It's time for breakfast!

This was the breakfast I had every morning on vacation at the Hilton. Bacon, egg, salt, pepper, and ketchup on a toasted bagel. A shitpot full of breakfast sausages and potatoes. Coffee.

I hit the buffet every morning, The wife couldn't do that because she had to be gluten-free. But we did what we always do and made friends with the people working there. I called the waiter over and introduced myself. He said his name was Aurelio and I said, "Hey that's the name of one of the greatest third basemen of all time." He knew of Aurelio Rodriquez of the Tigers who he was named after, and we hit it off.

I said to him, "I see that you have gluten-free bread on the menu so maybe the Chef can make my wife gluten-free French Toast." He said, "Don't worry Jim I will take care of it." He came out with some beautiful gluten-free French toast with berries on the side. She had that every day.

Twenty Dollars an hour for fast food workers?

I see where Cali has passed a law to give a twenty dollar an hour minimum wage to fast food workers. We went to few fast-food joints to my chagrin but my brother-in-law was in charge so what can you do.

One was place called Tender Greens and it wasn't too bad. You picked a protein, salad and a vegetable and they make you a plate. They give you a stick with a number on it and you sit down and the runner brings you your food. There is no waiter per se. There were a lot of workers but I bet half of them get laid off if this law stays in force. 

I kept seeing pizza joints advertising "New York Pizza" so I decided to give one a shot.

Where have you gone Joe DiMaggio....

I haven't been around for a while, and I apologize. 

I have been busy writing and trying to get some of my work published. Hopefully, I will have news soon on that front.  In the meantime, we have been living our life as best we can. I had my pacemaker replaced in June and it was a slow recovery, but I am back to snuff. So much so that we were able to take a short vacation. To California of all things!

Lisa's brother lives in Cali so we went to visit him in Santa Monica where he lives near the beach. I took advantage to sit by the hotel pool for a while to soak up the rays. It was too cold to go to the beach, but we visited a lot of places. We went to the Santa Moncia Pier. Malibu. The Hollywood Sign. Beverly Hills. Grauman's Chinese theatre. Even California Pizza Kitchen. I kid you not.

There are a lot of homeless people that scared my sister-in-law but we are from Brooklyn so nothing really phased us. We just gave off our normal don't fuck with us vibes and we had no problem. We were lucky and didn't run into any truly crazy ones so it was all good.

To sum it up, California is a great place to visit but I could never live there. 

I will post more about it at Trooper York as I don't want to clutter up Lem's spot with my personal life.

"California now has 407 foot wide vinyl record on top of it"

"The record is labeled as The Eagles’ “Hotel California”, but it doesn’t actually contain any music… if it did there would be no way to hear it anyways. This is part of a campaign to highlight The Forum’s re-opening, which The Eagles are playing at."

"It is made up of 250,000 square feet of vinyl and weighs about 25 tons. The record will be up through January and can be seen by travelers flying into LAX."





"The song has been given several interpretations by fans and critics alike, but the Eagles have described it as their "interpretation of the high life in Los Angeles". In the 2013 documentary History of the Eagles, Henley said the song was about "a journey from innocence to experience...that's all".

"In 2008, Don Felder described the origins of the lyrics:

Don Henley and Glenn wrote most of the words. All of us kind of drove into L.A. at night. Nobody was from California, and if you drive into L.A. at night... you can just see this glow on the horizon of lights, and the images that start running through your head of Hollywood and all the dreams that you have, and so it was kind of about that... what we started writing the song about. Coming into L.A.... and from that 'Life in the Fast Lane' came out of it, and 'Wasted Time' and a bunch of other songs