October Meditation is HERE. I succeeded this week because, as the endlessly repeated pop culture meme posits, for once I actually understood the assignment. More specifically, I got a perfect score on my final Executive MBA requirement, the Corporate Finance Case Study. I correctly used Excel form...

Puppy Meditation  HERE. Last week I wrote the newsletter right before Vlad’s Official Gotcha Day Party (ie, a celebration of one year since I adopted him). I posted the event in our building’s WhatsApp Puppy Chat and, since there was no possibility to RSVP. I had no idea if anyone would come. ...

New FREE Offering HERE. I admit to being a little distracted as I write this. Vlad also seems a little unnerved, specifically by the large mass of balloons that have just arrived. He’s usually fine with balloons but these are all clumped together in a large plastic bag, floating like some lumpy al...

Before things went sideways, I honestly thought that the week was off to a great start. On Monday, I had my teeth cleaned and had no cavities. (This is an ongoing personal triumph of sorts, but more about that later.) And on Thursday, Malibu’s parents, after encountering a travel snag, asked if Vl...

I hate to be gender-normative (or even breed-ist) and yet… At the end of the day, my chocolate lab Belle was always the perfect lady. She was the straight-A student (and class president) who was kind to all her friends and still found time to read to the blind. Vlad is…well… A lovable bad boy m...

New Meditation of the Month is HERE I admit that I was working from a very short list of suspects. Even so, since I didn’t know exactly when the thieving began, I was truly at a loss…and in more ways than one. It might have been relatively recent. Or it could have dated back to June 2011 when t...

Lawrence Kasdan, co-writer of Raiders of the Lost Arc and a bunch of the Star Wars movies summarized my fate best: “Being a writer is like having homeworkevery night for the rest of your life.” This began as a rare week where I thought I knew early on what I was going to write this newsletter about, ...

Life is full of important rites of passage. Weddings and funerals. Baptisms and Confirmations; Bar Mitzvahs and Bat Mitzvahs. Military service and college degrees. This week, young Vlad experienced a major one, onethat not everyone else enjoys. Namely, seeing his name for the first time in p...

June Meditation of the Month is HERE I admit I am profoundly prejudiced on this topic, but I do sincerely believe my puppy Vlad is a genius. He is, however, making one major miscalculation these days, one tactical error that’s utterly self-defeating for his goals. Namely, he thinks that if he hide...