Whew.

So I work for a small office (30) of a huge company (20,000). And we're probably not technically supposed to bring our dogs to work. But I do sometimes, because everyone knows and loves Banjo, and he's quiet, and sits under my desk and gives me licks when I need them. No problem, right?

Anyway, around 2:30 today, a frantic looking AA comes into my cube and informs me that the Chief Operating Officer (#2 in command) of the entire company is here at our office for the first time in history and he wants to meet everyone. And he's only two cubes away. She advises me to tell him that we're just "stopping by for a few minutes", but it is pretty obvious upon looking around that I'm set up for the day. Holy crap.

I start to sweat, shove Banjo under my desk and tell him to "stay". He does, like the good little guy he is. Moments later, COO arrives and starts chatting. More sweating, praying that dog will stay under the desk. I keep hoping he'll leave but he seems really intent on getting to know me. After about 5 minutes, Banjo decides enough is enough and that he wants to smell the fancy person yapping in my cubicle. Holy Crap.

Before I know it the fancy COO is rolling on the ground, playing with my dog and telling me about his beloved six pound maltese at home. Banjo is happily licking him. COO is a good person! Disaster averted! I still have a job! Huzzah!!

Lunar Eclipse

Tom managed to get my tired self out of bed at 3:00 this morning to see the lunar eclipse. Lunar eclipses aren't as rare as solar eclipses, but the last total lunar eclipse was in October 2004, so it has been a while. I've never seen one before, although I did see a solar eclipse when I was in Israel during the summer of 1999. At any rate, it really was cool - looked just like the pictures said it would. It was all pinky and orange and glowing and beautiful. We got out the binoculars to and had a great long look at it. Don't worry if you missed this one, we've got another one coming up February 20, 2008!

Movie Star

Partially because Kate has been teaching him some new tricks, and partially to test out the new video-posting feature that Blogger has added, here is Banjo doing some of his favorites. Enjoy!

Banjo Weaves

Banjo Hi-Fives

Andy Rooney's Take on Baseball

Warning - you may not want to read this column from the Stamford (CT) Times (his hometown) if you are a fan of Andy Rooney or think that he is not:
a) bordering on senile,
b) subtly racist, or at least bigoted against Latin American players, and/or
c) strikingly ignorant about the game of baseball.

Credit to the guys at FJM for the link.

"Good" timing?

Who else thinks that this proposed new regulation from the Bush administration that would expand the use of mountain top coal mining, with all of its environmentally and aesthetically destructive consequences, is suspiciously timed given the recent spate of traditional coal-mining tragedies that have received national attention?

Football is upon us!

Maggie managed to get some tickets to the Broncos-49ers pre-season game at Monster Park in SF. It was fun getting to go to a new stadium and have a new set of fans to banter with. Plus, our seats were awesome! Not too much intensity to the game since it was the first one, but the Broncos did win 17-14. Saw a couple good Cutler passes, Javon Walker made at least one catch, Travis Henry took a couple nice runs, and we saw a bunch of the bench-warmers.

The fans overall are not nearly as crazy as Raider Nation, but we got a couple of people to trade (good-natured) jabs with us. Great time overall, looking forward to the real season! Enough of this baseball!

Pumpkin Doodle

aka: Little Guy, Jojo, The Banj, Snookie Tookums, Sweet Cheeks, Puppa McDog-dog. I reluctantly take credit for most of these appalling monikers, but do occasionally catch Tom in the act, too. It must be love.

Find your "Walk Score"

No, this is not some new pedometer fad. Yes, it is another semi-cool googlemaps mashup I have found, but I think it's interesting and worth sharing because:

1. One of the things that Kate and I really like about living where we now do in Sunnyvale (as opposed to Foster City, rural Vermont, etc) is that there is a lot within walking distance that we can (and like to) do. This is nice when you have a dog and want to tie a trip to the store or the park in with your daily dog exercise.
2. On a more global-level, I think changing where we live is one of the key ways that our country, in general, can mitigate against global warming in the next century. What I mean is that I think that more so than buying a Prius, installing fluorescent light bulbs, or shopping at Whole Foods, living in places that are close to where we work and play in our lives can do a great deal to reduce the environmental impact of a growing first-world population. (While cars and commuting is a big part of this, it is by no means the only factor, as suburban sprawl often puts larger houses and communities in outlying areas that are harder to support a population and much less efficient to run public services to, etc). Granted, the economics of these situations are often complicated and I am well aware of that from living in the Bay Area, where housing prices in desirable areas are usually high enough to eliminate them as options for most of the non-renting population.
   

Anyways, to find your "Walk Score," go to www.walkscore.com and enter your address. It calculates a rating for how good your house's location is for pedestrian-related activities. Despite being "patent pending," I think it's a pretty simple algorithm that just takes the number of certain types of GoogleMaps-entered businesses, restaurants, POIs, etc. that are within a certain walkable range and scales it 0-100 against some arbitrary "optimal value," but however it's done it's kinda fun to see how you score. As you can see, our place gets a 55. What's your "Walk Score?"

Hiking in Yosemite

Well, almost in Yosemite. Technically we were just outside of Yosemite when we went hiking in the 20 Lakes Basin out of the Saddlebag Lake trailhead just past the eastern entrance to the national park, because inside Yosemite dogs are only allowed on paved trails, and on-leash. No big deal, I had been wanting to visit this area of craggy granite peaks, dwindling glaciers, and beautiful alpine lakes for some time now, and August is a great time of year to do so. And getting to hike with Banjo is worth a little drive.

This past weekend, after I finally got free from work on Friday afternoon, we were off to Yosemite for what is now the 3rd year in a row that a mostly consistent group of us, mostly work friends, has gone up to the land of granite for a camping trip. We camped at Hodgdon Meadows this year, just inside from the San Francisco-facing entrance. Despite the crowds and distance, it was really fun to hang out with our friends, see some amazing stars, have a campfire, and make some yummy camp food. Yosemite in August is definitely not a wilderness experience, but it's nice to have some camping luxuries sometime. For example, you don't normally get steaks for dinner, molten banana-marshmellow-nutella for dessert, and pancakes and bacon for breakfast when you're backpacking (although sometimes you do).

On Saturday, we drove through the park and out the other side, heading for the Saddlebag Lake trailhead and the 20 lakes basin for a day hike among some of the Eastern Sierra's rugged peaks and glacial ponds. We picked up a couple hitchhikers in Tuolumne Meadows who turned out to be boyscout troop leaders heading back to get their cars from where they started. Ever since abandoning Steve in Grand Teton (as was planned), leaving him at the whim of potential ride-offerers to get to the Jackson airport following our Wind River hiking trip, I like to restore my hitchhiker karma whenever I can. If you're curious, you can see a map of our hike, which included some interesting off-trail wandering around the Conness lakes, right at the base of the towering Mount Conness and North Peak, as well as the Conness glacier. I read that the Conness glacier is now about half of its 1994 size. Sigh.

But the seven (eight if you include Banjo, which I would be spousally remiss not to do) of us had a great hike with fantastic scenery for the relatively accessible trail (ie not that long, or not a huge amount of elevation gain). My favorite part was doing some class 3 scrambling as we found our way back down from the Conness Lakes off-trail. I believe Kate's favorite part was either a really loud grasshopper that sounded like a Van de Graaff generator when it jumped, or a lunchtime Snickers bar.

Before leaving on Sunday we went to one of the giant sequoia groves, and then stopped for 2 manhole-sized pizzas on our way back to the Bay Area. We got home just in time for my softball game, and now it's back to the real world. When is our next vacation? Hope we get to go again next year.

I've posted some pictures from our hike here.

Shiner

In the tradition of bad Tom-and-Kate photos started below, may I present to you my first ever black eye. I got it playing co-ed indoor soccer yesterday when a big burly guy from the other team found it necessary to shoulder-punch me in the face to keep me from getting the ball. Yes, I'm that good.

Book Suggestions / Reading List

A number of our Dartmouth friends have joined Goodreads, which is a website for posting book reviews and keeping track of books you want to read. Just what I've been looking for - thanks for the tip, Erin! Between my book group, friends, my reading-teacher mother, and my librarian mother-in-law and father-in-law, I'm always getting (and losing track of) suggestions for great books. So if you have any books you've loved, please let me know. I'll add them to my "to-read" list!

And in case you're interested in some of the books I've read and loved, my goodreads profile is here. You have to click on "read" under "Kate's bookshelves" to see the books I have already read.

Kiva

Speaking of financial-related matters, Tom and I are big fans of Kiva.org. It is one of the best-rated international microlending companies that distributes interest-free loans to people in need throughout the world.

Microlending is a fascinating concept to me. It was pioneered and championed by Muhammad Yunus, a Bangladeshi banker who realized that the people that were getting approved for loans were NOT the people who needed them the most, and vis versa. Traditional banking was allowing the rich to get richer, and keeping the poor from getting financial help they needed. So his bank decided to turn this system on its head and give money to people with no collateral and no credit history. These loanees turned out to be primarily women, often the sole bread-winner for a family in a third-world country. The loans are for a variety of things, from upgrading farming technology, to expanding business inventory, to renting a store front downtown.

At any rate, microlending has been wildly successful throughout the world. Despite the risks, repayment rates are as good or better than traditional loans.

So Tom and I regularly make loans to people on Kiva. It is even more satisfying than traditional charitable giving because when these loans are repaid to us we'll be able to loan the money right out again!

Budgeting for a dog

I read an article today that said that the average total cost of owning a dog over its life is $11,000. Wowser. That's a car, or a year at a state college, or a down payment on a house (elsewhere in the country, of course...)

At any rate, I thought it was kind of interesting. When we got Banjo we talked about how much we thought he'd cost. We were pretty close on the overall amount, but way off on the specifics.

Things that cost less than we expected: Food (less than $10 a month), Airfare ($50 each way as carry-on), Toys (Maybe $30 total so far). Things that cost waaay more than expected: Vet ($300 teeth cleaning, $45 just to have a little bump looked at in the office for 5 minutes, etc), Boarding ($25 a day, which is a good deal compared to other options), Routine Medications (more than $10 a month for flea / tick / heartworm...)

He's worth every penny, of course. And eventually, when we get dog #2 (a TBD frisbee-fetching-type), we'll know what we're getting into. Here's a picture of Tom after seeing the vet bill...

San Diego

We have returned from our trip down to San Diego last weekend, visiting the extended Ebel family, and had a great time. A few notes:

• The drive from the Bay Area to San Diego really wasn't as bad as I was expecting. ~450 miles, about 7 hours going down as we avoided LA traffic by leaving Sunnyvale at 6:30pm. On the way back there was some LA traffic, but all in all it was quite manageable - nothing a few books on tape couldn't handle. Banjo tolerated admirably.
• Speaking of 'Jo, our dog was quite popular among the nieces and nephews. Well, mostly the nieces, but it was nice to see how well behaved around somewhat unpredictable children he was. Interestingly, he was very intrigued with the smells emanating from 6 month old Oliver.
• We had some great beach time at Del Mar and Solana Beaches, doing lots of boogie boarding and swimming, although we didn't play any of San Diego's famous game Over the Line. It was nice to be at a beach where you can swim in the water and not go hypothermic in 4 minutes!
• Surprisingly, (or maybe not) our favorite show at SeaWorld was "Pets Rule" - a montage of all sorts of non-aquatic pets doing cool tricks on a fancy showy obstacle course. This included several dogs, cats (including the one that leapt off a 30 ft tall pole into this guy's baseball glove), ducks, pot-bellied pigs, and even some doves. I think this show may have inspired Kate to seriously look into agility courses for Banjo. Shamu was cool, but we think they have toned down the show since the recent accident with one of the orcas.
  
• The smog in LA is seriously depressing.
• Kate's dried strawberries and kiwis were a big hit, although most people seem to prefer the kiwis without the skins.
• We ate lots of delicious home-cooked food, including Soheil's Persian chicken kabobs, Jee's Korean bbq, and our Carne Asada recipe, and lots of yummy fruit.
  

Also, I added a new poll feature on the sidebar there - stay tuned as we'll change it to keep it timely. It's new, and I don't think Blogger has it set up such that the font color is changeable, so bear with the black text for now.