On vacation in New York, I bought a MetroCard transit pass and used the heck out of it over the next few days. Best $34 I ever spent. I also did a lot of walking and stair climbing. I talk about the experience, and recount some highlights (and one lowlight) from my trip, in my Sunday column. Have you been to New York? Did you love it, hate it or somewhere in between?

While on vacation, I saw the Yankees, and two days later, I saw the Mets, upping my ballpark total to 14 (of 30). I write about the experience, including bringing along a transistor radio, in my Friday column.

There’s never been a book until now on the LA County Fair. And I’m the author. Sometimes, if no one else is doing something that needs to be done, you have to do it yourself. I announce the book and list events scheduled so far in Sunday’s column. More to come!

I was a guest during a segment of KPCC-FM’s “Air Talk” on Thursday about the return of the LA County Fair. If you missed it (likely) or caught it but want to relive the glory (theoretically possible), you can find the audio here. Scroll down until you see the heading for the third segment of the show. It’s 14 minutes.

Bewilderingly, I’m on Day 10 of the flu. By now I’m mostly fine, but it’s proving stubborn. Have you had the flu this season, or thought you had COVID when you didn’t? I write another column from home for Wednesday.

I owned a series of five metal figures of musicians for 20 years and sometimes wondered if they were cool, as I’d thought originally, or cheesy. Recently I gave them away, by accident. I write about that in Friday’s latest from-home column.

Some backstory: This incident actually happened in late December, which may stretch the definition of “a few weeks ago” in the column. (To be fair, when I wrote it this week, I was thinking this had taken place in February, until realizing otherwise.) The situation had seemed amusing enough to make a column out of, but I didn’t get around to it until now, while sick at home. Whether it was worth writing or whether we’d all have been better off without it, that’s not for me to say, but I hope the former!

I was panhandled in novel ways during my recent Bay Area vacation. That would be old news by now, but thankfully I was panhandled in Riverside late last month, thus freshening up the encounters and allowing me to write a Sunday column.

My lack of air conditioning at home is moderately well known among longtime readers. Over the summer, I couldn’t take it anymore and got two portable units for my rental. I write about this milestone in my Wednesday column.

I’d been meaning to address this since July, when this took place, but what with one thing or another, it didn’t get done. Last weekend’s surprise heat wave seemed to offer one last excuse this calendar year, and I was able to find the notes I’d made the afternoon of the installation on the back of an envelope. Voila, a column.

Belatedly writing about my vacation last month, I share my visits to bookstores and record stores — eight of the former, three of the latter — in my Sunday column.

You may recall that I wrote about showing my vaccination card all over the place, but my intention to write about what I did while I was away kept getting put off for local news and features. To me, though, it’s important now and then to simply share a slice of my life.

The Society of Professional Journalists’ LA chapter named me a (cough) Distinguished Journalist. To be fair, they’ve never met me in person. Anyway, my colleague Beau Yarbrough wrote a story about it, which you can read here. It’s nice.

The awards ceremony has been pre-recorded. We were each given two minutes maximum for an acceptance speech. I got to go first. After hearing everyone else’s speech, I thought, boy was mine dumb. Still, if you’d care to watch on Thursday night, you can RSVP here.