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Calling All Dead Heads
Any Greatful Dead fans in the audience? Ted did an awesome interview, just for fun, with a HUGE Dead fan who works with him. I’m not a huge fan, but it’s fun to listen to someone who is, and hear what a smart guy who loves the music has to say. Go check it out. 🙂
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Resistance Is Futile
Now that I’m working from home, phone calls have been coming to my home phone, which I don’t really like. Sometimes someone else wants to use the phone, or if it’s during work hours, Ted and Maya feel funny answering it. Options: 1. A second phone line. 2. Vonage. 3. A cell phone. Let’s look at these, one at a time. 1. I don’t really have a big problem with a second phone line, but I’m not sure of the intricasies of having one for work, and having maybe a different calling plan than our regular phone. Our regular phone has no special provisions for long distance during the week,…
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Why do we live here again? Can anyone remind me?
Maya said she likes Girl Scout Camp, but it’s pretty hot, and I think she’s starting to get a little bit bored with doing the same activities every day. And seeing as how we’re in the middle of a fairly fierce heat wave, with the crappy air quality that goes with it, I don’t blame her for not really enjoying being outside all day. Right now it’s 11:20 in the morning, and it’s already 91 degrees. Blech. Maybe we should move to Portland. Today: Plentiful sunshine. Very hot. High 106F. Winds NNW at 5 to 10 mph. Tonight: Mainly clear. Low 64F. Winds SSW at 5 to 10 mph. Tomorrow:…
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Ode to Vegan Lunchbox
Inspired by ‘Jennifershmoo” and her Vegan Lunchbox, and requested by Cherry, here is yesterday’s lunch. Maya takes her lunch every day to Girl Scout Camp, and I ordered one of the cool Bento Lunchboxes that Jennifershmoo turned me on to. We’re not vegan, so there’s dairy in here. Lunch is a homemade bean and cheese burrito, rolled like a wrap (with pineapple/mango salsa in case she wants it), apple/apricot sauce, grapes and cherries, and a Costco brownie bite that came with the lunch Cherry and I had at a new Japanese place near Kohls. Who ever heard of brownie bites at Japanese restaurants? Not me, but Maya will be glad,…
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Girl Scout Camp
Maya’s going to girl scout camp this week. It’s a one week camp at Little Hills Ranch, which is in San Ramon. She is really enjoying it so far. She’s learning archery, they swim almost every day in a big pool, they learned to make egg drop soup and chinese chicken salad, they do art projects, etc. All in all, lots of fun. It’s kind of a pain in the butt for me, because it takes about an hour to an hour and a half to drop her off and pick her up every day. But it’s only for one week, and the benefit of starting work so early and…
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When I’m 64
Happy Belated Birthday to Paul McCartney, who turned 64 on June 18th. I’ll confess, Paul was the Beatle I had a crush on first. And come on, look at that face. That’s a face a 13 year old can love. He’s so…safe. And cute. 😉 John was the one who I had a crush on in High School (though of course he was already dead by that point, lending him an even greater sense of tragedy and mystery). I sometimes thought, personality wise, that Paul was the Heart of the Beatles, and John was the Soul. Not sure where that leaves poor George and Ringo. I like to picture Paul…
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Happy Juneteenth!
Today is Juneteenth. I remember when we lived in Philadelphia, the HUGE celebration every June, comemerating the holiday, Juneteenth. I had never heard of this holiday before. In case you haven’t heard of it, June 19th, 1865 is the date that Union General Gordon Granger landed in Galviston, TX, and announced that former slaves were now free. Philadelphia has a much larger black population than San Francisco, something like 50%. So the Juneteenth celebration there is much larger than it is in S.F. I am somewhat ashamed to admit that it used to go down Fillmore Street, which was very close to our Japantown apartment…we just didn’t know about it.…
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Happy Father’s Day, Dado
I thought that maybe I could have a guest blogger today, to wish her father a very happy Father’s Day. She’s not as verbose as I am, but she loves him VERY MUCH. So, with no further delay, here’s Maya. Happy Fathers Day, Dado! I love you! You are the best! Love, Monkey
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Happy Father’s Day, Dad!
My Dad and stepmom were here last weekend, which is a pretty groovy Father’s Day gift to me. 🙂 They live in Oregon, and so we don’t see them as much as we would like to. My dad is a pretty great guy, whom unfortunately I did not get to know until I was an adult. One day maybe I’ll tell that story, but not today. Anyway, when my dad was here, I asked him about his time in the 60s, about his involvement in the Civil Rights marches, etc. I was right on some things, wrong on others. I thought he had heard Martin Luther King Jr.’s “I Have…
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School’s Out For Summer
Yesterday was the last day of school for Maya….can’t believe she’ll be in the 5th grade this fall. They had a play at her school yesterday, on Westward Expansion. It was a musical, with touching, sad numbers like “Trail of Tears”, and a rousing number at the end about the Golden Spike. Fun. I may be biased, but I thought Maya did great. She was in the back for much of the play, but for the Golden Spike number, she was in front, looking great. I couldn’t get many pics because there were parents in front of me…but we asked her to recreate a pose for us. 🙂
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I Feel Dirty…
Because I watched THIS last night. I’m surrounded by books, some of them works of great literature, ALL of them better than watching Britney’s veiny boobs hang out of her top. I have DVDs. I have cable, with lots of options. But I watched Britney cry instead. If you have now lost all respect for me, I completely understand. I have, too. I need a bath with some comet to feel clean again, I think.
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No More GUILT
The worst, worst, WORST part of parenting, at least of mothering, is the guilt that society tries to push upon us. L at Homesick Home wrote a wonderful post the other day about her feelings after reading a New York Times article titled “Breast Feed Or Else“. I read L’s post, and I was horrified…horrified that people are actually equating not breastfeeding your children with smoking while pregnant. With going to a bar, riding a mechanical bull, and smoking while pregnant. Give me a fucking break. (Sorry, I tried not to swear there, but no other word worked for me. Get over it.) The current culture has really made a…
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Movie Update
We watched “To Kill a Mockingbird” the other night…it was pretty true to the book, very good, very sad. Too bad they took out the part about Scout and Dill being ‘engaged’…I always thought that was sweet and funny, but they only had 2 hours, so I guess it was best to stick to the main points as much as possible. Also no sight of the rich white man with the black family. Missed him too. I do understand, however, the difficulty involved with taking a book and all of the nuances involved in that medium, and putting it into a coherant narative for people to view and understand on…
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WTF Part II
I’m a bit confused…is our American diet so screwed up that we need all of these products to help us with our intestinal tract health? Is no one pooping anymore? Last week, in my multi-subject post, I mentioned a product that kind of freaked me out called the “Almighty Cleanse“. It freaked me out because there was a God/poop connection going on that was somewhat confusing. Well, even though none of my 4 loyal readers commented on the product or it’s disturbing connection between the Almighty and colon health, apparantly plenty of people found my blog by googling “Almighty Cleanse”. So people are out there, looking this stuff up. People…
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Black Diamond Mines
Maya’s class had a fieldtrip today to the Black Diamond Mines, in Antioch, CA. (That’s Maya’s BEST friend, Jackie, in the picture to your left.) I had never been there before, so I was happy to volunteer to drive some of the kids, and go check it out. The mines were for coal in the mid-1800s, and many men who came to California looking for gold ended up working in the coal mines instead. Actually, though we found out that CA coal is inferior to coal from Washington State or China, so when that coal started coming into CA, the mines closed down, and the cities disappeared. I kind of…