Zoe and the parents

checking out the house

We toured our house today. My pineapple guava has fruited! And they are delicious!

Alex

Yank Sing, SFMOMA

Today we bagn the day with another item off the culinary tick list of the bay area: Dim-sum at Yank Sing. The food was perfect. I wish we could find such perfect Shanghai dumplings in Grenoble! Zoe, however, was largely uninterested in everything except for the deep fried crab claw


Next, we drove to the SFMOMA and got a parking space right outside! I had not seen the rooftop garden before, which is very well done


There was an excellent Cartier-Bresson exhibit (like ten rooms full of photos!). Zoe's favorite part of the exhibit was the beaded exit, though:


She also enjoyed the aerial walkway


As well as some excellent Rothkos, Diebenkorns etc


On our way to Berkeley we stopped at See's candies. I wanted to take a picture of Zoe in front of the heaps of chocolates, but was informed that photos are not allowed in the store! I feel honor bound to violate every anti-photo policy I can find though, and I'm sure they don't really care, so I took some pictures anyway. It was just too cute.

Remarkable photos of Detroit

http://www.marchandmeffre.com/detroit/index.html

Kenji's art

Two friends of the parents that collect Kenji's paintings were at the NYE party. My parents had told me that it was one of the best presentations of his work that they had seen, and arranged for Chloe, Keith and I to go check it out today. The house was in Belvedere, with a dock that goes out to the lagoon. The house is spectacular, and Kenji's prints and paintings look fantastic.




The house even has a cupola-like upper level that looks out over the lagoon and environs.


There was also a rather impressive wine cellar. Apparently, a large part of the contents of the cellar had been sold to fund the remodeling of the house



Next: some bouldering with Ian. We brought Zoe, which turned out to be pretty exhausting. One of us obviously had to be with her at all times, which required hoisting her to the gymnastic rings to swing (and then fall on the mats), but she grew weary of this quickly. Happily, they also have a kids room that is filled with toys, which kept her fairly occupied. Zoe "cooked" me omelets with pickles, oranges and mushrooms using the Playskool cooking set.

Later on, Ian and I shared a pitcher of beer at Pyramid, and we uncorked the beloved Ardbeg 17 bottle (around 30 mL remain): The smoothest and best whiskey I have ever tasted. It's a shame it is not made anymore!

Party

Today was the parents new years day party. Despite daily sacrifices to Taka-Okami, the god of rain and consumer electronics (Ok I made that part up), it rained during the party, so things were a little crowded. We were hoping to be able to use the gardens and the deck, but Kenji had obviously angered the gods somehow. Kenji was prepared the traditional Japanese New Years soup called ozoni,

and I was in charge of grilling chicken teriyaki skewers (in the rain again). I got fed up with getting my hands singed and the bamboo skewers turning into charcoal halfway through, but finished it without too much collateral carbonization. Even more exciting than the soup was the music: mom had found Shamisen players from the Santa Cruz province of Honshu.



They were very nice, and patiently sat through some very strange behavior from my parents friends. As they were setting up, one of them got into a long conversation with them about his harmonica, and how it was a shame he had not brought it. They looked crestfallen at not being able to do a little harmonica shamisen jamming. Later on another old family friend cornered them and began grilling them about the name of a stringed intrument she had bought in Turkey, which she was sure was a "Baclava". Although it is possible that she was not talking about the sweet middle eastern pastry and there is indeed a stringed instrument from the middle east called a "Baclava", I have a feeling that she was talking about a Bouzouki. They both looked very confused but kept politely suggesting the names of instruments that began with the letter "B". Their suggestions were only for Japanese "B" instruments though. Some of Chloe and my friends also showed up, and I finally got to meet my friend Steve's son, who was born within a few weeks of Alex's surprise early arrival.

It was great to see everyone, but there were so many people that I barely had any time to talk to anyone in particular. I did manage to sneak away for ten minutes for a ride in Steve's 335i: an excellent and very fast ride. The acceleration on that thing is pretty savage. If only gas were less than six dollars a gallon and 335s didn't require the selling of organs here.



I did, however get to drink way too much heavily hopped beer (hard to find in France), whiskey and Chartreuse. A winning combination!

New Years Eve

We haven't really thought much about new years eve in the past three years -- my theory is that it has something to do with children. However, since we had parental support tonight, Chloe and I made our first NYE sortie in a long time! We put the kids to sleep, took the cell phones with us and instructed the parents to call us in case of kid problems. Despite the temptation, we did not hop on a plane to Kalymnos at this point, but went instead to an old friend's place, where they were having a party. It felt good to get out and be child free for a few hours.

Catch up

A combination of being fully committed to vacation mode and not having fully figured out how to deal with the increased volume of files from the K-5 have conspired to prevent me from posting updates. I will gradually get through the backlog, but the posts will be dated with their original times, so wont appear at the top of this page.

Discovery museum

Today we met some friends at the Bay Area Discovery Museum at Fort Baker. There are a *lot* of things for kids to do there, but what I liked most of all was that there were fun and engaging activities for young children (e.g. Alex!). Usually Alex doesn't escape from the stroller very much during museum visits, but this time he was able to do a lot of crawling over fuzzy things and exploring. In one section there is wall-to-wall carpeting as well as random stuffed animals. Alex ignored all of the dogs, cats and piggies and went for the vulture

After a lot of high speed crawling and cackling, he ran out of steam.

Zoe, of course, was in heaven and ran around like a little crazy thing. She was repairing a mini Golden Gate bridge:

Playing some music:


Playing in the sand box:

And doing the Hula Hoop.

She was not especially successful in this final endeavor: Chloe would fling the hoop around her, and Zoe would swing her hips frantically, but completeley out of sync with the hoop. The hoop would then clatter to the ground and she would shriek "MORE!"

Anyway, a big thumbs up to the Discovery Museum. If we still lived here, we would definitely buy a membership. As soon as we left, we got swept into a classic bay area traffic jam, like almost every other time we have taken the freeway anywhere here.

Rivoli / Bridges

We had babysitter support today and headed to the Bridges gym, next to the asian mega complex near the freeway. I'm not sure how they stay in business with so much gym competition, but chloe and I both like it there a lot. The route setting in particular is superb -- some of the best we have seen. It's also very cool that the boulders top out. At our gym in Grenoble, they have banned volatile chalk, which after some initial bristling, I fully embrace. When you get a lot of climbers chalking up in an enclosed space, you very rapidly find yourself in a giant lung destroying white cloud. We both climbed well considering the fact that we have not climbed in two weeks and have been eating vast quantities of food.

And speaking of food, next, it was on to an excellent dinner at Rivoli. Chloe and Kenji had the scallops, my mom had the duck, and I had leg of lamb. Everything was wonderful, and I particularly liked the appetizer -- fried portobello mushroom fritters. Dessert was also exceptional -- warm chocolate budino for me, and meyer lemon cheesecake for CZ. At the end of the meal, my mom was talking to us about Opentable.com, and I mentioned that a lot of restauranteurs hate it. It's true that it can be a hassle to make reservations by phone, though.


appetizer:
portabella mushroom fritters, aïoli, parmesan, arugula, caper vinaigrette

scallops:
grilled dayboat scallops, potato and anaheim chili gratin,
baby spinach, sherry gastrique, quince aïoli, marcona almond picada

duck:
Sonoma liberty duck cooked two ways, winter vegetable soufflé,
lydia’s brussels sprouts with pancetta and pine nuts, black mission fig marmalata

leg of lamb:
grilled rosemary leg of lamb, roast eggplant, tomato and goat cheese tian,
garlic and olive oil braised tuscan kale

desserts:
warm chocolate cake, vanilla ice cream,
chocolate and caramel sauces

Meyer lemon cheesecake, citrus compote

End of an era?

I sold my first piece of film gear (Fuji 645zi) to fund the purchase of a lens for a digital SLR.

Picante/LHOS

Loud, slightly yuppie, long lines, but some of our favorite mexican food (and best chilaquiles).





Zoe and I went to Lawrence Hall of Science, which like all science museums in the bay area is a little overpriced, but still wonderful. First, there was a giant orange pushy thing:

which consisted of orange pegs that could be pushed to one extreme or the other. Kids were in constant motion pushing the pegs to one side and then running to the other side to push them back. Sometimes teams of kids would arrange themselves on either side for more efficient pushing. The patterns varied from the ever popular hand, to the full body body slam, to subtle lines traced with a finger.

Next: another zoetrope!

And then an excellent set of activites on roller coasters, where you could push balls down tracks

Next, the Zoe Show

And Kaleidezoe

When I was a kid, I went to several classes at the LHOS, and had memories of the huge double stairway that led to the lower level. Hoping that there might be something worth looking at down below, we walked down the stairs and into a lab. They were doing a workshop on walking/drawing machines. The idea is to make a "walker" that moves by an imbalanced motor (a DC motor with an asymmetrical weight attached to it). Then you attach pens, and have it draw as it "walks". Zoe loved it, even if I had to do most of the work. What gave her particular delight was to attach the leads to the motor while I was trying to repair the walker (it fell apart every 10 seconds or so), which would send another piece flying. Then the cycle would repeat, with hysterical Zoe giggles in the background.



From this room, it was on to the room full of animals, where Zoe got to pet a chinchilla,

look at snakes and crabs, and then leave when a busload of kids showed up. Next, we walked down the hall and saw a full sized cast of a T-rex skull. Zoe was starting to flag at this point, so we went upstairs to a display that had a wind tunnel that you could feed various cups, string and paper into, some more orange pushy thing action, and then finally to the Bane Of The Parent: The Museum Store. Here, it turned out that Zoe wanted pretty much everything, but especially a flower printed canteen. However, while in line, she saw a kid playing with a Hoberman Sphere, and it was as if the whole world had descended into night, except for the sphere. She looked at me seriously, put down the canteen, pointed at the sphere and said "That one, daddy". And then beckoned for my hand to bring me to the toy. Who am I to resist that? I looked at a Lawrence cyclotron on the way out. We've come a long way.