Last weekend was my niece, Miss K's, 16th birthday, and my brother had a lovely party for friends and family at his house in Marin. It had been sweltering all day, but around 6:30 or so, a breeze came up, just briefly, but enough to cool things down to the perfect temperature to enjoy the party outside without worry of a sweater, a rare thing for ( Read more... )

My mom's mom was born at the end of the 19th century, probably around the time that a few houses were being wired for that new-fangled electricity everyone was talking about and there was talk of a fantastic, if absurd, thing called a telephone that would let you talk to people you couldn't see! She grew up learning a lot of skills that have been ( Read more... )

...Just standing around, you've been burned a few times, but you're a survivor. You're a friend to the animals and birds, pretty much keep to yourself and mind your own business. True, you're a 350-foot tall monster, but people don't really seem to be afraid of you, and many actually seem to revere you. Many of your kind have been felled by greedy ( Read more... )

Having lost this weight, I have found myself without many pants that fit (OK, just one pair that do). Yay, an excuse for shopping! I am used to navigating the world of jeans, and while sizes vary somewhat, I found that I could comfortably drop down two sizes from what I previously wore. But something's going on out there in the world of women's ( Read more... )

In the popular Helen Fielding novel, Bridget Jones's Diary, Bridget begins each entry with a tally of current weight, calories, alcohol, and cigarettes consumed. Diligently and humorously, she obsesses over the tiniest fluctuation in her weight, panicking when it spikes before a date, preening when it drops.

Since I've lost these twenty pounds, I've ( Read more... )

When we're adults, do all holidays prompt nostalgic reminiscing, or is the 4th of July somehow different because it, like Thanksgiving, is completely American, completely secular, but, unlike Thanksgiving, occurs in summer? Living in San Francisco, the 4th is hardly a big event, in large part because of the inevitable foggy weather. One of the ( Read more... )

I was about 10 years old. I remember watching the Jackson 5 on tv and being enthralled by Michael's lightning-quick spins and practicing and practicing to try to spin around as fast as he did.

In high school, in my high school, liking Michael Jackson (this was at the height of the Thriller era, when his videos were all over MTV) was somehow uncool. ( Read more... )

Last weekend I attended my **th college reunion. Back in the day, my friends and I would often ditch the dining hall and grab lunch at a small cafe just off campus. They had good sandwiches, great potato soup, and these cookies called fudge drops that were heavenly. Small, fudgy cookies, crackled on top, with powdered sugar.

The cafe, as it existed ( Read more... )

Last weekend I went to my 20-year college reunion. Having gone to a small liberal arts college (about 1600 students) in Los Angeles, we do have reunions, unlike 
( Read more... )

Just thought I'd post a pic of 
( Read more... )