O'Leary Logic...

The other day I walked into the dining room to find my dad writing on the wall with a pencil. I stopped and with a perplexed look on my face asked, "What are you doing?"

"Writing down the amount of water that was in the rain gauge," he calmly replied.

"You know, we do have this stuff called paper," I chided him thinking once again that my father is losing it.

"Yeah, but I might lose the piece of paper. I am not going to lose this wall."

I stood there, mouth agape, and realized that his logic was indeed sound.

Christmas Dinner

MERRY CHRISTMAS

We just got finished with our annual Christmas dinner. It was a wonderful evening with my mom's side of the family. Her brother Tim and sisters Maura and Rowan came. Tim brought his wife Jeanne, and Rowan brought her husband Bob and their daughter Olivia.


Because I am almost never here in California and Olivia is still really young (3 in Feb.) she does not really remember me and so she was a little scared of me. But we are working on that...


Ceara received a wonderful gift from aunt Maura and of course had to model it for everyone!

A Couple of Photos

Here are two more photos I have taken since I have been here in California.

The first is of sunrise this morning (don't even ask why I was up this early).


The second is my family and I. Dennis (dad), Catie (mom), Ceara (little sister), and some dork in the back.

My Folks' Place

In 1997, the summer between my senior year of high school and freshman year of college, my dad took the job as the executive director of the Djerassi Resident Artists Program. As a result, my family moved from Boise, Idaho to Woodside, California. The Djerassi property is in the hills to the west of the 280 freeway and about halfway between highways 84 and 92, which cross the San Francisco Peninsula from the bay to the coast.

The house, which is on the property and comes with my father's job, is nestled at the base of a large hill with stands of giant redwood trees downslope. There are gaps in the redwood trees that afford incredible views out over the hills, which turn brilliant shades of gold in the early August evenings. Through one of the gaps you can even see the Pacific Ocean. The house is principally constructed from redwood and the back deck includes an especially nice barrel style hot tub that is perfect for a late night or early morning soak.

One of the most amazing things about living in a rural portion of the Bay Area is that the houses are really far apart. The closest house to my parents' is more than a half-mile away. This means that there are still numerous wild animals to be seen including rabbit, raccoon, coyote, fox, bobcat, deer, numerous birds of prey, and even mountain lion. The Djerassi property also has several fire roads and numerous criss-crossing trails which make for excellent hiking.

The one minor catch to the house is that it is a ways from civilization. It takes about 30 minutes to drive the 14 miles of VERY twisty roads to get to the 280 freeway. From there it is at least another 10 minutes to the closest grocery store. This has proven to be a surmountable obstacle with a few minor changes of habit and a bit more planning. It is possible to get to San Francisco in about an hour for day trips to museums, shopping, and restaurants.

Christmas Trees and Christmas Parties

I have been here in California for three days now and it is wonderful. Sleeping till noon. Eating out of an everfull refridgerator. Soaking in the hottub. Spending quality time with family and friends.

The first real activity of my trip came Saturday morning - ok so it may have been Saturday afternoon - when my dad (Dennis) and I went out to get the Christmas tree. Since my parents live out in the boonies where the redwood trees grow like weeds we usually selectively thin the groves each year by one tree. It should be mentioned at this point in the story that for most years my mom (Catie) and little sister (Ceara) have stood on the back deck and supervised my dad and I. This particular year my sister was not back from college yet and it was raining, thus keeping my mom indoors. Unable to find a single tree that we liked, my dad and I focused our efforts on an old trunk of a tree that was growing parallel with the ground and had died out at the end. Growing straight up out of this portion of the tree were four small trunks. They were all rather skinny and none of them had all that many branches...

Before long my mother was standing on the covered portion of the back deck inquiring why there were three trees laid out on the hottub cover. My dad and I enthusiastically explained to her that if we tied the three of them together with bailing wire and duct tape we would have a nice big full tree with plenty of branches to hang all of our ornaments on. At present I am fairly certain that my parents have the only 12 foot tall three trunked Christmas tree in town. Maybe even the state, if not the entire country. Now that it is all decorated it looks fabulous. Hell, Ceara hasn't even noticed its uniqueness yet.

Saturday evening I attended Dan and Emily's (different Emily from Julie's sister) annual Christmas Party. All, well, almost all, of my friends made it and it was really great to get to catch up with all of them. For the most part people are doing the same things that they were the last time I saw them in May, but a few people have changed positions within the companies that they are working for and other have moved on to entirely new things to pursue other interests.

We also conducted our traditional white elephant (yankee swap) gift exchange game where everyone brings a wrapped gift and they are opened one at a time in a randomly determined order. Gifts are stolen from each other according to the rules and eventually everyone goes home with a gift. Some pleased. Some not so pleased. This year I really wanted the nerf dart guns, but I wound up with the new release of Office Space on DVD. I think that I came out ahead seeing as how all I brought was a gift pack of Hawaiiana touristy stuff.

Christmas in California

I am headed back to my parents house in Woodside, California for Christmas this Friday the 16th. I have managed to get three weeks off from my very generous boss at work. For those of you who are reading this who are not already familiar with where my parents live, Woodside is on the San Francisco Peninsula about half-way between the San Francisco and San Jose. My parents live up in the hills to the west of the 280 freeway.

I am very excited to be heading back to California. I haven't been there since May 2005 and looking forward to to seeing all of my extended family and my friends from college. I will be attending Dan and Emily's annual Christmas party, spending time with Emily (Julie's older sister), as well as traveling to southern California with my little sister to assist in her architecture batchelor's thesis research. While I am in SoCal I am going to get to see more friends from college and Linda and Ian's new daughter, Lindsay.

Another highlight of the trip is going to be my Mom's big opening in San Francisco on the 7th of January. She primarily does collage and she has a whole bunch of pieces that are going to be displayed in a gallery. My family is very excited and we are going out to support her.

As usual I have stocked up on chocolate covered macadamia nuts for everyone. I hope that this will be enough...


Since I am traveling, look for more posts in the coming month...