Annecy: 5 walks and a wedding
After early morning exercise (Linda jogged; I did a fairly grueling set of Heidi routines), we set off to explore Annecy’s fabled old town. We figured that if we got there by 10 AM, we’d beat the crowds in a country not particularly known for its early risers, and we’d checked to be sure that [...]
Three miles on the shore of Lac d’Annecy
A bicyclist pauses on the shore of Lac d’Annecy this morning as I walked a 3-mile circuit on the lake’s western shore, also known as the ‘Rive Gauche’ hereabouts. A pair of the lake’s celebrated swans or cygnes cruised by, and one of them agreed to pose picturesquely in the reeds (no doubt in the [...]
‘Retirement’ is hard work…
True, I’m out of the 9 to 5 rodent marathon, but this doesn’t mean we’re not busy. Indeed, between a strict exercise regimen, meetings with friends and colleagues, trying to find time to read and write and a social calendar that is far more full than in my working days, I’ve barely had time to [...]
An ‘Olympic bronze’
So, I’m not in a league with Misty May-Treanor and Kerri Walsh, but my personal Olympics continue. In my world, the bronze equates to walking 2 miles in one hour; the silver is for walking 3 miles in an hour; and the gold is for a return to jogging, if slowly.
This past Saturday, we nabbed [...]
Bachelor for a day
So, the spouse is away this weekend with her college roommates in L.A. - something about a limousine, Hollywood types and a girls-only party in Beverly Hills. So, like all red-blooded males, I used the opportunity for the usual guy stuff: I went to church (excellent sermon by Corrie Lassen on the topic of being [...]
eBooks vs software: what’s on your computer-like device?
So yesterday we were thinking about software and how, in my case, I’m not buying much thanks to all the great new products, mostly free (and mostly Google) that are available for my Mac and iPhone.
What I am buying, it occurred to me as I read from my Kindle during a solo lunch an hour [...]
My personal Olympics
We don’t have an extravagant, multimedia opening event planned, but the Gulker Olympics continue. In today’s event, the 2-mile stop sign dash, we achieved a new personal best at 1 hour, 5 minutes, shaving 5 minutes off the old record. This was the first time I did the whole distance without a cane, and [...]
Sunday evening in Berkeley
Daughter-in-law Julie Getze and I attended the James Taylor concert at the Greek Theater at UC Berkeley last night, the tickets being a joint birthday gift to us both from spouse and stepson. Julie hadn’t been born when Taylor’s ‘Fire and Rain’ and ‘Sweet Baby James’ were hits on those groovy ‘underground’ FM stations in [...]
A ‘dash’ through Baylands
None of our usual Baylands companions, neither cormorant nor egret nor blue heron were around today, so I had to make do with this snap of the ‘pole forest’ and a couple of joggers.
I did manage two new personal bests: I walked the 1.8 mile loop in an hour and 10 minutes (10 minutes faster [...]
15 minutes of Silicon Valley fame for the ‘Influential Blogger’
We were sitting at lunch at the AlwaysOn Summit yesterday, talking to IBM Capital’s Drew Clark, when Alexandra Johnson, a partner at Draper Fisher Jurvetson sat down next to us. I’m running a digital voice recorder, capturing Drew’s ideas, so it looks like he and I are in some sort of heavy discussion.
Most of the [...]