Okay, with this column, all of you have the right to call me a curmudgeon.

I write this after attempting to watch "The Today Show" for three days in a row. Now I don’t know, other than ratings, how and why the producers of this show could possibly write the segments that they do. 

James Patterson has written a new book called “The Store.” To me, it is a thinly disguised portrait of Amazon. Patterson said it is not about them. However, after reading 20 pages of this 270-page novel, you can’t help but think that is exactly what it is about.

As we have been viewing two massive hurricanes over the past week or so, I thought I’d write about all the “practical” things one needs to know in living through one.

I have written before that one should live each day as if it’s your last, because one of these days it will be. Now I really want to write about the loss we feel when someone either close to us, or someone we knew about passes away.

I’ve just completed reading a remarkable book called “Sea Power – the History and Geopolitics of the World’s Oceans,” by Admiral James Stavridis. I strongly recommend this book to anyone who is interested in how our modern world came to look as it is.

Living, as we do, on the shore of Puget Sound produces some very interesting sights. I guess most notable is the very large low tide/high tide variances. The low tide vs. high tide mark is several hundred yards wide.

For those of you (myself included) who never watched a cable TV show called "Six Feet Under," today I’m going to cover this groundbreaking show for you. 

Let me say, at the outset, that my wife and I lived in Boca Raton for six years just after I retired (for the first time). The weather was beautiful (other than from about mid-March to end of October – when the daily temperature and humidity were just about the same – 90 degrees, 90 percent) and we enjoyed living there.