A Year In Mill Valley

Wet baseball game today. Very close. Pitchers duel. Tied 2-2 after 4. Umps (who were both 12 or 13 years old) kept trying to get us to stop. Coaches and kids wanted to play on. They went up 4-2 after 5. We won 5-4 in 6.

Dinner tonight at Adam DeVito’s in Sausalito. I bid on an item at the Morning Song School auction, and won a dinner for 8 at Adam’s. Looking forward to an amazing meal.

Garden is torn up waiting for the retaining wall posts to be pulled up a little bit. Heading to Home Depot to return some lights and buy a come-along to do the pulling on the retaining wall.

Whenever I drive across the Golden Gate Bridge, whether it’s returning from SanFrancisco, or a trip back East, I always let out a big sigh and an ahhhhh. Does anyone else do this too?

Sent from my iPhone

Posted by email from backtalk’s posterous

I rode bikes with the boys on their first day of school. Here’s Sebastian all dressed up to ride behind me on the trail-behind bike.

He’s such a scrunch-munchy little boy still. He’s nowhere near as sophisticated as Nathaniel was at that age, nor does he make friends as easily. I just hope school is a good experience for him. And I do love him so.

Posted by email from backtalk’s posterous

I ride down the Mill Valley to Sausalito bike path on the way to the ferry each morning. I’m constantly reminded of that Harvey Keitel movie where he takes a picture from the same street corner every day for years (Smoke), because I want to do the same thing. This part of my ride is different every day. The tide. The birds. The color of the marsh. The color of the sky. Always beautiful. Always magical.

Sent from my iPhone

Posted by email from backtalk’s posterous

Heard an interesting interview with Erica Payne on KPFA’s Morning Show the other day, and
just ordered her book The Practical Progressive: How to Build a 21st Century Political Movement .

Eric on SF to Sausalito ferry

Took the ferry home tonight and ran into Eric Amsden from FM. He was in fine form.

Dinner in Saratoga before the show

Chicago live

Rachel and I went to see Chicago the other night, at the Mountain Winery in Saratoga. It was a great show, and an interesting juxtaposition to the Outside Lands Festival we attended a couple of weeks ago. They played all the old favorites — I’m A Man, 25 or 6 to 4, If You Leave Me Now, Colour My World, Saturday In The Park. I could almost hear the scratches on all those old Chicago records I’ve got sitting in boxes downstairs.

If you haven’t been to the Mountain Winery you really should find a reason to go…I think it’s the best place to see a concert in the Bay Area. They’ve expanded it since I was there last — (I used to go to 6 or 7 shows a year when I lived in Palo Alto, back when it was called the Paul Masson Winery, before the Hotmail guys bought it and gussied it up) — but it’s still a great venue. As you can see from the photos we were off to the right side of the stage, the view was great, and the sound wasn’t bad.

If you haven’t watched this series, run, don’t walk, to your nearest video store. Beautifully shot and acted.

If only there had been things like this available when I was growing up, who knows, I might have become a writer or an historian instead of a programmer.

I grew up spending summers on Cape Cod. When I was three years old my Aunt Cayo built a house there, and we spent every summer, all summer, from the day after school got out, until the day after Labor Day, at the Cape, on the water. My last full summer was in 1976 when I taught sailing at Wild Harbor Yacht Club. Since that time other things have come first. Jobs. Travels. Life.

But now the boys are 9 and 5, and it’s time for them to learn to sail, and to experience some of that same wonder and excitement that marked my summers growing up.

We did a house swap this year, and spent 2 1/2 weeks on the Cape, and it was glorious. The weather was perfect. The water was warm and safe. Nathaniel and George (cousin from the UK) learned to sail. And I literally could not have asked for a more perfect summer (except maybe spending a little more time there).

Here’s a movie that shows some of what we did there. Here’s a link to a larger version.