Tag Archives: San Jose

December 2, 2012 · 3:51 pm

Flat Nutcracker

Willow Glen gets into the winter holiday spirit with charming, funny, and bright house decorations. Some are more successful than others. The stores have different offerings each season. This year, icicle lights with blue-white flashing patterns – like creepy daggers hung along the roof line – are unfortunately popular. For several years, large blow-up characters have appeared front lawns. These Santas, bears, elves, and snowmen look good at night but very sad lying flat on the grass during the day. I commented on her deflated nutcracker when our neighbor was outside recently – she said it is fun to see him pop up, light up, and fling off the accumulated rain every night when he turns back on.

This is what happens when the blow-up nutcracker gets water inside…

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Filed under Home & Family

Tagged as San Jose, Willow Glen

November 30, 2012 · 9:40 pm

Walking in the Middle of the Road

Down the middle of the road, my husband John and I go for long walks each night. Willow Glen is a pleasant old neighborhood of San Jose, California, with wide streets and many big trees. Probably for reasons of economy, street lights are only at the intersections. To reduce the light pollution for the Lick Observatory on nearby Mount Hamilton, San Jose’s street lights are yellow (rather than white). As you can see in the photo above (taken about 7 pm tonight), all of this means that our streets are very dark at night. If you add in residential driveway dips and the haphazard condition of the pavements in our area (see photos below), walking down the middle of the road is less dangerous than keeping to the dark and broken sidewalks. In the evening roadway, we can see lights of the cars heading our way.

There is a friendly community of night time dog walkers and couples like ourselves who work during daylight hours. We know which pairs of little yippy dogs are friendly, and to keep to the other side when Monster the excitable husky is dragging his human around. We keep an eye open for the couple trailed by a bobbing light – the cat who follows their evening walk. John and I sometimes see our wilder neighbors – the raccoons and opossums who come out of the storm drains to hunt and explore in the dark. Even on a blustery rainy night, Willow Glen is a charming place to walk in the middle of the road.

Happy Thanksgiving!

In between celebrating my brother’s wedding, honoring the first anniversary of my father’s death, trying to finish the apparently-unending construction on the new porch, and starting work at MentorCloud, this has been a busy autumn. Today, we take time to give thanks for our blessings and bounty among family and friends. I hope that you too can pause for this moment to consider and be thankful for the good in your life.

In Willow Glen California, the sycamore, pistache, myrtle, and maple trees are putting on a glorious display of red leaves. I delight in the color, even when raking them up…

Gathering Leaves

Spades take up leaves
No better than spoons,
And bags full of leaves
Are light as balloons.

I make a great noise
Of rustling all day
Like rabbit and deer
Running away.

But the mountains I raise
Elude my embrace,
Flowing over my arms
And into my face.

I may load and unload
Again and again
Till I fill the whole shed,
And what have I then?

Next to nothing for weight,
And since they grew duller
From contact with earth,
Next to nothing for color.

Next to nothing for use.
But a crop is a crop,
And who’s to say where
The harvest shall stop?

by Robert Frost

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

Tagged as House Work, Mentoring, San Jose, Wade, Willow Glen

October 31, 2012 · 7:52 pm

Silicon Valley Halloween

Halloween is serious fun here in the Silicon Valley. Spooky house decorations go up weeks in advance, people come to church in funny hats and silly outfits (for “Boo Sunday”), companies have costume parties, waitresses work dressed as clowns, stores give out candy to kid parades, and tonight the sidewalks are full of children dressed as cats, bugs, princesses, super heros, and monsters walking from house to house trailed by their parents, greeting neighbors with “Trick or Treat!”.

Silicon Valley Women & Girls Leadership Summit

Huawei was again a sponsor of today’s 8th Silicon Valley Women & Girls Leadership Summit – held at LeyVa Middle School in San Jose. I was one of a group of women leaders who joined the 7th and 8th grade girls to listen to speakers and panels, and to learn more about each other. The inspiring keynote talks were by Santa Clara Judge Katherine Lucero (who encouraged the girls to find a mentor and the women to be a mentor), and entrepreneur Shelly Kapoor Collins (who asked us to be a door opener for each other, not a gate keeper barring the way).

After the big event, some of us went on a tour of the impressive new Bulldog Tech campus within the larger campus. I promised our able Bulldog Tech guides that I would post their photo tonight… good job girls!

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Filed under News & Reviews

Tagged as Huawei, Mentoring, San Jose, Silicon Valley, technical women

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.

Silicon Valley Leaves and Sky

The Silicon Valley is famous as geek-central but can also be a beautiful place. Our annual rains have started and it is getting cold at night. My husband likes to say that the Midwest has two seasons: road removal and snow repair. California’s two seasons are mudslide and wildfire. We are now in autumn, that lovely interim when the land is too wet to burn but not damp enough to slide.

More pictures on: Silicon Valley Autumn 2012 Pinterest page.