Category Archives: Home & Family

May 18, 2011 · 7:00 pm

Love My Smartcar

I have had my Smartcar for about 9 months and I still love it. I sometimes get tired of the cute remarks

Where’s the rest of your car?
Did it shrink?
Someone scribbled on your car!

But I love driving and I really love parking my 2-seat convertable, especially in San Francisco. It is surprisingly roomy inside. Smartcar drivers usually honk and wave to each other as we drive by. Parking “two in a box” with a motorcycle is fun. It’s like having reserved parking space.

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Tagged as San Francisco

May 17, 2011 · 11:38 pm

Paul’s Ceramics

My son Paul is in his 3rd quarter at Foothill College here in the San Francisco Bay Area. He is very interested in art and design and has become fascinated with ceramics in particular. Paul recently made a remarkable set of 3 cups on the wheel, decorated with Kanji characters, as presents for his sister Jessica and her fiance Matthew to celebrate their graduations from college this week. Paul said that he does his best pots when he lets his hands work without thinking too much about it.

Here are some of Paul’s recent creations:

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Tagged as Foothill College, Paul

May 17, 2011 · 8:52 pm

Jessica Graduated from CMU with Honors!

My daughter Jessica was graduated from Carnegie Mellon University with honors last weekend. Ten of her proud family flew to Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, from Boston, Pasadena, San Francisco, and San Jose to celebrate the occasion. My father, Wade Dickinson, who attended Carnegie Tech before graduating from West Point was particularly proud to see his granddaughter graduate from his alma mater.

Jessica majored in Ethics, History, and Public Policy (that’s one major offered by CMU in Humanities and Social Sciences). You can see a video of her advisor talking about Jessica’s accomplishments. Jessica was presented with a blank diploma folder because she will return to CMU as a 5th Year Scholar next year, to work on a special project and also complete her Minor in Vocal Music and concentration in Arabic. Jessica got to wear what she calls “commencement flare” in addition to her simple black robes:

A red stole for being an Andrew Carnegie Scholar
A maroon stole for spending a semester studying at CMU-Q in Doha, Qatar
A purple cord with tassels for being an honors student

Unfortunately, Jessica’s fiance Matthew was graduating at the same time from William and Mary hundreds of miles away, so we did not get to attend his commencement. The family did get to spend an afternoon visiting Frank Lloyd Wright’s masterpiece of architecture, Fallingwater, which is like touring an lovely modern sculpture. This is the 75th anniversary for the house built on a waterfall.

Jessica is packing up her house this week to return home to the San Francisco Bay Area for the summer. She is getting married in August, then she and Matt will live in Pittsburgh next year.

Jessica and Paul at Fallingwater

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Tagged as CMU, Jessica, marriage, Matthew, Middle East, Paul, Qatar, Wade

May 7, 2011 · 5:30 pm

Brunch in a Caboose

Over a year ago, my husband John and I donated a brunch in WP668, our backyard caboose, to the SAMA auction, to benefit the medical charity of St. Andrew’s Episcopal Church (Saratoga, California). Today, we fed six guests who left very happy with their meal aboard our historic railroad car. The menu included:

Pastries from Flour Flower bakery and florist shop in San Jose
Eggs on sliced turkey baked in pastry cups (by John)
Layered fruit salad with honey and mint (by me)
Waffles (by John)
Barefoot Bubbly Moscato Spumante Champagne
Orange Juice
Coffee from Peet’s

The dogs were happy to play with new friends in their yard and were sure that the whole event had been planned for doggy entertainment.

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Filed under Caboose Project and Other Trains, Church, Home & Family, News & Reviews

Tagged as Dogs, Episcopal church, San Jose, St. Andrew's Episcopal Church

May 1, 2011 · 3:20 pm

Easter Egg Hunt

We had more than a dozen kids – aged 3 to 21 – plus their parents over for our annual Easter Egg Hunt last week here in San Jose, California. There were about 400 plastic eggs filled with candy, plus one gold and one silver egg to find in our backyard. We followed the same rules as last year with a few additions.

Last summer, one of our experienced egg hunters arrived with bags of empty plastic eggs for us. When she saw the eggs at a garage sale, Galena bought them to help support her favorite springtime activity. Following up on Galena’s inspiration, this Easter we said that kids could take home their baskets and plastic eggs if they wanted to but they could also leave them with us for next year. The parents thought this was great idea! I insisted that any eggs left with us had to be empty and whole – with tops and bottoms matched up (no leaving half eggs). We ended up with several cubic feet of empty eggs, plus 8 empty baskets.

This year I again provided “advisors” in the form of ceramic bunnies of different sizes and styles. Each child can pick any basket and advisor they want before the hunt starts. The advisors support the young hunters so that their parents are not tempted to help. I buy bunnies and baskets at garage sales and second hand stores all year so that the children have a wide selection to choose from.

Several of our Huawei co-workers came with their kids. I don’t think they hold Easter Egg Hunts in China so this was a novel treat. They had fun playing in WP668, our backyard caboose. The potluck lunch included a wide variety of dishes which everyone enjoyed eating.

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Filed under Caboose Project and Other Trains, Home & Family, News & Reviews

Tagged as China, garden, Huawei, San Jose, WP668

April 9, 2011 · 5:28 pm

He will live at our house…

Growing up in San Francisco, my brothers and I had far more pets than you might think. From time to time, we had a rescued baby crow in the breakfast room, toads and frogs in the tub, iguanas and bunnies in the basement, a boa constrictor in the bathroom, and cats wherever they pleased to go. My mother’s motto about all of this was from the Dr. Seuss book One Fish Two Fish Red Fish Blue Fish:

Look what we found in the park in the dark.
We will take him home, we will call him Clark.
He will live at our house, he will grow and grow.
Will our mother like this? We don’t know.

At my home in San Jose, we have a more modest menagerie (2 dogs, 2 birds, and a cat) but since we live on the Guadalupe River, we are often invaded by hoards of squirrels, flocks of finches and other songbirds, geese, ducks, and hawks, weird horsehair worms, opossums, raccoons, lizards, and Jerusalem crickets, among others. Our new puppy Gilroy is delighting in all of it during his first week with us. His adopted-big-sister Redda is bored with squirrels but Gilroy still barks at them joyously.

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Tagged as birds, cats, Dogs, Eleanor, garden, insects, John, San Francisco, San Jose

April 3, 2011 · 6:52 pm

Goodbye Juliet, Hello Gilroy

Our old dog Juliet died this week. She was our beloved pet for about 15 years, after her stray mother had her among a litter of puppies born under the garage. Juliet’s brother Romeo died last year. When Romeo was failing, we adopted Redda, who is now a bouncy eighty-pound two-year-old collie-pit mix. The whole family misses Juliet very much. We have been looking for a good companion rescue dog for Redda so that she will not be so lonely.

Today, we adopted Gilroy. He is a 1-year-old corgi mix, about half Redda’s size, but when they met at the dog run of the Santa Clara County Animal Shelter in San Martin, California, it was love at first sight. They have been licking and chasing and playing non-stop since they met. She has been showing him all over the yard. Redda and Gilroy are both smiling a lot. Tino the cat is ignoring both dogs, as usual.