On Monday, I resume the glorious life of the corporate traveller with a trip to Cambridge, Mass. I can already taste the warm nuts….

Recent Books

I just finished Spider Robinson’s latest, Callahan’s Key. At first, I didn’t think I liked the book — like all Callahan’s books, it’s loaded with puns and improbabilities, but this time around, I thought they got in the way of the story. But once Spider got the crew to Key West, things picked up, and I couldn’t put the book down until I finished it.

I also read Donald Westlake’s latest Dortmunder novel, Bad News and strongly recommend it — unless you insist on rooting for the good guys in a mystery, in which case you should find something else to read, because there aren’t any good guys here.

Shabbat Shalom!

The big news today is that my father-in-law was released from the hospital and is back at home. He says it’s good to be home!

And in honor of his independence…and that of the United States…there was a small parade in our neighborhood this morning. We found a note announcing the parade in our mailbox a few days ago and decided it’d be fun to participate. So did many of our neighbors (though we didn’t see anyone living in the houses closest to us).

The parade started at the school down the block, with people staying in the shade on the little bit of lawn that hadn’t been destroyed by the renovation work going on this summer. Once the word was passed to start, we moved out to the street.

The parade wasn’t all that organized, but they did arrange for bagpipers to lead us:

And they also had a car bringing up the rear.

We looped back around to the school, and everyone broke up and went their various ways. In our case, that was back to the house to watch Star Trek V and try to stay out of the heat.

As planned, I brought Jeffrey to work today; he got to hear me on not one, but two long phone calls (though he didn’t get the full experience, since neither one was a conference call). And he also got a tour of the holographic storage project (which we both found interesting) and a quick visit to Extreme Blue; unfortunately, the project that could have used him as a tester wasn’t available today.

And he discovered the joys of the Almaden cafeteria — we went early enough that there were no lines, so it wasn’t a bad experience. He had his favorite meal (salmon and rice, with cucumbers and strawberries as garnish), but said that Mom makes it better. I had a “fire salad” which was interesting but odd. And then I joined Jeffrey in dessert, which I then sweated off with a walk around the building in the nearly 100-degree heat. :-)

We have a quiet Fourth of July planned; hope you enjoy yours!

Once more, I spent a weekend with the computer turned off. This could become a habit!

We spent Friday night and Saturday morning at Shir Hadash for the Rabbi’s son’s Bar Mitzvah; he, of course, knew his stuff cold and gave an interesting talk, too. His Bar Mitzvah booklet had a dove on the front cover made up of the word “Peace” in many different languages, including Klingon. I wouldn’t have expected Klingon to have the concept!

Sunday afternoon, Diane and I went to the Boulevard estaurant in San Francisco for dinner with some staff and alumni from Hofstra University, where Diane did her undergraduate work. Hofstra even picked up the tab (I very much doubt that Rensselaer would under similar circumstances), which was a pleasant surprise. The restaurant is quite pleasant, too, and I was even able to find parking.

Today, it was back to work — I wrote a Python program to mine some of the results from World Jam.

And in between times, we kept track of medical news from back East; Diane’s father’s still in the hospital (but might go home tomorrow), and one of my relatives was diagnosed with aortic stenosis, which will mean an operation in the not-too-distant future. *sigh*

Tomorrow, I bring Jeffrey to work, which just might affect my productivity a bit.