Today was my mom’s birthday. She would have been 79. Sometimes I forget she’s gone. Once in a while I think about how I’m going to call her on Sunday and tell her all about my week’s events, but then I remember. I had given her a small stuffed panda from the World Wildlife Fund when she was in the hospital. She had named him Andy. He’s with me now, watching over me and helping me remember all the great things about my mother.

The picture on the right is from a trip to Hawaii. We were in Maui, taking the picture with my camera on a timer. I had the timer set too short and it kept taking the picture before I was in place. My mom and Mary were cracking up the whole time. I took quite a few tries to get one decent picture. At least my mom had a genuine smile for this one!

Whenever I would visit my mom, one of the things we would do is eat at a Chinese buffet. We tried a few different places around town, but the last few times were at the Jade Garden. We would usually try to make it to another buffet places called the Golden Corral, sometimes getting much of the family to join us. My mom would call the place the Golden Goose. She wasn’t always good with names, but I always knew what she was talking about. I still call the place the Golden Goose.

Today, Mary and I took Mary’s parents to dinner at a Chinese buffet, in remembrance of my mom. The place is called Pacific Buffet and had a lot of seafood. I’m not sure my mom would have liked it because it had a bit of a seafood smell, though they did have something pretty similar to the lo mein she liked so much. I had taken her to a place near my house when she came out to visit, but unfortunately that place closed down a couple years ago. I miss her.

The rest of my week was pretty typical. I went to the office in Berkeley a few times and worked from home a couple times. I started going to the gym again 2 weeks ago. I’m going to try to go 4-5 times a week. I’m starting slow and building my way up. Mary and I often go out to look for raptors on the weekend. Now we takeout the Pentax scope I got for her birthday. I managed to get a picture through the scope using Mary’s digital camera. People call this digiscoping. I got a couple decent pictures of a white-tailed kite at Don Edwards. The pictures are in my gallery. I also have one of a red-tailed hawk and some regular pictures of black-tailed rabbits.