Peter had a rare day to spare on Sunday, so we made an excursion to a nearby tourist spot most of us hadn’t been before: Carmel. As charming as it’s known to be, it’s also renowned (locally at least) for being very pricey and snobby. It’s more “romantic getaway” than “family vacation,” and frankly, when…
Author: cjbickford
Michael Moore is an Evangelist Religion
While Kelly and I were being amused by a charming Frisian couple at a German language meet-up, Peter was being accosted by a Michael Moore fanatic in Fry’s. He’d gone to Fry’s to buy some memory, and on the way out, he and Neil were passing through the DVD section, and while browsing saw a…
Discovering Mount Madonna’s Archery Range
On Saturday day, we went out for another one of our Healthy Trails hikes, this one around the Henry Miller house. Neil, Kelly and I had taken this hike before on a cub scout trip last Spring. But just as then, the ruins were a particularly fun place to run around and play in: I…
An Afternoon at the Bay Area Discovery Museum
Neil had Friday off from school, so we drove up to the Bay Area Discovery Museum in Sausalito, from which we’d tried twice to visit earlier, only to find out, upon arrival, that the museum was closed. Despite the long drive, the Bay Area Discovery Museum is a cute little museum in a particularly scenic…
How Finding Office Space in the Alameda is Like Finding Beachside Parking in Capitola
The fact that Peter’s intending to move his office has me once again dreaming of him finding a funky (yet still safe and techno-friendly) space along The Alameda in San Jose. When we first sought out office space, our ideal was the kind of space occupied by one of our vendors, Plotter Pros. Their offices…
Does Getting a Hybrid Make You A Smug Bastard?
I’ll say it right up front: I love hybrid cars, and if any one person is guilty for turning hybrid car owners into smug bastards, I could take some of the responsibility. Back when hybrid cars were still fairly rare (that is, before California gave hybrid owners carpool permit stickers), I would approach hybrid car…
Who Was Dean Reed?
The Berlin & Beyond German film festival is going on at the Castro Theatre, and one of the films that caught my eye was one called “The Red Elvis.” Who was that I wondered? I know of several Russian rock icons; maybe this was a film of one of them. But rather, “the red Elvis”…
January Beach Weekend
So what did I do on this wintry weekend? I went to the beach with my family, twice! Beaches are, after all, scenic year round. And most of the many fun things you can do at the beach, such as making sandcastles, looking for seashells, twirling around on your tippy toes and giggling, can be…
Car Saves Trees
Peter and I considered it almost immoral to sell my old car to someone else. Sure, it still ran, but I’m convinced it ran mostly out of loyalty to me, and my almost constant praying and urging for it to go on. I had this confirmed this morning when I wanted to use to for…
A Full Day in San Jose
Every so often, I take the children to downtown San Jose via light rail and we spend the day there. We have memberships to three museums there, and there’s almost often some event going on, whether it’s Christmas in the Park, activities tying in to the national gymnastics championships, or a Vietnamese moon festival. We’d…