Some recent Austin doings: his first snowball fight happened on the way to Jenny's last Monday. He bunched up some snow and came charging after me.

And Mari: she's picking up words every day. "Hat" came recently and she was trying to say "lion" today. She loves spinning around in circles, and also holding things under her chin (like her socks, after pulling them off). Not sure what this means, but maybe she'll play the violin in a Sufi chamber music group.

Book review on other blog

Hey, I posted a book review on my "professional" blog, you know, the one I direct potential employers to so they don't have to read this drivel.

Alphabet

I haven't checked these out yet, but I clipped the "Ask the Teacher" column from the Boston Globe (January 8, 2006) and Ellen Peterson ("the Teacher") mentioned a few websites that deal with learning the alphabet. Here they are:

coe.sdsu.edu/people/jmora/Phonicssequence.htm

www.sraonline.com/index.php/home/curriculumsolutions/reading/ocr/622

The last one seems defunct. If anyone checks these out and has comments, I'd love to hear them.

New Year's Eve

We celebrated New Year's Eve with Amy, Aaron and friends. It was also the penultimate night of Hannukah.


Here're some Babes 'n' Babies.

We stayed up until midnight, EST, and then crashed, even as some friends of Amy andAaron went out to another party.

New Year's Brunch

Well, I'm about two weeks behind on everything, so here are some pictures from New Year's Eve. For brunch, we went over to Scott and Andrea's place in Orinda. Edie had described it, quite properly, as a "compound," you know, the kind of place where you could establish a cult. This cult would no doubt surround Andrea, Scott's wife, who made the fluffiest pancakes I have ever had. Well married, Scott. (She's Canadian, of course.)


Here's Scott with his oldest son Ben.

Ben with his best friend Monique.
Here's Monique's dad Mike and Monique's sister whose name I've already forgotten (here I'm baiting Mike to stop lurking and comment. It's Sara, right? Or Sarah?).

All the kids. Maia is the only one who doesn't have sibling yet. Get cracking, Edie and Bill! (But then you'll have to change the name of your blog. May I suggest: "Penguel"?

Are you reading Edie's blog? Lots of posts lately. Apparently they're raising a little ape out there -- a little ape that speaks Chinese.

Directions

This story from Morning Edition reminded me that my brother-in-law Stephen introduced me to something great on the Internet. I used to always use Mapquest to find directions. Then, I started using Google maps and really liking it. The initial draw was the satellite imagery, but really, who needs that? But I got used to the clean look and the elegant way the map refreshes as you slide one way or another or zoom in and out.

But then Stephen (a Yahoo employee) told me to check out the new Yahoo maps. Using Flash, the maps are nice looking than they used to be and have that instant refresh thing that Google has. Yahoo also has a neat Inset map which is helpful and the locate feature works pretty well. Another thing that's great is they let you map multiple stops. What would be even better is if you could "pick up" addresses from the map and insert them so you could see the route given, and if it passed near Fenway on a game day for instance, let you click on Storrow away from the park and insert that as your "B" address, between "A" and "C". When going to Scott's house in Orinda from Albany, I had to manually guess at an address to take us through the hills on Rte 24 rather than go over the hills (the latter route was calculated to be 1 minute shorter, but come on).

Also, given what was discussed in the NPR story, I hope they allow you to tweak the algorithm to your liking: more or less highway driving, etc.

Pacific Catch -- Yum!

Yay! We had lunch at the newest Pacific Catch restaurant in the Corte Madera Town Center (keep going -- it's right around the corner from the Safeway). According to this page today, the restaurant ranks as #8 in popularity for San Francisco eateries among TripAdvisor respondents.

I'll admit to bias upfront: we know Aaron Noveshen, the chef, and Amy Shimm, who helped design some of the elements in the restaurant.

That said, we love this place. The location in San Francisco was nice -- a little tight, but the Corte Madera restaurant had lots of seating when we showed up around noon on a weekday during the holiday week. By the time we left an hour later, the place was pretty full, though.

Julie had the salmon teriyaki rice bowl that she talks about all the time (the last time she had it was two years ago). I shared the mixed catch with Austin in part because I love the coconut shrimp (the sweet and spicy dipping sauce is half the joy). Aaron had told us on our last visit that the coconut shrimp was a challenge put to him by one of his partners -- could he make a version that tasted fresh and interesting and wasn't just a cloying pander to an American palate for sweet fried nuggets of food? Done. The fried fish and oysters were also delicious as were the fries (this early review singled out the delicious sweet potato fries and asked for regular fries which have since been added to the menu). Bill was kind enough to share his excellent tuna poke -- delicious chunks of sushi grade tuna in a tasty marinade.

Do you have kids? The staff was so friendly -- they handed out chalk boards to all the kids to doodle on while we waited, and when we asked for an order of fries to hold off the kiddies it appeared very quickly.Here's Mari, looking concerned that her "twin cousin" Maia is already writing Chinese (albeit with a Hungarian lilt to her brush strokes).

Aaron tells us that the place is a kiddie madhouse from 5:30 to 6:30 so if you have kids, swing by. They're more than tolerated here and you can eat decent food. And if you don't have kids, maybe you should come after 7 pm. The prices are pretty fair -- you can have a good meal for cheap or a better meal for more, but it's not going to break the bank even if you go for the gusto. (On this page, one guy says he thought the food was expensive but a few others called it cheap.)

Oh, and I have to mention the dessert. This one Julie and I have both been talking about for two years: mochi balls with chocolate sauce. Yes, chewy, sweet Japanese rice dough covering ice cream and served with a warm chocolate dipping sauce. Austin loved it as much as we did.

We have only two words for Aaron: Atlantic Catch! Atlantic Catch!

Bay Area Discovery Museum

On our Bay Area visit we also stopped by the Bay Area Discovery Museum in Sausalito. That's across the Golden Gate Bridge from San Francisco, and across the Richmond Bridge from the East Bay (I don't think I had ever been over the Richmond Bridge before -- it's as impressive as its more famous co-bridges).

It's essentially a children's museum built on the grounds of part of the Presidio -- and not far from San Quentin where all California executions take place! Exciting!

We didn't stray far from the first building we went into, with exhibits on frogs (there's Austin on a lily pad waterbed with Cate) and other local wildlife.

Austin's also really into skunks now. It began with the "stinky skunk" T-shirt Baldwin sent and was reinforced by a cute board book at my sister's house called I Love You Stinky Face.

The museum was a pleasant way to spend an hour and a half, but it's one of those kiddie things where you really need to buy a membership because the regular admission prices are pretty steep.

Oh, and I should mention that I spent some time talking to Maia's daycare provider Tibor and he was incredibly nice. Great manner, calm and reassuring and friendly with all the kids. It'd be neat if Maia learned some Hungarian to go with her English and Chinese.

Berkeley: Aquatic Park

Here's a picture of the playground in Aquatic Park, Berkeley, CA. Officially, the playground is called Dreamland for Kids, but because it's right by some active railroad tracks, the local kids refer to it as the train park.

It's a really great structure that is not made from pre-fab parts but actually built out of logs and lumber. (Architect's plan of the playground.)
Towers, ramps, ladders -- they're all here on a wood chip surface. Also, old school tire swings:

Here's Austin checking out one swing with Luca (in red) and Elliott (in blue). The landscaping is pretty nice, too, and includes a butterfly garden maintained by the local garden club.

In fact, the whole park was built by volunteers (some pictures here). One of the architects involved lives a quarter of a mile away and is named (and here I'll actually use last names because he deserves the credit) Seth Wachtel. Along with being a great designer and directing the undergraduate architecture program at University of San Francisco Seth is also an excellent father to Maia, Elliott (above in blue) and Oliver (below in dad's arms). And his wife makes a mean pumpkin soup.


Here's a San Francisco Chronicle article on the park.