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For the Thanksgiving holiday this year, we decided to explore San Mateo County’s section of the Pacific Coast. Dina settled on Butano State Park as our base, which is mostly made of a redwoods-forested canyon, south of Pescadero and on the western slopes of the Santa Cruz Mountains. We arrived in the late afternoon, having taken CA-84 through Woodside to San Gregario, and then heading south on CA-1.

We arrived late enough that, after setting up camp, it soon became too dark for even a short hike. It’s been cool on the Peninsula this fall, and it felt cool in the morning. We were all grateful when, with temperatures between 30 - 40 °F (0 - 5°C), Dina made oatmeal for breakfast.

One of the first things I noticed—and probably evident from the use of the flash in the above picture—is how dimmed the light on the forest floor is. The cool, dim environment appears to let some pretty sizeable mushrooms thrive; this specimen’s cap is about 2.5″ (63 mm) in diameter, although apparently there are bigger species around. The ribbon-like growths show a bit of élan.

Ben captured an interesting diffracted view of the forest around us:

Out of the dimness, we drove down to Año Neuvo State Reserve, and worked off a little energy in our walk out to the dunes and possible elephant seals.

As we walked, I watched a raptor maintain a position for seconds at a time, presumably as part of its hunting method. Here are three frames, over a total of 8 seconds, from a fair distance away.

The mating season for elephant seals doesn’t begin for a few weeks yet, so that apparently makes these early arrivals juvenile females that won’t actually participate directly.

We explored Pescadero State Beach and the Pigeon Point Lighthouse, but the formation revealed at Pebble Beach between the two was striking. Apparently, the ocean (and already pulled pebbles) knock out other pebbles and slowly widen the sockets.

We went back for another crisp evening and chilly morning at Butano, revisited a few of the sites on Friday, and headed back—with a detour through Gilroy to sample a bit of Black Friday—in time for a dinner at home.

Photos taken with a Panasonic Lumix LX-2 and with a Canon PowerShot S2 IS.

(I’ve realized I need to deal with a much-too-high interrupt rate at work, in part by ensuring I take out a bit of time for leisure. Here’s an entry I started in April.)

Over the past few years, my reading rate has climbed; perhaps I’ve unwittingly dropped a periodical, or maybe I’m getting back to splitting my reading time across a few books at once. In any case, I thought it would be pleasant to get back to recommending recent reading I’ve enjoyed.

When we were in Long Island at the end of our winter vacation, I secured sufficient late night reading to get through three 20th century classics:

• Chesterton’s The man who was Thursday (1907) [Wikipedia] [Gutenberg], which was an entertaining story that appears to have simultaneously pioneered the spy novel, takeoffs of the spy novel, and a number of forms of “postmodern paranoid” storytelling. It would be interesting to contrast with Conrad’s The secret agent (1907), but I won’t have time to work through these contemporary novels in parallel.
• Christopher Morley’s [Wikipedia] Parnassus on wheels [Gutenberg] and The haunted bookshop [Gutenberg]. These were light novels (about booksellers); one of the funniest parts was the introduction given in the edition of Parnassus that I read, which suggested that full comprehension of the novel would only be available to readers born in a three to four month period in the early 1920s. I wasn’t, but the books are still fun—although I never worried about highwaymen, however shabby, in any of my traverses of Connecticut.

One of Benjamin or Nathaniel, and sometimes both, would accompany me to the Redwood City library. We’ve been finding some fun books, plus I can try to read science fiction again.

• Ben and I have been working our way, planet by planet, through Dav Pilkey’s Ricky Ricotta and his mighty robot series. The stories are on the corny side for adults, although I admire the determined construction of a monsters-on-planets cosmology. (Plus the cheese surnames on mouse characters are good silliness.)
• I blitzed through Cory Doctorow’s Eastern standard tribe, and Bruce Sterling’s Zeitgeist and The zenith angle. I liked the last of these best; the other two were simple. (I like Doctorow’s story ideas initially, but I find that the unfolding is too pat—obvious complications of the hypothesis are ignored.)
• Out of some unknown reptilian duty—I started following this series after my undergraduate degree—I read Robert Jordan’s Knife of dreams, which is the eleventh book in his Wheel of time series (not counting prequels). Apparently, the series will end with Book Twelve and, for what seems like forever, some plotlines appear to be coming to their conclusions.
• From Ben’s continuing exploration of prehistory, I recommend Alan Turner’s National Geographic prehistoric mammals and Tim Haines’s Walking with prehistoric beasts. The latter is a companion to the Discovery Channel series—narrated by Stockard Channing—and appears to be illustrated with high quality stills from the shows, along with expanded text retellings of each episode. The National Geographic book is more of a complete text about the major prehistoric mammal groups. We enjoyed both of these enormously—suggestions on further reading are welcome, as I fear we’ll be off into college texts otherwise.
• My final novel of the quarter was Philip Roth’s The plot against America, which was very finely written. I kept comparing it to the famous science fiction novel by Philip K. Dick, The man in the high castle, which is also an alternate history of World War II. Dick’s novel eventually focuses on the detection of wrongness by the inhabitants of his reality; Roth’s eponymous protagonist on more personal disquiet. Recommended.

Of course, none of us stopped reading in April, but a quarterly summary seems like a reasonable balance.

Big news for our household: the New York Times has an article on the announcement of the discovery of Mapusaurus roseae, which is larger than Giganotosaurus (which is in turn felt to be larger than Tyrannosaurus rex). Both Mapusaurus and Giganotosaurus were discovered in Argentina, and perhaps hunted Argentinosaurus, a huge plant-eating sauropod.

Ben’s home sick today, so reading about the find—particularly of a new, giant meat-eater—was a nice break.

Most Saturdays, Dina and Benjamin head off to swimming lessons. Nathaniel and I are left to our own devices, which means we go for one of two kinds of walk: a walking walk, where Nathaniel walks, and a seeing walk, where Nathaniel gets pushed. This week, Nathaniel expressed that he wanted to see trains on the walk, which meant a seeing walk.

We headed east towards the Redwood City Caltrain station. On the way, we passed the most recent arrival in Redwood City’s gradual approach to Seattle-class latte infrastructure:

We walked through the station, intending to cross the tracks and visit a couple of the construction sites downtown. When you’re nearly two years old and focused on being an expert in trains and trucks, seeing a truck that can ride on the rails is perhaps mind expanding:

The renovation of the Old San Mateo County Courthouse—now home to the San Mateo County History Museum—appears to involve extensive work on the columns:

Finally, we walked back to the station to see the 10:41 Northbound train,

wheeled into Peet’s to grab a cappuccino, and sipped our drinks—Nathaniel is usually prepared with a travel flask—as the Southbound 26 pulled in ten minutes later. Two trains (and a “train truck”) spotted, we headed home.

The Wall Street Journal has an article, “Clever Gags Score High On Super Bowl Ads”, with best and worst polls to accompany the online edition. We, for a change, actually watched the SuperBowl this year—with appropriate TiVo gymnastics to cover the grossly underestimated duration given in the television listings—and so can comment on the advertisements. The popular FedEx cavemen-and-dinosaurs ad was a hit with Benjamin, as was the offspring-of-monster-and-robot bit from Hummer. My favorite? I think Stunt City [Degree] was underappreciated: the admonishment to the motorcycle deliveryman who has just crashed through the window (”no helmets”) was silent, low-key, and clever.

Oh, and we liked the meteoroid-geologically-becomes-PEBL [Motorola] ad, too.

A while back, I was speculating about getting a new camera. I finally gave up using the S30 with the broken screen and decided to act. Although I showed some recent system-administration-confererence-action shots, indoor snapshots are never as much fun.

So when we decided to go see the visiting reindeers—from central Oregon apparently—at the San Francisco Zoo, the camera went along for the ride. One of the guests of honour:

Note the ground-scraping horn extending well over the left brow.

Nathaniel thought the reindeer were cool and kept trying to pass through the outer fence to get a closer look:

Next up was seeing the bears, but the playground is a mandatory stop on this route:

Since our trip to San Diego, Ben has been very interested in the state of the Alaskan Brown Bear at that zoo. If the bear’s blogging I don’t know about it, but I was able to convince Ben that seeing the young grizzlies get larger was just as interesting—and they are getting bigger:

Down the way, at the spectacled bear grotto, I noticed some writing on a railing:

The bear dens were built by the WPA, so this railing’s Bethlehem Steel parentage is not surprising. (Apparently, these grottos and the other WPA-built exhibits are some of the earliest “barless” zoo exhibits in the world. I’ve noticed that children’s books often render cagebar zoo displays, even when written many years after such displays were common.)

On the way out, we noticed the otters were enjoying a light lunch:

One tip with electronic viewfinder cameras: turn off the review period to make the camera feel faster. (It is often set to about 2 seconds.) For outdoor shots, where the flash isn’t a factor, you’ll be much less likely to miss a good photo.

By the way, Dina went to Fairbanks a few weeks ago, enjoyed the chilly contrast with Bay Area weather, and had a productive and fun visit. And, to keep karmic scales in balance, I caught a nasty cold for reminding her of the low low temperatures she could expect.

It’s a balmy 9°F (-13°C) tonight in Fairbanks, although with windchill it feels like -6°F (-21°C). Why one would be naked and outdoors to verify that measurement is beyond me.

The current temperature in Fairbanks, Alaska is again -6°F, or -21°C.

The current temperature in Fairbanks, Alaska is -6°F, or -21°C.

Ben and I biked to GeoKids and then I carried on to the Menlo Park campus yesterday, perhaps in honour of Canada Day. Ben was pretty happy for the first few miles, but I suspect was bored by the time we made it to downtown Menlo. (Google Maps has the distance at about 5 1/2 miles, although our route was longer—but on bike-friendlier streets.)

Dina took a photo of us setting forth from the driveway:

(For Peninsula readers, the main roads we used were Virginia-to-Woodside-to-Alameda de las Pulgas-to-Avy-to Santa Cruz. There appear to be some neighbourhood roads that we can use to skip Woodside—California Highway 84—and make the route safer still.)

Nathaniel and Benjamin have been trading an ear infection back and forth for the past few weeks, and Nathaniel also looks like he caught the stomach bug that had been prowling through his class at daycare. (But Ben never developed chicken pox, so that’s one positive.)

I finally decided that the colds and allergies were systematic, rather than uncorrelated, and went under a part of the house to cover an open-to-ground crawlspace with 6 mil polyethelene sheeting. Air quality in the house is already better—I haven’t taken Claritin in a couple of days, and Dina mentioned her nose has been clear in the mornings. It took a little net research to figure out how to do this and, since I can write the Home Depot-based recipe, I’ll go under again and take some pictures for a longer “how to” posting.

I also did the second “clean out the hot tub when the baby turns one” chore. Icky: dead slugs (and live ones). It’s actually turning out to be a useful water experience for the boys, although Ben doesn’t like the bubbles and waves from the “air” mode. There’s a leak somewhere near the top—likely by one of the filter inlets—so I’m going to try a dynamic leak sealing system, but that will be another posting as well.

Homes are fun.

Well, the rash hasn’t progressed, and none of the constituent bumps have become vesicles, so Ben can’t have chicken pox. I suppose it’s just a viral rash—it already looks like it might be fully subsided by tomorrow.

So, another quiet day at home reading (and watching Thomas) together.

Benjamin has chicken pox. The pox just started to show up this morning, so I expect we’ll be at home for most of the week.

The book from my father’s Festschrift, From Orthography to Pedagogy, Essays in honor of Richard L. Venezky has been published and the essays are wonderful. Prepaid copies can be ordered from the above link for $39.95.

Our trip to Chicago was wonderful and on Tuesday we rushed to the airport trying not to blame each other in front of the kids for why we were late. It turned out that we were able to meet the 45 minute baggage deadline for our flight, although we both promised to do things differently next time (travel with kids IS fun). We boarded our 747 and got the kids buckled into our full row of middle seats and ready for naps. We had food, our nasal aspirator (for ‘thaniel), and more books than we really wanted to carry (our luggage was 7 lbs overweight and we were asked to remove some of the books). The plane was hot but we knew that it would be cooler once we took off. Then the announcement came… Read the rest of this entry »

Muskoka is a vacation region two or three hours’ drive north of Toronto in Canada. I was lucky enough to be able to spend a week or two each summer there, growing up in the late Seventies, at my maternal grandfather’s cottage on Lake Rosseau. My parents now share in a small place near Baysville. It turns out that my grandfather’s family helped establish a church there at the beginning of the twentieth century. Since my uncles were flying in for the centennial celebration, I decided that Benjamin and I should attend as well. I made this decision about five days before the celebration, but between Orbitz and JetBlue put together an itinerary without too much trouble.

Read the rest of this entry »

Stephen and Benjamin left on Thursday for Stephen’s family’s cottage in Northern Ontario. They drove to Oakland, flew Jet Blue to JFK and then Buffalo, spent the night in a hotel, and then drove across the border and towards the Artic Circle. Stephen sent a brief email using the Jet Blue hot zone at JFK. We were both surprised that he had cell phone coverage at the cottage causing me to reconsider its remoteness.

Benjamin greatly enjoyed meeting his family and playing in the lake. It’s unclear if he continued his recent shouting monologue in his sleep, “nooooo [name of child in daycare class]… don’t take that… that’s mine… I need it”, while at the cottage but Stephen said the following monologue in the dark prior to falling asleep greatly amused others.

b: Daddy, I can’t see your face. b: I can’t see your face. b: I can’t see my face.

Meanwhile, Nathaniel and I were doing our best to sleep more than four hours at a time and break our 12 diaper-a-day record.

(I suppose I glossed over this in the flat tire story.) Here’s a shot of Benjamin inspecting his new younger brother the afternoon of his birth:

We’re sleeping occassionally, in case you’re wondering.

It is with great sadness and honor that I announce the death of my father, Richard Lawrence Venezky, on June 11th, 2004. My father was an amazing man who excelled in so many ways and I’m grateful to have had the opportunity to not only write updates on his condition but also to receive many wonderful comments in return. I have learned so much about my father over the past year and a half. Your stories and well wishes verify my feelings that he was a loving father, a caring husband, a loyal friend, a committed mentor, an inspiring teacher, an honored scholar, an avid collector, and a gifted gardener. He greatly enriched our lives and we will all miss him dearly. I would love to be able to sit with each and every person to record all the stories and I hope you will continue to email me with thoughts about Dad. Read the rest of this entry »

Dina’s father has been sick the past year or so, and Dina’s been relaying information to friends and family via email. I’ve archived them all.

With Dina travelling, Ben nearly had to fend for himself under his father’s care. Here’s Ben preparing for an expedition to increase his available store of supplies at a nearby grocery store: