Recently, we had dinner at a friend’s house with five other couples. We raised kids together and now our kids have kids — 10 grandchildren between us. We’ve come full circle.

Last Saturday was the Bakersfield Master Chorale’s "Messiah" concert. This is the Christmas program, but Handel’s "Messiah" has a tendency to swamp the rest of the selections like high seas might a short-walled boat.

An old house is a mysterious thing, and one of the mysteries of this 122-year-old house has been a light switch downstairs inside the front door.

At home, she was Mom. It wasn’t until her children went to Alpha Beta with her before they realized their mother was bigger than Mom. She was a celebrity.

Then, it begins.

It is a luxury to fall asleep to rain, as we did last week, stir during the night to rain drumming on the composition roof and then wake up to rain dripping from the trees. That’s good-night and good-morning music.

Frank Fisher, aka Cranky Franky, eats breakfast at the “Pine” six days a week. That’d be seven if Fisher didn’t have coffee and a doughnut at church on Sunday.

The right lens fell out of my reading glasses. I popped it back in. A few minutes later, the lens fell out again.

I don’t know about anybody else, but I woke up stiff today. When I started walking, I was like a question mark with feet. My feel-age exceeded my chronological age by 20 years.

Jury duty is like hell: The quicker you accept that your options are limited, the better you’ll feel about it not being as hot as the literature suggests.

We were at Mel’s cabin near Glennville for a men’s night. I was doing dishes for a dinner that included spareribs, Luigi’s pasta with red sauce, salad with blue cheese and sweet, toasted pecans, and a pot of Italian beans.

I spent a weekend in Palm Springs recently. My picture of the city was wrong on a lot of counts; might as well join the club.

Everybody can agree on Thanksgiving. If we can’t agree on Thanksgiving, we’re probably not going to agree on much. It’s an uncomplicated holiday or at least for someone like me, whose contribution is subliminal, rather than honest labor in the kitchen.

I’d never gotten a double flat before. A double flat says, “I’ve arrived in the pantheon of car repairs.” A double flat also says, “It may be awhile before I arrive because I’m driving on metal rims.”

At the store, I bought a loaf of Greenlee’s cinnamon bread, a sack of Pedigree for mature dogs and a bag of avocados.

When David Torres knocked on the door of Room 113 last Friday morning, he looked around as if to check for enemy fire. Good — coast clear. At 8 a.m., local defense attorney had already accomplished his primary goal, regardless of whatever ambush faced him later in court: Beat H.A. Sala to a …

Don Loos finished every email with: “Keep writing! Your friend, Don Loos.”

I wrote the first part of this column (see below, starting with “Looking back”) last week, before we moved from our downtown offices at 17th and Eye to our new digs on Pegasus Drive out in the puckerbrush. I was sad then but now I’m singing a new tune and loving the melody.

The downtown coyote is like the midterms: Everybody has an opinion. Some people are for it, others are against it and the undecideds are awaiting more information before making up their minds.

“Mimi, I don’t feel good.”

To appreciate Halloween, take a walk through an old neighborhood with a 3-year-old. If you don’t have one, borrow one. If you can’t borrow one, be one.

Check his blood pressure. While you’re at it, maybe his sanity, too. Ken Wonderly is not only restoring a house built in 1895, he’s enjoying it, unruffled by the clouds of flying dust, high-pitched whine of the electric saws and nail guns that sound like small automatic weapons.