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 conference was free, but dinner was $30 for students, so I told Neil I’d pay…
Author: cjbickford
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 of the year any better than any other day.” Peter and I look at it…
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, Margaret Coel’s mystery series, etc.) and this book had chapters on Navajo spiritual beliefs, which…
Disappointing Dining in San Jose (with some exceptions)
Last night, Peter took me out to Paolo’s Restaurant to celebrate our 22nd anniversary. We honestly hadn’t been there in a dog’s age, but it has held a place in our heart thanks to previous romantic dinners there. It’s one of San Jose’s oldest restaurants, known for its elegant Italian cuisine, and Peter had a…
Three Crazy Things I Did This Summer
This summer, despite my plans to have one particularly lazy and low-key, I did not one, not two, but three crazy things I’ve never done before and hadn’t even imagined doing. In June, I volunteered as adult staff for a week a local Girl Scout camp. Kelly’s girl scout troop leader, Allison Vickery, had capriciously…
The Long Hot Dry Summer of 2014
I regularly go hiking, and it was already clear at the beginning of the year that we were in for a long drought. We had only a few sprinklings of rain during a season which typically includes several storms, and it rarely if ever rains during the summer. By the time June rolled around, the…
Enjoying Comic Con from Afar
This marks my 6th year of not attending Comic Con, and this year, it was the best ever. My friends, family, and colleagues have been manning a booth at the show since 1994, and I worked beside them up to 2003, and the last time I set foot on the convention center floor (as their…
The Exploited College Athlete and the Revenge of the Nerds
As Peter and I were reviving a series of old 80s college movies (most of which are terrible), we realized our son had missed out on life by never having seen Revenge of the Nerds or any of its sequels. These days the people I like and hang out with are openly and happily nerdy….
The Perfect SAT Score and the Quest for the Right College
Yesterday, we got some amazing news: Neil scored a perfect 2400 on the SAT test he took earlier this month. I’ve got to hand it to him, he’s always been smart, but he really sweated the SAT, running himself through practice test after practice test, and even mastering the devilish essay which gets the best…
The College Fair
Yesterday evening, Neil and I went to Exploring Educational Excellence, a college fair, a first for him. More than anything, in the frustrating sameness of college solicitations, we wanted to hear what the unique qualities are for any school. In that, the fair excelled. The admissions officers for each school only had 10 minutes to…