Everything I Need to Know in Life I Learned From Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer

I grew up watching this kitschy TV special every Christmas during the 60s and 70s. It came on the other night while I was putzing around the house, and while listening to it, I realized how many important life lessons you can learn from this lovable classic:

• Follow your heart and do what you love. If you are an elf who is supposed to make toys, but you really want to be a dentist, be a dentist.

• Covering up your glowing nose with a fake plastic nose = hiding your light under bushel. Don’t be ashamed of what makes you special; instead, let it shine.

• Let everyone play reindeer games.

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2011 in Review

The WordPress.com stats helper monkeys prepared a 2011 annual report for this blog.

Here’s an excerpt:

A San Francisco cable car holds 60 people. This blog was viewed about 2,200 times in 2011. If it were a cable car, it would take about 37 trips to carry that many people.

Click here to see the complete report.

Nuvo, Where Have You Been All My Life?

So, daughter #2 and I were shopping at Costco for liquor the other day.

What? So, there’s no chapter in the parenting books about teaching your kids how to shop for booze–where do you want them to learn it from– Boardwalk Empire?

Somewhere in the middle of the massive alcoholic playground stacks, we saw the cutest pink bottle you’ve ever seen.

My daughter was all “Oh, I’ve heard of that, it’s supposed to be really good, we should try it!” Only not in those exact words. What she said included the word “bomb” or “sick” or some other young-person-speak that I can’t remember.

At any rate, it was VERY pink, which was a little frightening, but it said “sparkling” on it, which means it must be good, so I bought it.

Silicon Valley’s New Center–Mountain View?

Mountain View is Silicon Valley’s “it” city, according to an article in today’s San Jose Mercury News:

Mountain View emerging as major center of Silicon Valley innovation

This is not really news for those of us who live in Mountain View.  There’s a brightly colored Google sign on every other building around here, it seems.

Bedwell Bayfront Park

On Sunday I went on a hike with one of my fabulous sisters-in-law and my adorable 7-year old niece. I’d been wanting to explore this strange, hilly little park on the edge of the bay in Menlo Park. I had seen the park for years near my work but had never taken the time to explore it.

It’s called Bedwell Bayfront Park. I don’t think many people know about it; there was hardly anyone there. It’s where Marsh Road dead-ends at the bay, but there’s nothing else really out there, so you’d never know about it unless you intended to go there. I like that. Living in the Bay Area means dealing with lots of people much of the time, and finding a place this wide open is a rare thing.

Dear Transformers 3: Avada Kedavra! Sincerely, Harry Potter

Hollywood, if you were planning to conjure up any more movies this year, you can just forget it. Can ’em. You’re never going to top Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Part 2, which opened today.

Hang up your movie magic wands, your work is done. Movies simply do not get better than this. I feel sorry for the rest of the movies that are out there right now. It’s not that they’re bad….it’s that this movie is EPIC.

I Love Balls

And I don’t mean beach balls

or costume balls

or bowling balls

or meat balls.

I mean man balls.

Nads.  Junk. Cajones. Family jewels. Nutsacks. Bollocks.

Without them, my children would not be alive. None of us would be. What’s not to love?

God Bless Cable, KQED, and the French

I think I’ve just died and gone to entertainment heaven. Or ooh, maybe I’ve been raptured. Hard to tell the difference.

Since we moved to Mountain View in March, we’ve been trying to get by without cable television. Cable is just too dang expensive, and we’d like to retire before we’re 90, so we bought an HD antennae for $25 and tried living with just the few channels that it provided. Unfortunately, our new home is directly across the street from the police station, from which they apparently broadcast all sorts of signals that jammed up our antennae reception to the point where the TV was pretty much unwatchable.

We finally gave in to the dark side after a few months and called Comcast. We’re resigned to funding their retirement plans, I guess. They hooked us up yesterday, and last night I flipped around all our glorious new channels until I landed on a broadcast of the 25th anniversary concert of Les Miserables on our local PBS station, KQED. This show alone is worth the price of cable.

Happy Birthday, But I Retain My Right To Bitch

My youngest daughter turns 20 today.

But enough about her; let’s talk about me. This birthday means that I can’t whine about parenting teenagers anymore! I’ve been moaning about being the parent of teenage girls for over 10 years. I blame ALL my problems on my hormone-crazed brood!

Headache? It’s the stress of all the nagging, boyfriends, messy rooms, driving practice, and college applications.

Fatigue? It’s all the waiting up at night for them to come home safely, and then dragging their butts out of bed to get to school in the morning!

Broke? Do you have any idea how much it costs to clothe, feed, insure, and educate a teen?

San Francisco – Top 5 Rants and Raves

Our year in San Francisco is over. My job moved to Santa Clara right around the time the lease on our loft ran out, so we’re heading back down the peninsula again to rent a house in Mountain View. Here are my top five rants and raves about this amazing city by the bay.

Raves

There are so many great things about San Francisco–the majestic Golden Gate bridge, the museums, the food, the shopping, the views, Golden Gate Park, Chinatown, the parades and street fairs, the people, the Giants–and much much more. But after living here in SOMA for a year and really getting to know my neighborhood as a resident, there are some things that I know I’m really going to miss more than anything else after we leave. Here are just a few:

• The Embarcadero. I’ve really loved walking my dog and riding my bike along this beautiful stretch of waterfront. Even before I moved here, this was my favorite part of the city. The views are out-of-this-world spectacular, and there is plenty of room to ride your bike safely away from the busy street traffic. You really feel the wide open space of the San Francisco Bay when you are out there. And of course there are so many treasures there–AT&T Park, the harbor, the Ferry Building, Fisherman’s Wharf, and the Bay Bridge–just to name a few. When I marched along the Embarcadero along with thousands of other pink people as part of the Race for the Cure back in October, it was truly a magical experience.

Photo by j.bach