Tag Archives: Willow Glen

July 8, 2010 · 6:16 pm

Pancakes & San Jose Metblog Entries

I just posted a San Jose Metblog entry about the Willow Glen Lions Club preparing to serve up Pancakes for Charity, at “Hot San Jose Nights” this coming weekend at the Santa Clara County Fairgrounds.

The Lions practiced cooking eggs, bacon, sausage, and pancakes at last night’s meeting – it was good!

My other recent San Jose Metblog posts:

25 Technical Girls Win Awards, 6 Jun 2010
Sweet Mango Replaces Siam Square, 27 May 2010
Plants vs. Zombies, 26 May 2010
Lions in Egypt, 5 May 2010

You can see the index to all 13 of my San Jose Metblogs postings on: Authors – Katy Dickinson.

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Filed under Lions, News & Reviews

Tagged as Egypt, San Jose, technical women, Willow Glen

April 7, 2010 · 10:05 pm

Four More San Jose Metblog Entries

I have recently posted four more San Jose Metblogs entries:

Favorite Falafel, 07 Apr 2010 in Eating Out& Food & Drink& Silicon Valley
Top Nosh Cafe Opens in Willow Glen, 06 Apr 2010 in Business& Coffee& Eating Out& Willow Glen
Happy 50th Birthday Tim!, 18 Mar 2010 in Benefit& Donations& Money& Willow Glen
2010 Women of Vision Awards, 15 Mar 2010 in Downtown& News& San Jose

You can see the index to all of my San Jose Metblogs postings on: Authors – Katy Dickinson.

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Tagged as San Jose, technical women, Willow Glen

March 3, 2010 · 11:24 pm

Willow Glen Lions Speakers’ Contest

The newly-chartered Willow Glen Lions Club held its first annual high school speakers’ contest on Sunday, 21 February 2010. This contest is offered by many Lions clubs and at higher levels of competition offers some large scholarship prizes. Our club contest featured three talented young women from Presentation High School here in San Jose, California.

Joe McGrady and Kat Carpenter managed this Willow Glen Lions project. They very carefully followed the rules for the California Lions 73rd Annual Student Speakers Contest. I served as one of the timers. As a former Toastmasters Area Governor, I very much enjoyed being part of this event.

We were honored to have San Jose Councilmember Pierluigi Oliverio, plus Pam Foley of San Jose Unified School District, and Helen Vanderberg Area H5 Governor for Toastmasters as our judges. Our contest was held at the Willow Glen Branch Library and included a reception afterward.

Sara Cois was our club-level contest winner but she was given a good competition by Alisha Azevedo and Ashley Philip. Sara goes on to speak in the Lions Zone level of competition this Friday. We were particularly proud of Sara when we learned that she was asked to participate only a week or so before the contest.

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Tagged as San Jose, Willow Glen

February 19, 2010 · 10:55 pm

Expensive Valentine’s Day

Since I no longer work for Sun Microsystems, I am using my own home office equipment more. This week, everything overloaded and died. My old Motorola Razr cell phone had been limping along but then the battery started disconnecting randomly. My husband John’s Razr gave up after it got washed. So, we started discussing new phones. Luckily, we mentioned this at our monthly Spirals dinner. Several of the couples passed around their cell phones and gave tutorials. The two I liked best were the Motorola Droid and the Apple iPhone, with the iPhone feeling easier for me to use.

John and I went to the very crowded Oakridge Mall Apple Store on Valentine’s Day to buy a black and a white iPhone 3GS. Then, we went out to a lovely dinner at the Sienna Bistro in downtown Willow Glen. John had a spectacular red bouquet by Mimi at Flower Flour on the table when we arrived. (I gave John a turned and inlaid wooden bowl by William Broderson as his Valentine’s Day present.)

I consulted with my 17-year-old son Paul as to which two iPhone games he recommended. I know he will be borrowing my phone to play games when we are driving, so he might as well help me pick. We chose Crayon Physics Deluxe and Tetris for $5/each.

After I turned in my Sun Ray at Home system on my last day of work, I started using John’s 4-year-old MacBook Pro laptop to drive the big monitor that is cantilevered over my desk. John started using his iMac for his primary computer because the laptop kept crashing. After the laptop crashed for the sixth time in one day for me, we went to the Apple web site and bought a new 13″ MacBook Pro. The Magic Mouse and Wireless Keyboard arrived today, so the laptop itself should get here soon. It already shipped from Singapore. It is fun to have new electronics but I very much hope we are done for a while. This stuff is expensive!

Images 2010 Copyright Katy Dickinson

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Filed under Home & Family, News & Reviews

Tagged as John, Marriage Encounter, Paul, Sun Microsystems, Willow Glen

February 4, 2010 · 11:30 pm

Skype from Qatar

A friend of ours dropped by yesterday with a good bottle of wine to cheer us up after my being laid off by Sun-Oracle last week. During lunch, I was very surprised to receive a phone call on my cell phone from my daughter Jessica who is at school at CMU-Q in Qatar until May 2010. I ran out of the restaurant trying to find a quiet place to hear why Jessica had called. I was only slightly hyperventilating, really.

Jessica is having fun in Doha, Qatar. (Qatar is east of Saudi Arabia and south of Iran.) Our busy girl is in a musical, a choir, and on the basketball team as well as taking classes at CMU-Q and Georgetown University in Doha’s Education City. We have been talking with her by way of Skype on a regular schedule. Doha is 11 hours off Pacific Time, so we need to be organized to stay in contact. Yesterday’s call was the first unexpected communication.

It turned out that all is well. Jessica called to say she had found a cheap ticket and would be visiting her fiance Matt in Washington DC over Spring Break instead of traveling around the Middle East as she had planned. It was good to hear her voice. It always amazes me that I can be standing on the street in Willow Glen, California talking with my daughter who is sitting in her dorm room in Qatar talking to her laptop. I love technology.

Image Copyright Katy Dickinson 2010

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Filed under Home & Family

Tagged as CMU, Jessica, Matthew, Middle East, Qatar, Willow Glen

January 27, 2010 · 7:39 pm

Rescued Rocker

Late one night in November 2009, my husband and I found a high backed antique rocking chair during our regular walk around our Willow Glen neighborhood. At 10 pm, we did not expect to find Victorian era furniture abandoned and covered in foggy dew on a street corner. We cycled back to it at the end of our walk and saw that the old chair had a broken rocker and some smaller damage but was generally intact and in good condition. We took it home.

The next day, the rocker went to our favorite fixer of antique furniture, John Gibbs of The Workshop (Campbell, CA). John said that it was about 100 years old, a good piece and worth saving so long as we did not need anything done before Christmas.

We checked up on chair progress from time-to-time and even visited it at The Workshop. This week, we brought the rocker home to WP 668, our backyard caboose. I still need to spend some hours cleaning the wood with Howard Feed-n-Wax and some grade 0000 extra fine steel wool, and we need to have a seat cushion made. I am sitting in the rocker as I write, very glad we saved it!

Blog entry by Katy Dickinson

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Filed under Caboose Project and Other Trains, Home & Family

Tagged as Willow Glen

January 13, 2010 · 10:10 pm

Weird Worm – What is it?

Living on the Guadalupe River in San Jose, California, we often see raccoons, opossums, Jerusalem crickets, squirrels, black snakes, toads, mallard ducks, Canada geese, plus song birds and hawks of all sizes.

This week, our neighbor Jamie called John to come see something interesting on the street. John took pictures of an odd very long and thin pinkish-tan worm, about 1-1/2 feet in length (45 cm). It was very lively – wriggling all over the rain-wet pavement. I saw something like it several years ago at night when it was too dark for detail. We are still trying to figure out what it is.

Suggestions?