The Narrow Interest Portal
Julie and I traveled to Capitola with my parents for Thanksgiving lunch at Shadowbrook restaurant. Our kids were with Julie’s parents at Disneyland.
We had a great lunch and then took a short walk along the beach and pier where we met several interesting birds including a very spirited pelican.
This is a great place over in Portola Valley. The facility has over 250 military vehicles including tanks, armored cars, artillery units, and other vehicles. It’s incredible. Apparently, the owner, Jaques Littlefield, was sort of a military nut and apparently wealthy enough to allow him to procure his own armada. Littlefield has passed away but the facility remains in operation and does tours by appointment. I took Riley and Quinn today with Riley’s Scout troop.
Quinn and I were in a waiting room today, and we spent the time in different ways. I read the Steve Jobs book, while Quinn spent time making photos with the iPhone app called Kitty Carnage.
We visited Perry Farm over in Ardenwood today to get some pumpkins. They have all the traditional fun things we like going here for, including the mountain of straw, a small hay maze and some displays.
Unfortunately what they didn’t have was good pumpkins. So we left empty handed.
Here are some of the better photos from our trip to Disneyland last weekend. Notable is that some of these are from my new iPhone 4S and comparing them to my Canon DigitalElf camera they are essentially indistinguishable.
There’s something amazing about the joy on a kid’s face when they experience the magic of Disneyland. Here are some of the best shots from our trips in April and August of this year.
I love that last one of Quinn so much…
A busy weekend, though in many respects quite productive.
On Friday night, Julie and I took Riley to see Horrible Bosses. Not the most-appropriate movie for a 13 year old, but a kid has to learn about these things someday…
On Saturday, the three of us attended the Japan Bazaar at the Southern Alameda County Buddhist Church in Union City. They had carnival games and some merchandise, along with plenty of food and drinks and entertainment. I had a very tasty teriyaki burger and a beer (this, clearly, is a different kind of church than the one I’m used to). We were there since the family of one of Riley’s buddies goes to the church and was working one of the booths.
Quinn spent Friday night at a sleepover, then on Saturday at a birthday party where they saw Transformers (and Julie gives me a hard time for taking Riley to see Horrible Bosses!). On Sunday, I took Quinn out to hit some tennis balls. He has great fashion sense!
I also spent some time catching up on some blogging. I posted a ton of blog posts this weekend. Here are all the links!
The Frat Pack Tribute:
Lip Balm Anonymous:
Rock Around the Year:
Kevdo.com
So there you go… 13 blog posts in a weekend.
As a former Librarian, I’ve always loved bookstores. Not to a fault, mind you  – I’m not paying twice as much for a book at retail if I can get it online instead. Starting in the mid-1990s, I’ve very much enjoyed the big bookstores such as Barnes & Noble, and especially Borders. Yes, those chains have hurt small bookstores, but in general I’ve chalked that up to changing times. For about 15 years, those chains have had a really good run, but now Borders is closing many of it’s stores.
I’ve gone out of my way to support physical bookstores. We enjoyed visiting the stores after going to the movies or after dinner at places like the Fremont Hub or McCarthy Ranch. In recent years, I’ve been given the opportunity to choose gift cards from several vendors while participating in a rewards program at work. In those cases, I’ve often chosen Borders cards and used them to purchase books, movies, and CDs at their stores. As the kids have grown up, we have regularly taken trips to these stores to browse or more regularly purchase books for them to read.
But, as we know, Borders is closing many of it’s stores. And this has made me really sad. Some of it is nostalgia – the Borders shown in the photo is at McCarthy Ranch and Julie and I went here a lot when we were dating or after we married without kids. And on a recent date night we made one final trip to the location. Inside, it was a bloodbath as people were seemingly picking over the bones of a dead carcass.
So, so sad.
A little composition piece today… Â That’s Matilda eating, and Owen and Maya watching from behind glass.
Quinn wrote this letter to Santa Claus… We then worked on the envelope to mail the letter today.
