Tag Archives: Paul

September 20, 2012 · 10:20 pm

New Porch

This summer, we have been fixing up our home – doing small construction and repairs, including: refinishing the front door, filling in missing baseboards, refinishing the floor in John’s office, eliminating some dry rot and fixing a floor that shifted out of level in John’s model train room and workshop, adding a side fence and creating a pottery studio for Paul. Our next project is to add a side porch to the house. The contractors poured the concrete foundation yesterday. Months ago, we bought hundreds of old ceramic roof tiles from a neighbor – which match those already on our 1930 Willow Glen house roof. The “new” tiles will go on the porch roof so that it will look like a natural part of the house.

1 Comment

Filed under Home & Family, News & Reviews

Tagged as garden, House Work, John, Paul, San Jose, Willow Glen

September 11, 2012 · 10:44 pm

TechWomen at Huawei

We are having a good first week with the three TechWomen mentees hosted by Huawei in Santa Clara, California. We are still sorting out offices and equipment and accesses and orientation and starting work on our projects. Tonight, John and Paul and I went to a sushi dinner with two TechWomen and then on a tour of the San Jose TechShop where we have a family membership. We visited the textile area, wood shop (including my favorite Powermatic lathe), metal shop, laser room, and other technical and tool delights.

2 Comments

Filed under Home & Family, Mentoring & Other Business, News & Reviews

Tagged as Geeks, Huawei, John, Mentoring, Middle East, Paul, technical women, TechWomen

August 26, 2012 · 6:26 pm

Paul’s 20th

My son Paul turned twenty recently, with much celebration of the life milestone – no longer a teenager! Paul has been camping at the University of California Alumni Association Lair of the Golden Bear family camp since before he could walk. As usual, his first birthday celebration was a chocolate Lair Cake in the dining hall. His final party was last night at the Melting Pot restaurant. The big present was a violet and white deep carved crystal vessel by Celestial Art Glass which he fell in love with last month at the Palo Alto Clay & Glass Festival.

Camping at the Lair of the Golden Bear

Yesterday, we got back from our annual family camping trip at the U.C. Berkeley Alumni Association’s Lair of the Golden Bear near Pinecrest, California. We had 19 people in four tents, with 8 in just ours. As usual, we had an enjoyable and relaxing time. The car is unpacked and stuff is mostly put away but I am still working my way through the laundry. I have finished the towels and bedding and most of the clothes. I still need to wash the sleeping bags.

Some of the highlights of our week in the Sierras:

Hiking to the Natural Bridges swim-through cave. The air was so hot and the water was so cold! Carrying my camera in a zip bag to take pictures from the deep pool was tricky.
Seeing an eagle pulling big fish from the Pinecrest Lake right near the swimmers and boaters. One of the Pinecrest summer residents said it was a bald eagle but it may have been an osprey (fish eagle).
Watching a white headed woodpecker eating his way from pine to pine.
Walking along the creek (Tuolumne River, North Fork), looking for wild flowers, animals, insects, and pretty stones.
Watching the sunset from the Trail of the Gargoyles, in the Stanislaus National Forest. We could see Mount Diablo (a 3,864 feet or 1,178 meter peak in the San Francisco Bay Area) in the far distance.
Hanging out with family and friends.

This was the first time we have been camping since my father died – he loved the mountains. We stopped at Railtown 1897 in Jamestown on the drive home yesterday to collect more caboose pictures – see my Caboose Sisters Pinterest page for the whole collection. I also put up a Camp Blue Pinterest page with more images from our camping week.

2 Comments

Filed under Home & Family, News & Reviews

Tagged as birds, Eleanor, Jessica, John, Lair of the Bear, Matthew, Paul, University of California, Wade

July 24, 2012 · 8:51 pm

New Baseboards

Ten years ago, we took out the (horrible pink) wall-to-wall carpet in our 1930 house in Willow Glen and had the floors refinished. Like many home improvement efforts, we got 90% done and then stopped. The carpet came out but the baseboards never got installed. I have heard it said that it is hardest to pay someone else to do work that you know how to do well yourself. Baseboards are not very difficult but they are fussy and take time to get right, so we never got around to them. We finally decided to bring in the professionals.

The upper hall was easy – it is almost empty. However, our bedroom is fully furnished and everything was in the way. Paul and I helped the contractors to move stuff around. It is surprising how much dust settles under an armoire in ten years and how many books had migrated into our room from where they should have been. I am happy with the results and especially happy to be done with that project, finally.

1 Comment

Filed under Home & Family

Tagged as House Work, Paul, Willow Glen

July 21, 2012 · 1:36 pm

Non-Travel Diary 4

While my husband John is in China on business for Huawei, I am keeping a non-travel diary. This has been a relatively quiet week. In addition to working full-time at Huawei:

There was a small amount of progress on our home construction projects. The painter spent a half day painting the wrong color stain on the baseboards. When I pointed out the error, he spent about the same amount of time sanding that color off and re-staining. Nobody was happy.
Thursday, I joined the monthly Board meeting of the Santa Maria Urban Ministry. We said an appreciative goodbye to our summer intern. The SMUM Tech Team (of which John and I are members) was assigned some new projects by the Board.
My newly-assigned 2012 TechWomen mentee from Lebanon and I made first contact. We exchanged introductory emails and are starting to make preparations for her visit to the Silicon Valley in September. Her background is impressive – I very much look forward to working with her in person. TechWomen is an initiative of the U.S. Department of State’s Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs (ECA).
I communicated with the 2011 TechWomen mentees with whom I am presenting a panel at the Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computing in October 2012 (Baltimore, MD). I am the moderator of the panel called “Technical Women in the Arab Region: Challenges vs. Aspirations”. We have travel funding confirmed for three of the panelists and we are working on support for our fourth. The ladies are traveling from Algeria, Palestine, Egypt, and Lebanon for GHC12. I am very eager to see them again!
Paul and I took our Wood Shop basic safety and equipment introduction at TechShop San Jose last night. We enjoyed learning to use the miter saw, table saw, band saw, electric sander, and drill press. The scroll saw is being repaired so we will learn how to use that later. I made a heart for John and Paul started work on an infinity symbol using the band saw. One of the other students laser-engraved the heart for me. I want to take a TechShop laser class next!
This morning, we had a community yard sale. Despite being on Craigslist and putting signs up on nearby corners, it was very poorly attended. However, it was fun to hang out with the neighbors. Our neighborhood apparently has 7 boys and 1 girl aged between 6 and 12 years old – who spent the morning rocketing from sale to sale comparing stuff and giving updates.
John comes home Tuesday morning!

Non-Travel Diary 3

While my husband John is in China on business for Huawei, I am keeping a non-travel diary. This weekend has been packed with activities:

Saturday morning, my mother and I picked up our new glasses from Visual Eyes Optometry in Willow Glen (San Jose CA). She was fitted with her new lenses and frames (and I got new lenses for my sunglasses).
Saturday afternoon, my son Paul and I went to the amazing Palo Alto Clay & Glass Festival, then took an evening class from Jeanne Fishback at TechShop San Jose on the wood lathe. We had a great time – and will take a second TechShop wood class this coming Friday night.
This morning at St. Andrew’s Episcopal Church, Rev. Channing Smith announced that next week is Backpack Sunday – we will collect school supplies and backpacks for the children of Santa Maria Urban Ministry (no red or blue – gang colors).
Paul and I went to the Clay & Glass Festival again this afternoon. In the last two years, he has taken most of the ceramics classes offered by the excellent Foothill College art program. So, Paul was fascinated to see the finished work of so many superb creative potters. The artists also had fun talking to Paul – many of them know his teachers at Foothill. I bought some amazing pots. After seeing the art, we went to see the latest Ice Age animated movie.