Marion's Blog

One of the good things about retirement

One of the lovely things about being retired is that for the first time in my life my daily schedule and agenda are under my control. My days were externally driven in childhood, in school, at  work, and then parenthood. Now I decide what I am going to do every day. I decide what is important and what isn't. It is up to me! I absolutely cherish this freedom.

So, for example, last Tuesday I drove to Sunnyvale and had breakfast with a friend before taking her to the San Jose airport for her flight. Then back to Sunnyvale where I caught Cal Train to San Francisco for lunch with Allison.  The train service on the the San Francisco peninsula is wonderful and the scenery is great too. I walked to Allison's office. It was a beautiful warm sunny day (rare for San Francisco). After we ate our sandwiches we sat in Yerba Buena park and talked before she had to go back to work. Then I walked back to the train and took it back to Sunnyvale.

My friend Linda's house is near the train station. She I went out for dinner before our book club meeting. The book club book was Any Bitter Thing by Monica Wood. It was a wonderful very enjoyable book. I liked that it was well developed. The characters were very believable and it had a thought provoking and satisfying ending.

Tuesday was a perfect day partly at least because I was doing things I wanted to do.

Duke and Marion's Big adventure

Duke and I are off on a grand adventure. (490 miles so far) We are driving down into Mexico to do some exploring and to stay a week at a condo in Manzanilla. On Wednesday we left Union City and drove to Escondido down near San Diego to spend a day with my parents helping to instal the new printer they received for Christmas and to visit and hel;p with a few other tasks. Tomorrow we are off to Tucson.

I haven't blogged in a while. Lot's going on. One of the highlights was a trip to the Computer History Museum right before Christmas. My daughter works there but it was my first visit. It felt like going through a museum of my working career. They had pretty much every computer I ever worked on, IBM 360, Univac, PDP 11, Data General Eclipse, early CP/M machines, the Compaq portable that looked like a sewing machine, Sun machines, and of course PCs. The highlight of the visit was when the guys who had renovated the museum's PDP1 computer ran it to lead us in Christmas carols. It was so cool to see them run the paper tape programs through the machine and flip the switches on the front of the computer to play the carols. The man running the PDP 1 was one of the original programers of the machine, Peter Samson. According to his wikipedia article "For the restoration project he reverse-engineered music tapes from the PDP-1 era and built a player for the museum." I highly recommend touring the museum if you get a chance. i plan to go back again soon

Santa Cruz County Open Studios Art Tour

Last weekend we went to the Cultural Council of Santa Cruz County's 21st Annual Open Studios Art Tour. This is the third or fourth year we have attended and we always have a good time. To attend the tour you buy a calendar and map of the almost 300 open studios and then you pick the ones you want to visit. The tour runs over three weekends so you can visit as many or as few as you want to.  There are several reasons why the tour is a fun thing to do. The obvious first reason is that it is interesting to see the art. But in addition to seeing the art it is also fun to meet and talk to the artists, to see where and how they create their art and to drive around Santa Cruz county and see the beautiful scenery and homes.

This year my favorite artists that we visited were Julia Cairns, Michael Eckerman and Marilyn Kuksht.

Julia Cairns is an artist/ illustrator who lived in Africa for a number of years and has illustrated several children's books. I really liked her paintings too. Her studio was in an old house overlooking the ocean half way between Santa Cruz and Half Moon Bay. As an added treat we got to see a wild bobcat out the window of our car as we were navigating the dirt road leading to her studio.

Michael Eckerman uses river rock to make the most wonderful sculptures and fireplaces. His studio was in a residential area of Santa Cruz.

Marilyn Kuksht does metal sculpture. The works that she was displaying had a marvelous  way of flowing and of symbolizing their subject that I thought was very powerful. Her studio was north of Santa Cruz, just off highway one, right next to a field of Brussels sprouts.

Some of the studios on the tour will be open next weekend. Eckerman is the only one of the the three artists above who will be open. If you get a chance try to go next year. I highly recommend it.

The River's Edge

How many places are truly unique? So many restaurants, stores, homes and towns feel like they are just copies of one another. It is rare to find a place and a restaurant, especially in the San Francisco bay area that is not just like all the others. I think maybe homogenization comes with population density.

A few weeks ago Duke and I took a long weekend and went up to the California gold country. On our way we stopped for lunch in Isleton, a small town on the Sacramento river delta. Isleton feels unique. The shops and restaurants all have character. The restaurant we stopped at for lunch is well worth going out of your way to eat at. This trip was the third time we have eaten at the River's edge. Every meal we have had there has been special. The cafe is in an old renovated building. The hardwood floors look original and are accented by purple tile. The eggplant green and purple walls are decorated  with geometric modern art. The result is a warm wonderful feeling before you even open the menu.

But the food............  ah my mouth is watering just thinking about it.  All the sandwiches come with salads, mine had fresh, wonderful, room temperature greens with a tangy raspberry dressing. My sandwich was chicken meatloaf and Duke's was the roast lamb. Both were on homemade facacia bread with homemade mayonnaise that brought out the flavor of the meat.

The breakfast menu had my mouth watering too. So last weekend we drove out to the River's Edge for breakfast and then took tours of the Jelly Belly factory and the Budweiser factory which are in nearby Fairfield. With all the rain we have had and the concern about the integrity of California's levees it was interesting to drive on top of one of the levee's along the river. Isleton feels like it is way below the level of the river. Our breakfast at the River's Edge didn't disappoint me.

The River's Edge is worth making a special trip to visit.  Next time you are driving down highway 80 from the Bay Area to Sacramento take a detour to Isleton and the River's Edge. You won't regret it.

Telescopes

Last night Duke and I went with friends to the Chabot Space and Science Center in Oakland.  I enjoyed the exhibits but the planetarium and the telescopes were the highlights of the evening.  I didn't know this but their telescopes are open to the public free of charge every Friday and Saturday night. It was so cool to go out into the night air in the dim red light and look at Venus through the refractor telescope. We looked out the window and saw Venus in the west and then looked through the telescope and saw that Venus looked just like a half moon. It was also really cool to realize that the telescope is the original 1883 instrument donated by Anthony Chabot who founded the center. We also looked through the  telescope which is the largest refractor in the western United open for public viewing and saw the globular cluster M15. It gave me shivers.

The planetarium at Chabot was just reopened recently. It has the latest and greatest in the way of planetarium equipment. The man who gave presentation had just the right amount of fascination and awe about the universe mixed with a scientific skepticism and telling of the facts.  The planetarium night sky was wonderful. At one point he raised the lights a bit to show us how the lights of the bay area wash out the stars. I think that was part of what made the bay area night sky of the planetarium so awe inspiring, It was just like we were up in the back country of the Sierras able to see the millions of stars that take your breath away.

When we left the planetarium we went for dinner to the Downtown Restaurant in Berkeley. Last time we went there the dinner was great and this time I thought it was even better.