A family tradition

Many years ago, my Mom helped Alyson and I create a special gift for Dad. We went to Color Me Mine, a chain of shops for the commercial buying and painting of porcelain goods ranging from dinnerware to sculptures of robots and dragons that are put through a kiln on-site. In my experience it's a …

Father’s Day 2019

Another year, another celebration. Today we brought the current peak of the Rochlin's patriarchal totem pole up to my Aunt's house in West Hills to ring in Father's Day with some barbecue and time out by the pool. Let me tell you, there are few things more magical than having some ribs, taking a dip …

Celebrating life

Earlier today, my Cousin Erica said it was fitting that we held my Grandma's celebration of life on the same day as the Oscars, because she loved that award show quite a bit. To be fair the Oscars are only coincidentally happening on the same day. We held our gathering today because her birthday would …

Stranded in Suburbia

I'm in a bit of an odd predicament. In my 22nd birthday blog post, I based the whole thing on the fact that there isn't a lot of external fanfare surrounding 22 compared to 21. But there is one specific thing that happened when I turned 22, which I sort of alluded to yesterday. I …

Fantastical Creatures

/me hopes that title is different enough to avoid any sort of legal action from Warner Bros. or J.K. Rowling With Dad at work and Mom + Aly off in Disneyland where the youngin' was marching in a parade (which would be a much more exciting story if it was mine to tell), I had …

My Grandpa is Into the Spider-Verse

Broke away from my homework long enough today to venture into the wild, rainy yonder so I could spend some time with the family. Not the usual suspects though. No, today I went out to the movies with my sister, cousins Josh and Erica, as well as our collective Grandpa Joe! After all the unexpected …

The things we leave behind

We started to go through some of the stuff my Grandma Rhea had in her room at the assisted living home today. I know that's a very morbid way to start one of these, so just trust me when I say I have a not quite as morbid reason for talking it over. Yesterday I …

Stories by the fire

In the beginning, early hominids huddled in dark seclusion deep inside caverns on the fringes of the world, scared of beasts and inclement weather threatening their existence from the wilds outside. Then everything changed in the year of our lord 2001, when the blessed Kubrick himself delivered our ancestors a gift of blazing fire: Bright …

Bands under the Bob Cole banner

As promised last night, here I am to talk about sitting around in Long Beach all day. Except today there was a much more pertinent reason for me to be there! Instead of just bumming around laughing about how much the campus at Cal State Long Beach looks like an F-Zero track, I got to …

Baffling bathroom decor

Got a late one for you, since interesting life stuff happened and that drove me to save my deep, contemplative "complains about Christmas" post for tomorrow. I promise it's not as bad as I hyperbole it out to be. The family took a mini road trip out to Santa Monica tonight — random music mix …