November 14, 2011
Thanksgiving has always been my favorite holiday, probably because it’s all about food and there’s no gift buying pressure.
Our family’s Thanksgiving tradition is a little different from most. It started back when my mother was a young graduate student at Berkely in the early 70′s. I remember it clearly and I couldn’t have been more than 4 years old at the time. We had about 25 people over to dinner and they were all “friends and orphans” with no family in the area and nowhere else to go. We didn’t have a lot of money, but somehow my mom managed to put on an amazing feast.
Over the years little has changed. We still have somewhere between 15 and 25 people at dinner, mostly friends and sometimes the occasional relative. The players have evolved to be a greater proportion my generation’s “friends and orphans” but the love and familial …
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December 19, 2010
Everyone is familiar with the phrase, when life gives you lemons, make lemonade, right? Well, my lemons are still on my tree, not ready to be picked, and unfortunately, my computer’s hard drive is now toast and there’s no great parable for that, no way to make lemonade out of a 20 lb paperweight.
One morning last week a awoke to find an error message on my computer. I ignored it, clicking on whatever button I could to make it go away. That was the last I ever saw of my computer. Shortly thereafter it froze up and never rebooted again. Had I known, I would have said my proper goodbyes.
It took me a while to determine that the hard drive was good and truly dead. Fortunately, I have an external backup drive and the contents are current. What I don’t have is a full size computer with photoshop on it and a big …
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