Force B-2 bomber. I suppose the Army felt a little embarrassed by the flyover since they only fly helicopters and a helicopter is just not as impressive as a flight of four jet fighters in close formation flying low and fast over the parade route.
The military jets are very noisy and last year I was trying to sleep after I had a round of chemotherapy infusion on the day before. Sleeping was out of the question then as well as yesterday.
I like to think of the sound of the Navy and Marine jets as the sound of freedom.
That works well for me.
Visitors
We had a level week in terms of visitors to the blog. 565 visitors managed to find the blog but they visited far fewer pages at only 784. The country of origin split remains fairly constant at about 35% coming from the United States and the rest coming from everywhere else.
I think that number would shift a bit more if those from Texas were counted as coming from another country. Texans have a state of mind where they often think of themselves as being from another country.
I do appreciate all of you who took time to visit the blog in this past week.
Paulina Garces
My collection of Paulina Garces photos is now at thirty. Great for me. I will run out the remaining and newly downloaded photos and then recycle the presentation so I can make certain that I did not unintentionally exclude any images.
Here are two of the new images.
My Old Fountain Pen
I went to Staples over the weekend to pick up some new folders for my classes next term. While I was there, I checked to see if they had any replacement pen points for my pen. Unfortunately, Staples did not have any replacements for any brand of pen. I could have, of course, purchased a new fountain pen but that would have defeated the whole purpose of getting a replacement.
I think my old pen cost me less than a dollar and, yes, I know that, with inflation, a straight replacement, if one was made any more, would cost much more than a dollar. The whole point of replacing only damaged part is not to spend a lot of money on a new fountain pen that I will only use to sign my name.
I won’t live long enough to wear out a pen that I will only use to sign my name. I used the old pen for note taking and test writing through my undergraduate degree and four graduate degrees. I do not believe that I will become a student at any time in the foreseeable future.
4.7 or 5.0 Richter Scale earthquake
I was shaken and not stirred by an earthquake that happened to pop my area at 8:39 PM and some seconds on Sunday. Fortunately, I am fine and so is the flat. I will have to spend some time tomorrow rearranging some water colors that I have framed. They were all aligned so nicely and now they are all askew. Nothing seems to have fallen from a shelf and that is nice.
The building was hit with a sudden jolt that was followed by a rolling motion. This rolling motion did not last very long. I think the earthquake lasted about 10 or 15 seconds.
The quake was centered about ten miles north by north east of my flat on the Newport Inglewood Fault line. This quake was the first major activity on the northern end of the fault line in over 70 years. The fault lines runs close to my flat and I think it is no more than a few miles away.
But, then, almost all of Southern California is near a fault line.
As is usual in events like this, the local television news readers were in over their heads. One local station kept a closed loop of the seismograph tracing running while the news readers read the latest bulletins. They also exercised less than brilliant judgment in taking telephone calls; this same station took two phones while I was viewing that came from fifty miles away.
Here’s a great local news idea; take calls from people who were closest to the epicenter.
Today, we had either an aftershock of Sunday’s quake or a new quake on the same fault line and at the same epicenter almost. The preliminary estimates placed the earthquake’s magnitude at 4.1 on the Richter Scale.
If it was an aftershock, then it was a big surprise to many including me because there was a 3.5 magnitude aftershock on Sunday about twenty minutes after the first earthquake. Usually, aftershock intensities decline with the passage of time and not increase. On the other hand, if it was a new quake, then the northern end of the Newport Inglewood Fault has just become very active after over seventy years or relative quiet.
Life is becoming interesting for me.
That was my weekend and part of this week.
Be well and stay happy.
posted by Chuck Reinhardt at 5:13 PM
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