The Bachelor in Florida

Hey. Been a while, huh? I've been enjoying my "book writing sabbatical" perhaps a little too much. A lot of my novel has gotten done, but there have been plenty of things over the last month I easily could have blogged about. I was almost completely by myself for three weeks as Mom and Aly …

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 …

A car full of spaghetti

If I was quiet this weekend it's because I've been immobile outside of family chores, and I didn't think a second post about running the Burbank Ikea circuit would be very exciting. The immobility comes from car troubles that have plagued me since early last week and at one point derailed my blog into a …

Tribute to well-worn clothing

I wound up lingering around the house today in lieu of some planned activities because of unexpected car troubles. Instead I did some chores around the house. Mainly blowing through this mountain of laundry I've avoided for too long. While doing so I had to confront that age-old question of what you do when something …

Gobble gobble, shinobi

Alright, let's do this one last time. I don't have a long post today, just wanted to slip something in while spending the afternoon with my friends. Today's is a relatively small gathering. Me, my buds Juan and Mitchell, plus this surprise guest: Everyone else is either not on Spring Break or has work/family commitments, …

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 …

Aches and pains

Overall this Winter Break has been strange. I spent the first week or two sick in bed, and kept the sore throat for some time after. Figured that was going to be the end of my rainy season hardships. But then it actually started raining hard in SoCal and everything fell apart again. Just after …

New adventures (real and fake)

So I broke my New Year writing streak yesterday. Unless you want to substitute in that day I did two posts in one, in which case I'm right on track! But if you don't count that, I have a good excuse. ... It was raining a lot, and that made me lethargic. Plus I was …

Yearning for games prematurely abandoned

I was originally going to spend part of today writing the post that will probably ruin my reputation once and for all. A post about my recent relapse into playing the Pokémon Trading Card Game Online. But uhh... I got lazy and didn't put the effort in. So sorry about that! Maybe tomorrow. Now to …