Our town backs up to the local mountains. Some cities have houses facing the sea. We have Mother Saddleback staring at our backyards. Fire ravaged the steep areas on the very edges of Rancho Santa Margarita a few months ago, burning all the way to the summit and up the slopes of the valley on the other side for miles. Last Wednesday Santa Ana winds roared through the pass connecting our town with cities on the other side of Saddleback.
The whole world is in love with Artificial Intelligence. I don't know all the things AI is capable of accomplishing, but people seem to love is that it makes writing easier. Letters, emails, term papers — no more struggling to find the right word and build a smart sentence. Let AI do it.
You know who doesn't love AI?
Writers.
Django blew out his ACL and the vet says the surgery for an old dog is beyond expensive. So he prescribes pain pills and time, saying the joint will calcify. The doggie day care acknowledges his wound by putting a yellow band around his neck to indicate his limp is an injury. Combined with his normal blue collar it looks like he's wearing the flag of Ukraine around his neck. The place is now synonymous for anxiety, unpredictability, and complete What the Fuck.
"Charge system fault." That's what I googled in the waiting room. The warning light had just come on in the Rover. Red and important.... Google told me precisely what would happen next. One by one, my car's electrical functions would shut down. Then it would stop completely. Just a matter of time. Get to a mechanic immediately.
We got a little sideways news from the cancer docs that day. The kind that reminds you that the things you thought were under control have other plans
1 p.m. Father's Day. Gift to myself: a new power washer. There's something amazing about a high pressure machine to clean every last bit of the backyard pavers and deck. It's like cleaning your physical soul. I tend to do this barefoot, just because there's something about walking around without shoes on when the sun is out and the pavers are warm.
It has been a week, my people.
The moment I realized things were getting under my skin came on Thursday evening, as I tried to park for the Springsteen show at the Forum. I went to the wrong entrance and was instructed to turn around and go back down the street to an entirely different lot. Traffic was coming from both directions. I had no choice but to make a very illegal u-turn.
