Since there is a Ben & Jerry’s near his Santa Clara office, Peter found out yesterday that it was free cone day at Ben & Jerry’s. Hey, we love ice cream, and we love free ice cream even more, especially when it comes from a yummy ice cream vendor like Ben & Jerry’s. And so…
An Overscheduled Childhood
I’m feeling really unpopular these days, because it seems none of Neil’s friends are ever able to visit him for fun and play at his home, and they’re not inviting him over to play with them either. It’s enough to make me wonder about personal hygiene and personality flaws, but I know deep down the…
How Sedna Punked Pluto
A few years ago, Neil was excited to find out that our solar system might have a new planet. Orbiting the earth, sometimes closer in and sometimes further out than Pluto, the new would-be planet was named Sedna. Since the name didn’t come out of Hamilton’s Mythology like the rest of the planets’ names, I…
The Milk Pail in Mountain View
When Peter and I lived in Mountain View, I had a brief infatuation with buying milk in return-for-deposit glass bottles. It was made possible by the fact that Mountain View had a small dairy store, The Milk Pail, that sold milk in that form. I’m hoping to write a blog post about whether buying milk…
Richard Avedon at the Cantor Museum
The Cantor Art Museum on the Stanford University campus is one of my favorite art museums. It’s not as big or as prestigious as the de Young Museum or the Legion of Honor, but unlike the other museums, it has the feel of being curated by an enthusiastic art professor, hoping to get his students…
Hiking Around Arastradero Lake
Yesterday, I took my children for a short hike around Arastradero Lake in the Arastradero Preserve. If you’re a regular visitor of varied parks, the Arastradero Preserve is like the Hollywoodized, that is almost unrealistically pleasant, version of parklands. On this day alone, we encountered friendly joggers; cheerful dog owners with a dog eager to…
Exploring at the Chabot Space and Science Center
One of my favorite science museums in the Bay Area is the Chabot Space and Science Center in and on top of Oakland’s Joaquin Miller Park. It’s one of the newer–if not the newest–science museums and still has a shiny, polished feel as a result. It was busier than I’d ever seen it before on…
Peter Catches an Intruder
Early Monday morning, someone broke into Peter’s office building. The intruder damaged some door handles apparently trying to get into various suites, but Peter, who was there, working start-up hours, didn’t hear anything. However, to his dismay, the GPS device was stolen from his unlocked car, and replacing it cost over $200. It was a…
This Milk from Cows Not Treated with rBST
Most of the milk I buy has a small label saying that it comes from cows not treated with rBST (recombinant bovine growth hormone.) Ironically, the not-made-with-rBST costs the same, sometimes even less, than its less holistic counterpart. But getting more milk out of cows with chemical stimulation, it seems, isn’t more profitable than getting…
M. C. Escher and Op Art at the San Jose Museum of Art
I’ve been looking for an excuse to renew my membership in the San Jose Museum of Art (SJMA), and I found it today in the Escher exhibit they currently have on. Just as context, about a year ago, the SJMA, formerly featuring free admission to all, had to start charging for admission when they lost…