Helen's Blog

American River Parkway Half Marathon

2010-05-02T08:34:00.001-07:00

Last year, my daughter Aisling began running cross country for her high school team. She did well, and decided she wanted to run a half marathon. I agreed to do one with her, so in December we signed up for the American River Parkway Half Marathon.

We planned to start training in January, but then Aisling joined her track team, and naturally, the track coach doesn't want them doing road races during the season as it increases the risk of injury. So I started training by myself in January. I had always run short distances two to three times per week, I simply added a long run on the weekend to that. My long run actually started out pretty short - my first one being only 45 minutes - and I just increased it over the course of several months. A couple of things really worked to my advantage during training. First, I live very close to the American River Parkway and Lake Natoma, great places to run. The second thing that helped was my furlough days. It was so much easier to schedule a long run on a furlough day than a weekend day, just logistically. I increased my time and distance a little with each long run. Sometimes I felt really good with the increase, but some of the long runs were really hard. I remember the first time I ran 10 miles, I actually thought I was going to cry at the end. On the other hand, two weeks ago, I ran 12.5 miles, and felt really pretty good.

Yesterday was the big day. I arrived at the starting line at William Pond Park at the starting time of 8. We didn't actually get started until about 8:30, however. The race started with a Scottish band, with bagpipes and drums, marching across the starting line. It was great! It was also really crowded - about 3,000 people in all. The course was lovely, along the river, nice and flat. There were bands all along the way serenading us, and plenty of water/gatorade stations. I started out well, and as I hit the miles markers, I was feeling pretty good, all the way up until about mile 10. Then it started to get really hard! The mile markers seemed to be further apart at that point. So I would guess that I walked about .75 of the last 3 miles. Once I passed the 12 mile marker, there were many of the people who had already finished the race lined up yelling encouragement. So I pushed on and finally made it across the finish line. My time was 2:23:44. I had been aiming for under 2:30, so I was very satisfied. I did sort of feel like I was so tired and sore that I was about to cry! But instead of crying, I just went home and showered, that made me feel much better. I spent the rest of the day drinking probably gallons of water!

So will I do it again? I don't know - the length is hard. 10 miles felt okay, but 13 felt painful. So ask me again in a couple of weeks when the memory of the pain is gone!

Furlough day long run

2010-03-12T22:17:00.000-08:00

So today was my furlough day. Many thanks to the governator for the day off and the accompanying paycut!! Anyhow, in an effort to not put my furlough day to waste, I decided to use it to stretch my long run out to ninety minutes. Rain was in the forecast for midmorning, so I thought I'd get out there early to miss that, so I started running at 8:30. While it wasn't raining it was overcast and slightly chilly - in other words, perfect running weather. When I did my last long run, 75 minutes, it was a little later in the day, and a little warmer, and I think I paced myself wrong, because when I got to the end of the run, I just thought I was going to die, or at least vomit. Happily I managed to avoid doing either! So today, I decided to pace myself slower by breaking up the run with stretches of short walks. So more or less, I ran for 20 minutes, then walked for a couple of minutes and continued on in that pace.

My favorite place to run is the American River Parkway. I usually cross the footbridge in Fair Oaks, and head upriver toward the Sac State Acquatic center and then back again. But that isn't quite long enough for 90 minutes, so instead I headed downriver. My plan was to run downriver until I hit about 50 minutes, and then head back. I had never run further than the Bannister Park bridge in that direction before, so it was good to get a change of scenery. You can see my route here. Because it was Friday, it wasn't too crowded on the parkway. And it is really a lovely run. I ran from the upper Sunrise are to the lower Sunrise area. Because the trail, the Jedediah Smith Memorial trail, winds through the recreation areas, sometimes you're close to the river and sometimes you're not. So it's heavily wooded in some areas, and more open in others. There's also a fair amount of interesting wildlife. There are warning signs for mountain lions (why are they down near a river if they're called mountain lions? there's no mountain) but luckily I didn't see them. I did have to run through a flock of turkeys though. They let me pass without pecking me too much. More information on the Jedediah Smith Trail can be found here.

Anyhow, perhaps it was the perfect running weather, or the time of day, or the slower pace I took, but it was a very good run. I ran almost 8.5 miles and I am planning to stretch it out to 10 miles next week on my next furlough day, following the same route, just going a little further!

Also, I really would like photos of the route but obviously I don't carry a camera on my run. However, we are currently dogsitting for some friends who are in Argentina. So perhaps we'll take their dog, Linus, for a walk on that route. That could be fun!

Weekend runs

2010-02-28T19:00:00.001-08:00

So with two months to go before the half marathon, I am trying to build up more stamina with a weekly long run. Generally, to minimize the risk of missing it due to procrastination, I aim to do the long run on Saturday, rather than Sunday. This weekend, Ashling's track team was doing timed trials on Saturday, so I thought I could use that time for my long run. Rain was predicted for Saturday, but you can never be sure that's right. But when we woke up Saturday, it was pouring. Wet and chilly! Ashling's track team was meeting at American River College at 9, so off we went. When we got there, Ashling's coach, Sherri, had decided against the timed trial, so as to avoid having the girls sitting around in the cold rain in between being timed, and opted instead to do a short practice. I decided to do a short run around the track when the rain seemed to ease off. Well, that was a temporary easing off! I think I had done two laps when it really started to pour. So I managed to do about two miles in the pouring rain. It was fairly lonely out there at the ARC track, also. Just Ashling's track team, the Jesuit High School boys track team (apparently, they are not bothered by the rain), and a couple of very tough solo runners were out. I was glad to get back into the warm car, I tell you.

That meant that my long run needed to happen on Sunday. As it worked out, Sunday was an incredibly nice day. Last day in February, temperature in the 60s, and beautiful sunny skies. We took Ashling back to ARC to practice long jump and triple jump. That triple jump thing is wacky! Hopping and jumping? I wonder who thought that up and what they were smoking at the time? I also read that one of the women on the Irish Women's Olympic Bobsleigh team (yes we have one) is also a triple jumper. You must need the same special muscles (that I don't have) for both events. Anyhow, I had Gordon drop me off at a place called Bannister Park on the way home so I could start my long run. My plan was to do 75 minutes, so for those who know the Sacramento area, I planned to run through Bannister Park, cross the river on the footbridge, run up the River to the Sac State Aquatic Center, and then turn around and come back to the Fair Oaks bridge, cross there and then run home. For those who don't know the Sacramento area, I mapped my route using Runkeeper, and you can see it here. I've just started to use this runkeeper thing on my iPhone, and I won't say I've mastered it yet. I occasionally accidentally pause it (usually when I am trying to change a song or something) and I end up with a break in the run. But you get the idea.

This is really a very nice route. In fact, any route on the American River Parkway is just fabulous. And people who live here really take advantage of it. So on a beautiful day like today, the parkway is full of other runners, walkers, bicyclists, people walking dogs etc. etc. It means you have to pay attention so as not to collide with a bicyclist, but it it nice to see so many people out there. And of course, you're running right by the river, watching people fish, kayak etc. etc. It's also a good surface to run on - the bike path is in great shape, no potholes or anything - but most of the time you can run on the shoulder, which is a lot easier on the knees and ankles. Also, it's nice and flat! The only problem today is that there is some construction going on at the Aquatic Center end of the parkway, and the parkway is basically closed between the Nimbus Fish Hatchery and the Aquatic Center. That's not a huge distance or anything, but in order to make sure I got enough running in, I ran around the fish hatchery parking lot a couple of time. That was probably the low spot of the run, from a scenery perspective.

Today's run was the longest that I have done so far, and takes me beyond the halfway point for a half marathon. A quarter marathon maybe. But I must say, it was hard! When I crossed the Fair Oaks bridge, probably at the 6.5 mile point, I was really feeling it. There's a slight hill from the bridge going toward the village, and I thought that I would die, or at least throw up, at that point. But I managed to not do either, so that was good. I am not sure how it is going to feel to double that distance. I foresee a substantial period of time walking during the midpoint of the half marathon!

Next week I am aiming for a longish run on Thursday night with the Folsom Trail Runners, as Aidan is coming to spend the weekend starting Friday night. Maybe I'll do a long walk with Aidan instead of a long run.

Running by the river

2010-01-31T07:23:00.001-08:00

I've been running for several years, but mostly short distances. However, I have decided to do a half marathon in May, the American River Parkway Half Marathon.. That's 13.1 miles. That's a long way. I have heard from other runners, who all think I can do this, that the difference between training for this and training for something short distance is pretty straightforward. In addition to the normal runs and other workouts during the week, you simply add a long run on the weekend. So I've been doing that, gradually increasing the length of the run. I want to get it to a two hour run by the middle of March. This weekend, I did a one hour run. For those who know the area, I ran through Fair Oaks village, down to the American River, across the Fair Oaks bridge, and then on upstream along the river, until I got to Nimbus Fish Hatchery by Hazel Avenue and then back again. I'm not fast, so I think it's overall under six miles. But it was a good run. Yesterday was the most lovely day so far this year weather-wise. After several weeks of rain, it was clear and warm (at least for January). The American River Parkway trail is very popular and because of the great weather, there were lots of people running and biking, and also people in the river fishing.

So I plan to keep up this schedule, gym workouts four or five times a week and a long run on the weekend, probably always by the American River. I am also hoping to recruit a team of runners (other than Ashling) to do the half marathon!

Colder weather in Sacramento

2009-11-22T08:48:00.000-08:00

Sacramento has very hot summers. By comparison to places that get really cold on the east coast or in the midwest, we don't really get cold winters. But it is quite a bit colder than the bay area, where I lived for years, and as I am apparently a California Weather Wimp, I think it gets really cold.

Yesterday, Ashling and I went to Davis to do the annual "Turkey Trot" a 5K run just before Thanksgiving. We also planned to go to the Causeway Classic, the big football game between traditional local rivals, Sac State (the Hornets) and UC Davis (the Aggies).

For those who don't know the area, Davis is town about 20 miles west of Sacramento, home to UC Davis, a fine institution of learning. You get from Sac to Davis on I-80, and after you cross into Yolo county, the freeway is a causeway over the Yolo flats, hence the term "Causeway Classic" for the big football game. We left on Saturday at about 7 a.m. heading to Davis for the Turkey Trot, and man was it foggy! This Valley fog is way different to bay fog, much thicker and harder to drive in. I was just glad that there was so little traffic on I-80 as the visibility was very poor. In fact, when we crossed the Sacramento River, the fog was at its thickest and the river was not at all visible. But we got to Davis safely. But it was cold! Again, not by real winter standards, but by California wimp standards. I was glad to get running to warm up! And also to be around the crowds - there are about 5000 participants. It's a nice enough course through Davis, the best part being how flat it is. No hills! I clocked a time of about 30 minutes, Ashling, of course, was several minutes ahead of me.

After the race, we headed home so. Crossing the Yolo flats, we saw where the Davis fans had adorned the flats with the a rather large sign stating "Sac Iz Wac". I am guessing that spelling and grammar aren't a top priority for the Aggies. But it was cute, we giggled about it all the way home. Game started at 2:05, we headed over to Hornet stadium a little early and enjoyed the smell of the barbeque at all the tailgate parties on campus. Given that Sac State doesn't have a particularly prestigious football program, the stadium is smaller than, say, Memorial Stadium at Berkeley. However, I would say that Hercy the Hornet is a very cool mascot, partly because he has a stinger and partly because he can ride a unicycle. However, the first half of the game was filled with some of the sloppiest football I have ever seen, and I have sat through a large number of high school football games. That combined with the chilly weather led to us leaving at halftime, which unfortunately means that we missed one of the greatest comebacks in college sports history when the Hornets came back from a 14-3 deficit at halftime to win 31-28 with just 20 seconds to go! That's the price of being a California Weather Wimp and being unable to last a couple of hours in the shade when it's less than 60 degrees!

The new shed

2009-10-26T21:39:00.000-07:00

The last of Gordon's big outdoor projects for this year is the new shed. When we moved in, the house had a shed. But, oh my god, what a mess!!! There was so much ivy in it. I think the ivy was holding it up. Not to mention all the nasty things left behind by critters that had been in there. Yuck! Anyhow, we have a two-car garage, but there is so much stuff in there, mostly tools and motorbikes, that I can't park my car in there. So I went through this summer parking my car in the driveway, and I really don't want to do that again. Honestly, some afternoons I'd get into my car after it had been sitting in the sun for a few hours, and I would get third degree burns on my fingers from touching the steering wheel. Not good! So the shed had to get built so that Gordon could put his stuff in it so that I could park my car in the garage.

The first major task was killing the ivy. That took a long time, because it was some large ivy. It was frustrating because he was working so hard but it didn't look like much was changing! Except for the big pile of roots that had to go out in the green bin that is. Once it was pretty much dead, and cleared from the concrete, then he could go to work on that. We used the concrete that had been poured for the old shed, but it need some serious patching and chipping. Then it was time to begin building the actual shed. Gordon actually bought a book "shed-building for dummies" I think it was, and just picked out a nice design and went from there. A picture is worth a thousand words, they say, so click here to see pictures of the shed in progress.

I think the most most stressful time was the day before our first big storms of the season. We knew there would be some serious rain and wind, so Gordon had to get the roof on that weekend, and then get something called housewrap around the shed. That was important because the windows and doors weren't in yet, and the housewrap covered that. Since we were storing all of his tools in the new shed, it was important to keep as much rain as possible out of there. The storm tore up some trees, even dumping some into the pool, and almost destroyed the sunshade, but the shed and the tools stood up well.

Keep checking the photos - it should be finished soon and I'll keep posting photos.

Summer in Sacramento

2009-08-04T18:03:00.000-07:00

This week, there was a really good article about living in Sacramento in the Sac Bee. Click here to read it. The article, by a San Francisco native now living in Sacramento, talks about how the hot summers really define the lifestyle here. Now I've been really lucky - since I moved to Sacramento we've experienced one of the most delightful summers imaginable. But there have been a couple of hot weeks and I totally see what he means about how the weather defines life here. The cool active mornings, the slow midday and the lively evenings. I also think he's right on when he says we can look at day with a high of 92 (for my European readers, that's about 33 centigrade) and marvel at how cool it will be. It sort of reminds me, in an opposite type way of course, of how when I was growing up in Ireland, we would head to the beach if it got remotely close to 70. That was some hot beach weather then! On a personal level, it's pretty amazing how quickly I've gotten into the if-it's-not-100-it's-almost-chilly mentality. Also, how quickly I've grown to love the shade. It's way different in the shade! And the air conditioning. I believe in A/C!!

There are a couple of things I would also note about how Sacramentans deal with the heat. First is the use of water. When it's hot, I come home from work and get into the pool. I've gotten into the pool at 9 or 10 o'clock. Then you don't even have to worry about the sun. Pools are a big deal. And of course, there's the river. When I drive over the American River, I always glance to see how many people are out on the river. On the weekend, there are hundreds of people, either just hanging out or floating down the river in rafts. I've done it myself. It is so much cooler on the water. And even though you're in the river with crowds of people, it's cool, because, really, everyone is just so nice. I don't know if the heat contributes to it, but people are so friendly here, it rivals Ireland! The first day we went out on the river, we forgot to bring paddles for the raft (well, we were rookies) and someone just gave us one. I am not making this up! He had a spare, and he noticed that we needed it, so he just gave it to us. That would *never* happen in the bay area.

The other thing that the heat brings out is a totally different sense of style. It sort of makes sense, I suppose, it's hot so we dress skimpier. All of us. I'm a 48-year-old grandmother and it's completely acceptable for me to leave the house in short-shorts and a tank top. Admittedly, I'm in decent shape, but hey, other places in the world have rules about that sort of thing. Not here! And the skimpier clothing leads to more display of body art. There probably aren't actually more tattoos per capita here or anything, it just looks like it because they're all on display.

The article also talks about how we lean toward evening activities because of the heat. That's so true. I go listen to live music in the village near my house every Thursday night. I walk down by the river and it is simply full of people biking and walking their dogs, or kids. Restaurants in midtown serve food until the wee hours of the morning. If only we could get a siesta in mid-afternoon, life would be perfect! Maybe that's the way we should be furloughing - a two-hour nap each day.

I don't know how it's going to be in the winter. There may not be sun, there might even be rain! I might even get an early night. But I guess I'll just wait and see.

More progress on the house and yard

2009-07-12T19:33:00.001-07:00

We've been in our house in Fair Oaks for almost a month now, and Gordon continues to make progress especially outside in the yard. Last week, he finished painting the pool. This week, after it sat for 7 days, we were able to fill it and then use it. It took 36 hours to fill it. We got it filled in time for a visit from Dara, Zach, Aidan and Zach's sisters, the twins Ciara and Cheyenne. So, along with Aisling, they spent two days in the pool having a great time. When Dara was pregnant, I bought a child's wetsuit with built in floatation device at a second hand shop. They all made fun of me at the time, questioning when a toddler might use it. But I guess I was right! Aidan wore it into the pool on Friday and Saturday and it worked beautifully. He came down the slide once, and just bounced up to the surface, so it feels very safe to have him in the pool with that on.

I got in the pool with Aisling on Sunday. I must say, it's very relaxing to float around on one of those air mattress loungers. Dara thought it had cupholders, but I didn't find anything that fit a wineglass. Oh well! It also seemed that Aisling enjoys shooting me with the watergun, both when I'm on the air mattress and on the side of the pool. Hmm.

The other major development is the shed. There was an old shed in the back yard. It really needs some serious work. Basically, I think the walls have to come down and be rebuilt. The foundation seems to be okay. Also, it was pretty overgrown with ivy and other trees and vines. So Gordon has been cutting back the growth over the last few days. As he cut back the ivy, he found that there was actually another shed buried under there, connected to the original shed. I would guess it has been buried under the ivy for years. That shed (on the right in the picture) probably needs new walls and a new roof. There were also things in there that had obviously been there for years, including an old crib and bike. However, there is also an old 55-gallon drum full of something, we're not sure what. We're contacting someone with the county's hazmat department before we do anything with it, just in case. But it'll be interesting to see what's in there!

Update from our new home

2009-07-06T07:56:00.001-07:00

Well, we've been moved in for a couple of weeks now, and it's feeling like home! We've unpacked many many boxes. I admit, there are still a ton in the garage, but the house is almost box-free, and furniture is where it should be. I can find all my shoes, clothes and earrings. Not quite there in the kitchen yet, we keep finding things we haven't moved or unpacked, like a can opener, or cooking oil.

We've even had visitors, Nan, Dara, Zach and Aidan have all come up from the bay area, and Maureen and Nate have come over from my office. The cats are completely comfortable here now, Gordon put a new door in with a cat door and they come and go as they please. I'm pretty sure they like the big yard and the neighbor's dogs don't seem to bother them. Saki has always been a big killer and now he is finding more things to kill! Last week, he brought in something that looked like a huge worm to me, however, Gordon told me that it was a small garden snake. Yuck! There definitely are more creepy crawlies here, including the dreaded spiders, but I am choosing to ignore them.

The other major development is the pool. It was quite a mess when we bought the house. We talked to several pool contractors, and we thought we would get it completely refinished. However, the cost for that is pretty high - for the finish that we'd like, it'd probably be close to $10,000. So it sort of came down to a choice between the pool and the roof, so we are going with a new roof. We decided instead to have Gordon clean and paint the pool. What a process! First, it had to be cleaned with TSP, and then acid washed. After washing, it needs to sit for a few days. Then it can be patched in the damaged spots. Then it needs to sit for a few days. Then it needs to be washed with TSP and acid washed again! Then it needs to sit for a few days, and then it can be painted. After that, it needs to sit for a week before it can be filled.

So last week it was getting close to the painting time. I had a business meeting with Women in Technology International in Sacramento, and when I came home at about 9:30, Gordon was in the pool painting. I actually could smell the paint all the way out in the driveway! He thought it would take about three hours, and when I got home, he'd been painting for about an hour and a half and he looked like he was pretty close to halfway done. Boy was that wrong! He had mostly done shallow end, and the deep end is much bigger! He painted until about 5:30 in the morning! But it looks incredible, as you can see from the picture. We are looking forward to filling it up, starting this week. We actually have a pool going on how long it will take to fill up the pool! I have 60 hours.

Now that we're really in Sacramento, we are starting to explore a little more. Nan came up last week, so we took her to lunch at Rick's Dessert Diner. Yum!! We also have spent a lot of time in Fair Oaks with the chickens. And yesterday, we went rafting on the Sacramento River. Nate and Maureen have an inflatable dinghy from their sailboat and the five of us went out in it. We met up at one or so and sailed down the river for about 3 and a half hours. Our theory that people are friendlier in Sacramento was again proven when we realized that we had forgotten paddles, and someone who had a spare paddle just gave it to us. Which was good, because otherwise we would have been up the river without a paddle. Ha ha!!It was a very mild day by Sacramento standards (about 88) when we were out on the river, but it felt even cooler down by the water, so on a hot day, that's going to be fabulous. It is bright and sunny, so lots of sunscreen is the way to go. The journey itself is very relaxing, only one or two "rapids" and even they're pretty lightweight. Lots of people out on the river, all friendly and all in a really good mood, so all in all, a good time!

We're moved!

2009-06-28T20:20:00.001-07:00

At last, after many months, we have moved from the bay area to Sacramento. We've been packing at our house in Hercules since April. Gordon has been working at our house in Fair Oaks since May. But the work that needed to be done before we could move in got completed a week or so ago. He installed new insulation, did some re-wiring, had a painter paint all the rooms (without wood), and had a contractor re-finish all the wood floors. Also, he did lots of out side cleanup and is continuing to work on the pool.

So the movers came to Hercules on Sunday. They arrived at 9 and got the truck all packed up about 4. We got almost all the furniture and boxes in the truck. Gordon packed up his truck and I packed a bunch of things in my car. Aisling and I took one cat and a turtle in my car and Gordon took the other cat in his truck. After we got to Sacramento, the movers were there until about 11 moving furniture and boxes into the house. My goal was to get our beds set up so we could sleep Sunday night, and also to get the big heavy pieces of furniture located. And we did manage to do that, so we could sleep in our beds on Sunday night!

I took off three days during the week and we unpacked and moved furniture around during that time. In addition, Gordon was continuing with some things that weren't quite done, like some light fixtures. The cats and the turtle have completely settled in. The cats love being outside and we haven't lost them yet. Dara, Zach and Aidan came up to visit over the weekend. Zach helped clear more stuff from the garden, and Dara helped unpack the kitchen. Aidan ran around and played with the cats.

So it's great to be all back together all the time. Aisling has started her summer program at Sac State. Gordon will need to finish stuff up at the Hercules house, as we have a new tenant moving in on August 1, which is great news!

ITLP Conference 2009

2009-06-07T17:24:00.000-07:00

I just got back from Chicago where I attended the IT Leader's Program 2nd annual conference. I had a great time. I presented my leadership diary three times - mostly tongue-in-cheek presentations, recalling our various leadership concepts and gently poking fun at them. The third day was spent poking fun at the previous speakers sessions. However, the previous speakers were mostl very good, especially Professor Ronald Burt on Social Networks and how they create advantage and value; Professor Harry Davis on leadership as performance art (I know what you're thinking and you're wrong); and Clarke Stroud Vice President and Dean of Students from the University of Okalahoma on the role that students play in advancing technology. Clarke Stroud was almost (but not quite) as funny as I was and he also gave me tons of material for my final diary - just a lot to revisit and make fun of.

It was also good to reconnect with my ITLP colleagues from around the country. Many of us are dealing with similar issues obviously around budgets and crises caused by security issues. Many of us spent some quality time at a bowling alley in Chicago - great fun!

House update

2009-05-20T22:01:00.000-07:00

It's been a while since I've posted to my blog; just busy I guess. We finally took possession of the house last week. Getting through closing was a really pain in the neck but it finally got done. Now we (and by we I mean Gordon) are spending a lot of time doing work to make it move in ready. Last week, he got a lot of electrical work done so now the house won't be a fire hazard. He also got some new drywall in the laundry room. And now he's focusing on doing some ceiling insulation. That'll take a couple of weeks and then we'll have it painted and have the floors repaired and refinished. In between that, we'll make the pool ready for swimming.

All of this while we pack and move and get our Hercules house ready to rent!

I am thrilled with the house, but I hadn't been there for several weeks until we got the keys last Thursday. There's been some rain in between those two times and the weeds in the very large garden are about five feet tall! That's a lower priority than the house interior, obviously, but it is a mess. We spent the night there Thursday sleeping on the floor. It was so quiet! On Friday the refrigerator and other appliances arrived.

So it's a work in progress. But it's exciting.

A new house!

2009-04-07T23:00:00.001-07:00

So after several days of looking at homes in Sacramento, the offer we place on the first one we bid on was accepted yesterday! Woo-hoo! We have to get it inspected but assuming that it doesn't have some major strucutural issues, we'll close on the house in the beginning of May.

The house is in Fair Oaks, which is a suburb of Sacramento. It's about 15 miles from my office, so a bit of a commute, but the Fair Oaks location is great. It's only a mile from the American River and numerous trails for hiking and biking. It's also very close to Fair Oaks village, a cutesy little village with shops, restaurants etc. Because of the proximity to Fair Oaks village we're actually in walking distance to a pub! The house is on a half acre, so the yard is very big and includes a pool, two decks, and lots of trees. I honestly think there are camp sites out there! The garden does need work, but that doesn't have to be done before we move in. The house itself is very nice, four bedrooms and great living space. It sort of looks like a cabin. Also, even though it's close by stuff, the location feels pretty remote, so that adds to the cabin like feeling.

Once we close, Gordon is going to do a little internal work - mostly painting and new floors. Then we'll move in, do some cleanup on the house in Hercules and rent it. Once we're in, Gordon plans to work on the external stuff, making the garden a beautiful oasis and adding more sheds and workshops for himself.

We're really looking forward to it. It's a great house and garden and in a fabulous location!

House-hunting in Sacramento

2009-03-29T21:09:00.000-07:00

So I am really getting settled in Sacramento and into a routine. I drive up Monday and back on Friday, go to the gym pretty much every day, and have taken some time to get to know the area. I almost know my way around! Sometimes I mess up my routine by going out of town to Southern California, or on vacation to Ireland, but mostly, I'm in a routine. However, being away from Gordon and Aisling during the week is getting old, so I'm looking forward to them moving up here. So it's time to get serious about buying a house. It should be easy, right? There are lots of houses for sale, and we have very stringent requirements - must have a pool, and must be within certain school boundaries. Not so easy!

So since we're serious about buying a house, a couple of weeks ago, Gordon and Aisling came up to Sacramento to spend the weekend. We went out looking at houses on Saturday with our real estate guy, Charles. We looked at lots of homes. A couple of interesting points. First, some houses were just trashed by the people who got foreclosed on. We saw some that had been covered in graffiti, on the inside, in every room! We saw others that had paint poured on the carpets in every single room. We've also seen every glass surface and toilet in the house just smashed up with a hammer.

But we did see a house that we loved, and we put a bid in on it. That was two weeks ago. The other thing we learned is that when there's a bank involved, it doesn't move too fast. One would think that the banks would be anxious to move the properties, but they don't seem to be too worried about responding fast. Oh well. So we went and looked at more homes this weekend. We might have to make two or three offers before we get a home! Stay tuned.

Trip to Ireland and France summary

2009-03-04T18:01:00.001-08:00

Aisling and Helen in Dublin

Last month, we had a great vacation to Dublin, Ireland to visit my family, with a side trip to a town called Carcassonne in France. The photos are posted, of course, on flickr and can be seen here. We had a great time meeting with old friends from college and of course spending a lot of time with family. We also did a little sightseeing in Ireland and a lot of sightseeing in France. As a special bonus, we saw Oasis in concert in France - quite an experience. More detail is posted in my daily blogs below.

Trip to Ireland and France - Final day, Wednesday February 25th

2009-03-01T07:27:00.000-08:00

Wednesday was our last day. We headed to Dublin airport, and caught the direct flight to San Francisco. It was a very smooth trip. The plane was an airbus, so we could select our own movies, which was great, so I watched four movies on the way back since I couldn't sleep, the best of which was probably W, just because Josh Brolin was so good as George W. Bush. We arrived in SFO on time, and then headed home. Dara, Zach and Aidan came over to see us, which was good because we missed them so much, and then I showered, and headed on Bart over to Oakland International airport for a business trip to LA. Another uneventful trip. The weather in LA was just so different to the weather in Ireland and France. I calculated that by the time I got to my hotel in LA, I had been awake for 23 hours. I think that might actually have helped me get over my jet lag! I spent Thursday in LA, flew back to Sacramento and then took Amtrak back to the bay area on Friday evening. Given that I used the bus and light rail to get from my condo to work on Friday, I believe I used every mode of mass transit in this timeframe!

Trip to Ireland and France - Day 13, Tuesday February 24th

2009-03-01T07:07:00.001-08:00

Most of Tuesday was given over to packing for our flight home. However, Gordon and I went to lunch with a friend of mind, Lidia, with whom I worked when I lived in Germany. We drove into town and parked near the South Docks, which has changed so much over the years. In the past, it really wasn't that safe to be in that area, but now it has been heavily developed and is home to the Point, now renamed the O2, a major concert venue in Ireland. We enjoyed walking in that area to see some of the newer buildings. We had lunch with Lidia at Cafe En Seine, on Dawson Street. It's a lovely building. Neither Lidia nor I could remember what it was before we had the boom, when the economy could support restaurants like this! I must say, it had the best bathrooms in Dublin. Gordon wandered out and found an interesting Irish whiskey shop where I am pretty sure they let him taste many shots of whiskey. Lidia is now a PhD student at Trinity, an archaeologist working mostly on digs in Israel. In fact, she had just returned from Israel. She also told me a story about a mutual acquaintance, a German woman who worked with us for the US Army in Germany in the early 80s. Apparently 3 or 4 years after Lidia and I both left Germany, this woman was arrested as an East German spy! That combined with the harp-kidnapping guy would seem to show that I have met some interesting characters in my past!

That evening, we went over to visit even more college friends! It must have been the day for connecting with old friends. Also, all my sisters came over to my mother's house that evening to say goodbye. It was bedlam! There must have been 20 people in the house. But it was very good to see so many friends and family on the trip.

Trip to Ireland and France - Day 12, Monday February 23rd

2009-03-01T06:36:00.001-08:00

Paula and Orla took Aisling out shopping and to a movie, so Gordon, Nan and I went to see some sights in Dublin. This is not Aisling's favorite activity, so it seemed like a good way to go. We decided to go see Dublin Castle. I don't remember ever going to see Dublin Castle when I lived in Ireland, although my Dad told me that he took me there when I was a little girl, I just don't remember. It is a functioning government building, however, and I do remember going here in the early 80s when I worked for IBM in Ireland to hand over a tax check that was due.

There's a lot of history about Dublin Castle. There was a Viking settlement in Dublin and then a Norman settlement later, with the castle being built in 1204 by King John. It apparently burnt down in 1684 in a big fire and was rebuilt then. It was home to the Viceroys of Ireland who represented the monarchs of England until 1922, when we gained our independence. This includes Cornwallis who was made Viceroy of Ireland after he lost a major battle in the American Revolutionary war. I assume it was a demotion. The tour of the castle was excellent and we got to walk through the state apartments, which were used by the viceroys and visiting monarchs and are now used by the Irish government for some state affairs. The most notable event held in the castle now is the swearing-in of the president of Ireland. Some of the major items of interest include: the James Connolly room, where Irish rebel James Connolly was treated for a gunshot by the British (who had turned the castle into a hospital) so that he could be executed for his part in the Easter Rising of 1916; a mirror from Versailles, one of two that were stolen following the French Revolution (the other one's in Munich) and somehow ended up as the headboard on the bed of some wealthy Irish farmer, before being sold from his estate to a collector for the princely sum of 5 pounds; a huge throne built for the very large King George the IV when he was visiting and which had six inches of it's legs sawed off by the very petite Queen Victoria when she had to use it; some of the original Norman and Viking walls which were re-discovered in 1986 when the River Poddle flooded, leading to the destruction of a building on the site.

Before we went through the State Apartments, we had a little time to kill so we visited two smaller museums in the castle. One is a museum to Revenue Collectors, which I found to be hilarious. It included displays of contraband seized by revenue collectors, including knock-off Gucci bags and much drug paraphernalia. It also displayed a special toilet used by revenue collectors to help in the "collect evidence" from suspected drug mules. The second museum was a museum to the Irish police force, the Garda Siochana. I thought that was pretty boring, but it was in the remaining Norman Tower, the records tower, so it was worth going in to take a look at the tower itself.

We had lunch at a little restaurant called Gruel, and then headed down to Trinity College to see the Long Hall, Book of Kells and the oldest harp in Ireland, which is often connected erroneously with King Brian Boru, who died at the battle of Clontarf in 1014. However, the harp itself is "only" 500 or 600 years old, so it actually isn't Brian Boru's harp. The image of the harp is used in much of Ireland's official documents etc. and also on our currency. When we got home, my father reminded me that in the 1970s, it was stolen and held for ransom by the IRA, and that one of the ringleaders of this crime was my swimming teacher when I was a little girl!

That evening, we went to dinner at the home of some college friends of mine. They live in a lovely old late Victorian or Edwardian house on the South Circular Road. We had a nice time reminiscing about college. When we left, we had some excitement with the rental car. The clutch and transmission had apparently been treated pretty badly by renters, and it really had a hard time going into reverse. Getting out of our parking spot, we held up a couple of taxis while we got out of our parking spot!

Trip to Ireland and France - Day 11, Sunday February 22nd

2009-03-01T06:25:00.000-08:00

We spent Sunday out in Skerries, a village on the outskirts of Dublin where my sister Orla and her family live. I think almost the whole family was there, nearly 20 people! We ate lunch at Orla's, which was great, but mostly we wanted to see her house, which had been seriously renovated since we had last been home. It's very common in Ireland for people to buy homes and then add on to them over the years. Her extension resulted in a huge kitchen, with lots of space to cook, eat and gather, as the kitchen is the main gathering spot in Irish homes.

Skerries is right on the coast, so after lunch we all went out to walk on the beach. There is a stony beach to the north and a sandy beach to the south with the old village more or less in between the two (Orla and Joe live in a newer part of Skerries). It was cold, of course, but it was a very nice walk. There are several small islands off the coast, including one that my father tells me was briefly inhabited by hippies, who left because there were too many rats. But they wanted to go back, so they released 50 cats on the island to kill the rats, but when they came back several weeks later, there were only a dozen or so cats left. Yuck!

Trip to Ireland and France - Day 10, Saturday February 21st

2009-03-01T06:15:00.001-08:00

After the very busy week, we had a quiet day. We spent most of the day at home, although we took Aisling shopping (again) and to play football in a nearby field. That evening, Gordon and I went to the Laughter Lounge, a comedy club, with Paula, Hubert and Orla. There were four comedians plus the MC, and it was hilarious. We thought we might have to translate some jokes for Gordon, but there were just a couple of words that he wasn't familiar with. There were lots of jokes about the recession, Barack Obama (well, not so much Obama himself, more people's reactions to him), and of course, about getting drunk. After the show we went to a pub called MacTorcaills.

With our quiet day, we missed a big event in Dublin. Apparently over 100,000 people showed up for a protest march, expressing their displeasure with the current state of the economy and the government's handling of the situation, including what many people see as a fairly lax response to questionable or even likely criminal behavior by banks during the boom. The example most under discussion while we were there was Anglo Irish Bank, the details of which can be found in a Wall Street Journal article.

Trip to Ireland & France, Day 9, Friday February 20th

2009-02-28T17:19:00.000-08:00

Friday was a travel day, going back from Carcassonne to Dublin. We sent Aisling out to the Boulangerie to buy us baguettes (she had been doing that most days) and we ate as many of our leftovers as we could. However, each of the wrinklies packed some contraband in their carryons. Nana had cheese and Nan had salmon. Not to mention the bottle of wine we packed in Nan's luggage. We headed to the airport and had an uneventful flight back to Ireland. Once there, we did a little shopping with Nana as we were pretty much out of food. Gordon always enjoys visiting supermarkets in other countries. After we had dinner that night, we went over to Harold's Cross to enjoy the greyhound racing. Aisling bet on the first race and won 20 euros, which pretty much financed her gambling for the rest of the night. My next door neighbors came, and won on every single race. I usually picked my bet by the description of the dog in the printed program. I especially enjoyed the descriptions that went "experienced bitch" or "tenacious bitch" and I always bet on them. However, I never won anything!

We took a taxi home through the city and Dublin is definitely hopping on a Friday night. It's full of people. The cab driver complained bitterly about how his business has suffered because of the recession and also because of recent deregulation, but it didn't look to me like the recession was impacting how much people were going out at night.

Trip to Ireland & France, Day 8, Thursday February 19th

2009-02-28T16:07:00.000-08:00

Thursday was our last full day in France, so we decided to spend it down in the Ville Basse. We thought it was a little far for the wrinklies to walk, so Gordon and I walked and we sent Aisling and the wrinklies in a cab. We arranged to meet at the McDonalds, just because you sort of can't miss it, it's right across from La Gare. I got coffee in McDonalds, and it was pretty good. Also, the bathroom in McDonalds was great! We spent a long time in McDs as the grandmothers decided to go shopping before meeting us! They showed up wearing new hats and scarves to help them stay warm. We walked into the main square in Ville Basse, where there was a market, but we got there a little late, and we missed most of the market, which seems to sell mostly produce and cheese and meet. We had lunch at a little restaurant on the square and then we split up and arranged to meet at the same cafe later in the afternoon.

Aisling and I went shopping. Aisling was wearing a Barack Obama campaign button, and that really made her very popular. We went into Sephora, and they actually gave us free stuff! We also went to the Monoprix, as Aisling wanted to buy French chocolate. She also bought french makeup and went to a cheap french clothes shop and bought some french clothes! We then headed back to the cafe to meet the others. The wrinklies were late. Apparently they went to the coiffure and got their hair done. They also reported that they had gotten capuccinos, and they had never seen so much cream on a capuccino before.

We decided to buy food at the Monprix and eat at the hotel. We ate baguettes, salmon, cheese, pate, and Aisling had a steak. We also *had* to drink two bottles of wine from the winery since we couldn't take it on the plane! After dinner, Gordon and I went for a nighttime stroll to the Ville Basse. I hadn't gotten to see Cathedral St. Michel in the Ville Basse, so we walked by both cathedrals in the town and enjoyed how they looked from the outside. We also found one of the two Irish pubs (although we didn't go in). On the way back, we passed the museum which was beautifully illuminated at night. The town was pretty lively at night but we just went back to the hotel rather than go clubbing!

Trip to Ireland & France, Day 7, Wednesday February 18th

2009-02-28T15:47:00.000-08:00

After the long day Gordon and I let Aisling and the wrinklies sleep late and we headed to return the rental car. The car rental office itself was closed, but we turned it back inside La Gare. We then headed back to the hotel and met the others to head up to La Cite for the day. It was great. We walked the shorter, but somewhat steep way. We wandered around the , the moat and battlements, enjoyed the daytime view of the Ville Basse. Once we got up to La Cite, Nan and Nana stopped for coffee and Gordon, Aisling and I went to La Maison Hantee, the Haunted House. It was very scary, but all the ghosts spoke french so I'm not really sure what I was afraid of. It was a unique experience, you wandered from room to room as the doors automatically opened for you and then people jumped out and scared you in French.

We then headed up to the castle and did the tour. We learned a lot about Carcassonne and the castle. Some highlights. The town is supposedly named after Mme. Carcass. When the town was under siege, after several months of siege she had the bright idea to have a pig killed in view of the attackers (under the command of a french king). The attackers then concluded that if they were killing pigs for no good reason, then they must have lots of food and could hold out for months, so they retreated. As they left, Mme Carcassonne had all the bells in the city rung, and one of the retreating warriors said that "Mmm Carcass sonne". Sonne means rings. The tour also explained the winds, the cold one that we experienced while we were there is called the "cers". The town was restored beginning in the 19th century. The towers on the wall are from several different time periods, including some Roman towers, which are "u" shaped. While it was in operation, the castle would have had wooden walkways built, so there were a couple of these walkways built so that we could see what they were like. They had slits in the floor, called murder holes, where the defending soldiers could throw object like stones or arrows at attackers making there way forward. Apparently, nobody ever threw boiling oil or water - this is just a myth - as oil and water were just too precious. It was an interesting tour, but walking along the top of the castle was cold!

After we were done in the castle, we also went to the the church in La Cite, formerly a cathedral, the Cathedral de St. Nazaire. It was much smaller than the cathedral in Toulouse. But it had very nice stained glass. The old part of the cathedral was freezing! The walls were several feet thick, and that seemed to hold in the cold for us. We wanted to visit the hotel de la Cite, the fancy hotel there, which we heard was beautiful. However, it was actually closed until March 6th, so we didn't get to see it.

That night, we ate dinner in a little restaurant in La Cite. It was in a most interesting building. The bathroom was very bizarre, very low ceiling and very tiny. I don't believe it would have met anyone's ADA requirements. We ordered steak, which was cooked on a wood fire in the dining room. There was live music, mostly Spanish singers and guitar players. Our waitress was a very friendly Scottish woman from Glasgow. All in all, it was one of our best meals in France.

Trip to Ireland and France, Day 6, Tuesday February 17th

2009-02-28T13:30:00.000-08:00

Before we came on our trip, Aisling discovered that my favorite rock band, Oasis, was performing in Toulouse while we were in France. Toulouse is only about an hour from Carcassonne so we decided to buy tickets and head to the concert. Carcassonne is small, so a car is unnecessary, but for the trip to Toulouse we rented a car for the day. Gordon and I walked over the the train station (La Gare) in Ville Basse and rented a Peugeot. So after getting used to driving on the left in Ireland, Gordon had to switch to driving on the right again, although with roundabouts! The walk to La Gare was pretty fun as we got more of a sense of what the Ville Basse was like, the churches, shopping etc. We did stop in a chocolatier and buy some chocolate snacks!

We headed back to the hotel and picked up Nan, Nana and Aisling. The plan was to drive to Toulouse, do some sightseeing, drop Nan and Nana off at a restaurant while Gordon, Aisling and I headed to the concert. However, we decided to make a couple of stops on the way (okay, slightly out of the way) to Toulouse. Carcassonne is in an area of France known as "cathar country". Apparently, the Cathars were a religious group persecuted by French catholics in the 12th and 13th centuries. So all the towns have significant Cathar history, including churches, castles etc. There are so many towns to pick from and sights to see, it's hard to choose where to go! But we decided to go to a town called Lastours, which is the home to the remains for four castles, built up very high on ridges and mountains in the Black Mountains for protection. Lastours apparently welcomed the Cathars and paid for this later when the French kings destroyed the castles.

It took us a little while to get our directions straight, but once we were out of Carcassonne on the way to Lastours it was a very nice drive on older French roads, very picturesque. It didn't take long to get to Lastours, a very pretty little town. One of the ruined castles was visible from the road. We followed the road to try to get up to the castles, however, that's not possible, so we turned around and came back to the town. It's very lovely, small with a river running through it and lovely old buildings. It's in a valley with the castles looking down on it. We stopped for lunch in a friendly little restaurant with great food. By this time we've gotten totally used to "le menu" the three course meal, with a glass of wine. After lunch, we headed up to the viewpoint, or the belvedere, where there's a fabulous view of the castles. It was fabulous. So we took some photos and then headed out of Lastours, back down the French country road to the motorway.

We decided to stop on the way at a little winery, Salitis. We pulled in and it said they were "ouvert" but it seemed pretty deserted. The sign said ring the bell and we'll come out. So we did, and out came the owner of the winery, a french woman. She brought us into the tasting room, which was very informal, and she spent a great deal of time talking to Nan and Gordon about the winery. Apparently, it's been in her family for four generations, and all the owners are women. She gave us several types of wine to taste - Chardonnay, Sauvignon Blanc, merlot and dessert wine - and even Aisling got to taste. We bought four bottles of wine, none of them over 7 euros, and headed on our way to Toulouse.

Before we left California, I had printed a google map directing us from Carcassonne to the venue of the Oasis concert, Le Zenith, in Toulouse. I had intended to buy a map of Toulouse before we headed there, but I was unable to find one in Dublin or Carcassonne. We wanted to stop at some of the sights of Toulouse and needed a map for that, but we headed toward Le Zenith and figured we'd just get one there. So off we went, and followed the google map. Unfortunately, Le Zenith is near the Toulouse airport, in a fairly industrial neighborhood so we were a little concerned about finding a place for Nan and Nana, who somehow had now given themselves the nickname "the wrinklies". So we drove around a little bit, and finally found a store. I went in and in my very bad accent asked for a map of Toulouse. The guy went behind the counter, dug in a drawer and handed me a map, which he said was a little out of date and so he gave it to me as a gift. Who says the French are unfriendly? He was delightful. I studied the map, and figured out where the big cathedral, St. Etienne, was, and we headed toward it. We headed across a lovely bridge, Pont St. Michel, along a big boulevard toward "le grande rond" (the big roundabout), which was big, and we parked near St. Etienne. This was clearly the nicer part of Toulouse - fancy shops, nice bars and restaurants, and of course the cathedral. St. Etienne is a 12th and 13th century cathedral. It's quite large, beautiful stained glass, lots of ornate side altars and a huge organ. The city of Toulouse in that area is very beautiful, very attractive architecture and cute little windy streets. We toured the cathedral, walked the area, and set the wrinklies up in a coffee shop, found a restaurant for them for dinner, and a bar for after dinner, and then we headed to the concert.

We drove over to Le Zenith and parked in the lot, which was free! We then decided to eat at a food truck, where they were grilling sausages and burgers. I ordered a "burger americain". It was a baguette, with the burger cut in half and put in there like a sandwich, with chips (french fries) on top! The burger may have seen the grill for about 30 seconds or so. It was definitely rare! We then went on into Le Zenith. It was open seating, so we found a good spot and waited for the show. The opening band, Three Piece from Liverpool, was sort of boring. But then Oasis came on, and they were fabulous. They played lots of my favorites and they were really great.

After the show, we headed back over to the center of Toulouse to meet up with the wrinklies. I was a little worried about leaving them, but I needn't have been worried. We found them in a bar. Apparently, they had had a couple of gin and tonics, a half bottle of wine with dinner and two aneracs (a type of brandy) and were having a grand old time. So we more or less poured them into the car and drove back to Carcassonne.

Trip to Ireland & France, Day 5, Monday February 16th

2009-02-28T13:10:00.000-08:00

This was the beginning of our France trip, so the group of us - Nan, Nana, Gordon, Aisling and me - headed off early to Dublin Airport for our flight to Carcassonne on the very no-frills airline, Ryanair. We obeyed their very specific rules about the dimensions of our single carry-on bag. The flight was full but went smoothly and we arrived in Carcassonne on time. On our descent, we got a fabulous view of Carcassonne. This is the oldest medieval walled city in Europe, restored in the 19th century, and it looks magnificant from the air. When we got off the plane, I think the first thing we noticed was that it was much colder than we anticipated. I think temperature wise, it was okay, but there was an extremely cold wind. This is because Carcassonne is in a valley in between the Pyrenees and the Black Mountains and it's sort of a wind tunnel.

We took a shuttle to our hotel, the Citea Carcassonne. It's an "aparthotel" meaning the rooms are meant to be more like apartments and we were really pleased. The rooms had large living areas and very well-equipped kitchens. Carcassonne is divided into two distinct towns, the old medieval city, called La Cite, and the newer city, called Ville Basse. They're spearated by the Aude river. Our hotel was on the La Cite side of the river, just outside the walls, and close to the older bridge, Pont Vieux, which is a walking bridge only. So once we were settled we decided to head out for some lunch. We headed across the Pont Vieux to Ville Basse. The views of La Cite from Pont Vieux are fabulous, so we took lots of photos. But we really felt the wind on the bridge and we were pretty much freezing to death.

Of course, it was about two by then, and we forgot that many French establishments serve lunch, then close for a few hours before opening again for dinner. So we weren't having a lot of luck finding something, until we were directed to a restauranct called La Salle du Dome near and old dome. That restaurant is open "toute l'heures". They were only serving one dish - Cassoulet, a local speciality. It's a stew made of duck, sausage and white beans, and given how cold we were and how warm and tasty it was, it was perfect.

After lunch we headed back across the Pont Vieux to La Cite. La Cite is on the top of a hill and it's a pretty steep walk. We weren't sure that the mothers were going to make it! But somehow they did. We came in through the Norbonne gate. It is very touristy, full of little shops catering to tourists, but at this time of year, there aren't so many tourists, so it felt fine. Even with the commercialism, it is an amazing place. The city walls, the fifty plus towers on the walls, the little cobbled streets, and the quaint buildings are all very nice. We just wandered around La Cite and didn't visit the castle of the church. We stopped for coffee and crepes in one of the many little establishments before heading back to the room. We stopped on the way back at a little grocery and at a boulangerie and bought lots of food including cheese, pate, baguettes, wine, meats and coffee for the morning. We spent the evening playing cards and snacking and drinking wine. It was great!

After we were done snacking, Gordon and I went out for an evening walk. La Cite is lit up at night, and it looks beautiful. We also found an easier way into La Cite from our hotel and we walked around the wall and battlements. There is a fabulous view of the Ville Basse and the rest of Carcassonne from La Cite. Some of the restaurants were still open, we could hear the music coming from them. Other than that, it wasn't that lively, probably because of the time of year, so it was easy for Gordon and me to just wander around. It was cold, but it is definitely worth walking around La Cite at night.

Trip to Ireland & France, Day 4, Sunday February 15th

2009-02-28T12:56:00.000-08:00

Most of Sunday was spent getting ready for our trip to Carcassonne in France, although Aisling managed to get her cousin Sarah to take her shopping to the Pennys in Swords, where she bought three pairs of shoes at three euros each. We also went to lunch at Bewley's hotel near the airport. I used to work for Bewley's cafe in the center of Dublin when I was a student, and the menu has changed a little. But as always, there is tea. Most of my family went to lunch, so we werer a group of 15 or so. After lunch Gordon and I went over to Paula and Hubert's where Gordon got to ride Hubert's honda shadow motorcycle, which apparently came from Sacramento! I think he managed to stay on the left side of the road.

Sunday evening, we played cards again and then Gordon and I went out for a little while to a local pub, the Sheaf o' Wheat. There was "live" music. Two guys with guitars and a backing track. Of course, Irish people will dance to any sort of music, so there was much dancing. Gordon got to observe the Irish phenomenen of two men dancing together. That's perfectly acceptable in a straight establishment, after all, it's only dancing. On the way home, we stopped at a local chipper so that Gordon could experience post-pub Irish cuisine. I had a spiceburger, which is a burger made primarily of breadcrumbs as far as I can tell (I'm not saying there's no meat, there just isn't much) and various spices. It's then deep-fried. I love them! Gordon had a battered sausage, which is a fully-cooked Irish pork sausage dipped in a flour batter and then deep-fried. Yum!

Trip to Ireland and France, Day 3, Saturday February 14th

2009-02-28T12:38:00.000-08:00

Thankfully, Gordon was feeling much better on Saturday, so the four of us - me, Gordon, Aisling and Nan - headed up to a beautiful place in the Wicklow mountains, Glendalough. We met Orla, Joe and the kids, Colm and Daniel, up there.

This was Gordon's first long drive since we got to Ireland. He did well with driving on the left, and with the roundabouts. There are lots of motorways in Ireland that have been built recently, so it makes driving out of Dublin much easier. We took the M50 motorway, which is actually a toll road, into County Wicklow, and then got off onto older country roads close to Glendalough. We drove through two little towns, Lara and Roundwood. We stopped in Lara and picked up some lunch in the grocery store. Gordon and I had the Irish culinary treat, a sausage roll. Nan bought a little bottle of wine to eat with lunch, which she proceeded to open in the car, which is illegal even in Ireland. We headed up to Glendalough and parked, and waited for Orla and Joe.

Glendalough, which translated from Ireland means "glen of the two lakes" is an old monk "city" in the Wicklow mountains. It's a great spot as it is both naturally beautiful being relatively high up in the Wicklow mountains and it has the two beautiful lakes, and it is historically interesting as it has churches, cemeteries and a round tower, which date from the 11th century on. Also, there was actually snow on the mountains, which is quite unusual in Ireland, as we get very little snow, and our higher elevations aren't actually that high (under 2000 feet in the Wicklow mountains, for example). We walked along the trails, and first visited the cemetery, church and round tower. It is fascinating looking at old gravestones, and many of these dated back to the 17th and 18th centuries. Naturally, some were pretty weatherbeaten, but we could read the inscriptions on many. The Round Tower is interesting too. The door is about 15-20 feet off the ground, and that serves two purposes. First, the monks stored treasures in the Round Tower, so it was harder for local people to break in and steal things if the tower itself was pretty inaccessible. Secondly, if they were attacked by invaders, the monks would climb the ladded up to the door, then pull it up and try to wait out the invaders.

The two lakes are very lovely, and the trails around them are very nice, with some small waterfalls. There's a larger waterfall on the opposite side of the upper lake, but that's quite a hike and with all the kids, we just couldn't take it on. But we enjoyed the scenery on our walk . The river was flowing pretty fast, probably due to the snow, and Aisling enjoyed leaning over and drinking some of the very clear water from it.

When we were finished at Glendalough, we headed back to Roundwood and had lunch/dinner at the Roundwood Inn. It was very good, Gordon had venison and Aisling had duck. We didn't see Bono there, however (apparently he's a regular). We headed home, and Aisling spent the night with her cousins, while Gordon and I went to visit my sister Paula and her husband Hubert. Paula's mother-in-law, Breda, who is quite a character, was there, and regaled us with stories from her past, claiming to be related to the well-known Irish rebel, Harry Boland. (google him)

Trip to Ireland and France, Day 2, Friday February 13th

2009-02-28T12:02:00.000-08:00

Gordon was still sick on Friday and not really able to do much. However, Nan, Aisling and I took the bus into town to wander around and go shopping. Aisling loves to go upstairs on the bus when she's in Ireland, so of course we did so. When we got into town, we were hungry so we went and had lunch at the Kylemore. As usual in Ireland, we drink tons of tea, and we continued with that tradition at the Kylemore. We shopped in Penny's, Ireland's cheap store. Aisling loves cheap stores. While we were in Penny's some local people heard Nan's accent, and stopped her to tell her how much they love Barack Obama. We also stopped at a bookstore called Eason's (the best in Dublin) and a second hand bookstore. We then walked along the river Liffey along the quays. We crossed over the river on the ha'penny bridge and went to Templebar, the area crammed with bars and restaurants. There was nothing in that area when I was young and living in Ireland and now it's a really lively area, but it's expensive. We had coffee and snacks and then headed back over to the bus stop to go home. We crossed O'Connell bridge, the busiest bridge in Dublin. Dublin has a lot of statues, and at the end of O'Connell Bridge, there is a statue of Daniel O'Connell. Daniel's head appears to be very popular with the seagulls. There was constantly a seagull on his head, which Nan really enjoyed, and photographed repeatedly. Aisling really enjoyed one of the ads on the side of the bus. It was for her favorite TV program, House, and the ad said "Meet the doctor whose a pain in the ass". She thought that was hysterical.

We just spent the night at home, playing cards, Aisling's favorite activity. We stayed up a little later, apparently getting more onto Irish time.

Trip to Ireland and France, Day 1, Weds & Thurs Feb 11 & 12

2009-02-28T11:51:00.000-08:00

We got started on our trip by flying directly from San Francisco to Dublin. This is the first time we've done this, in the past, there wasn't a direct flight and we had to go through LA. This is so much better! One clear sign of the recession was how quiet the international terminal felt (although admittedly this was a Wednesday, probably a slower day). Another sign is that our flight was nowhere near full. We walked right up to the checkin, no line at all. We ate lunch at SFO, Aisling and Gordon played chess in the airport, and then we headed to the plane. It was an uneventful flight. The extra seats meant that Aisling could lie down and get some sleep. I didn't sleep much, instead suffered through three of the worst in-flight movies ever, Nights in Rodanthe, Igor and City of Embers.

We left on Wednesday, lost eight hours and arrived on Thursday morning. It was grey and chilly. My sister Orla met us at the airport. She took Nan an Aisling and much of the luggage to my mother's while Gordon and I went to get the rental car from Hertz. What an ordeal that was. I look at the nametag of the person who was helping us, a very nice guy, but I was a little perturbed that his name was "trainee". Slowly, he got us our car and walked us out there, when he noticed a wire hanging from underneath the car. He tried to re-connect and couldn't and got someone else to try to reconnect it also, but he couldn't. So he went in to get us a new car, which seemed to take a while. When he finally brought us our paperwork, I noticed that the price for the new car was about 1,000 euros higher than what I paid for the first one. Not okay! So we went in to get that fixed. Poor little trainee guy couldn't fix it, so he called his supervisor, who also couldn't fix it, and eventually it had to be fixed by the manager (or at least some guy in a suit). So after an hour or so, we finally got our car, a Toyota Avensia (sort of like a Camry) and headed to my mother's house. I think they thought we just got lost on the way as it took us so long.

When we got there, we met my newest nephew, Daniel, Orla's son. He was very cute and he likes the same games that my grandson Aidan likes, so he seemed to warm up to us right away. We also met my newest great-nephew, Lewie, the son of my niece Hannah. He warmed up to Aisling very fast because she plays football (or soccer for Americans). We decided to have a fairly unambitious day. Gordon and I took Aisling down to the Omniplex, where she and I skated on their indoor ice rink, quite possibly the worst ice rink I've ever been on! But it was good to get up and move around. We headed home, ordered Chinese takeout for dinner and went to bed early. Unfortunately, it was an eventful night, as the food, or maybe the travel, didn't seem to agree with Gordon and he was sick for most of the night.

My upcoming trip

2009-02-08T19:28:00.000-08:00

Starting this week, I have a crazy travel schedule between vacation and work. Tomorrow I'll be driving from the bay area to to Sacramento, then drive back to the bay area on Tuesday. On Wednesday, we'll fly from San Francisco to Dublin, then later on we'll fly from Dublin to Carcassonne, then Carcassonne to Dublin, then Dublin to San Francisco, then I'll cross the bay and fly from Oakland to Los Angeles the same day. The following day, I'll fly back to Sacramento and the day after that, I drive back to the bay area. Then I'll probably collapse for the weekend!

So probably no blog posts while I'm gone but lots when I get back!

The Inauguration

2009-01-21T17:10:00.001-08:00

To say that yesterday was a huge day in American history is a bit of an understatement. Obama's swearing-in is an indication of how far the country has come. Plenty of other more eloquent writers than me are talking about what this means, so I will instead just talk about how the day made me feel, and how it moved me.

If you read my blog, or know me, you know that I've just moved to a new job at Sac State. My current commute/living arrangements are that I live in a condo in Sacramento M-F and go home on weekends, so I drive up to Sacramento from the bay area, about 90 minutes, on Monday morning. This week because of the holiday - Martin Luther King's birthday - I drove up on Tuesday. Of course, celebrating Dr. King on day and President Obama the next was an incredible, almost surreal, feeling. On my drive to Sacramento, I tuned my radio to KQED and listened to the coverage. They described the scene in Washington, people arriving as early as 3 a.m. just to be there; people being in a joyous mood in spite of the bitter cold; people talking about driving over 24 hours just to get to Washington DC. The reporters interviewed many of these individuals, and the comments almost moved me to tears. The hope and joy was so apparent. For me, driving toward Sacramento, across a causeway, as the sun was coming up on a beautiful day, it was really wonderful to hear those positive thoughts.

After I arrived at work, a group of us went over to the University Union to watch the inauguration on TV. In my life, I can only remember two other times when I gathered around the TV in the workplace with my colleagues. They were for the OJ Simpson verdict and for 9/11 coverage. How different this was to either of them! The scene we watched was amazing, the sheer number of people on the mall, the wonder and amazement in their faces, the reaction to the speakers. I thought it was interesting, but not surprising, that the response to Rick Warren was so muted, especially when we was followed by the fabulous Aretha Franklin! Of course, Obama's speech was amazing - full of hope, but full of reality too! It was hard to not be moved by the moment.

I have lived in America for 25 years. I have always been careful to let people know that I am not American. That's really a typical anti-American snobbery that you see in many Europeans, somehow we think we're better that Americans. And when you look at the govenment we have had in this country recently, it's hard to argue with that sentiment. However, yesterday, and again today, I am proud to live in America. I would be proud to be an American. I never dreamed I would say that, even when Bill Clinton was president, and I have always been a supporter of Bill Clinton. But this is different. With all due respect to Clinton, Obama is more than just a politician. It's hard to remember that he is just the president, and not a messiah. The expectations are so high, but there is such a feeling of goodwill toward Obama in the country that it feels as if we are in it with him. A "new era of responsibility" resonated with us.

Some of my favorite web postings today include:

Crowds watching the inauguration on Sproul Plaza in Berkeley
The Daily Kos Inauguration Coverage
Sacramentans watch the Inauguration

Day 2 at CSU

2009-01-13T17:39:00.001-08:00

Another incredibly warm day in Sacramento! Is the weather always like this, or did they order it just for me? After a good commute on Monday, I got lost on my way to work today - really just in getting onto the Sac State campus - and I now realize I need to carry a Sac State map in my car too! Hopefully I won't get lost going home. I am meeting more and more people here at Sac State and getting a sense of the issues I should be dealing with - performance of CMS and bringing the Data Warehouse along. I also got keys to my office today, which is good, since I got locked out of my office last night!

I checked out the 24 Hour Fitness in Citrus Heights last night. It is big and crowded!!! I am not sure how well I will like this particular gym, but I am going to give it another try tonight.

Warriors vs. Kings tomorrow. Who should I root for?

First day at CSU

2009-01-12T17:48:00.000-08:00

Today (January 12th) was my first day at CSU Sacramento. I moved into my shared condo last night. I have made friends with the cat, and I know how to get to work. I plan to try out the gym near the condo shortly.

The highlights of the day at Sac State:
- People seem to be very nice and friendly
- I have a beautiful office
- There is traffic but it appears to move at the speed limit (unlike the bay area)
- I know where to get coffee and food
- Speaking of food, I was the judge at the chili cookoff
- I was able to get my photo id and parking pass on my first day!

More later

Moving to Sacramento

2008-11-29T17:45:00.000-08:00

Last week, I interviewed for a position at Cal State University, Sacramento, or Sacramento State University. They quickly made me an offer and I accepted. So I will be moving to the position of Associate Vice President for Administrative Computing at Sac State. I am very excited - the job plays to my strengths, focusing on Peoplesoft, Data Warehousing and other administrative initiatives, and gives me a great opportunity for change without a very dramatic move. Even though we will move to Sacramento, we will still be in very close proximity to Dara, Zach and Aidan and to Nan. I was obviously interested in the job when I applied, but became even more swayed when I got to Sac State. Some of the things I liked: Seems like there's a focus on students, the campus is very nice and very walkable (i.e. flat), the IT organization seems to have a very positive energy, and the budget issues seem more manageable.

On a personal level, I will likely commute from the bay area to Sacramento starting in January until about June, when Aisling gets out of school, planning to move then. We need to meet with realtors and mortgage agents to figure out if we can maintain our two homes here, renting them out, while buying something in Sacramento. Aisling is very excited about the move. Her top priority seems to be to get us to buy a house with a pool. Gordon's top priority for a house is the garage, and of course, mine is closet space! And air conditioning. It's way hotter in Sacramento than it is here. It'll really be interesting to see how the cats do when we move them, especially Saki. That cat is loony! I can't even imagine being in the car with him for the hour and a half drive to Sacramento, let alone keeping him in a new house for a couple of days while he acclimates to the area.

So stay tuned! As plans unfold, I will update my blog.

Halloween Photos

2008-11-02T07:28:00.000-08:00

Friday was Halloween, always one of my favorite holidays. This year, of course, the holiday comes close to what is certainly the most exciting election since I've been in the U.S. Exciting and important and also with interesting characters. So it's not a surprise that the candidates and other election-related people (i.e. Joe the Plumber) showed up at Halloween parties. At my job, I planned with several of my colleagues to have multiple Sarah Palins show up, and we did. There were four of us. See photos here.

So now to my story about the photos. I have been using flickr for a long time now. I love flickr. And I like it even more because I get a flickr pro account for free, somehow related to my home internet account. So I use flickr not just so share photos, but basically I upload all my digital photos to flickr as a way to have them backed up. So I am constantly uploading photos to flickr, because I am sort of obsessive about making sure they're backed up. Then a few months ago, my colleague and friend David Greenbaum showed me a feature on flickr that I didn't know about, the statistics. If you're a flickr user and don't know about the stats, I highly recommend that you get to know them! Basically, you can click on your statistics and see how many people have viewed which photos, both for the previous day and for all time. I think you get to your statistics under the "You" link. Since David showed me this feature, I have been absolutely obsessed with my stats on flickr. I view them daily, actually sometimes more than daily. I view them on my phone on the bus on the way home. My kids tease me about it unmercifully. But I like to see which of my photos are popular!

Also, over the last couple of years, a few of my photos have been "discovered" by random people on flickr, who then email me and ask me if I can add my photo to their group. For example, the American Red Cross added a photo of my daughter at the annual Red Cross run in San Francisco to their American Red Cross group. Now I'm friends with the American Red Cross and see new photos of disasters as soon as they post them, which is kind of cool. I've also had a photo added to the International Talk Like a Pirate Day group, an Oakland Coliseum group and a Canadian Flag group.

So what does all of this have to do with Halloween? Well, I came home from work and immediately posted my Sarah Palin lookalike photos to flickr. (Another obsession of mine, the photos usually get published as soon as I have access to a computer). Within an hour, I got a request to add them to a "Sarah Palin on Halloween" group, which I of course accepted. You can see the whole group here, it's pretty funny. Then I started to notice something. I started to see an incredible number of views of my Halloween photos! By the end of the day, I had over 700 views of my photos. My top 10 most viewed photos on flickr over time now includes 9 Sarah Palin photos and one old one, a large man wearing a thong at the Bay to Breakers. That one has thousands of hits. It somehow got posted on a site that shows naked people at the Bay to Breakers. But I was just amazed at the popularity of these photos! Flickr is amazing.

No on 8!

2008-10-22T20:30:00.000-07:00

As you may know, California recently legalized gay marriage. It took a long time and lots of legal action, but it's here! I have been at numerous weddings and celebrations since the law took effect, and it's great to see people be able to celebrate their relationships.

In the upcoming elections, there's a ballot measure, Proposition 8, to outlaw gay marriage. As a good liberal, I am naturally opposed to Proposition 8. And Proposition 8 could easily pass. I have noticed in the last couple of weeks a few "Yes on 8" signs around Hercules, where I live. Aisling saw them and wanted to deface them. But as a good proponent of free speech and general not-troublemaker, I told her that she couldn't. Instead, I told her that we would get our own yard signs opposing Proposition 8. So I called my friend who is active in an organization called Marriage Equality USA and got a couple of yardsigns. I put one in our yard and planned to give some to other friends.

So last Saturday, I was invited to a friend's wedding. These friends happen to be gay. It was a really nice wedding, you can see my photos of flickr. I brought the remaining signs to the wedding, put one in their yard, gave one to someone else. We had a good time at the wedding - great food, wine and weather - and then headed home. When we got home, the No on 8 yardsign had been stolen from our yard! Someone wanted to restrict my free speech! I just think it's ironic that the sign was stolen when I was actually at a gay wedding! It's a right-wing conspiracy.

So the moral of the story is that Prop 8 could pass. So if you vote in California, get out and vote against it!

Dara's Birthday Celebration

2008-09-13T07:33:00.001-07:00

Dara's Birthday Celebration,
originally uploaded by Helen Norris.

It was Dara's birthday on Monday, so on Sunday evening we went out to dinner at Outback Steakhouse. We had a great time, consumed a blooming onion or whatever it's called (a whole deep fried onion) before we even started our meals. I gave Dara a hard time about Sunday being her last day as a teenager. Zach, of course, knew the waiter. He seems to know someone everywhere we go! Aidan has been very lively for a while, but now he's also trying to be chatty. I don't know if he knows what he's saying, but he seemed to be saying "thank you" to everyone! It was a very fun evening.

Not the iPhone

2008-08-26T21:45:00.000-07:00

Before we went to Vancouver, I called Verizon to see whether my plan covered calls to Canada, or whether I would have to pay an arm and a leg to talk to the kids. While I was talking to the guy, he mentioned that I was eligible for a new phone. So I said that I would really like an iPhone and so I was going to wait until they're available from Verizon. Of course, he explained to me how Verizon has something better than the iPhone, the LG Dare. So long story short, he talked me into buying the LG Dare, Verizon's fake iPhone. As it turns out, I do like it a lot. I enjoy getting to Facebook and checking my email when I'm on the bus.

One of the reasons they claim it's better than the iPhone is because it's faster, or so they say. So the other day I met my colleague, Michael Quan, on the bus. Michael has an iPhone so we were comparing phones, and we decided to do a speed test from the Bart platform. So we both connected to dslreports.com from our phones, and it turns out, the LG Dare *is* faster than the iPhone! Next time I meet Michael on the bus or Bart, we'll do another test.

Trip to Vancouver & Seattle summary

2008-08-17T19:25:00.000-07:00

We had a great time in both Vancouver and Seattle. Canadians really are friendly, except for that one waitress!!! Public transportation in both cities is great, although traffic in Seattle is awful. Our flight home was fine, although we did stop in Boise. The day we arrived we had multiple commitments, some of which we missed, as we were victimized by the terrible Bay Area traffic after we landed and got Aisling to her friend's birthday party in San Francisco - two hours from Oakland airport! We did manage to make it to Carol's annual birthday party.

Photos of the trip are on flickr in two sets - Vancouver and Seattle.

Trip to Vancouver & Seattle - Day 7

2008-08-17T18:54:00.000-07:00

Although our Seattle hotel was pretty lame, the breakfast was actually pretty good!! I had agreed to take Aisling to some local thrift stores recommended to us by Lucia, so right after breakfast we headed off to one near our hotel, where she could enjoy second-hand Seattle clothes!! We then headed into Seattle to Pike's Place market, which is fun, if a little touristy. Gordon and Aisling explored the market while I headed over to the University of Washington to have lunch with my friend Sara. We did a very short tour of the local campus area. We visited a new office building, recently acquired by the university from Safeco, after Safeco consolidated it's staff in it's newer downtown Seattle building. It's a very nice building and it's being utilized mostly for administrative folks, so I visited Sara's office plus the office of my former colleague from Berkeley who is now the budget person at UW. What a fabulous view, downtown Seattle and Rainier, still visible in the slight smog. After lunch I met up with Gordon and Aisling again. We dropped Gordon at the Experience Music Project near the Space Needle, and then I took Aisling to the thrift store mecca - the Goodwill Outlet store, which sells old stuff by the pound!! We went to the wrong store first - a regular Goodwill retail store, but probably the largest Goodwill in North America! It was huge! But Aisling held her shopping for the Outlet store, where she bought 15 lbs of clothes and I bought an extra suitcase just to get home! The Goodwill by the pound is not my thing, but she had a blast.

We headed back over to the Seattle Center and picked up Gordon. He loved the Experience Music Project, probably could have spent two days there! But we moved on to the Space Needle. Since I've done it before, I stayed on the ground while Gordon and Aisling went up and enjoyed the views. We then did a few of the rides at the Seattle Center, including the roller coaster and log flume (since it was the hottest day of the year in Seattle) before heading over to Pioneer Square for the underground tour.

We really enjoyed the underground tour. It started with a discussion of the history of Seattle, how it was founded etc. I won't give all the details, apparently one should read a book by the tour founder, Bill Speidel, who died in 1988. The guide was informative and amusing. They seem to enjoy making fun of Tacoma. The history is that when Seattle was built first, in the second half of the 19th century, it was made of wooden building, and it was also built at a pretty low level, which made it subject to mud and flooding. There was also much discussion of sewage and the early "crappers" which I won't go into here. Anyhow, after a fire destroyed pretty much all Seattle in 1889, the merchants rebuilt in stone, but declined the city's request to wait several years while the city was regraded and sidewalks were more or less raised. After the building were back up, the city came in and raised the streets by anywhere from 10 to 35 feet, meaning that large portions of the building were underground. The sidewalks had ladders at each end, and people would climb up and down to get around. ultimately, the merchants built the sidewalks at street level and mostly filled in the lower floors of their buildings although a couple remain as basement, including in the Pioneer building. Years later, they excavated some of the filler out of the buildings and now they have the underground tour. It's a great tour, although we did see a rat while we were down there. It ends in a nice little museum, although Aisling didn't have a lot of patience for that after 90 minutes wandering around the underground!

We had dinner at a Chinese restaurant in Chinatown. All in all, I prefer Vancouver's Chinatown to Seattle's. In fact, I think it's my favorite Chinatown and I've even been in China! We headed home to the difficult task of packing Aisling's purchases!

Pictures are on Flickr.

Trip to Vancouver & Seattle - Day 6

2008-08-17T18:46:00.001-07:00

On Thursday, we were heading back to Seattle. We said goodbye to Mary, our Irish friend, and wished her good luck, and then headed to the border. We crossed at the Peace Arch at Blaine Washington. Crossing was no problem, except there was a 50 minute wait! People were jumping out of their cars while in line to take pictures of the Peace Arch, so Gordon did too! We stopped for lunch somewhere in Washington, and also stopped at a town called Mount Vernon so that Aisling could swim in the Skagit River. The Skagit River, which I think gets a fair amount of glacier runoff, is way colder than the bay in Vancouver! We arrived in Seattle, fought the traffic, and then met our friends Bill & Lucia for dinner at a great Vietnamese restaurant called the Tamarind Tree in the Chinatown/International district. We would never have found it ourselves, and it was fabulous. Great food and especially great cocktails. After dinner, Bill and Lucia took us over to West Seattle so we could enjoy the sunset over the Seattle skyline. It was fabulous, just beautiful. The view of the skyline and Mt. Rainier was just incredible, although because it has been unusually warm in Seattle, it was a little smoggy. We also saw ferries, party boats and a fleet of kayaks coming back in. We then headed back to our slightly lame hotel near the airport. Not nearly as much character as the Met!!

Trip to Vancouver & Seattle - Day 5

2008-08-17T18:32:00.000-07:00

Since it was our last full day in Vancouver we thought we'd go back to our favorite place, Stanley Park. We headed into Vancouver, did a little shopping and had lunch on the way. We ate at a korean restaurant, and we thought it was interesting that even in a Korean restaurant, some of the dishes were flavored with maple. Before heading to Stanley Park, we went to the Vancouver Art Museum. The building is beautiful, although they seemed to have a balloon shaped like a fetus adorning the front of the building for some reason. The exhibit was cartoon and anime. I don't claim to be an art buff by any stretch of the imagination, but it's really hard to get my mind around cartoons and anime as art! So I was pretty disappointed in the exhibits. However, they also had a part of the exhibit on computer games, apparently they're art too. The good part about that is that they had an old Pac Man machine, which Aisling and I played on for quite a while and also a Super Mario game that Aisling played. PacMan as art, that I can see!

They also had a couple of other exhibits, equally disappointing. A Chinese artist who expresses himself by dressing in a suit made of raw meat and then hanging out near ground zero in New York. I'm not sure what that's about. Also a local artist whose exhibit included a four-poster bed on a turkish rug. It was very nice, but more in a furniture and furnishings sort of way than in a art way. Finally some female Canadian artists whose work looked a little more traditional. Sometimes I don't get art. Especially when there's raw meat involved.

After the museum we headed back up to third beach in Stanley Park. I'm not sure why the highways have names and the beaches have numbers, but I guess it works. It was just as beautiful as the previous day and we spent hours there playing in the water. It is so much warmer than northern California beaches, I cannot figure out why, perhaps it's to do with currents or something. We stayed until about 7 and then headed home. However, on the way home we passed another beach called English Bay beach, bigger and way more crowded than third beach and with the added attraction of a platform with a slide out about thirty feet from the shore. Aisling was still in her swimsuit and begged us to stop. Miraculously, I found a parking spot, and off she went to play in the water for another thirty minutes or so. The beach is in a lovely area, the west end of Vancouver. There are lots of the high-rise condos that seem to be common here, including one with a rather large tree growing on the roof. What a great place to live! After Aisling finally got her fill of the sea, we headed back to New Westminster and ate at the Keg, which seems to be a Canadian chain, but was very nice.

Photos are on flick.

Trip to Vancouver & Seattle - Day 4

2008-08-17T18:16:00.000-07:00

We got up on Tuesday morning and while we were having coffee in the lobby we met an Irish woman named Mary. Mary had come to Vancouver unexpectedly as her daughter had been in a plane crash a couple of days before, and thankfully survived but with fairly major injuries. She is in a hospital in New Westminster, and is going to recover, but will probably have to spend eight weeks in the hospital in Canada. She was actually going skydiving, but at 4000 feet, an engine failed, and so they started to descend. On the way down, unfortunately, the other engine failed and they ended up crash landing. Fortunately, everyone on board survived although apparently one person is on life support. Apparently, the plane has to climb to 5000 feet before any skydivers can jump, so even though they had parachutes, they all remained in the plane. It was certainly a stunning story!

We decided to head on up to Whistler for the day. Before we got on the road, we went to the local English shop to buy sweets and other things that Aisling and I miss! In addition to the turkish delight and milky bars, we bought some savory items for breakfast, including a scotch egg. I've been telling Gordon about how great they are for years! Unfortunately, it was possibly the worst scotch egg ever created!! So we got on the freeway, first the Trans-Canada highway and then the Sea-to-Sky highway. Highways have such nice names here! The Sea-to-Sky (or 99) runs from Vancouver to Whistler, and because they are having the winter olympics here in 2010, there is a huge amount of construction on it, so the drive was really slow. However, it is quite possibly the most beautiful drive in the world, absolutely stunning scenery. It follows Horseshoe Bay on up to Howe Strait, and then more inland, through Squamish into Whistler. Squamish and Whistler are really more winter destinations, however, in Whistler, there are lots of lakes connected by short and easy hikes (walks really) so out plan was to swim in those lakes. Unfortunately, when we got up to Whistler, it was about 20 degrees colder than Vancouver and outdoor swimming didn't seem like it made sense! However, we saw an ad for an indoor sports center, with a pool, so we went there and spent the whole afternoon in the pool, spa and hot tub!! Gordon even used the treadmill and weight room. They had a slide and basketball in the pool and we just had a blast. On the way out, we stopped at a lake park - we thought we should see some Whistler scenery since we made the drive! We enjoyed the drive back also, more fabulous scenery. We also listened to Canadian radio in the car, and they were just as obsessed as Canadian TV about the lack of Olympic medals won by the Canadian athletes!

When we got back to New Westminster, we had dinner at a Sushi place called Ki Sushi. Aisling was able to get oysters, which she had been craving. Gordon got the Canada special, which includes deep-fried creamed corn. He also continued to sample many Canadian beers.

Vancouver photos are on Flickr.

Trip to Vancouver & Seattle - Day 3

2008-08-14T10:20:00.000-07:00

Being a thrift store junkie, Aisling decided to start the day by visiting the Salvation Army store in New Westminster. I think she was a little disappointed. After her shopping trip, we decided to drive into Vancouver so we could visit Stanley Park and also go over to North Vancouver. When we got to Stanley Park we spent a little time at the Rose Garden and also at the Vancouver Rowing club, but we decided to head up to North Vancouver pretty early. We drove across the Lions Gate bridge out of Stanley Park, up into North Vancouver. We had lunch at a little pizza place in Capilano called DDDN pizza - healthy pizza, according to the accolades posted on their wall, the best pizza in the world. It was pretty good, but the best pizza ever? I'm just not sure. We then headed to the Capilano suspension bridge. This suspension bridge is built 230 ft above the Capilano canyon. It was sort of a queasy feeling walking across a 450 ft long swinging bridge (although perfectly safe) and the scenery was spectacular. Across the bridge, there was a "treetop adventure" more swinging bridges strung between platforms in trees, some as high as 100 ft off the ground. This is actually a rainforest, and apparently this is the best way to see one, and also to minimize the impact on the forest itself. It was certainly beautiful. We also walked on the Cliffhanger boardwalk, built above a cliff with trees growing out of it. We crossed the suspension bridge again. Gordon almost got deported from Canada for swinging the bridge despite multiple warnings not to do so! We then drove a short way to Capilano Canyon provincial park (sort of like a state park in California) and visited a salmon hatchery. We then did a very short hike, a stroll really, along the Capilano river where we did see one guy fly fishing, although we didn't notice any fish being caught.

On the way back to Vancouver we stopped at a place called Earls for our customary late afternoon drinks and snacks. It was much friendlier than Sammy Peppers! We watched the Olympics, still zero medals for Canada. The Canadian media seems to be relatively upset with this, although of course they're more of a "winter sports" country. We then headed back across the Lions Gate Bridge into Stanley Park. We stopped at Prospect Point for the breathtaking view, and met some raccoons. Even the raccoons are friendly in Canada!!!

In Stanley Park we stopped at a beach called third beach. It was just beautiful. We spent a long time there, Aisling's favorite spot so far. We weren't prepared for the beach, but Aisling had shorts and a sportsbra so she was able to jump right in to the water, which was quite warm. Way warmer than Northern California, I'm not sure why. After a few hours, we headed back to our hotel, where we slept really well.

Trip to Vancouver & Seattle - Day 2

2008-08-13T13:44:00.000-07:00

Coffee and muffins are served in the lobby of the Met every day from 8 - 11. The coffee is surprisingly good! Also, you can tell this is not America. 8-11 is a much more civilized hour than what we'd get in the US - probably 6-9 or something. After the coffee and muffins we hoped on the Skytrain to downtown Vancouver. The Skytrain is fabulous, and busy. Not even 10 on Sunday morning and it's full of people going somewhere! We got off at Stadium/Chinatown. Stadium is the home of the Canucks apparently, some hockey thing. We wandered over to Chinatown, and again were struck by how much later things get going in Canada than the US. Chinatown was just not that lively. We spent some time in Dr. Sun Yat-Sen's traditional Chinese garden, it was very nice. They unfortunately have a "no feeding the Koi" rule. Aisling still tried to entice them so come close to us by sticking her finger in the water, with no success. We headed out to Chinatown and the shops and malls and it was beginning to wake up. So we stopped and had dim sum for breakfast. It was really good. After breakfast, we walked around Chinatown, shopping, window-shopping, going to bakeries and finally headed over to the Gaslight part of town. It was still pretty chilly, and there were some showers. We browsed some of the touristy stores including a boot shop (very expensive). And we noted a lot of items related to the upcoming 2010 winter olympics, which will be held in Vancouver. Hopefully the Canadians will do better there than in Beijing. We also liked the little inukshuks - a native collection of stones but together to represent man. After we were done in the gaslight section, we headed into downtown Vancouver, where we walked along the waterfront. We then hopped on a bus to Granville Island. The public transportation is great!

Granville Island is very touristy, but fun. Lots of art and funky shops, plus a miniature ship and train museum and a public market. We stopped for a drink and some food at a place called Sammy Peppers and sat on the patio overlooking the dock. Our waitress was probably the least friendly waitress I've ever had, and probably the least friendly person in Canada. But the drinks and food were fine. We then walked around Granville Island a little more. When we were done we took a bus back into Chinatown. The Vancouver Chinatown night market was just getting started - it runs from 6 until 11 on Friday, Saturday and Sunday. It's very cool, lots of stalls selling interesting food and other items. We spent a little time there and then took the Skytrain back to our hotel. Aisling and I went for a short drive around New Westminster, just to get a sense of the place, before we went to bed.

Trip to Vancouver and Seattle - Day 1

2008-08-13T13:32:00.000-07:00

This year's big vacation is a trip to Vancouver and Seattle. We left Saturday, August 9th. Unfortunately our flight out of Oakland was delayed due to fog/rain in Seattle. Since we hadn't seen rain in California literally for months and we're in the midst of a drought, that actually sounded pretty good. We arrived in Seattle and picked up our car, and headed north toward Vancouver. We actually drove through some rain so I got to exercise the wipers, which felt a little novel due to the lack of rain in California! Traffic in Seattle was predictably bad. We also got caught on I-5 outside of Seattle due to an overturned RV. Not only did it block traffic, but apparently the sewage tank exploded, resulting in a pretty awful smell!! Once we got through that delay, we headed up north and stopped in the last town in Washington before Canada, Blaine, the home of the Peace Arch. We bought wine and beer and some snacks for our room and then headed across the border. The border crossing was easy, although the Canadian immigration guy did ask us a bunch of questions. We then drove up to New Westminster, a suburb of Vancouver where we had booked a room in a hotel called the Met. It's fair to say that New Westminster has character. It's a very small town on the quay of the Fraser river. It possibly has the highest concentration of bridal shops I have ever seen. Our hotel, the Met, was built in 1891. The room was nice, but the kitchenette that we booked turned out to be a refrigerator and microwave. Given the age of the building, there was obviously no exercise room! The location was pretty perfect though, right next to the Skytrain that goes into Vancouver. We wandered around New Westminster, checking out the Casino boat (at least from the outside) and various restaurants, finally settling on eating at the Heritage bar and grill, which featured live music by a local group called Fretworks. Aisling especially enjoyed their rendition of "Summertime" by Porgy & Bess. After dinner we headed to the local internet cafe/map store where Aisling and Gordon checked myspace and I bought a map of Vancouver. We went back to our room, which turned out to overlook both the Skytrain station and the beergarden for the hotel bar, which was pretty lively, since it was a Saturday night. We got a good sense of how effective the Skytrain is; a train seemed to be stopping literally every two minutes. Even with all the noise, though, we slept really well after the long day traveling.

Aidan's First Birthday

2008-08-02T19:17:00.001-07:00

Aidans First Birthday in Crockett Park,
originally uploaded by Helen Norris.

Today was Aidan's first birthday. I can't believe it's gone by so fast, and also that he is so different to the day he was born, when he only weighed 4lbs! I think one of his legs weighs 4lbs now! It just reminds me that this day last year, we were coming home from China and rushing to the hospital to greet Aidan. And poor Dara was just in pain!

Dara and Zach had a barbecue in the park in Crockett to celebrate Aidan's birthday. The weather was beautiful, although a little hot. The little kids played on the slide and the swings, while Zach cooked and we ate. Aidan got lots of nice gifts, of course, and we had a great time. Video of Aidan on the swing can be seen here. Photos can be seen here.

A funny book

2008-07-02T21:53:00.000-07:00

I like to read and I like to laugh. Recently I found a book that made me laugh out loud. It was so funny, I couldn't really read it on Bart, because I didn't want the other passengers to think I was crazy. The book is called "Here speeching american" and basically it's a collection of garbled english phrases, or phrases that are just hard to figure out, from around the world. Some of my favorites are:

"Shoes to make your street-walking more relaxed" - an ad slogan from Tokyo
"We try our best to decrease your life" - an ad slogan in China

And many more! Just pick up the book, open it at random and there will be something funny! Highly recommended.

What the . . .

2008-07-02T21:46:00.000-07:00

Say it ain't so!!! Baron Davis to the Clippers?? That's just wrong! It's just not going to be the same with BD on the floor. Maybe the Warriors should sign Elton Brand.

Enough dreaming, and back to baseball. At least I can look forward to Albert Pujols hitting number 300. And the Cardinals are playing like they mean it. And the Cubs will collapse like they always do.

More Cat Drama

2008-06-23T09:43:00.001-07:00

Our cat Mr. Pickles,
originally uploaded by Helen Norris.

A couple of weeks ago, we noticed that we hadn’t seen one of our cats, Mr. Pickles, for a while. That was a couple of weeks ago. Now I think we’ve accepted that Pickles isn’t coming back. As usual, I am assuming that he found a nicer home, maybe one where they give him wet food or tuna all the time. Probably has his own TV too.

So of course now we need to get a new cat. We just can’t have Tofu all by himself, although he seems to be handling it just fine. So we’ve talked about getting a new one, maybe when we get back from vacation. However, last Friday, Aisling went over to her friend Chelsea’s house, and what a surprise, she “found” a cute little kittie and brought it home. Now I got home late that night *and* there was a powercut so there really wasn’t much choice, the kittie spent the night. And the next morning, we could see it was a pretty damaged kitty, eye injury etc. By then, of course, she had named it Ginger (it’s red/orange). Anyhow, in spite of her attachment to it, we took it to the pound – it needs medical care that it can get there, and she had many tears when we dropped it off.

But we do need to adopt another cat, so now we’re in discussions about whether or not we should adopt Ginger when he’s well (at the pound, they told us it was male) or whether we should wait until we get back from vacation, or adopt a different cat. Stay tuned!

I hate American Airlines

2008-06-08T22:57:00.001-07:00

ITLP Annual Conference,
originally uploaded by Helen Norris.

Last week I went to Chicago to a conference. It was a good conference, and on the last evening, we went into Downtown Chicago to the Chicago Blues Festival. A group of us stayed out pretty late (like 3 a.m.) and so the last thing I needed the following day was a six-hour delay at O'Hare. But that's what we got. Our flight was supposed to leave at 6:30, but there were high winds in Chicago, so it was delayed by an hour. That seemed plausible. Then it got delayed by another hour, with the gate agent saying it was because the plane flying from Chicago to SFO had just arrived from Frankfurt and needed to be cleaned and clear Customs etc. etc. So the plan arrived at the gate almost two hours late, and the flight crew got on the plane. About 20 minutes later, however, the crew deplaned, as they had become "illegal". They can only be active for a certain number of hours at a time, and because American didn't get the passengers on before the witching hour or something, they turned into pumpkins. So they had to locate another flight crew, which they did, however, that crew was actually in St. Louis, and we had to wait until their (late) flight arrived. Most frustrating. My colleagues and I eventually went to the bar to drink while we waited to depart. We finally did so after midnight (flight was supposed to leave at 6:30), and we arrived in San Francisco at 3 a.m.! And the plane was uncomfortable. it was terrible.

Yet another race

2008-06-01T19:01:00.001-07:00

Red Cross Run ,
originally uploaded by Helen Norris.

On the spur of the moment, Aisling and I decided to participate in a 5K run in San Francisco today. It was a benefit for the Red Cross, which is a positive considering the work that they're involved in due to the disasters in China and Myanmar. The run was in Golden Gate Park, a very nice course, around Stow Lake. The weather was good, chilly when we got there in the morning, but really warming up to just right. Aisling thought it was a little sunny in places when she was running, but I was just fine.

This time, Aisling took off and ran on her own, rather than with me. She did really well, she seems to have learned how to pace herself, no running too fast at the beginning and then running out of gas. I had a pretty good run myself, and ended with a time under 30 minutes. Aisling was about 40 seconds ahead of me. Both of us placed first in our age groups! Admittedly, it was a thin field - probably about 150 runners overall - but it was pretty satisfying nonetheless. We won gift certificates, and then I won an emergency kit (since it was sponsored by the Red Cross) in a raffle. I would've like to have spent a little more time after the race in Golden Gate Park, but Aisling was hungry, and probably a little tired, so we left.

Bay To Breakers

2008-05-19T22:14:00.001-07:00

This year, we decided to do the Bay to Breakers in San Francisco. It was our first time ever. We all did it, me, Gordon, Aisling and Gordon's nephew Robert who had come in from Omaha for Nan's birthday. The Bay to Breakers is a San Francisco race that goes from the bay side of the city out to the ocean. It's 12K, always crowded and is a lot of fun, complete with interesting costumes.

The race starts at 8 a.m., so we left at about 6 to catch the Bart. There was actually a group of us going from work, so we connected with some friends on the Bart and some at the starting line. The weather had been very hot in San Francisco, record highs in fact, the week leading up to the race, so we were a little worried about how it would feel. However, it cooled down a lot, and it was so early in the morning that it felt really cool. We got into San Francisco and headed to the starting line. It was packed! Before the race, apparently there's a tradition of throwing tortillas into the crowd. I don't really know why that is, but it was hilarious. We were right behind a group that had a shopping cart with a keg of beer on board, and tons of tortillas, and they were throwing them everywhere. Aisling and Robert really got into the tortilla thing. They caught them or picked them up and re-flung them. It was great. I am pretty sure my hair was full of tortilla crumbs! I figure that the seagulls had a field day with the tortillas when the crowd moved out.

The starting time was 8 a.m. They obviously sent the serious runners off first, and then the rest of us. The crowd was so big, it actually took us 15 minutes to get to the starting line after the race started! Gordon and Robert took off ahead of me and Aisling, as we really planned to do a combination of walking and running. We really enjoyed taking in the scenery. There were so many costumes! We saw lots of brides, hula dancers, vikings, Star Wars characters, Santa Claus, and of course, the naked people. There were so many naked runners! After a while we sort of stopped noticing them. There were only two that really were memorable. One was a naked guy all painted blue. The other was a naked guy who was also barefoot. I mean, the whole race is on pavement. You need shoes!

The race goes through downtown San Francisco until it comes to Hayes Street at about the two mile mark, where the infamous Hayes Street Hill has to be climbed. Man is it steep! I really felt it on my legs. There are lots of spectators along the Hayes Street Hill, sitting outside of bars and homes. There were lots of spirits being imbibed both by participants and spectators. Aisling and I made it up the Hill and kept on going. We continued to more city streets and headed into Golden Gate Park. There was lots of entertainment along the way. I especially enjoyed the Elvis impersonator on the steps of the DMV. Most of the other bands were rock bands. There was also a jewish Beach Boys-type of band that I thought were pretty great.

It got cooler and cooler through Golden Gate Park as we got closer to the ocean. It was hard to believe that there had been record heat during the week! There were lots of spectators in the park too. One group was drinking mimosas, and had delightful snacks. Aisling stopped there and they gave her quiche and a custard pie!

All along the way, there were mile markers so that we always knew how close we were getting. Getting past the four-mile marker was a big deal, because we knew we were more than halfway through! We passed the six-mile marker, but somehow missed the seven-mile marker, but when we saw the ocean and the finish line in the distance, it seemed to give Aisling a boost of energy and off she went. It felt great to cross the finish line! After that we headed down to Kezar stadium in the park for the party following the race, and to meet Gordon and Robert. I don't know why they put the finish line so far away from the stadium! But it felt like a long walk. We ran into Gordon and Robert when we got there, and also into some other friends from work. We were starving, I guess that running 7 and a half miles in the cold will work up an appetite, so we got some food from some of the vendors there. It was really pretty cold, so we headed home.

The absolute worst part of the race was getting home! The Muni had buses going from the park back into the city. For only $7, we got to wait in line for about an hour to get on a bus that then took the most circuitous route back to the Bart. The bus took over an hour to get back. it was terrible. Maybe next year we can figure out a better way home.

All in all, it was a great time. Aisling and I did a pretty slow time because we walked as much as we ran, but we liked taking in the events, so it was fun! All the photos (at least the appropriate ones) can be seen on my flickr site here.

Nans 80th Birthday

2008-05-19T21:37:00.001-07:00

Nans 80th Birthday

Gordon's mom Nan will turn 80 in June, so we wanted to do something special to celebrate. Because so many people had to come in from out of town, we picked this Saturday in May, the 17th, and did a nice event at a restaurant in Albany called Six Degrees. It was a good turnout, Ken and Robert came out from Omaha, and Bonnie, Nan's stepdaughter, and her husband Dennis came in from North Carolina. Of course, all the local family members and even some friends of Nan's from school showed up so it was a good crowd.

The food was great, and Ken invited the guests to tell an anecdote or a story about Nan. Gordon told a story involving Nan showing up at a greek restaurant on a motorbike. Dara talked about Nan coming to help her take care of the baby when we were in the Bahamas, and Aisling talked about taking Nan shopping and just wearing her out! It was a lovely evening. Photos can be seen here.

Mother's Day

2008-05-12T22:33:00.001-07:00

Dara & Helen

So Sunday was Mother's Day, well, in America anyhow. It's a different day in Ireland, earlier I think. Since it was Dara's first Mother's Day as a mother and since the wedding, we decided to go over to her house. Gordon and Zach cooked breakfast and we drank Mimosas. There were lots of mothers there, including Zach's mom and Nan. We ate and played cards, and also the kids played Xbox. Nan joined in on the Xbox game. I think it was her first game.

Also, on Mother's Day, Gordon and I went to see Les Nubians at Yoshi's. It was a great show. I like the Nubians music, so I really enjoyed getting to see them live. I have to say, I can't give the Yoshi's food a great recommendation, although it was okay. Just expensive for what we got. But we had good wine and it was a great show.

When we got home, we caught the end of Survivor with Aisling. I just can't believe that Parvati won. Oh my god!!!

Dara's Wedding

2008-05-02T14:58:00.001-07:00

Daras Wedding,
originally uploaded by Helen Norris.

So after lots of planning, Dara and Zach got married on April 18th. The wedding was at the Rockefeller Lodge in San Pablo, a very nice place. There were lots of guests, Zach is from a large family, and there was a great turnout from Doug's family also. Dara looked beautiful, she wore my dress. Aisling and Dara's friend Emily were bridesmaids and wore lovely green dresses. And Aidan was, of course, the cutest baby around. Gordon officiated, so the ceremony was brief. The food was served by the catering company at the Rockefeller, Partytime catering, and I highly recommend them. The food was good, and the service was excellent. We brought the drinks and the cake ourselves, and Dara decorated and prepared flowers. All in all it was a lovely day. Photos can be seen here.

We had several out of town guests, including my mother who came over from Ireland and Gordon's brother and sister-in-law from Omaha. We did some sightseeing and other things after the wedding. Aidan had an accident at Dim Sum on Saturday, they may never let us back! Aisling insisted on taking my mother to various thrift stores, her favorite, and we also did some of the tourist haunts in San Francisco. Unfortunately, the Boudin museum was closed. We also went to Figaro at the Berkeley Rep - opera, not exactly my cup of tea! All in all, we had a good visit with my mother and she seemed to enjoy it.

Dara's wedding shower

2008-04-08T18:22:00.001-07:00

Saturday we had a wedding shower for Dara at our house. Aisling was the hostess and she arranged the food and the games. We had it "catered" by L&L Hawaiian Barbeque, Dara's favorite, and Nan brought a tiramisu and a chocolate cake.

The turnout was good, a lot of Dara's future inlaws came. We ate and mingled and then Aisling started the games. I wasn't that enthused at the thought of some of the games, but I have to admit that Aisling was totally right, they were a big hit. The first game involved breaking into two teams and using garbage bags, paper towels and grocery store bags to create wedding dresses. The two teams were really competitive. The team Aisling was on went all-out with the paper towel-train and ruffle. The other team made a veil out of a bag from Luckys. Another popular game was the underwear game. Aisling and I had bought several pairs of plain white cotton underwear, which we distributed during the shower. Then all the guests used markers and scissors to decorate the underwear as Dara's honeymoon underwear. Then Dara had to model them for us. I have never seen a group of women get so quiet as they did when they were decorating those underwear! The winning pair were decorated with prison bars. We also played games that involved checking out what was in everyone's purse. Nan had the most unusual item, a sand dollar. We also had a game where we tried to identify various spices, just by a smelling and looking.

We then had gifts. She got really nice gifts, various household items including sheet sets and a coffee pot. However, Victoria, Zach's mom, had a very elaborate presentation of several outfits for various moments in marriage, including the Donna Reed and the combat outfit. It was really cute!

Photos of the shower are posted here.

March Sadness

2008-03-30T19:28:00.000-07:00

Every year in March I get into at least one NCAA bracket pool. I don't usually do that well, but this year I think I've hit a new low! I believe I am dead last in each of the pools that I'm in. Apparently my strategy of picking the Catholic universities through the sweet sixteen isn't working. It seemed pretty sensible to me, and after all, Marquette *almost* beat Stanford. However, we're down to the final four now, and I have two of the four, Memphis and Kansas. I am also one of the few people to pick Kansas to win it all. So if Memphis can beat UCLA and Kansas can beat North Carolina and then Memphis, I could make up some real ground. So let's all root for the center of the country over the coasts!

St Patrick's Day in an American "Irish" pub & Wine tasting in Livermore

2008-03-24T16:20:00.001-07:00

St Patrick's Day at Beckett's

This week, I believe I consumed more than my annual quota of alcohol. First, it was St Patrick's Day, and a group of my colleagues and my facebook friends met at an "irish" pub in Berkeley California, Becketts. We had a great time. You can see all the photos here. Lots of alcohol was imbibed by everyone, as you can see from the photos. One of my friends, who shall remain nameless, has officially dubbed me a bad influence, since she was inebriated enough that she needed to take a taxi home. I, on the other hand, brought my own designated driver, which is a smart move, as I can barely drive when I'm sober.

Helen, Gordon, Phil and Enda

Then Easter Sunday came along and Gordon and I spent the day winetasting in Livermore with my college friends Phil & Enda. Now I hadn't seen Phil & Enda since 1982, then I connected with a mutual friend on facebook and he told me that Phil was working at Lawrence Livermore National Lab, so I got in touch and now I have college friends in the area! I am happy to say that none of us had changed a bit since college, really. So since they live in Livermore, we headed over there for brunch and then visited the Livermore wineries, which were really good. They are more low-key than the Napa wineries, which translates to them not charging you for tasting, for the most part! It was a beautiful day, Livermore tends to be warm, and in March, a 75 degree temp feels pretty good. Might not feel as good in July! Also, the owner of Bent Creek winery used to be the school principal to Phil & Enda's kids, so we had a good connection there. We hit two or three wineries, and I tasted lots of good wine. Apparently, I like port. Who knew?

Bus B3 Reunion

2008-02-24T16:41:00.001-08:00

Aisling with fan

Last night, we had a reunion of the Bus B3 folks from our trip to China last year. We decided to do it right around Chinese New Year, it seemed like a good time to do it. As is normal around Chinese New Year in the Bay Area, the rain *poured* down, but even so, we had a great turnout, including people like Fengyi & Alex driving all the way from Davis. The food was great, Gordon dug into his chinese cooking book and made a delicious spicy eggplant dish, spicy noodles, curry crescents (yum), smoked chicken. We also had pork and chicken that Fengyi and Alex brought, along with a green bean cake, made slightly sweeter than normal by Fengyi for dessert. Siegrid also brought the obligatory watermelon. And lots of people brought wine! There were a lot of empty winebottles at the end of the night. Siegrid brought the Bus B3 photo, plus the Great Wall photo plus some prints of other photos to share. It was also a nice opportunity to meet family members who weren't on the tour, Dara, Zach and Aidan (who wasn't even born at the time!) and Malaika's boyfriend Eric.

We had a great time. More photos are posted on my flickr site. Click here to see them.

Chinese New Year Run

2008-02-17T11:17:00.001-08:00

Helen at Chinese New Year Race

Today, Aisling and I did a 5K run in Chinatown in San Francisco. It was the annual Chinese New Year run. It's the year of the rat. We had to get up at an ungodly hour to get in to register before the 8 a.m. start. We registered, got our numbers and t-shirts, and were at the starting line on time, though. The t-shirts are very attractive. There were a lot of people, probably 3000 or so. It was really well organized, it got started on time, and the traffic control was great. The streets were open to cars on one side and runners on the other.

It was cold in San Francisco, the fog had not burned off, which is okay when you're running I guess. It's all on pavement, and there were a couple of hills. We tried the running some and then walking some to keep our pace where we wanted it. We both came in at about 32 minutes, which is a little slower than I'd like, but considering the hills and the crowd, which also slowed us down, so it wasn't bad. After the race, and some water and coffee, Aisling played at the Portsmouth Square playground for a while, and we were home before 10!

Dara's Wedding

2008-02-12T19:26:00.001-08:00

Last week, or maybe the week before, Dara and Zach told us they were getting married. She's going to wear my dress from my wedding. I have a picture of her in it, but I don't want to put it on my blog because supposedly it's bad luck if Zach sees it or something. But here's her ring. It's very pretty. We're all very happy, Aidan included. No really, he doesn't actually know what the heck is going on! They've set a date for April 18th, and we've reserved the Rockefeller Lodge in San Pablo for the reception. It's very nice. So we're all aflutter, and in the throes of preparation. Dara printed the invitations today and should be getting them out in the mail soon. More updates to come!

Northern California State Cup, Sacramento

2008-01-20T15:47:00.001-08:00

Aisling played in the Northern California State Cup today. The game was in Sacramento. Because it had been so beautiful yesterday, I sort of assumed that we would have good weather for the game. Boy was that wrong!!! We drove up to Sacramento early in the morning and when we got there, it was cold and windy. I wasn't prepared - didn't have a warm enough jacket, no blanket etc. I stayed in the car until the game started just so I wouldn't freeze to death!

Aisling's team, the Scorpions, hasn't had a good record this year. Also, very few girls could make the game today, so they ended up putting only 9 players on the field. Aisling was the only one on offense, the coach elected to put a full defense out there. That turned out to be a great move, and the game ended up 0-0, which really felt like a victory to all of us. It was great!

After the game, one of the parents brought all the kids over to her car and showed us a pair of baby goats she has recently acquired. They were cute, and warm too! I can't imagine having pet adult goats, but the baby goats were cute. They even made the "baa" sound for us a few times. Also, we learned that they don't like being held with their feet in the air, for some reason. All the girls fussed over them.

Gordon, Aisling and I stopped at a Mexican restaurant called Adalbertos on the way home, and we got the largest meals I have ever seen in my entire life. Even the tortillas were supersized!! The food was great, even if we did have to bring half of it home. It was just a fun day.

Life's changes

2008-01-20T15:40:00.001-08:00

Aisling & Cynthia in 2005

Last week, we learned that Cynthia Kelly, Dara and Aisling's aunt, died suddenly in Jackson Mississippi. She died due to carbon monoxide poisoning, as described in an article in the local newspaper. While the girls didn't know Cynthia that well, this was still a sad thing for them. We all attended a memorial service for Cynthia on Saturday, giving the girls a chance to grieve with their family. Following the service, there was food and socializing, and we were lucky to have just magnificent weather, so we gathered outside, where everyone made a fuss over Aidan. It was really nice for Dara, Aisling and Aidan to spend some time with their dad's family, especially their grandma.

Aidan's first Christmas

2007-12-31T14:27:00.001-08:00

Aidan in Santa suit,
originally uploaded by Helen Norris.

2007 was Aidan's first Christmas. He seemed to have a good time, His favorite gifts were the exersaucer and a stuffed moose. For some reason, he likes to stuff the moose in his mouth! It's amazing to see how much more alert he is than before. He also has found his voice and his feet.

After Christmas, we had an open house, where many of our friends came over to eat and drink some non-Christmas food. It was a lot of fun. The next day, Aisling and I drove up to Reno to visit Amanda & Tim and also to sled and tube. It was snowing on the way up so I was worried about the roads, but it was absolutely fine. Aisling dragged me to every mall in Reno, and there are a lot of them! We went sledding on Mount Rose one day, and the next day we went tubing and sledding at Donner Pass. In addition to the excitement of the snow sports and the mall visits, Aisling also spent a lot of time eating oysters both on the half shell and as shooters. Visit our youtube videos to see Aisling in action! Who knew she would develop such an adventurous food side (unlike myself!) We stayed at the Atlantis resort, which was fine. We especially liked the Sushi bar on the skywalk, which is where Aisling experienced her oyster bliss! The only negative thing about the Atlantis was the exercise center, which was under construction. They did have a temporary exercise room, but it was only available to people over 18, so Aisling couldn't use it. Also, the hot tub was just too full of people for us to really use it at all, and that would have been very nice after our bruising sledding experiences!

Thanksgiving & more

2007-11-25T18:46:00.001-08:00

This year we had lots of family come over for Thanksgiving. Gordon's brother, Ken, and his family came in on Monday. They spent the week sightseeing, first visiting Truchard winery in Napa. I understand that even Aidan walked out with a bottle of wine! The next day there was shopping and sightseeing in San Francisco. We followed up that busy day with dinner at the Beach Chalet on the Great Highway in San Francisco. It was too dark by the time we ate to actually see the view. I think most of Wednesday was consumed with food preparation, well not by me of course, but there was a lot of food to be made as we were also joined for Thanksgiving by my sister Amanda and her family and Gordon's cousin Kent and his family.

Gordon, Dara and Emily did most of the work in the kitchen on Thursday, joined a little later by Kent and Tim, Amanda's husband. Before dinner we snacked on ham & cheese pinwheels as well as deep-fried portobellos, which all go well with the vast amounts of sparkling wine that was consumed. Dinner was served at about four - turkey (of course), a rib roast, duck, pumpkin bread stuffing, andouille sausage stuffing, green been casserole, corn casserole, mashed potatoes, mashed sweet potatoes and salad. That's it I think! Dessert was pumpkin pie, apple pie, chocolate cake and pecan pie. We followed up dinner by energetically watching ASU lose to USC.

Friday night Gordon and I went to my friend Patricia's fiftieth birthday party, which was actually a surprise party. We started out at 6 degrees in Albany, where we had dinner - there was a lot of food this weekend - and then we headed out to a club in Oakland called the Easy club. There was lots of dancing and drinking. We stayed out late - you can probably tell from the pictures that the next day I was at least low-energy, or maybe hungover. But it was a great party!

Race at Mare Island, Vallejo

2007-11-18T22:19:00.001-08:00

Today, Aisling, Dara (accompanied by Baby Aidan) and I participated in the return to Mare Island race. It was a very cold and foggy morning! The event took place at Touro University on Mare Island. Getting there involves driving though the old navy base, and with all those abandoned buildings, it kind of looked creepy in the fog. Aisling and I intended to do the four mile run, but the run started with a pretty steep half mile hill, which pretty much knocked the wind out of Aisling, so we switched to the two-mile run at that point. It felt like a long two miles! It was a nice course, though, starting at the University, running along Admiral's row, which has all the big old houses that the admirals used to live in, past some new housing developments, through some old military buildings and finally along the waterfront past the old warehouses. I understand that they are now used for filming, and it looked like some filming was going on in at least one of them. Our times weren't great, but we had a good time.

Bruuuce

2007-10-30T21:23:00.000-07:00

Gordon & Lucia tasting wine.

So last week Gordon and I went to see Bruce Springsteen in concert. It was a very tightly planned day. I was in Seattle, flying in to Oakland landing at fourish. Then we needed to go to both a wine reception and a launch party for Apple's Leopard operating system both at my office in Berkeley before heading back to Oakland to the Coliseum to see Bruce.

Things started out really well, as my flight was on time, always a good start. Midway through the flight, some woman ran down the aisle calling out "Who's going to see Bruce?" and high-fiving those of us who admitted to going! The plane arrived

Waiting for Leopard.

safely, and the other Bruce fans and I headed to the Bart shuttle. Apparently we picked up more Bruce fans there, because there was even more talk about the concert on the shuttle. I headed in to Berkeley, and we went up to the wine tasting, bringing with us a 12-year-old petite syrah from Gordon's basement. That was a very popular wine, apparently it had been properly aged. There was lots of good wine, snacks and conversation. At six, the Scholars Workstation started selling copies of the just-released Leopard operating system. It was pretty amazing to see the line of students waiting to buy Leopard! TSW did have a great price, but even so!

Bruce in Oakland.

We left both parties and took the Bart back to Oakland for the concert. Bruce got started a little late, which kind of worked for us. The concert was great! The Coliseum was packed with a lively crowd and Bruce sounded and looked great. It's hard to believe that he's 58! I must admit to not being overly familiar with all of Bruce's early stuff, sort of pre-dates me I guess, but I knew enough of the music to have a good time. I especially liked the numbers from the Rising. It was also kind of fun to see the guy from the Sopranos on stage. He looked less like a mafia guy with his bandanna. The concert went on for about two and a half hours. All in all, it was great.

Seattle trip

2007-10-30T20:06:00.001-07:00

Last week I went to Seattle on business. You can read all about the Educause conference on my work blog. But in between work things, I managed to do a couple of cool things in Seattle.

The fish market.

First, I took a little time to go down to the public market at Pike's place. I liked seeing the guys throwing the fish to each other. And the market itself was very nice. Plus, the weather was fabulous on that particular day, beautiful clear skies and lovely temperatures. I enjoyed walking around the market, I ate some food and then headed down to the piers just to enjoy the view.

That night, I met up with my friend Scott from Chicago and we went to see the Golden State Warriors play the Seattle Sonics at Key Arena. It was a preseason game, so not exactly a sellout. I wanted to get the cheapest seats possible and the ticket seller told Scott that they would be fine, as the arena is the smallest in the league! It turns out that the Sonics ownership is considering a move to Oklahoma City because the arena is so crappy.

Warriors in action.

So we were serenaded by some guys singing "Save our Sonics" all through the game. Actually, because Scott was still on central time and I had to meet my friend Jeff at another bar, we only stayed for the first half. The Warriors didn't look that great, although they did come back to win the game in OT. But in the first half, they didn't seem to be clicking, and one of the new guys, Austin Croshere, looked pretty out of place. Also, Baron Davis was still taking *way* too many outside shots, let's hope he gets over that soon. By contrast, the Sonics rookie, Kevin Durant, looked just great, although I hear he got injured after the game and may miss the beginning of the season.

After I left the game, Scott went to his hotel, and I walked about 20 blocks in downtown Seattle to meet Jeff at a bar called Fado. It was a really nice night, and a very pleasant walk, and I enjoyed seeing that much of the city. I walked past the hotel where Jeff was staying, the Hotel 1000, which was *way* nicer than my Holiday Inn, somewhere on the outskirts of Seattle. Anyhow, Jeff and I had a couple of drinks, the bar was very nice, and then I headed back to my Holiday Inn.

The next evening after the conference I went to a reception featuring the former ITLP'ers. This was at the Hotel W, which is very fancy. Lots of good food and wine.

Apple reception

After this reception, I went with a group from the University of Washington to the Apple reception. I just want to say that the people from Washington are a really bad influence on me! The Apple reception was very exclusive, you needed to be on "the list" but we were all able to get in. It was in the coolest bar in Seattle, the Chapel, which is formerly a mortuary chapel. Again, there was lots of food and alcohol, so I was pretty well plastered by the time the entertainment, Don Felder from the Eagles, came on. I must say I was unimpressed by how much he talked, but it sounded pretty good when he finally played some old Eagles songs, accompanied by his Apple Powerbook (I think).

We left the Apple reception and headed to another bar that looked sort of Moroccan or something, and I had yet another drink! It was getting later then, so some of the more lightweight people headed home, but I stayed with the bad influence people and we headed to yet another bar, this one that served food, as I had a real need for food by then. This bar was very nice, and the food was very good (I think I remember liking the food). By then it was after one a.m. so I finally got some common sense and headed back to my Holiday Inn, in a taxi this time. Needless to say, I didn't make the earliest sessions the next morning!

Helen in Jet

The last night in Seattle, I went to a conference even at the Seattle Museum of Flight. That was a lot of fun. It's a very cool museum, with one side devoted to WWII and pre-WWII flights. We spent so much time there, we didn't realize that there was more to see. On our way out we noticed the other side of the museum, so we stopped in. That's where all the cool stuff was! I got to sit in the cockpit of a fighter jet of some kind, and they had lots of exhibits related to space travel.

I headed home on Friday to see Bruce Springsteen in concert!

Homefront Festival & 5K race

2007-09-30T22:46:00.001-07:00

Helen & Aisling before race,
originally uploaded by Helen Norris.

Before we went to the Bahamas (see next post) Aisling convinced us to sign up to participate in a 5K run at the Homefront Festival in Richmond. It's not that long, it just seemed like it might be daunting the day after returning from vacation. However, Aisling, Dara, the baby and I all headed over there at 9 (Gordon was sick from being on the plane) and participated. It was fun, a very nice course, and we each made good time, Aisling and I at about 30 minutes, and Dara at about 45, pushing the baby. There weren't that many participants, and it turns out that Dara and I each placed third in our age groups, and Aisling placed first in hers (admittedly she was the only under-13 runner in the 5K). Also, I won a fancy sleeping bag in the raffle, so all in all, we had a great time.

The Bahamas

2007-09-30T16:56:00.000-07:00

View from our hotel balcony,
originally uploaded by Helen Norris.

This must be our year for great travel. Earlier, we went to Mexico, then we had the big trip to China, and last week, Gordon & I spent the week in the Bahamas. We actually went because I won a trip at a conference, so transportation and lodging was free.

We arrived on Sunday night at the Atlantis which is on an island called Paradise Island, which is just off New Providence Island, connected by a bridge, the P.I. (Paradise Island) Bridge. There's no way we could really afford to stay at the Atlantis if we were paying! We did, however, stay in one of the older sections, the Coral Towers, but the room was fine. After we got in, we took a walk around the hotel & casino, which is the biggest in the Caribbean. It was big, impressive and really expensive! We needed to eat, so we paid about thirty bucks for a couple of slices of pizza, a salad and a beer. Later, we watched a football game in the sports gambling area of the casino (although we didn't gamble) and we paid $17 for a beer and a glass of wine!

On Monday, we woke up late and spent some time sitting on our balcony, the best feature of our room. What a lovely view from there! The hotel property is very elaborately landscaped, lots of lagoons, pools, a waterpark, and plenty of palm trees. Later, we decided to head into Nassau in order to find more reasonably priced food. So we took a taxi across the P.I bridge, and got out in the center of Nassau, where the cruise ships dock. It rained on and off all day Monday (which is why we didn't go to the beach) so we walked to a local restaurant and had lunch. Everything in the Bahamas seems to come with peas & rice, although the peas kind of look like beans to me. After that we decided to explore Nassau a little, dodging the rainshowers when we could. Aside from the obviously touristy things, there are lots of things to see, including a museum about slavery & emancipation, and several forts. We also went to the Queen's staircase, which is in a limestone quarry that was dug out by slaves, who also carved the 66 steps in the staircase. There are only 65 now. We climbed the steps and ran into several locals who were using the steps for exercise, including one woman who had walked up and down the steps 20 times! At the top of the steps in Fort Fincastle. A local guy came up and recited the entire history of the Bahamas to us while we were there! It was kind of slow - outside of regular tourist season - and I guess he considers himself a guide, and since we were the only ones there, well he decided to guide us. He did share some interesting facts, for example, about the staircase eventually becoming an escape route for slaves. Also, the French planned to take over the Bahamas but just never bothered, and the US ruled the Bahamas for one day. Pretty soon, though, we tipped him and headed back down to the harbor. We stopped by several churches and cathedrals. There seem to be a lot of them in the Bahamas. We decided to have a drink in the bar attached to the Pirate museum. We finished up there about seven and then figured out that everything in Nassau seems to close at six! So we found one little place open for dinner and ate and went back to our room.

On Tuesday, we went down to the beach near our hotel. The beach was very nice, however, they pretty much had us roped in to about 20 feet as there were lots of Jetskis out there and they didn't want an accident. So Gordon couldn't really snorkel much. The hotel had a snorkeling lagoon instead, but that was really pretty disappointing, so he came back to the beach. We spent a little while there before it started to rain again, then we walked around the hotel property and saw the sharks and barracudas in the Predator tank. It was really pretty impressive. We then took a taxi into Nassau to an area the bartender had told us about the night before, the Fish Fry, which is apparently a good place to eat. On the way there, our taxi driver filled us in on local history, for example, pointing out the hospital were Anna Nicole Smith had a baby. We had a really good lunch at a small fish place, where the food was reasonable and tasty, although I did have to eat the mandatory peas & rice, and the beer and rum was very cheap. After lunch we walked up to Fort Charlotte, which wasn't that impressive, and then headed back into Nassau. In Nassau we did a little shopping, including getting a bottle of coconut rum, and headed back to the hotel. We decided to take a bus from central Nassau to the P.I. bridge. It was a fun experience. That night, there was a good size storm, and we could see the lightning, about 43 strikes, from our balcony.

On Wednesday, we walked down to the other end of the beach where a hotel employee told Gordon that there was better snorkeling. It was a very nice beach, but he still didn't think the snorkeling was that great. Then it started to rain again, pretty heavily, so we headed back to the hotel. Apparently, we were getting rain because of Tropical Storm Karen. We decided to have lunch at a place called Double Dees, right across the P.I. Bridge, a very local kind of place. Gordon had fried grouper and I had chicken. And peas & rice of course. It was excellent. It looked like a break in the rain, so we walked back over to Paradise Island and then walked to the other end of the Paradise Island to see gardens there called Versailles. They were very pretty gardens, although more on a Bahamas-type scale than on a Versailles scale. However, the rain really came down then and we got totally drenched on the way back to the hotel. We dried off, had some pina coladas, and then walked around the casino again. We hadn't visited the Great Hall of Waters, and something called the Dig, so we decided to visit both. The Dig is a very large aquarium, and it is truly impressive. The scale is immense, and the variety of creatures is incredible. We saw some huge manta rays, probably with an 8 or 10 foot wingspan. There were also sharks, and moray eels. On the way back, Gordon stopped to play blackjack for a little while. The cheapest table had a $10 minimum. So we set a limit, and luckily he actually came out $10 ahead!

Thursday was the first really dry day, so we decided to check out the water slides and other things in the waterpark. They were great! We especially enjoyed the lazy river, which was two miles long and had lots of waves and one of the slides called the Abyss, which I found pretty scary. However, I totally chickened out on the Mayan tower. The drop just looked too high and steep. After several hours in the waterpark, we went over to the fishmarket and ate lunch, very late, at one of the vendor stalls. The person who was working behind the counter was a conch salad artiste! Lots of skills with the knife. We then went on to a couple of different happy hours, one at Crazy Johnny's and one at the Poop Deck. More locals at Crazy Johnny's. We spent some time with a guy who has lived on the Bahamas his whole life, and who talked about the changes he has seen, including the development of Paradise Island. He told us that Atlantis is now the largest employer in the Bahamas, employing about 35,000 people, which is particularly amazing when you consider that the population of the Bahamas is only 310,000. He told us that they're actually a pretty good employer, providing health benefits for employees, for example. The Poop Deck is more tourist-oriented, but it's right on the water, and has a great view.

Friday was absolutely fabulous from a weather perspective. We had signed up for a cruise to a small island called Rose Island, which is much less developed and has beautiful beaches and snorkeling. It was fabulous. It took about an hour to get there, and it was very unspoiled, with just some minimal building done on the the island, mostly a pier and rustic kitchen and tables. We spent the day at a very unspoiled beach. The water was very clear. Most people snorkeled, but I don't like to do that, however, the water was so clear that I could actually see fish just standing in the water. The tour included lunch with unlimited wine. After lunch, naturally, I needed to spend some time in a hammock before I could go back to the beach. Gordon did even more snorkeling. We headed back to Paradise Island at about 4, and then we had dinner at the Poop Deck, which was very nice.

Saturday, we left early and headed home. It was a long trip back, and we were pretty much exhausted when we finally got home.

Photos from the Bahamas can be seen here.

China Trip - Summary

2007-08-07T23:19:00.000-07:00

This year, Gordon, Aisling and I took a trip to China organized through the University, partnering with an organization called Legends of China. It was a ten day trip, starting in Beijing, then going south to Souzhou, Hangzhou and finally ending in Shanghai. It was a great trip. The sights in China were amazing, from the ancient sites like the Forbidden City and the Great Wall to the ultra-modern skyscrapers in Shanghai. The people were very friendly to us, we had great student volunteers on the trip, and our bus captains were awesome, with lots of really great information. The other people on our tour bus were also wonderful, and we had a great time with everyone. Some of the things that stand out are the beautiful sites in Souzhou and Hangzhou, Shanghai at night, the amazing amount of construction in Beijing, the Great Wall, and the Forbidden City. The only downside was that it was hot and humid.

I would recommend the tour to anyone, with the only warning that it is a busy tour. You're kept going all the time and there's a lot of walking.

You can see photos from the trip taken by myself and some fellow travelers at the following sites:
General Photos
More Photos
Erika's Photos
Mel & Liz's China Journal
Pictures from Bus 5

China Trip, Day 9 - Aug 2

2007-08-07T23:05:00.000-07:00

The last day! Our fellow B3ers who were heading to LA had a later flight, so it was sad to say goodbye to them at the hotel. We took all our luggage, which had grown considerably since we arrived and headed to Shanghai's Podung airport. Jenny accompanied us into the airport, which was great, because we did have some problems checking in. For me, my Irish passport was a small problem, because at first they couldn't find Ireland into their system. Eventually a supervisor or someone found it. Secondly, one of my suitcases set off the alarm, and Gordon had to go to the luggage check room, where they basically unpacked the suitcase to figure out what set off the alarm. It turns out that one of the fake iPods set off the alarm. So Gordon repacked the suitcase and off we went. Kim also had problems, as it turns out that someone with her name is on the "no fly list" so she had to convince them she was not a terrorist. We had a flight from Shanghai to Beijing, and then a connection on to San Francisco. We boarded at Shanghai, and then we sat on the ground for three hours before we could take off, apparently due to thunderstorms in Beijing. We even ate lunch and watched a movie before we took off, it was so boring. There also wasn't much information given out except for one announcement in Mandarin. Luckily for us, Alex in our group speaks Mandarin and he checked in with a crew member who kept us up to date, and also gave us the good news that our flight from Beijing to SFO would wait for us.

We landed in Beijing and changed planes, leaving Beijing three hours later than planned. The flight across the Pacific was long but uneventful, and we managed to sleep. When we landed in SFO, I called Dara to arrange for her to meet us at Bart. Dara told me that she was in the hospital, delivering my grandson a month early! We picked up our luggage and checked back in with her, and she said it would be another 3-6 hours. We headed to Bart and she called back, saying they were doing a C-Section, and would wait for me. Ten minutes later, she called back saying that they couldn't wait. So we went straight to the hospital, arriving only 10 minutes after baby Aidan was born. Dara & Aidan are both doing fine, although he was little because of being early. What an exciting end to our trip!

China Trip, Day 8 - Aug 1

2007-08-07T20:43:00.000-07:00

Our last full day in China started with breakfast at the New Mayfair, which actually wasn't that great. Some people chose to eat at other establishments, Aisling had pancakes at MacDonalds and Siegrid had a red bean scone at Starbucks. We went to the Shanghai Museum. On the drive to the museum we started to see what Shanghai looks like. There are an incredible number of skyscrapers, and mostly they look fabulous. It's much nicer than Beijing. Shanghai is divided by a river, and one side of the river is new Shanghai, a lot of skyscrapers, all built since 1990. We also saw the Shanghai Expo, which was built in the 60s with help from a Soviet architect, so it looks very Russian. Jenny told us that we would have two hours in the Shanghai museum, and asked if that would be enough. We indicated that it would be, and she told us that when Bill Clinton was in Shanghai, he was scheduled to spend two hours in the museum, but ended up basically spending all day there. However, when George W. Bush went to Shanghai, he skipped the museum altogether!

The museum was in a beautiful building, four floors, very airy. It had many interesting exhibits. One of my favorites was the room with artifacts from the Chinese ethnic minorities, including the Mongols and Manchurians. I also enjoyed the calligraphy and painting, both of which were quite beautiful. In the jade area, there were carved pieces of jade from the 23rd century B.C. I also really liked the furniture, especially an exhibit of miniature furniture carved for an eighth level administrator, a person in charge of cooking condiments for an emperor, which he had buried with him. In addition to a miniature of a house and other buildings, there were several miniature carved soldiers that went along with the miniature. Gordon loved the museum, and could have spent all day there, but we had to leave to go to our next destination, a silk carpet factory. That was really not that great, although the carpets did feel very soft and looking at some of the really old carpets was interesting. We ate lunch in the same building as the carpet factory, it was Mongolian barbecue, which was different and pretty good.

We got back on the bus to get to our next destination, the Yu Ling Garden market. On the drive, Jenny went back to the marriage topic, telling us that in China, Shanghai men are considered to be good catches - they cook, clean and generally take care of things. We again got another decent look at Shanghai, quite a fabulous city, but with terrible traffic! We arrived at the Yu Ling gardens, which is a lovely rebuilt complex, very traditional looking buildings with ponds, lotus, and Chinese architecture. It's a shopping complex with lots of shopping options. A great deal of bargaining went on - special price for us - and people wrapped up their souvenir shopping. It was thoroughly enjoyable, however, because of the variety of shops, the street food (we got a sweet pancake) and the architecture. It was thoroughly packed with tourists, however, both Chinese and foreign. After our shopping, we went to dinner at another nice restaurant, where we had a lecture by a professor from a Chinese University, giving advice on doing business in China. It was very interesting, and she made lots of good points, including discussing cultural differences between China and the west.

After dinner we went on a night cruise on the Huangpu river to see Shanghai. This was the highlight of Shanghai, I think. As I mentioned, on one side of the river is old Shanghai, with the famous street called the Bund. The Bund has older buildings with a colonial feel. I believe that they have mostly been converted to high end stores now, but at night they are beautifully lit up and look fabulous from the boat. The other side of the river is new Shanghai, all skyscrapers, all built since 1990. Some of the most impressive ones include the Oriental Pearl television tower (pictured), tallest in the Asia at 468 meters, with eleven steel spheres, which is very futuristic in its appearance. Then there's the Jin Mao tower, over 90 stories, with a Chinese flair. I understand that it had a starring role in Mission Impossible III. And finally there is the International Finance Center, currently under construction, slated to become possibly the tallest building in the world (pictured at right, between the buses).

After the cruise, we went back to the hotel, and Gordon, Aisling and I headed down the street to a massage parlor to get a cheaper massage than we got at the hotel. Aisling and I went together, she got a back massage and asked for the cupping option and I got a ginger foot massage. Aisling's back massage seemed like it went well, although somehow a back massage included her legs and feet, and I had a very hard time explaining that they should not massage her broken foot. After her massage, the masseur went ahead with the cupping, which is a form of acupressure called Gua Sha. He brought in about 10 jars, and then got a long stick, attached some cotton wool and lit it. He put the flame inside a jar, pulled it out and immediately put the jar on her back. He did this with each ten jars. Because the flame created a vacuum in the jar, it stuck to her back and caused her flesh to bubble up. It looked so weird! Then when he took the jars off, she still had little circles on her back.

My foot massage was almost as weird. First, he brought in a barrel filled it water and plugged it in. I put my feet in there, and let them steam. At some point, it just got too hot, and I had to ask him to turn it down. Then he started to massage my feet. He noticed that I had a lot of hard skin on my feet (all that walking in China) and so he asked if I wanted my feet scraped. I said sure, and he went out and got the scraping tools. When he brought them back, I was beginning to regret saying yes. They were essentially straight edge razors of varying lengths. His only English word was "relax", which he used many times when scraping my feet. Then he asked if I wanted my toenails cut, I said sure, and he actually used one of the razors to cut my toenails! I think he was the number 1 foot scraper in China. When he was finished with the massage, he went and got a ginger substance that he slathered all over my legs, and then covered with very hot towels. My legs got very hot, and I couldn't actually make it to the scheduled end of the treatment!

Gordon was still getting his massage when we left, so when he was done he asked at the reception desk where were the two women he was with, and they thought he was asking for the "home service". We all got back to the hotel pretty late and I packed Aisling up for the flight home.

China Trip, Day 7 - July 31

2007-08-07T19:14:00.000-07:00

We had a very nice breakfast at the Hangzhou Honglou, and then took a bus to West Lake for a cruise. It's a very beautiful semi-man made lake, and considered to be one of the most romantic spots in China. We walked along the Lovers Causeway before we got on the boat for a cruise. We heard several sad stories about Chinese lovers, including the white snake lady. All the stories seem to end with somebody dying. Hmm. There are hills around the lake, all made from silt taken from the lake. The gardens around the lake include three sites, the solitary hill, which isn't solitary, the long walk, which isn't that long, and the broken bridge, which isn't broken. On the lake, there are three little pagodas (pictured), which are also depicted on the back of the one-yuan bill. Around the lake, there are about 700 tea houses in Hangzhou, where people can spend all day drinking tea, eating and playing cards. Apparently, people in Hangzhou are pretty relaxed and believe in taking care of themselves. Jenny also told us about a moon holiday when the local people come out to the West Lake and see the 33 moons. Apparently there are five moons on each little pagoda, and with their reflection in the lake, that makes 30 moons. Then there's the moon in the sky and it's reflection, that makes 32 moons. And finally the moon that shines with love in your heart (or something like that) is the 33rd moon.

We left West Lake and headed to a tea orchard, which was a bit of a drive, but it got us out of the city and into the country. It is a beautiful area, with lots of tea trees, which are about the size of tea bushes. They have green tea and black tea. We walked over by the tea trees, and then watched a local man drying the leaves. We then went into the tea house for a cup of green tea and a lecture on tea. Like the embroidery and silk factories, this totally exceeded all expectations. We learned that tea is picked from March on into the summer, and the earlier that it's picked, the better the quality. We also learned that the water should be boiled and then cooled to 85 degrees. The tea lady put two pinches of tea in our cups, glasses actually, and then the hot water was poured in a very specific manner, which is hard to describe but it was sort of a triple pour. The tea lady then told us to lean over the glass and get some of the green tea steam in our eyes. It's apparently really good for our eyes. Then we drank and refilled and learned how green tea is good for everything. We were all sold, not only was she the number 1 tea packer, but she was also the number 1 saleslady! We bought as much tea as we did silk comforters. Aisling even bought a tea-filled pillow!

We went to have lunch at a lovely restaurant by the lake. I went to the bathroom, and on my way back to the table, Gordon called me and said, "Hey look at this". It was a case full of live snakes! There was also a frozen alligator! Because we were tourists, they didn't offer us snake or alligator, however. We then went to Lingyin temple, a buddhist temple in Hangzhou. Although many religious icons were destroyed during the Cultural revolution, this one was apparently protected by the Premier at that time. In it's heyday, long before the Cultural Revolution, there were as many as 3000 monks in this temple. We walked through a long garden, with many stone Buddhas, most of which had a strong Indian influence, as one of the founding monks was Indian. There were three main buildings, one of which had the largest Buddha statue in China. I guess it's the number 1 Buddha. Another building had 500 bronze statues of Buddha's followers, each weighing one ton. It was amazing.

We went back to the bus and drove on to Shanghai. We checked into the New Mayfair hotel, which was fabulous. We went to a nice restaurant for dinner, where we had a short speech by Yu Li, the president of Legends of China. Because the hotel was in downtown Shanghai, there were lots of things close by, including a park, several Starbucks and other fast food type places. After dinner, several people went for a walk around the hotel. Then Aisling went to Pizza Hut with some of the young people and Gordon and I got a massage in the hotel. It was Chinese massage, very tough, but I felt better afterwards. We were in the same room, and Gordon's masseuse came in first. When my masseuse came in, Gordon was lying face-down, and she thought he was my sister because of his pony tail. After our massages, we had a drink in the hotel bar with Kim, Joe and Harry before going to bed. All said, I think the MayFair was the best hotel, because of it's location in Downtown Shanghai and all the facilities in the hotel.

China Trip, Day 6 - July 30

2007-08-07T18:31:00.000-07:00

Day 6 begin with breakfast at the Holiday Inn in Souzhou, which unfortunately wasn't as good as the breakfast at the Loong Palace. We then got on the bus to go to Tiger Hill. Jenny seemed to continue with her marriage obsession, explaining to us that in North China, the husband tends to have more control in the marriage and makes all the decisions, and that they call this the "Big Husband". That's not so true in South China. She also told us that Souzhou was once part of the Pacific Ocean, and that Tiger Hill was an island in the Pacific Ocean. An emperor came from North China to this area, and ultimately was buried at Tiger Hill. 10,000 workers built his tomb, and they were later killed so that nobody could locate the tomb. Apparently, this same emperor saw a white tiger on the hill, which is why the hill is called Tiger Hill. Centuries later, a pagoda was built on the hill. The pagoda is now leaning, and the theory is that it's leaning because it was built on the tomb, which impacted the foundation. The pagoda is 48 meters tall, and is leaning 2.34m. Jenny pointed out that this is a more extreme lean than the leaning "pagoda" in Pisa. The visit to Tiger Hill was fabulous. The grounds are beautiful. In addition, it was much less crowded that anywhere we had been in Beijing and that was a nice change. It was, however, hotter than Beijing, at least 110 fahrenheit and very humid. We climbed the hill to get to the leaning Pagoda, a much less strenuous climb than the Great Wall. Even Aisling was able to manage it.

We left Tiger Hill after a couple of hours and headed back into Souzhou. There are lots of canals in Souzhou, and also in Hangzhou. An emperor many centuries ago built the grand canal all the way from Beijing to Shanghai for transportation. This, the other canals, the lakes and natural features in this area do make beautiful scenery. The Chinese refer to Souzhou and Hangzhou as Heaven on earth. Jenny also mentioned that I.M. Pei had spent part of his childhood in Souzhou and has designed two buildings there, including the new museum, which contains artifacts that were discovered in the leaning Pagoda.

We then headed over to an embroidery factory. True to her pattern, Jenny told the men that Souzhou women are considered to be the most beautiful women in China. She said there are five different Souzhou girls, and I can't remember all of them, but one of them was embroidery girl. I wasn't looking forward to the embroidery factory visit, but I must admit that it far exceeded my expectations. We saw the most beautiful embroidery and watched the embroidery girls at worked. They could produce one-sided or two-sided embroidery. In the case of the two-sided, they could even produce a piece that was a puppy on one side and a kitty on the other! The embroidery pieces created by masters were just incredible. There was a really amazing portrait-size piece of Chairman Mao. In the garden, we saw three little kittens, and that was the high spot of the embroidery factory for Aisling.

We went for lunch to the number 1 Silk factory in China. They decided we should have western food that day, and it wasn't very good. We then had a lecture about silk, and went into the silk factory. Like the embroidery, this was fabulous. The lecture explained how the whole process works. Apparently the worms eat and eat for 25 days. Then they actually spit the silk thread out of their mouth and make a cocoon. The cocoon is put in the oven, basically to kill the moth, and the workers find the start of the thread in the cocoon and pull it off. We walked through the factory and saw the worms eat, and watched the women pull the thread of the cocoon. It was fascinating. Also, there are some double cocoons, where two silkworms get together and make a cocoon with their two threads. Of course, Jenny referred to this as a love cocoon. Because there are two threads intertwined, they can't really pull the silk threads off, so instead they pull the cocoon apart and use the fibers use them to make these fabulous silk comforters, filled with this fiber. We had heard about this from Lauren, number 1 shopper on bus B3, and we were mostly already pretty much sold on the whole silk comforter concept, so let's just say the number 1 silk factory in China got lots of sales from our bus. I bought three myself, as well as the silk covers to go on them. When we got back to the bus, Jenny greeted us by saying "on behalf of the governor of the province, I thank you for your contributions to the local economy". We also had a fashion show - Souzhou's next top model, I believe. We went into the room, and before the models came out, Gordon and Aisling both took a turn on the runway. They were considerably more animated than the models, who really looked bored. I have a theory that they were girls who worked in the factory (Silk girls, as Jenny called them) who were required to do the modeling as a condition of employment and were all bored by it. They modeled some of the silk clothes for sale in the store.

Our final visit of the day was the Humble Administrators garden. Jenny indicated that the gardens we had visited in Beijing at the Summer Palace and the Temple of Heaven are Imperial Gardens, built on a grand scale, but that the Humble Administrator's Garden is built by a private citizen, and is on a much smaller scale. But it was beautiful, and I am not sure why it's humble. He must have been a pretty high ranking administrator to be able to afford to build a garden like that. Apparently, it became divided into three later when a descendant of the Humble Administrator lost it while gambling with three other people. There was a lovely lake filled with beautiful lotus plants, and an old lady in a boat harvesting the lotus root. Also, there was an entertainment pavilion where performances could be presented to visitors. The picture of Gordon and me on my blog was taken at the Humble Administrators garden. Jenny also noted that the garden is designed to bloom year round, so there are flowers that bloom in each season. We just happened to be there in the time for lotus to bloom, the summer.

We returned to the bus and headed to Hangzhou. From the bus as we drove through Souzhou, we got to see more of Souzhou and what a lovely city it is with all the canals and beautiful bridges. Jenny noted that Souzhou is known as the honeymoon capital in China. We got to our hotel in Hangzhou, the Honglou, and spent a little time in our room before we went to dinner in the hotel. It was a very high rise hotel, and we were pretty high up there, and we were lucky to see fireworks from our room! Not sure what the fireworks show was about. The hotel was in downtown Hangzhou, near the train station, so after dinner we went for a short walk. We went into a couple of small local shops, where we bought a couple of souvenirs, and also a bottle of cheap white wine, brand name Great Wall. Over in a park near the train station, there were tons of people, including, inexplicably, a guy hanging his laundry in a tree. After that, we went to meet Aisling and Kim who had already gone to the pool. For some reason, the route to the pool was through the karaoke room and the game room, where several men were sitting around playing cards. We then went back to our room and had some of our cheap white wine, which wasn't bad.

On the way back from the pool, we ran into Denise and Erika, who had gone to the spa to get a massage. They were told that massages were only for men, and were shooed out of there. Gordon and I decided to try our luck. The story we got was that I could get a foot massage, but not a body massage. The reason for this, we were told, was because the only had male masseurs working, and that they wouldn't massage women. However, we heard the story the next day from Mike who actually got a massage. It turns out that it was all attractive, scantily-clad female masseuses who were seeming to want to sell additional services! A little different to what I had been told!

China Trip, Day 5 - July 29

2007-08-06T22:26:00.000-07:00

Today was our last day in Beijing, so we packed and brought our luggage down to the lobby to checkout and get it loaded onto the bus. Angie collected our passports and tickets to get us checked in on the airline. Because of our excursion the night before, Siegrid, Aisling and I were watching very closely to make sure that people showed up at breakfast, hoping we hadn't lost anyone! We didn't. We actually had a little time at the hotel after breakfast and then left and went to a very early lunch before going to the airport. Angie spent some time on the bus comparing Beijing and Shanghai. Beijing is actually bigger than Shanghai - 16,800 sq. km compared to 6000 sq km in Shanghai. However, the population of Shanghai, at 19 million, is larger than Beijing's 17 million. Beijing was feeling pretty crowded to me, so I could only imagine what Shanghai must be like. Angie indicated that Beijing is often known China's Washington DC, while Shanghai is known as China's New York. A third city that we visit, Hangzhou, is known as China's Venice, because it's full of canals. Angie also mentioned that the food in Shanghai is different to Beijing, commenting that it's more sweet and less seasoned.

After lunch, which was very good, we said goodbye to Angie, Hunter and Mr Wu, the parking master, at the airport. We went to the gate to find that our flight was delayed, so we spent some time playing cards at the gate. Then our gate was changed, and we had to run to the new gate.

While waiting for this flight, I had a rather bizarre bathroom experience. Now at the airport, at least all the bathrooms were western style, rather than the Chinese "squatting" style, which I really found hard to master. Anyhow, I went into the airport bathroom, and found that the lines were by stall rather than one single line. I, of course, got in line for the slowest stall. I was standing there for so long I was wondering if it was out of order or something, when the woman who was in there dropped her compact. Turns out she was putting her makeup on in there. She finally came out. I was pretty quick in the bathroom, but the woman in line behind me knocked on the door like I was too slow. It was very weird.

The flight from Beijing to Shanghai was bumpy, but we arrived safe, although quite late. We flew into Shanghai Hongqiao airport, the domestic airport. There's also an international airport that we would fly out of later. Nobody's luggage got lost, so we went to the terminal and met our new bus captain, Jenny. It was definitely hot and humid when we got to Shanghai, but it seemed less smoggy than Beijing. We saw the sun there, which we hadn't seen at all in Beijing. We got on the bus and drove to our first stop, Souzhou, about two hours from Shanghai. I thought that Shanghai looked quite different to Beijing as we drove along the freeway. We arrived in Souzhou at about nine. It was really pretty charming. There were lots of canals, and it was very nicely lit up. Also, the streets were smaller, it's a much smaller city than Beijing, and the way the driver maneuvered the bus was pretty amazing. While there were still a lot of bikes on the roads, there were also a lot of mopeds. I don't think I saw a single helmet on a bike or moped rider in China, and in Souzhou, the mopeds didn't seem to have lights either. Jenny explained that the government encourages the use of mopeds, which are electric, to minimize pollution, by levying large taxes on cars and motorbikes.

We got to the restaurant, and the food was different to what we had in Beijing. There was a soup made from some local plant that grows in the lake, I forget the name. That soup got mixed reviews, but I personally liked it. Jenny made a joke about food - Chinese people eat everything with two wings except a plane and everything with four legs, except the table. Also, Jenny seems to be pretty obsessed with marriage and romance. She made several jokes about Chinese women looking for a 3C man - a man with a car, career and credit card.

Jenny also talked about the Family Planning Policy in China. Angie spent a lot of time talking about this too. They noted that without this policy, the population in China would be about 1.9 billion. (It's currently 1.3 billion). They were very careful to point out that it's not just a one-child policy, it also encourages later marriage and later childbearing, and they both pointed out several times that there are exceptions to the one-child rule. For example, if you and your spouse are the child of two only children, you can have two children. Also, they discourage learning the gender of the child before birth to avoid abortions. It's really interesting that previous generations were really encouraged to have lots of children, as Mao felt their strength was in their population. It's amazing that they have gone from families with six or seven children to one-child families in the space of a single generation.

In Souzhou we stayed in a Holiday Inn. It was very new and the room was nice.

China Trip, Day 4 - July 28

2007-08-06T16:45:00.000-07:00

After the previous night's thunderstorm, we woke up to a cooler day on day 4. We're now used to our routine. Get up, have a great breakfast at the hotel, head over to the bus and go for a drive to someplace fabulous. Today it's the Summer Palace. As if the Forbidden City isn't enough, the emperors had a special palace in Beijing where they spent summer - April through October. Mostly Angie talked about the dowager Empress, who basically ruled through her children following the death of the emperor. I may not have that completely right, but essentially she was in charge. The palace is in a beautiful garden (like all of them) on a man-made lake. Lots of lotus on the lake. The palace was lovely, and there was a covered walkway, called the long walk, where the empress took a walk after each meal. Each meal consisted of 128 courses, so we can see why that might be necessary! It's worth noting that this was during the time of bound feet, so she did this mile-long walk several times a day on bound feet. What a woman! The long walk was covered with roof with the most magnificent blue paintings (pictured).

The street vendors were out in strength in the Summer Palace. The item of choice here was the fake designer bag. I must admit that I succumbed to the fake Gucci. Unfortunately, when you buy one, it seems to attract other vendors!

We took a boat ride across the lake to get back to the bus from the Summer Palace. Where we boarded the boat, there was also a really interesting decorative stone boat. The boat ride gave us the best views of the palace itself, which is on a hill overlooking the lake. We also got to see several beautiful bridges across the lake, including the 17-arch bridge that links to a man-made island in the lake. From there, we drove to a Pearl factory, government store. A little disappointing, basically there was a pretty hard sell for the pearls, and it wasn't nearly as interesting as watching the Jade master at work. We had lunch there, also a little disappointing, and then off to Tian'anmen Square.

Nothing disappointing about Tian'anmen Square. It's the largest public square in the world. The cement slabs that make up the square are designed to hold two people standing, and when they're full, it holds 1 million people. There's a big Mao poster on the wall of the Forbidden City facing Tian'anmen Square (photo below), plus Mao's tomb in the middle, which, of course, isn't accessible. Also, there's a memorial to the fallen heroes of the Cultural Revolution (pictured above). All in all, very impressive. The downside is that the street vendors are out in force, and are really very aggressive. Gordon did buy a Chairman Mao watch, and because it had heated up again, I really needed to buy a fan. We all learned the call of the street vendor - "special price for you!" Tian'anmen Square was also packed with foreign tourists and Chinese visitors. Again, many in our group were photographed with Chinese nationals and Aisling's cast was a major point of interest. As with the Forbidden City, the sheer size of Tian'anmen Square is breathtaking, and like everywhere else in Beijing, it is very crowded.

Our group had some "free time" then so we did a couple of our own activities. First, we went to a distinctly non-government shopping mall. It was a blast. There were lots of little stores with people aggressively bargaining better prices. Some of them might have been a little *too* aggressive. One of the vendors practically ripped my arm out of my sockets trying to drag me into her store when I tried to leave. We bought all kinds of stuff, I have no idea if the jade I bought is real, in spite of my lesson at the factory, but I am certain that the iPods we bought were fake! I mean, they were $20! Aisling bought one, and then I piggy-backed on her, and Don & Diane piggybacked on that purchase. But we were all overshadowed by Lauren's serious shopping! 40 Pashmina scarves, 20 silk ties and heaven knows how many strands of pearls! Absolutely amazing. She spent $200 and made out like a bandit.

We left our shopping frenzy and had a very nice dinner, although they clearly thought we were craving western food because in addition to the regular Chinese fare, we had fries! Our table specifically boycotted the fries, however. At dinner, we made plans to go out that night back to the Lotus market to go "clubbing". Some people had a pre-arranged tour to the Beijing Opera, those of us that didn't went back to the hotel and went swimming, and we arranged to meet in the lobby at 10:30.

At least 12 of us met up to go to the Lotus Market, including our student volunteer, Hunter, and Aisling. I don't know if it makes me a bad parent to let my 11-year-old daughter go clubbing in Beijing, what can I say? We also picked up four additional people from UCLA, and off we went in four different taxis. Aisling went in a cab with some of the other girls, while I rode with Siegrid, Hunter and Carrie. It turns out that Hunter told the company that he was going out with us, and they told him that he should keep an eye on us and not let us drink. However, Hunter indicated that beer doesn't really count as drinking. I think the Legends of China company was very concerned that we not do something crazy and miss our flight to Shanghai the next day. We arranged to meet at 12:30 at the Starbucks (there's one on every corner) but I honestly expected to run into people walking along the street, as that had happened the previous evening that we were there. However, we didn't run into each other for the first hour, so I was a little worried about Aisling, although no need to worry, she was with Alicia and Erica, who really look out for her. Siegrid, Hunter, Carrie and I went out on a boat on the lake, Hunter and I had sodas but Siegrid and Carrie had beers, so Hunter and I pedaled.

We all met up as scheduled at 12:30 at Starbucks, including the UCLA folks. Denise had connected with a friend of hers from Guatemala, who now lives in Beijing, who offered to take the group to a different area, more of a student nightlife area. Aisling was tired, however, so I took her home. One of the UCLA group, actually the father of a UCLA student who also is on the faculty at UCSF, Bob, decided to also come home in the taxi with Aisling and me. The UCLA group had been drinking bottles of beer, and Bob asked if I thought he could take his beer in the cab with him. My guess is that it wasn't going to be a problem, and sure enough, it wasn't, so he got to finish his beer in the taxi on the way home. Aisling finished her frapuccino.

As I've mentioned, the hotel is out in the suburbs, so sometimes it's hard to get a taxi to go out that far, however, the first taxi that stopped agreed to take us. However, he must not have read the directions on the hotel card too well, because he ended up driving in the total opposite direction! We went miles out of our way before he finally confessed to being lost, at least I assume that's what he was saying. There was a bit of a communication issue. He finally called the hotel and got more directions and took us back. We then had to haggle about the cost of the taxi ride, as it showed almost three times what it should on the meter. The hotel staff helped, though, and we got it to a reasonable cost.

I took Aisling to the room she shares with Siegrid. Siegrid was already back, even though she left way after we did. Her taxi didn't get lost on the way! The group that stayed behind decided to go get some pizza before going to the other area, and walked to a pizza place just outside the lotus market. The had to walk through a very deserted dark alley to get there, which was a little unnerving for some of the group. The pizza place was closed anyhow, and Hunter got more calls from Legends of China, so he came home with Siegrid and Kim. The rest of the group went on to the other area and by all accounts danced into the wee hours of the morning.

China Trip, Day 3 - July 27

2007-08-06T15:19:00.000-07:00

Day 3 took us to the Great Wall of China, probably the highlight of the trip so far. It was a longish drive on the bus, but out of the city, so the traffic wasn't as terrible. When we got there first, we had to assemble with all the Legends of China groups and have one huge photo taken with the Great Wall in the background. We were then left on our own to climb. Aisling couldn't really climb, so she hung out with some of the other people who found it a bit daunting at the souvenir shops in the bus parking area. She is quite the little bargainer for a lower price. We headed up, and at the first "bridge" we saw our silk squares hanging there! All the LOC squares had been mounted there for the day. We then proceeded to go up, and it was a really tough climb. The stairs are uneven and sometimes steep, and of course there are lots of them. I wish I had remembered to count! It was hot and sticky. I cannot remember the last time that I was that hot and sweaty. We did make it all the way to the top, however, and it was totally worth it. It's such a foreboding structure. It must have been impenetrable to outside invaders. It's so steep up the sides, and then it's on a hillside, you would need to be crazy to try to assault it. Coming down was almost scarier than going up, I'm just glad they put in the rail for the tourists!

We headed to lunch at a combined restaurant/government friendship store, and then back to the hotel to freshen up for about thirty minutes. Then we headed to QingHua University for a short walking tour. It was interesting, but we didn't get a lot of details about the buildings or the University itself. We then went to dinner in the student dining hall, not the fanciest food we've had, but the convenience store was a big hit. I think I paid 2 yuan for a bottle of cold water and 5 yuan for a beer. We then had the silk banner/olympic ceremony and show. We had three winners for the silk banner contest on our bus - Mike, Carrie and Gloria. The show, which described China's successful bid for the Olympics, was completely done by Chinese students, and other than being a little long, was quite enjoyable.

After the show, we headed out for a night tour of Beijing. I enjoyed this enormously. The bus drove us down Chang An Boulevard, which is kind of like Beijing's Champs Elysee, and it was very beautiful. We passed the Forbidden City and Tian'anmen square. Most of the buildings on Chang An Boulevard are government buildings and are very large and impressive. Some of the street lights were designed to look like fireworks, it was very pretty. We also saw the remains of the original Beijing City Wall. There's very little left of it, much of it destroyed in earlier building frenzies. Our guide (it wasn't Angie) also told us that most Chinese people like to do some light exercise after dinner for health reasons. So the parks were literally full of people either walking or dancing. Apparently, dancing in the park after dinner is very popular. Usually someone brings a radio or CD player, or there may be live music, and other people gather round and dance. We saw lots of people dancing in the parks in Beijing. We saw some waltzes, but probably the most interesting was the country & western line dancing, which apparently is very popular in China right now.

We stopped for a half hour at the Lotus Market. This is a former market and now is Beijing's night spot. It's on a lake, and is very pretty. We stopped in one bar where I had a drink that I can't even describe, except maybe as firewater. We didn't have time to eat, but I know that Gordon was interested in the turtle and snake soup.

After we got home and to bed, there was a thunderstorm in the middle of the night.

China Trip, Day 2 - July 26

2007-08-06T14:44:00.000-07:00

We still weren't over the jet lag, waking up at 5 a.m. There's not much of a view from my room window, given that we're out on the fourth ring road, but even out here in the suburbs, it's interesting to note that there are 12 huge cranes visible. Our hotel is pretty new itself, and right next to it, there's a building that looks like an old motel that seems to be housing construction workers. Breakfast at the hotel was great, I went with the Asian breakfast, noodles, rice and congee, a kind of porridge. But I didn't skip the coffee! The bus was due to leave at 8 for our first stop, but left a little late, so Angie spent a lot of time talking about our first destination the "number 1" jade factory in Beijing. Our bus driver, Mr. Wu, is the "number 1" bus driver in the company. The jade factory is government approved, and the store there is a government store, so we were encouraged to shop there for the better quality. We took off, and then got a good sense of the driving style in Beijing. There are lots of bikes as well as cars, but the rules seem to be that the largest vehicle has the right of way. Bike riders in this city must have nerves of steel!

The jade factory was enjoyable, we got to see the jade masters carving away at big blocks of jade making my personal favorite, four jade balls, one inside the other, carved from a single piece of jade (pictured in various stages at left). We also learned how to tell good jade from bad jade, although I can't say I really know how. The government store was somewhat disappointing, quality may have been good, but prices weren't. However, Aisling spent a fair amount of time looking at all the jade jewelry. We then returned to the bus to head for the Forbidden City, which is in the center of Beijing, so it was a fairly long ride. On the way, we continued to get a good sense of all the construction and a better view of the "birds nest" Olympic stadium. The other Olympic venues for various sports are designed to look like they are related to the sport, for example, the aquatics center has a "wavy" kind of look. The Olympic village, also under construction, is pretty darn large and imposing also. We were joined on the bus by Hunter Lee, a student volunteer from Peking University.

We drove from the Jade factory, which wasn't far from our hotel, into Beijing to go to the Forbidden City. On the way, we passed lots more construction, and also the older part of Beijing. In the old city, there are little buildings called Hutong, where people live in very close quarters, usually with a lot of little alleyways running in between the houses, and with most of the houses facing into a communal square. While many of them have been destroyed and replaced with high rises, they are now protected and it's not so easy to tear one down.

We arrived at the Forbidden City. Now that we're in the center of Beijing, we could really get a feel of just how crowded a city it is, especially at a major tourist site like the Forbidden City. Our group tried to stay together, and we were fairly identifiable, as we all had our yellow "B3" tags on. The Forbidden City is huge. There are 9999.5 rooms in the Forbidden City, and I believe it covers 250 acres. Plus, there's a moat around it. The land dug out from the moat then was used to make a hill directly across from the Forbidden City. As we waited in front of the entrance for Angie to buy our tickets, several members of our group were approached by local people who wanted to have photos taken with them. This was particularly true for members of the group who are African-American, a very interesting phenomenon. We also got our first taste of street vendors, selling us everything from postcards to fans to umbrellas. The fans became very popular as we got into the trip and the heat wore us down. We got into the Forbidden City and started our tour. It was fabulous, just the sheer scale of the buildings was enormously impressive. The wife and concubine quarters, however, were smaller than the other sections. Angie tried valiantly to keep our group together, through the large distance and the huge crowds, however, we unfortunately lost four people! Everyone took lots of photos, however, my camera picked that particular day to die, unfortunately. We spend several hours in the Forbidden City, going from building to building and courtyard to courtyard, finally getting back to the bus minus four people and very hot and tired.

We went to lunch in a building called the "Bonding Center". I thought the group was already pretty well bonded, but it didn't seem to hurt. It was a good lunch, also Aisling got her photo taken in a traditional Chinese costume and then shopped at their little gift shop. Even in that shop you could bargain! You can bargain anywhere that it's not a government shop. We left lunch and headed for the Temple of Heaven, where the emperors prayed for good harvests. The temple buildings are in a very nice garden, and while we were waiting for Angie to get the tickets, we read the rules of the park. Some of the English translations were pretty funny including:

Don't be lying on the benches.
No leaking.
No percussion.
No teaching dance for profit.
Don't hang items from trees.
No recycling.
Don't stay at the entrances and exits for a really long time.

The garden itself was lovely. Also, like the Forbidden City, the sheer size of the buildings was most impressive. In the Temple of Heaven, the roofs are all blue, like the sky, whereas in the Forbidden City, the buildings are yellow with red roofs to signify that it's an emperor's home. Aisling's aircast on her foot attracted a lot of attention. People would just stop and stare at it, and finally a Chinese man who was walking with a cane insisted on having a photo taken with her.

We found our missing four people at the Temple of Heaven. They had taken a taxi (or two) back to the hotel and then called Angie, and arranged to meet us there. We then went to dinner at another very nice restaurant. Aisling thought the highlight of this restaurant was the shop next door. Gordon figured out that you can but a second bottle of beer for the table for 10 yuan (about $1.50) and that became a standard practice at our tables. The food was good, however, we're noticing that the same dishes seem to be showing up at all the meals.

We then headed back to the hotel. Some of the group signed up for the Chinese Acrobatic show, but we hadn't done that so instead we walked around the hotel and got a fairly early night.

China Trip, Day 1 - July 24-25 2007

2007-08-05T18:35:00.000-07:00

The trip got off to a dubious start, with our flight out of San Francisco delayed by two hours. Gordon, Aisling, Siegrid and I had lunch with Dara and Mike Sinatra. We ate the most American food we could find - Lori's Diner! Lots of pancakes, BLTs etc. We went to the gate, chatted to some of our fellow travelers and waited for the flight. The plane was a combo passenger/cargo plane, very strange. The flight took off two hours late, but was uneventful. We arrived in Beijing, landing at about 8. We got off the plane on a tarmac, and got a shuttle to the terminal, which gave us an opportunity to experience the heat and humidity in Beijing, which is comparable to what I experienced living 13 years in St. Louis. When we picked up our luggage, we cleared customs and immigration and went out to meet our Bus Captain, Angie Wang. Angie took us to a restaurant for dinner. On the way, we got a full taste of the frenetic pace of construction in Beijing. Even though it was after 9 or so at night, there were still crews working. We got our first view of the Beijing Olympic stadium, currently under construction, which is designed to look like a birds nest. Angie told us that the airport currently has two terminals but that they are adding a third for the Olympics, as they expect to have 60 million visitors next year. They'll depend heavily on the public transportation/subway system to move people around. We arrived at the restaurant, which was very attractive, and the food was very nice, although not that different to what we might experience at a Chinese restaurant in California. Drinks, however, were served in a very non-American style, we were allowed to have one glass of a soft drink. Soft drinks included sodas (no diet), beer and water. We chatted and began to get to know each other at dinner (through my blog I'll just mention people's names, rather than do introductions). Angie also made us laugh back on the bus when she told us it would be very hot tomorrow, so we should dress accordingly, suggesting that the men wear "wife beaters". We then went back to our hotel, the Loong Palace hotel, which Angie indicated is "out in the suburbs". Beijing has five "ring roads" with a sixth coming for the Olympics, and the Loong Place is on the fourth ring, meaning it's pretty far out there. The hotel was very nice, the rooms were beautiful. I fell asleep at midnight about 9 am California time, and while my sleep was a little broken up, I felt good about getting any sleep at all.

More Health Drama

2007-07-18T22:24:00.000-07:00

Well, everyone had to hear the story of Aisling's broken foot several times. Maybe I can start boring people with the story of how I passed out while on the tour of the labor ward at the hospital with Dara! Yes, I was in a room with ten pregnant women and a little girl on crutches and I simply passed out and keeled over. I've no idea what happened, all I remember was telling Aisling that I wasn't feeling well, and the next thing I knew one of the expectant fathers was picking me up while three nurses made a fuss over me. How embarrassing!

Aisling's injury

2007-07-15T19:24:00.000-07:00

Okay. This is Aisling (Helen's daughter) and my mom can hardly ever get the story of my injury straight so for those of you who want to know this is the story. I was at an overnight summer camp in Soda Springs and it was day five out of eight days at camp and one morning it was breakfast. The dining hall was about 50 feet away from the restrooms which I was at when the injury occurred. So there was a white SUV driving by very slowly and inside it was the maintenance guy who was paying no attention to the road and was talking to the camp director. When I thought the SUV had gone by me I walked behind the back wheel. then the truck kind of swerved and ran over my foot and I started crying. The SUV kept driving and when I told the camp director she said "stop making jokes." I told her I was serious and went to the health center she called my mom and my mom wanted me to go to the nearest emergency room to get X-rayed and the camp director went up to me and called me a liar and since I had a headache the first day she said that she thought that this was an attempt to get out of camp, or as she said "I was looking for a way out." She said if the x-rays proved she was wrong then she would apologize to me". Anyhow, the xrays showed that I had broken bones in my foot, and the nurse called my Mom and she had to come get me the next day. The camp director still didn't apologize to me even though the xray proved I was right.

My mom and fuzzers were worried that the injury was so bad that it would mess up our trip to China. My regular doctor told fuzzers to take me to an orthpedist, who did a special xray called a CT scan so he could see better. He was worried that I might need surgery which would really have messed up our trip to China. Anyhow, I don't need surgery, just a big cast. Then I get to go back the day before our trip and get a lighter cast. There's a picture of my cast up above.

The Big Ending

2007-06-11T10:50:00.000-07:00

I must confess that I am disappointed with the ending. I know that's a typical thing with the Sopranos - leaving lots of loose ends. But really, I thought my TV went on the fritz! However, I am sure that I will eventually see it for the brilliance that it is. In the meantime, let me suggest a couple of things that might explain the ending.

- The cat is really Adriana reincarnated, that's why it keeps looking at the photo of Chris. Eventually the cat tells Carmela that Tony had Adriana killed.
- When it all goes black at the end, it's really because Tony got whacked by that Russian mobster who went missing in the woods several years ago.
- Uncle Junior isn't really demented, and he starts running the family from the security of the hospital.
- AJ becomes a Navy SEAL.
- Sil remains a vegetable but shows signs of life when he hears anything played by Bruce Springsteen.
- Paulie is killed in a freak accident involving lightning and a cell phone.

Warriors Playoff Run ends

2007-05-20T18:58:00.000-07:00

It's just taken me several days to acknowledge that it's over, but it is. While I wish that the Warriors were still in it, I'm still really thrilled at how well the Warriors did and I'm looking forward to next year, hoping that Don Nelson comes back and that the team is still close to intact.

Message from Yau-Man

2007-05-18T16:36:00.000-07:00

Well it was a bad week, Yau-Man lost and the Warriors were eliminated from the playoffs. I don't think Yau would mind me sharing this message he sent the "pool" with the world.

From Yau-Man: Thank you very much to all of you who have sent me greetings and kind words.

Yes, it was a near miss - I've never been so close to $1M before in my life.. it was good will it lasted. It was by far the greatest experience in life ever - and I wish everyone can have the opportunity to experience it.

When I first signed up for the show, I did so for the sole purpose of winning a Million Dollars - for what other reasons would I want to go through so much pain and suffering? Yes, it a game. Yes, I want that million as much as any other contestants. But yet, it is very important to me to be able to face my teenage daughters when I come home, with or without the million, and be able to look them in the eyes and say to them without hesitation or reservations, "When you watch the show, you will be proud of your dad." I have to be able to assure them that they will not be embarrassed to ask their friends and schoolmates to watch each and every episode with them. In playing a game where there are no rules - a game which involve living in a situation without moral codes, how I think my daughters will see me became my "moral compass."

As for Dreamz, I think Shakespeare said it best in "Julius Caesar" Act 3, Scene 2 with Mark Anthony's Friends, Romans, countrymen/lend me your ears/I come to bury Ceasar not to praise him/ soliloquy with the line: " The evil that men do lives after them; the good is oft interred with their bones." Dreamz will have to live this decision down for the rest of his life. I wish him no ill will and for his sake hope that he can do enough good to make amends for this "slight" moral infraction committed in front of 20 million people.

I know there a movement out there to raise a million dollars for me or to buy me a truck. Well, if you come across them or if you get email solicitation, please help me get the word out that they should use their money to make a donation to their favorite charity instead. If they are interested in donating to my charities, they are: National Collegiate Table Tennis Association (http://NCTTA.org), Contra Costa Food Bank (http://www.foodbankccs.org/ ) or the American Lung Association.

Thank you very much.

Yau-Man

Big Survivor Finale

2007-05-13T13:25:00.000-07:00

Tonight's Survivor promises to be exciting! Last week's episode was great. Yau-Man giving up the truck and playing the hidden idol at just the right time - it was classic.

Warriors Playoff Update

2007-05-13T13:16:00.000-07:00

I haven't been very good about posting regularly on the Warriors, but you know how it's been going! I'll just list my highlights:

1. Beating the Mavs in 6. Dirk who???
2. Baron's dunk over Andrei Kirilenko (also known as AK-47) in Game 3 in Oakland.
3. Agonizing through the first two games in Utah with friends in student bars in Minnesota. My boss and colleagues are shown above.
4. Derek Fisher's uplifting story. Okay, so he's on the wrong team now, but he was always a class act, and everyone wishes him the best for his family.
5. Listening to the announcers on ESPN talk about Davis. It's good to see the Warriors get national attention.
6. Matt Barnes's new tattoo.
7. Stephen Jackson stepping up.
8. Andris Biedrins' rebounds.
9. Sarunas Jasikevicius cheering on the sidelines. He doesn't fit into Nellie's system, but he's really into the team.
10. Adonal Foyle getting into a playoff game. Put Foyle in! Put Foyle in!

Baron Davis is a god!

2007-04-23T15:45:00.000-07:00

The Warriors beat the number 1 seeded Mavs at home! I cannot wait for Wednesday. http://www.nba.com/warriors/news/2007_Playoffs_R1G1.html

Yau-Man's victories

2007-04-05T23:29:00.000-07:00

If you're a Yau-Man fan, then tonight's Survivor has to be one of the best ever. He follows up last week's hijinks with the immunity idol by winning the immunity challenge for his team. In spite of the jocks team boasting beforehand about how they were going to take the archery challenge, Yau-Man completely destroyed them with his technique on both bow and arrow and spear! It was awesome.

That was followed up by Lisi getting voted off, following a hilarious exchange between Lisi and Dreamz at tribal council. Lisi was really pretty disrespectful and condescending to him before, so it was good to see him push back. It was especially funny when he referred back to a comment she made indicating that he had delivered a soliloquy. Dreamz is probably the most entertaining survivor, and gets more and more likable as you watch him.

Bureaucratic fun

2007-04-05T22:33:00.000-07:00

So we’re going to Mexico on Sunday. It’s a really good trip. Gordon actually left Wednesday morning, he’s going to drive to San Diego, meet up with his friend Sean, and then they’re going to drive on down into Baja, past a town called Loreto. We’re going to camp, kayak and so forth, so that’s why he’s driving, to take all the stuff in his truck. Aisling and I are going to fly down on Sunday, along with Sean’s wife, Jenny. Now when we planned this trip, we noted that Aisling’s passport had expired, so we applied for a new one in January, which is in plenty of time, based on their information, for this trip. Well what I didn’t know is that the travel laws have changed, requiring passports to Canada, Mexico, Aruba and other places, so the system is quite overloaded. Our trip was approaching, and the passport hadn’t arrived. I checked the status on line, it just said in process. So I began to panic last week, two weeks before our flight, and started calling their toll-free number. It took me about five days to get through. Now to be fair, I wasn’t being that persistent, probably only calling 15-20 times per day. I finally got through on Friday. The person I spoke to told me that the passport was in the San Francisco office, and that she would mark it “expedite” and “will call”. She told me that if I didn’t hear by Tuesday to call back. Well, guess what, I didn’t hear by Tuesday! By this time I had figured out how to get through on the toll free number, so Wednesday morning, I called, spoke to a person who told me he was making an appointment for me at the passport office for 9 on Thursday and that he would email me a confirmation. Of course, the email never arrived, I got up Thursday morning at 5:30, called them, and got a different story, that they don’t email appointment confirmations etc. etc. By this time, I had pretty much decided I was coming in to the passport office no matter what anyone said. So I gathered all my documents and headed in.

I arrived at the building at 8:30 to find three different lines, each about a block long. I finally figured out which line to get into – the “pending” line – and waited. I waited in line outside until 11:00. Everyone in the line had a similar story to mine. There were people who were leaving that evening, or the next day, people who had been there earlier in the week and were just coming back to pick up their passports. I was so happy to get in the building at 11:00, that I didn’t care that all they did was put me in another line to get a number. I was in that line for about 30 minutes. Then they gave me a number – 195. They were on number 120 when I got the number. But at least I could just sit on the floor and wait. So I did, until about 2. After all this hassle, when I got up there at two, the guy was great. He said, yes, here’s your application, it’s not processed yet, but we’ll do it today, and you can pick it up after 3:30. I could leave the building and come back at 3:30 if I wanted. By that time, I would have been terrified to leave the building, thinking I would have had to wait in line just to get back in. Instead, I hung around until 3:30, got in line again, in fact I was first in line, and actually got the passport at 3:45. That’s just over seven hours waiting in line for Aisling’s passport, after I had applied for it in plenty of time for the trip. But it was better than canceling the trip, or having to return the next day for pickup so I was happy enough with it. I just hope the trip is worth it!

The moral of the story is probably pretty obvious. Apply for your passport in plenty of time, way ahead what they tell you is needed! The other moral of the story is how people really bond when they're forced to go through something unpleasant together, for hours at a time. I made several new best friends in line! When I finally got Aisling's passport, I actually got applause!

The truth about cats & dogs

2007-04-05T22:31:00.000-07:00

Yesterday (Wednesday) was a bad day. First, there was the whole passport thing (see previous blog entry) and then there’s the trouble with cats and dogs.

The day wasn’t getting off to a great start with the whole passport agency thing, when Gordon told me that on top of everything else, one of our cats, Sushi, was dead. He found her in the street, run over by a car. Now I must admit to being somewhat blasé about dead cats. I love cats, until Sushi’s demise we had three, now we’re down to two, but I have a really bad track record with them, killing six of them over the last two years. Well, to be honest, there’s only three confirmed fatalities, the other three are MIAs. In addition to Sushi, my first cat, Lizzie, was run over. Then another cat, Abby, got very sick and we had to have her put down. The other three – Willie, Pockets, and Bobo – all took off. I like to think that they went to nice new homes. Willie and Bobo just kind of wandered off, but Pockets’ escape was truly spectacular. I stupidly let Aisling bring her to school for show and tell when she was in elementary school. We got to the classroom and Aisling let her out of the cat carrier. Then the kids got all excited and Pockets sort of freaked out. When one of the kids accidentally opened the door, Pockets made her escape.

Anyhow, while I’m blasé about dead cats, Aisling isn’t. She was at school, so I planned to tell her when I got home from work. However, she came home at three, and couldn’t find Sushi and sort of freaked out. She pretty much became hysterical, and just started calling Gordon and bawling on the phone. Gordon was driving to San Diego, so there wasn’t much he could do. It just ended up with me leaving work early, abandoning an important meeting, and then getting home to her as soon as I could. By the time I got home, Dara had told her about Sushi, because none of us liked lying to her on the phone. She was really upset, of course, but eventually, she calmed down enough, and since Gordon was gone, and I can’t cook, I suggested that the three of us go out to dinner.

So we headed for the door, and as soon as we opened it, we saw a dead dog in the middle of the street. Actually, it wasn’t quite dead but very much dying. It was really shocking to see it right after what happened to Sushi. Aisling just turned and went back into the house, but Dara and I went out to see what was going on. Well it turns out that the dog was Max, the pet of Aisling’s friend, Alice. The woman who ran over the dog was talking to my neighbor, I went over to check it out, and then Alice came over from her house and, naturally, the poor child just lost it. When Aisling realized what was going on, she also got totally upset and the situation was really pretty intense and chaotic. Dara called Animal Control, the police came, we all generally complained about how fast people drive, and the dog got picked up and put into a bag, I took all the kids, including Alice, out to eat, but it was just very weird, two animals run over and killed on the same day in the same place.

Rocky's gone!

2007-03-29T21:13:00.000-07:00

At last, the Ravu tribe got some common sense and voted out Rocky! While it was a non-Yau moment, it was the best moment of the show tonight! If anyone could decipher what he muttered under his breath before he was voted off, please let me know.

Yau-Man has the idol, and what a devious move to plant a fake idol! Really, that's a Johnny Fairplay moment. And let's not forget that even though his team only won one of the challenges, Yau-Man performed well in both. I wonder if being a table-tennis player helped with that flamethrower thing?

Classic Yau-Man moment

2007-03-21T20:58:00.000-07:00

"I now have the strength to carry the flag!"

It's also good to see Yau-Man on the good beach and on the challenge-winning team! The only downer was the Ravu twits voting off Anthony instead of Rocky.

Episode 4 - Survivors 4 & 5

2007-03-01T21:13:00.000-08:00

What an interesting show! First, Yau-Man goes to Exile Island. I hope that there weren't *too* many snakes around. Then we lost the 4th (Gary) and 5th (Liliana) survivors. So that means we had four "losers" this week - Jeff Kreutzen and Ann Dobson lost on Papa Smurf, And Anthony Vann and myself lost on Liliana. For next week, Jeff Kreutzen is up again, along with Liz Marsh.

I can't wait to see Yau-Man dig up the immunity idol!

Episode 3 - Bad Edit!

2007-02-23T18:25:00.000-08:00

From Yau-Man's email:

I can't believe they didn't show or explain how fire can be started with eyeglasses - they missed an opportunity for another science lesson.. My only thought is that perhaps the producers want to preserve the mystery about fire-starting so as to not make it easy for subsequence series survivors..

There's no way to focus the sun with your glasses - the trick is to put a drop of water on the glass to act as a magnifying glass (convex lens) and focus the sun to start a fire. .. And who do you think came up with that idea and didn't get acknowledged...

Oh well, at least I'm still on the island!!!

Revised Pool Listings

2007-02-17T21:54:00.000-08:00

As it turns out, the Yau-Man Survivor pool was so popular, we had to do two. Going into week 3, Ken Tanaka and Nancy Finkle are both hoping that Yau-Man gets voted out. Mike Sinatra, Monica Mack, Sheila Press, and Nancy Finkle have already lost in the first two weeks. Here are the revised picks

Survivor 1 Michael Sinatra, Monica Mack
Survivor 2 Sheila Press, Nancy Finkle
Survivor 3 Ken Tanaka, Nancy Finkle
Survivor 4 Jeff Kreutzen, Ann Dobson
Survivor 5 Helen Norris, Anthony Vann
Survivor 6 Jeff Kreutzen, Liz Marsh
Survivor 7 Tessa Michaels, Nancy Han
Survivor 8 Gordon Adams, Glenn Oliva
Survivor 9 Jann Fong, Susan McKeehan
Survivor 10 Kevin Burney, Lucia Tsai
Survivor 11 Siegrid Rickenback, Angela Blackstone
Survivor 12 Cliff Frost, David Greenbaum
Survivor 13 Tom Holub, Burke Bundy
Survivor 14 Sheila Press, Helen Norris
Survivor 15 Neil Maxwell, Shel Waggener
Final 4 Jon Broshius, Joyce Freedman

Warriors destroy Knicks on Valentine's Day

2007-02-15T21:52:00.000-08:00

It was good to see the Warriors do so well although they did try to blow the big lead in the fourth quarter. I was at the game with Dara, and I spent most of the game trying to ignore the conversation between the guy who was trying to hit on her and her. Having a teenager is hard!

Yau-Man survives!

2007-02-15T21:49:00.000-08:00

Well I didn't get to post last week so I suppose I should catch up. First, everyone loved how Yau-Man opened that box when none of the big burly guys could! Not much Yau-Man action tonight. But the snake on Exile island! Yuck!

Just one more day

2007-02-07T12:24:00.000-08:00

It's only one more day until the Survivor:Fiji debut featuring Yau-Man. There were lots of commercials for it during the Superbowl. I pretty much wore out the TiVo trying to find Yau-Man. Today, he was featured in the Contra Costa Times at http://www.contracostatimes.com/mld/cctimes/entertainment/television/16641688.htm. His picture was right next to Jessica Simpson's, a strange juxtaposition. Final pool spots to be published tomorrow.