sharpening my home skills

mike was kind enough to give me tuesday night off so that i could attend a class on fermentation sponsored by an old friend that i hadn't seen in years. it was great to sample ginger beer and cider while learning and catching up with old friends. the class fit nicely with my interests in the food preservation (planning to pick strawberries and can them this weekend). i suspect that there is a batch of pomegranate sparkling wine in my near future.

now for a little insight into what i do at work.

my favorite project in the last five years was working on the design for the Pulse Smartpen from Livescribe. i got to work on a few different aspects of the interface on both the pen itself and the software you use to interact with the files on your computer. i find the pen very cool, as well as very useful. the pen records both what i write, along with the corresponding audio, so you can both see what was written and hear what was said at the same time.

i used the pen to take notes during my class on tuesday night, so i thought i'd share them here to give you an idea of what i'm talking about. click around in the notes to manipulate the audio playback - and let me know what you think (but no comments on my handwriting!).

urban peasant - fermentation class
brought to you by Livescribe

old friends

old friends
Originally uploaded by jcampioni

mel, eli and brighton came for dinner on sunday night. they were visiting sf from new mexico. we hadn't seen them since a visit in january, so it was great to catch up. brighton turned two last week, and is such a little boy. he and evie had a great time together.

they were having so much fun, that brighton decided he wanted to get in the bath with evie. i decided to oblige and stripped him down and was putting him in the tub when evie exclaimed "brighton's got the penis!"

well, i guess she's got that body part figured out.

a happy monday

i came home last monday to a very loud banging in the stairwell. when i got upstairs paloma and evie were sitting on either side of the drum banging out their abc's in unison. pretty impressive. of course when i pulled out the camera, mayhem ensued.

evie and mom's big adventure

moss beach
Originally uploaded by jcampioni

mike was away for the weekend, his first time since evie was born. he left on friday morning and got back on sunday evening. evie was a champ, and mostly took it easy on me.

we started out our weekend with a trip to moss beach to explore the tide pools with our friday friends. there were fish, crabs and anemones to see, but evie was most partial to being barefoot and splashing in the water. she was tuckered out by the time we headed home.

that night she and i went out for pizza and ice cream. big fan of ice cream, it turns out. all was well and good until the ice cream hit her system, then it was time to beat a hasty retreat - on piggyback of course.

saturday we went to the bakery for breakfast. then gaurav came up to the city with zyla and his sister cheri (visiting from india). it was all so much fun that we headed down to los altos to do it all over again on sunday.

evie taught zyla the joys of watching sesame street videos on youtube.



some really great time just hanging out and playing in the sun.



evie was in the bath on sunday night when mike pulled up out front. normally i have to pry her from the tub after a bath, but not that night. she hopped out of the tub and ran to see daddy. i think the best way to end our special weekend.

the joys of womanhood

being a woman just gets more and more glamourous all of the time.  last week i got to experience my very first mammogram, now that i have passed the age of 40 (yes, i realize i was a little late getting to this).  

let me just say what every other woman who has had this test already knows - if they did this to the penis, they would have come up with a much better way to perform this test by now.  

uncomfortable, but not awful.

then on friday afternoon i get a call from my doc that i need to go back and have it done again - and apparently this happens all of the time.  joy.  more squishing this morning.  this moved beyond uncomfortable.  but all is good, so at least it's all out of the way.

such glamour.

mmmm. crawdads!

DSCF4336
Originally uploaded by jcampioni

the weekend before last was my friend dan's 50th birthday party. dan is from louisiana, so his partner, claire, decided a crawfish boil was in order. they shipped in a ton of them in for the party, which was in golden gate park on a gorgeous saturday afternoon.  

evie had a good time playing with them pre-boil.  she was not so keen on them post-boil.

evie picked out her prettiest christmas dress to wear to the party. and when i say she insisted on wearing this dress, i understate it a bit. she did look cute, snowmen and all.

evan and lena come for a visit

DSCF4342
Originally uploaded by jcampioni

we had a nice treat last week when margaret stopped by for dinner with evan and lena. we hadn't seen them since our trip to LA for christmas. evie had a blast playing with the kids, and we had a nice time catching up with margaret. as a bonus, we had pizza and ice cream. good times.

easter fun

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Originally uploaded by jcampioni

sorry, it's been a while since i've posted anything. i've got a big backlog, but uncle sam was really wanting me to finish those taxes.

we had a really nice easter here. our friends claudia and frank threw a birthday party/easter egg hunt for their son marlon yesterday over in golden gate park. there was a great group of people, gorgeous weather, and a whole lot of eggs and goodies to find.

evie enjoyed it all. especially the chocolate.



claudia proved herself the hostess with the mostess. dying 4 dozen easter eggs, making packs of homemade play-doh, wrapping up little toys for each of the kids, and bringing baskets for all of them.

i want her to plan all of my easters. scratch that, i want her to host all of my easters - her way sounds like too much work for me.

we kept things a little more low key over at our house. evie and i dyed some eggs on saturday. then i "hid" three of them on sunday morning when i heard her wake up. it took her a surprisingly long time to find them, considering exactly how hidden they were, but she did find them all eventually, and then expected to eat them all on the spot.



by the way, that very cute dress she was wearing at the easter egg hunt was a present from auntie kim. great taste!