One pirate's final story

It must have had its moments. Think of the stories, the children, the smiles.

Perhaps the person who put this pirate creature into the dumpster by the community center's preschool felt a twinge of remorse.

Why else would it be propped in full-regret, like it doesn't quite understand, shouldn't it be in the big basket near the picture book corner?

Or is it that, now resigned to walking this plank, its eyes are cast on the rest of us: Don't we see what's happening, it seems to ask, will we do nothing?

Lidge Seizes More than Series

I’ve aged out of claiming to know any current professional athlete because we went to college together.

I have to jump generations, to someone like my husband’s cousin’s son, a guy I met maybe once, more than a decade ago. Someone I’m confident can’t pick me out in the Safeway checkout line.

Still… when anyone says, “Brad’s pitching,” I tune in.
“I don’t care about that other crap,” said Lidge, after he clinched the World Series tonight. “This is it right here.”


And I smiled because he’s right –- in more ways than one.

Re-traditioning: 31 Days to a new Thanksgiving

There are probably 739 reasons why we’ve held tightly to celebrating Thanksgiving at Aunt Caroline’s house in Southern California, my Thanksgiving tradition since 1986.



Yet this tradition that survived marriage, children, even our relocation to the Bay Area in 1999, proved no match for high school sports. Already, we’ve celebrated two Thanksgivings without our oldest son.

This year? No family road trip.

We’re re-traditioning. Think re-decorating, only we’re considering Thanksgiving alternatives, everything from recipes to community service.

Having shaken the Thanksgiving Etch-a-Sketch clear, we’ve got 31 days to make a new picture.

Your ideas?

Burglary Math

Waiting for my turn to answer questions, I listened to the judge interview other prospective jurors: Is there anything about this? Is there anything about that? Anything about anything that impacts your ability to be impartial in this particular criminal proceeding?

That's when I realized something both obvious and humbling -- everything about September's burglary impacts my ability to be impartial right now. It's still too fresh.

I have been quantifying burglary costs in dollars lost and hours wasted.

There's more to the equation, a growing unknown I'm not sure yet how to measure.

Pre-election Shakes in Martinez

In a random sidebar to the Martinez beavers vs. Alhambra Creek construction controversy, a moving van stopped at the Election Department warehouse on Marina Vista today.

Good news: The beavers didn't seem to notice. Our furry friends remained hunkered down in their lodge, as expected.




Apparently the construction project is shaking the warehouse, not exactly standard handling procedure for sensitive voting equipment.



No one wants to wake up Election Day faced with a stack of repair orders and a newspaper headline.

Enter the truck, a busy fork lift and various signs to slow traffic.

To Be or Not to Be... The Guy

On. Off. On. Off. If not The Guy with the smooth dismount, the man seemed determined to at least be The Guy who didn’t fumble the hand-off.


Watching, it made me think of the Reluctant Guy I overheard on Saturday’s flag football field.

Overstaffed, the senior ref told the 15-year-old ref, “Make yourself useful. Pick-up trash. Be. The. Guy.”

“I don’t want to be The Guy,” retorted the younger ref, even as he left to hunt trash. “I don’t even know who The Guy is.”

If not now, I wanted to ask... When?

Second Chance Thanks

If at this very moment we were at one of those family dinners where everyone has to say one thing that they’re thankful for, I wouldn’t hesitate.

That’s because today I finally got tired of that box under my office desk and took a closer look at all the old disks in it.

Guess what I found?

Moments, large and small, casual and formal. Some random ones, too.
Photos I'd never printed. Photos I thought had fallen victim to long-ago computer crashes.

Today, I'm thankful for second chances.


What are you thankful for?

Alumni Clicks

Everything about these Stanford alums screams, "Wow, aren't we great!" And why not? They’ve just witnessed Zagory’s extra-point kick, giving Stanford a final-seconds lead over Arizona, clinching the Reunion Weekend win.

Still... that’s a lot of Cardinal pride for one pastel-wearing Tarheel with "Spouse" badge to swallow.

The big take-away?

Red tsunami. Tailgates to match. Remember-when stories. Even the die-hard fan, radio to ear and dressed in questionable plaid.

All that energy fueled something unexpected.




My own sentimental journey.

Back to a more familiar memory.

Go Heels!

Behind Friendly Lines

Look closely and you’ll see that Kay, who is turning 86 this month, has written her own name on her birthday calendar.


I love that Kay keeps this calendar close at hand, but I have from the start been a little spooked by the way she keeps it up to date: When a friend dies, Kay draws a line through his or her name.

Kay has a different take.

This way, Kay says, she thinks about each of her friends on their birthday.

A line simply reminds her not to send a card.

Digitally challenged Fleet Week

Dateline: San Francisco. Sunday, Fleet Week.


I missed my stolen camera more yesterday than any other day since the burglary.

I'm currently making do with several digital-camera-generations-ago technology.

My Coolpix775's slower reaction time means what I see isn't always what I get.

Sometimes, that's okay, because what I see lasts long enough that it doesn't matter, like this mother-pilot moment.


Sometimes I get something better, like this stranger's spontaneous salute that seemed to sum up how we all felt about the day.




The rest? Essence shots. Memory joggers only.

Mission Refocus

Our 6th grader worried when our friend and neighbor asked him to introduce her oldest son at the middle school's Fleet Week presentation.

"I'm going to get the rep of that kid who announced some other guy at an assembly," Scotty told me.

Captain Russell Piggot, the Air Force's current West Coast F-16 demonstration pilot, offered a fresh spin.

"You won't be the kid who introduced another kid," said Piggot, a not-so-long-ago student at the same middle school.

"You'll be the guy who's friends with the Fighter Pilot."





Mission complete.

Museum Evolution

It’s as if the Smithsonian and Monterey Bay Aquarium had a fling, and we just met their love child.

Familiar -- only hipper.

For all that hip-ness, the California Academy of Sciences is less revolutionary than evolutionary. The logical next step among many steps museums have been taking for decades.


Steps in a direction I first witnessed in 1976 when I walked into the National Air and Space Museum shortly after it opened.

Education meets entertainment...

When it works, it doesn’t just catch your attention. It holds it. And that’s what happened tonight.

Pixelated family stories

FACTS:

Sunny afternoon.

Pappy and Marie.

Fresno, Caifornia.

1940's.


When Aunt Ila gave me this picture of my great grandparents, I immediately fell for its after-church weekly family potluck feel.


Simple food. Mismatched servers. Potato salad covered with wax paper anchored by sauerkraut jar. Next Sunday -- who'll fry chicken?

Nice story. Wrong reality.

"Our family didn't get together all the time back then," Uncle Tommy says. "Not like now."

That means special occasion: Birthday. Serviceman's homecoming.

Maybe...
christening? --->



<------
Church explains why Marie looks overdressed for backyard burgers.




Play along. What's your idea?

Woo Wisdom for New Age Moderation

As a child of the Depression, Kay says she didn’t focus on economic woes: "Kids just know how they live."
But think how kids today have BEEN living -- how do we break the fall?

Enter the Wisdom of Anna Woo:

Don't Offer.

It's a parent's mantra in the making: Stop impulse gifts, need presumptions. Keep your mouth shut, your VISA in your wallet. Meet real needs. Maybe wishes. But wait for kids to ask. Then decide – yes or no. Start today. Save for tomorrow.

Anna told Alison. Alison told me. Pass the word.