Last evening, just after we’d put the kids to bed, we had an earthquake that rattled the house, had us all running outside, and trembling. Peter was surprised it scared me more than the now-legendary Loma Prieta earthquake, which was technically bigger, and I was surprised when I checked the USGS Quake info site (the [...]
Both Peter and I are enjoying the new science-fiction TV show, Journeyman, in which a journalist gets unexpectedly transported back in time to change lives in one way or another. Understandably for us, one of the things we really enjoy is that the show is set in San Francisco, and it explicitly shows the locations. [...]
One of the many things I didn’t realize came packaged with American parenthood is a mania for pumpkin patches. They were invisible to me before I had Neil, but by the time I had Kelly, especially as she started learning to walk, I couldn’t get to them quickly or frequently enough during the Halloween season. [...]
A few weeks ago, at one of Kelly’s many preschool storytimes, a young boy sneezed without covering his mouth and covered me and Kelly with, um, germs. Kelly escaped the biological onslaught somehow, probably with the magical phrase of admonition: “That was yucky!” I wasn’t so lucky.
The next day, I had a sore throat. By [...]
It was with some reluctance that I sent Neil back to the institution that is public school this year, but we were lucky enough to get the one good teacher that was willing to challenge him. Unfortunately, I underestimated the influence of the great schools bureaucracy.
In short, when it became clear Neil was quickly blowing [...]
On Monday, Peter, Neil and I went to see a “conversation with Philip Glass and Leonard Cohen” at Stanford. The next night, a performance of selections from Cohen’s poetry The Book of Longing set to Philip Glass’ composition was scheduled to be performed in the same theatre. Amazing, the tickets to the talk were free. [...]
This morning we got word that John Simpson, a ComicBase customer who had become a family friend had died. In Spring, when he knew his illness was incurable, he gave Peter a letter to publish upon his death, which Peter did. I didn’t know him as well as Peter did, but Peter’s description of him [...]
A few weeks ago, Neil and I came up with the idea of a day of touring mysterious attractions within the South Bay. In particular, I wanted to go on a family Mystery Hike at Big Basin Redwoods Park, and Neil wanted to check out the Winchester Mystery House again. I thought why not do [...]
The San Francisco Symphony came to play a free outdoor concert at noontime in downtown San Jose, and I was absolutely thrilled about it. I can’t afford even a stuck-in-the-rafters ticket to the San Francisco Symphony. Heck, I can’t even afford a decent ticket to the Symphony Silicon Valley, Ballet San Jose, or even the [...]
