Tag: At Home With Jeff
At Home With Jeff: “Pockets”
By JEFF ROUBAL Martinez News-Gazette Columnist One of my favorite games to play when our kids were little was “What is in your pockets?” We played this while waiting somewhere or killing time. We would sit on a curb and everyone would empty his or her pockets. Next, we would see what we could make […]
At Home With Jeff: Artichokes
By JEFF ROUBAL Martinez News-Gazette Columnist My father was born and raised near Omaha. When he moved to California, Dad became somewhat of a celebrity in his hometown. His relatives and former neighbors described “LIttle Eddie” as all grown up and living a glamorous life with beaches, freeways, movie stars, and palm trees. During the […]
At Home With Jeff: Soup’s on
By JEFF ROUBAL Martinez News-Gazette Columnist While Vivian and I were camping in Kings Canyon a couple weeks ago, we made beef stew for dinner. It was the most delicious stew that I’ve had in a long time. (I suspect part of the secret seasoning may have been kerosene fumes from the camp stove.) As […]
At Home With Jeff: Things You Never Expect
By JEFF ROUBAL Things sometimes turn out as you never expected — usually to the better! In 1983, Vivian and I were living in Hayward. We were a young couple, married five years with three children all under the age of four. We rented a small, three-bedroom house on Sunset Boulevard. Sunset was a main […]
At Home With Jeff: Best of plans
By JEFF ROUBAL Martinez News-Gazette Columnist I have finished enough home improvement projects to understand that the final product is never one hundred percent what was initially envisioned. Colors look different after you get them home from the store. Dimensions must be compressed or stretched slightly to fit in with existing conditions that are almost […]
At Home With Jeff: Interesting Times
By JEFF ROUBAL Martinez News-Gazette Contributor “May you live in interesting times.” – A traditional Chinese curse One of my current projects is to build a fence between our neighbor’s house and ours. Our neighbor does not live in his house. Nobody does. The house is uninhabitable. There are holes in the roof. The gas […]
At Home With Jeff: What’s my line?
By JEFF ROUBAL Martinez News-Gazette Contributor A friend at the American Legion asked me last week to update his telephone number on the membership list. He and his wife had just disconnected their home phone permanently. From now on, they will be using their cell phones exclusively while away and while at home. I was […]
At Home With Jeff: You’ve Got Mail!
By JEFF ROUBAL Special to the Gazette Everyone loves getting letters and packages in the mail. Mail is one way that Vivian and kept our family close over the years. Several of my assignments with the Air Force required extensive travel away from the family. One time, I was sent to Somalia for six months. […]
