Favorite News Headline of the Day

Drivers report seeing belly dancer shimmying across I-880

December Visit

John's mom, Kay, visited us in December, and I've been meaning to post a few pictures. We were excited to have her come out, especially since we didn't make it to Arkansas this year for Christmas. One of the things we did while she was here was pick out fabric for new sheers in our living and dining rooms. Kay made them for us for Christmas- it was quite the job! We've really been enjoying them- here's John and his Mom in our dining room:



We also went to Alcatraz- none of us had ever been. We went on the night tour, which leaves from San Francisco at dusk. We took the audio tour, and I was really impressed by it. It was made really well, with voices of the guards and prisoners sharing their experiences at the prison. After the audio tour, we wandered around the prison and hospital. We were surprised to find that the prison's dining hall and hospital had the exact same tile that's in our kitchen and bathroom (our house was built around 1930). They also had park rangers stationed around the prison, giving talks. One about the lesser known prisoners of Alcatraz was really interesting- I highly recommend it!

A few pictures of the island:

Early morning walk at Rancho San Antonio

Go to a Huckabee rally, see Chuck Norris. Really.

the rooster

Lately, I've come to like the idea of having roosters in my kitchen. After a long time looking, yesterday I found my first one- a copper cake mold.




I also discovered (but didn't buy) the Rotato in a thrift store. What an awesome name.

snow day...almost

Growing up in Arizona, I never experienced the having a snow day home from school. With the stormy weather in the bay area, today might be the closest thing to it (althought with rain instead of snow). I went in to work this morning, and it was windy and pouring all the way there. I didn't realize what a bad mistake it was to go in until I drove in the parking lot and tried to look for a place to park. There wasn't a parking space that wasn't within close distance of a potentially falling tree...so I parked in between two SUVs, hoping they might sheild my car if anything fell near it.

I went in to the office and the power had just gone out, and hardly anyone was there. So I headed out to work from home the rest of the day. On my way out I saw a huge tree that had cracked in half and landed on a couple of cars near where I had parked, but as I got closer I saw that my car was safe. Phew! Too bad I actually had a lot of work to do for a deadline, or I could've made the snow day experience more complete by watching movies all afternoon...