Day - 1000

Wednesday, March 31, 2021

Another 1/4th of these journal entries and I'm done! That's just crazy. Had a fun second book club today on Mediocre, The Dangerous Legacy of White Male America, by Ijeoma Oluo. The introduction and conclusion were my favorite parts of the book. The first chapter on Buffalo Bill wasn't as interesting to me as the final chapter on the first owner of the Washington Redskins and some of the stories about the NFL. I found this book overshadowed by Isabel Wilkerson's Caste. Still, I enjoyed reading it an appreciated the insights made, based on so many generations of slavery, caste, inequality and the white male hierarchy. Richard, Lisa, Margaret and I had dinner at the Youngs' back yard and talked about the book before moving on to other topics, like the Madonna Inn and the June weekend we'll spend there! Exciting!



Day - 1001

Tuesday, March 30, 2021

We had our book club on Caste from 4-5 at work.  About 20+ folks were in attendance. Jerri ran the book club and did an excellent job. The reactions were similar to mine, that this was an important, powerful, amazing look at our caste system in America. The book really calls out who were are and what our history has always been about. One of the telling take-aways of Caste is how Isabel Wilkerson breaks down American history using a couple of key numbers. If each generation equals 20 years of history, we have 20 generations of American history (equal to 400 years). From that, we have three eras, 12, 5, and 3: 12 generations in which slavery was the law of the land, 5 generations in which Jim Crow was the law of the land (with 12 years, or a 1/2 generation of Reconstruction), and the final 3 generations represents the Civil Rights Laws from the 1960s to the present. 17 generations of slavery and Jim Crow, versus 3 generations of Civil Rights Laws. That really puts things in perspective for me. Ron Johnson, Ron DeSantis, Brian Kemp, Mitch McConnell, Lindsay Graham, and all the other enablers and white power sympathizers actually do represent who America has been. Who we are now is another story, and we'll see who wins out in the coming months and years. I do like how the illusion of America verses the realities of America are becoming more and more mainstream. That's a good thing.

Before our book club, I listened to an interview with Isabel Wilkerson and Michael Eric Dyson. So good!



Day - 1002

 Monday, March 29, 2021

I picked up a deep-thinking poker strategy book at the library called Play Optimal Poker.


I read the first chapter on equilibrium and I can tell this book will take me a few reads to fully understand and absorb. But it's so good and the techniques outlined are current to today's play. Looking forward to learning about game theory.


Day - 1003

Sunday, March 28, 2021

We were hoping to cross the Golden Gate bridge on our bikes and ride down to Sausolito, but it was so foggy and miserably cold that we decided instead to stay home. 

That means eating, which we did. I made hummus (oh yeah, I'll make this more often!).


We did go to the Korean market to buy a Korean BBQ grill.  Works perfectly!

I spent the rest of the evening reading Isabel Wilkerson in preparation for our firm book club on Tuesday.

Day - 1004

Saturday, March 27, 2021

The day began with my Saturday morning breakfast of champions! McMuffin from the machine mom got me for Christmas, and a latte from the machine Alice got several months ago.  Mmmm, Mmmm, good! 


We took a road trip to San Mateo to buy fish at a Japanese market, then had lunch at a park in San Mateo that also has a Japanese Garden.  The Garden is beautiful. Spring has returned!






At home, we hung out in the back yard. Alice's orchids that have been dormant in a pot for more than 25 years are back in bloom.  These flowers are amazing to me!


In the afternoon, we went for a bicycle ride along the Great Ocean Highway. This makes me happy!



Day - 1005

Friday, March 26, 2021


Listened to this Blink this morning. So on the mark. Creating and sustaining slight edges in life are so meaningful. I'm applying these ideas in the poker world and preparing for the day when the Oaks opens up again. I enjoy studying this game and look forward to seeing how some of my strategies play out on the felt. This will be easier to achieve now that I have a proper bank roll. Looking forward to the new poker book waiting for me at the library (Play Optimal Poker).

Day - 1006

Thursday, March 25, 2021

Beginning April 1, we're eligible for the vaccine. Good news! I see a summer of grand possibilities! We're already planning a weekend getaway for Miles's graduation in San Luis Obisbo. The Young family, Rossana, Alice and I are staying at the Madonna Inn June 19 and 20. The hotel has unique rooms with pink throughout, the ultimate in California kitch. We're staying in the Austrian Suite on the 3rd floor. 




Day - 1007

 Wednesday, March 24, 2021

Remembering all the complexities of hold 'em poker and why I enjoy this game so much. Lots of layers and now there are so many resources to study hands and get better. It's a wonderful game to practice emotional control and dealing with bad beats. 



Day - 1008

 Tuesday, March 23, 2021

Chapter 11 of Caste is so current and now. The Capital riots are a reflection of it. The times we're in are surreal and a bit frightening. The madness of the Republican party and their voter suppression efforts boggle my mind. I don't get why that crazy party isn't wholeheartedly reputiated for their Jim Crow tendencies. I'd like to think they'll suffer at the polls in 2022, but you never know. The new voter suppression laws they're enacting in Georgia are pathetic. The governor in that state is a joke.



 

Day - 1009

Monday, March 22, 2021

The rise of Asian violence is another excavated feature of Trump racist rhetoric. A year's worth of China Virus dogma will have a certain effect in a country like the US. Our melting pot continues to boil over.



Day - 1010

Sunday, March 21, 2021 

An afternoon of bridge with Kevin. So much fun. It's like going to the gym for my brain. In order to be a decent bridge player, I'd need to devote so much time to the game. Poker will in all likelihood take over because the rewards for playing good poker are so much more than the reward for playing good bridge. But bridge, in many ways, is the better game. One of the best games ever.



Day - 1011

 Saturday, March 20, 2021

We went out to dinner with Alice's bookkeeping client Michael at Cultivar on Chestnut Street. We sat at a patio table in the corner.  Chestnut Street was full of people, all socializing, having fun, driving, and many not wearing masks. The city is opening up again, but is it opening up too quickly? I'm glad we were in a corner outside. I won't feel truly safe in public until we get our vaccines. Weeks away, I'm guessing.



Day - 1012

Friday, March 19, 2021

Poker has such a rich, interesting vocabulary. It's a world all its own, and yet a wonderful metaphor to life itself. Variance, suck-outs, donks, big slick, hi-jack, under the gun, over pair, trips, set, backdoor flush, GTO, optimal play, turn, river, squeeze play, under pair, opened-ended draw, gut shot, so many funny sounding phrases that mean specific things in the poker world. Might be time to combine these two interests into something a little different from what's currently out there. The myth of poker is a master player who can read people and see through the cards being played, when in reality so much of a great poker player's decision making is based on math and game theory. The game has evolved and changed dramatically in the past few years. It's fun to get back into it and see what I can do with a nice bank roll. I never really had much of a bank roll ten years ago. I do now, so it will be interesting to see how much my bank roll can grow. If I study properly, I should crush the lower limit tables and work my way up to the larger games. I have two things on my side: patience and discipline. Three things: I don't drink.




Day - 1014

Wednesday, March 17, 2021

Back at the gym for the second time, though I started at 7:15 instead of 6 a.m. because of our morning meeting on Zoom. My muscles are slowing waking up from their year-long dormant state. My left foot feels weak. I'm feeling my torn plantar fasciitis. 


I plan to workout for two weeks, then fire up the Insanity videos and work off a few pounds of the Covid-19 I've been carrying all year. Racquetball will get me back to where I need to go.

Day - 1013

Thursday, March 18, 2021

Very busy week so far and it's just getting busier. No time to read or think. 

In preparation for our Caste book club on March 30, I need to pick up steam in reading The Warmth of Other Suns. This is the narrative that shows how Caste has played out in America. It's rich, detailed, brilliant, but I'm only 50 pages into it. 500 pages to go.



Day - 1015

Tuesday, March 16, 2021

First day back at the gym since November. So nice! I hit the racquetball in court 3 for an hour, then did some stretching. Just warmup this week. Nothing fancy. It feels good to be here. It's like church. All I need now is the guys to compete with.

Spending less and less time with political videos that expose how easily manipulated Americans can be.



Day - 1016

Monday, March 15, 2021

Busy at work but managed to catch this clip with Jeremy Grantham.  He's right, but when will it happen?  



Day - 1017

Sunday, March 14, 2021

A gray, cold, rainy day in SF. Lots of reading, relaxing, thinking about poker strategies in preparation for the opening of the Oaks, whenever that happens. Poker has evolved to a GTO (game theory optimal) strategy in which you're not playing hands but a range of hands and become unexploitable to your opponents. It gets quite complicated and involves a lot of memorization, which is good for me because my memory is often sketchy. 



Day - 1018

Saturday, March 13, 2021

A cold, rainy day. We stayed inside most of the day and made cowboy cookies and chicken tikki masala for Jay and Cecilia. They were happy!

Read and practiced poker until late in the evening.

What to do about the epic market bubble? Continue to feed the beast, or hedge the impending market implosion, next week, next year, or never?



Day - 1019

 Friday, March 12, 2021

A busy Friday. Played poker tonight with Tom and his buddies. I lost both games but had fun. I was the chip leader with 5 players left, but ran into the nut straight and lost 60%. Then faced quad Tens against my pocket Queens head up. Done.

Jonathan Little's poker videos are good.



Day - 1020

Thursday, March 11, 2021

Studying poker and bridge, reading through the books I'm reading through, and logging in another day of chores, work, laundry. Family Zoom tonight, which was fun.

This is so sweet!



Day - 1021

Wednesday, March 10, 2021

We had an interesting conversation about reparations this morning, focused primarily on the Oakland Public School system and how black schools have been targeted and closed over the course of the last several decades to a higher degree than white-populated schools. Lee shared a PowerPoint presentation from the event he attended. None of this is a surprise to me. More and more, reparations are becoming a serious topic of conversation. Part of that conversation includes the reasons why reparations are a topic in the first place. The more white culture learns about and acknowledges the reasons behind a position for reparations, the more reparations become a reflection of the change that is happening in the country. Once you know America's history, it's easy to get on board with the idea of leveling the playing field and  establishing policies that reflect our intended goals and belief system. It's a process that may or may not happen in my lifetime. But learning and educating ourselves about the reasons why reparations are on the table is already happening.


 

Day - 1022

 Tuesday, March 9, 2021

The drama continues on Good Morning Britain:

Piers doesn't get it. And may never. 

Then, this happened:


Goodbye and good riddance.




Day - 1023

Monday, March 8, 2021

Reactions from last night's bombshell interview on Good Morning Britain:

Piers Morgan is apparently a Royalist gatekeeper. Here, he asserts all the negative attributes of a white male insufferable engaged in an emotional tissy fit. He's dismissive, derogatory, hyperbolic, basically emotionally unhinged because he's so angry. What a privilege to be so unraveled on the national tele and feel it's perfectly fine to behave in such a manner. This is white male entitlement in action. His co-host would certainly not be able to get away with this, but Piers is allowed to because he's Piers. He falls into a trap of his own making and becomes the latest white male poster boy for how not to engage in the topic of race. Talk about tone deaf. And his quip about the lecture on journalism...only a truly petty thin-skinned guy would say something like that. But  wait, there's more!


Piers gets the worst of it here by a ways. He is owned by presenter Trisha Goddard, but that doesn't stop him from interrupting her, putting words in other people's mouths, getting super defensive, and basically acting like the kind of white male bully we all cringe over these days.

I love this guest for calling Piers out. Choice stuff. She's so right...Piers is such a disappointment here.

Day - 1024

Sunday, March 7, 2021

No biking today. Too cold. Instead, we hung out at home. I read, wrote, hung out in the back yard, which wasn't so cold. We both stretched on our grass, which absorbs the rays of the sun and acts like a heating pad when it's cold.


Ramon for lunch with the rest of the duck we cooked last night. So good!


Of course, we watched Oprah's epic interview tonight with Prince Harry and Meghan. I really didn't know much of the story of these two beyond the fairytale wedding and subsequent falling out, all in only a couple years. I didn't know any of the particulars and less of the personalities. So we watched. Oh, lots of moments came up. I don't know these two at all, and only wish the best for them; however, patterns emerged. Old stories reappeared with a new twist. Diana seemed front and center at the heart of where was (and perhaps still is), the outsider who did not get the support she needed, only this time the husband is fully present, fully devoted, fully beside his bride, unlike Diana's spouse, his father, who was always part of the problem. Family dynamics never disappoint. Meghan reminds me of Gwen when Gwen was in her 30s, and both of them together remind me a little bit of the early years of the Gwen and Greg Show. Reactionary, strong, calm when surrounded by drama and conflict ready to shoot shots across the bow when warranted, Meghan seemed a natural at all of that with Oprah. A natural. I found her story compelling, believable, sad, authentic. But I was struck by her admission that she did zero homework whatsoever in what she was getting herself into when becoming part of this most creepy, iconic, institutionalized representation of white supremacy and unlimited entitlement. No prep whatsoever, and in fact even stated her no-prep strategy saved her. Interesting. Institutions have rules, and the older the institution, the less flexible those rules are going to be. Things have changed since the time of Wallace Simpson, but not by much. I'm sure Meghan's time as a royal, and all that went with it, was something of a living hell that countered against the Kodak moments and perceived martial bliss as she and Harry toured the world as the most hip, contemporary representations of England's century's old royal family. Alas, all an illusion, apparently. How sad. How unfortunate that it has turned this way, and yet, perhaps because this is how fate and destiny work, it is all playing out the way it's supposed to play out, with the actress Meghan playing her part, and the son who chose her, replaying the unresolved storyline of his mother, much to the bewilderment of the father who is no longer taking his son's calls. Shakespeare through and through, and feeling much more like a tragedy than a comedy or romance. I would love to see these two live out their lives in quiet anonimity. Something tells me that's so not happening. 

Day - 1026

Friday, March 5, 2021

Going through my porfolio, wondering how much I should keep on the sidelines and how much I should position. Hard to know when everything is so overpriced. Will we see the bottom fall out anytime soon? Only time will tell.



Day - 1025

Saturday, March 6, 2021

Began our day with a lovely bicycle ride through the Presidio along bike paths that took us past the Golden Gate Bridge and back through Golden Gate Park, a 17-mile loop that was fun and easy to ride, thanks to our e-bikes. Any hill we encounter is no problem with a little e-assist. Love it!








Although it was sunny, it was cold and didn't warm up much. Can't wait for warmer weather. Spring is just around the corner!

Dinner was yumscious! Duck breasts cooked on the cast iron skillet. So good!





Day - 1027

Thursday, March 4, 2021

Had to drive to SF this morning to pick up a foot pedal in order to transcribe a presentation about our firm. Also dropped off a year's worth of library books. I have another wave of books to drop off next week.

Drove back to the East Bay in the afternoon. No family zoom tonight, so I ended up a few chapters from Caste. Our firm has a book club on the book March 30. This is such a profound, important book. Lots of history here.

Spent a little time tracking Perserverance:




Day - 1028

Wedneday, March 3, 2021

Adam's former student Efrain joined our Wedneday morning meeting. He thought we were radical, in a good way. I love that. 

Caught another excellent PBS documentary on the life of Marian Anderson, called Voice of Freedom. It's superb.



Day - 1029

Tuesday, March 2, 2021

E-bike delivered today. It looks just like Alice's. It's from Costco. This will help with some of the higher hills. We'll also be able to go farther. Can't wait to bike with this!




Day - 1030

Monday, March 1, 2021

Need new running shoes. It's been cold these days. Falling behind on bridge reading. I can't keep up with everything. Busy today. 

Good interview with the Mooch on the Breakdown.



Day - 1031

Sunday, February 28, 2021

Oakland Civic Orchestra concert at 4 today, but some of it was a repeat of the concert we performed last year, so I ended up reading a poker book. The card clubs in Oakland have been closed a year. I wonder what the regulars are up to. Lots of excellent poker information online. I enjoy Jonathan Little's videos. Such a smart guy and has a great website.


Day - 1032

Saturday, February 27, 2021

We went on a really fun bike ride along the Sawyer Camp Trail near San Mateo. It was a warm, sunny day, with perhaps a slight breeze. We rode 7 miles or so, then came back to our car and went for sushi downtown. 








Day - 1033

Friday, February 26, 2021

Met with Rossana for an hour before lunch. It was so nice catching up, listening to her adventures at Twitter, etc. She and Ed are doing well.  I can't wait to spend an afternoon with them after we get our vaccines. Any week now, I'm guessing.

There's a new Starbuck's across from the Grand Lake Theatre where the old Kentucky Fried Chicken used to be. it's got a classy 1930s art deco look.



Day - 1034

Thursday, February 25, 2021

Attended a virtual wedding today from 4-5 p.m., one of my racquetball buddies Ron Davis and his bride Nichelle. Aside from a couple of technical glitches, it went off well, though virtual weddings are nothing like attending a wedding in person. There are more than 100 in attendance. That's big for a Zoom wedding. 



Then at 7 p.m., Rodney gave a presentation of his art through the San Francisco Public Library Artist Interview Series. The Youngs were there and Rossana. It was a great talk!



Day - 1035

Wednesday, February 24, 2021

New books arrived today. Got a stack of them. So many books to read and so little time. Reading some of these books twice!

I enjoyed this interview with Deion Sanders from his sons on First Take.