Tag Archives: Paul

October 24, 2012 · 6:52 pm

Pizza and Art

Last Sunday after church, we went out to a pizza lunch with my mother (retired Professor of Life Drawing at California College of the Arts) in San Jose. Between conversational interludes, John read a book, Paul played a game on his smart phone, and my mother drew Paul. As usual, people walking by the table stopped to admire her drawing. Paul is studying Art at Foothill College, having grown up seeing art as a constant and necessary expression of creativity.

Porch Progress

We have continued to make slow progress on adding our new porch, although yesterday we had a setback. John discovered that the special-order outer window (despite being carefully measured by two experts) turned out to be the wrong size for the heirloom Van Gilder stained glass panel it was made to protect. So we are now waiting to see how long a replacement will take to make. We are also waiting for the test tiles from the special-order mural from Fireclay so that we can check the color. We are about to place the order for the wrought iron railing from Brian’s Welding. The good news is that the two new round windows above the porch in Paul’s room look good. Construction is a slow business. Even though the rainy season just started, we hope to be done by Christmas (this year!).

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Filed under Home & Family, News & Reviews

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

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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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Tagged as House Work, Paul, Willow Glen

Tag Archives: Paul

Pizza and Art

Porch Progress

New Porch

TechWomen at Huawei

Paul’s 20th

Camping at the Lair of the Golden Bear

New Baseboards

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