Leaving San Jose
If you haven’t heard already, Peter and I sold our house of 21 years on Thistle Drive, and we’re heading off right around Neil’s 19th birthday to find a new home and new adventures. We lived in the San Francisco…
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Author Archive: cjbickford
I Wish There Was Something Like Boy Scouts for Girls
After having homeschooled my son from 6th grade through high school, my daughter got a turn at being homeschooled as a sixth grader. Unfortunately, and while she kept a positive attitude, it was surprisingly isolated and lonely, despite the fact…
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Gilroy Yamoto Hot Springs: Hidden History Under Repair
Last June, one of my fellow hikers introduced me (and other fellow hikers) to Gilroy Yamoto Hot Springs, a former Japanese-American resort that’s now being repaired and renovated by a small non-profit group. Like most locals, I had no idea…
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My Life with the Thrill Kill Kult and the Serial Cat Killer
We had a memorable night last Wednesday, which started with a concert in downtown San Jose, and ended with meeting a serial cat killer in front of our house. Peter and I went out to see My Life with the…
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Berkeley’s Naked Guy and Columbia’s Mattress Girl: Roles that Lead to Madness
I have followed the stories of Columbia’s “Mattress Girl” with an increasing sense of horror. Regardless of the circumstances that led her to carry a mattress around her campus in the name of artistic expression, the fact that this led…
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Comic-Con vs. Creation Con
Last Saturday was my first time going to a for-profit fan convention; my previous experiences have been with comic book conventions as exhibitor support, most notably (and for more than 20 years) Comic-Con. As anyone who’s been there lately knows,…
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A Day at a Supernatural Fan Convention
Peter and I have been fans of the TV show Supernatural since it first aired (after we’d seen a booth promoting it at Comic-Con in 2005). He has decided I need more fun in my life, so at Christmas he…
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Neil and the Continuous Mathematicians
When Neil heard that Stanford was having a celebration of Joe Keller’s 90th birthday, he signed up to go to it. After all, it was for the Joe Keller, the world’s only two-time winner of the Ig Nobel Prize! The…
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In Defense of New Year Goals
Lately, I’ve been hearing negativity about New Year Resolutions, along the lines of “I always break them, so it only gives me an excuse to over-indulge at year’s end,” or “if didn’t start doing it earlier, why is the first…
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A Journey Into Navajoland
On our recent trip through the Southwest, I found an old book called The Navaho (sic) by Clyde Kluckhohn in a used bookstore on Tucson’s 4th Ave. I’ve been enjoying fiction books with Native American characters (i.e. Sherman Alexie novels,…
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