Last night Mary and I went to see Carrie Fisher’s one woman show, Wishful Drinking, and the San Jose Rep. I think this is the first show I’ve been to at the SJRep. It’s nice but small theater. We were close to the stage, in the 4th row on the right end, but I don’t think there are any bad seats in this theater. The show is quite funny. It’s basically Carrie telling the audience all about her crazy life, and I mean that literally. In addition to various stints in rehab for various substance abuse, she also received an exclusive invitation to spend some time in a mental hospital, where she was diagnosed as bipolar. In fact, she showed a picture from a psychology textbook showing a picture of her as Princess Leia as a bipolar case study. Carrie also introduces us to her wild “family tree” as a course she titled Hollywood 101. There were of course many references to Star Wars, and she even recited the hologram speech from A New Hope. She seems rather unhappy that she just can’t get the little monologue out of her head. Anyway, the show is a lot of fun.

Speaking of drinking, we took Nick on a tour of Napa Valley on Sunday. Since Mary and I don’t really know Napa all that well, we just picked some wineries off the web. We started out at Trefethen Family Vinyards, which has pretty nice grounds. It’s not all that big, but it’s got a bit of the Napa, over-commercialized feel. Maybe it was just the person pouring. She was nice, but she’s been drinking too much of the company cool aid, or wine as the case may be. Next we stopped at Hagafen Cellars. We all agreed this was our best stop of the day: friendly service and good wine. We stopped for lunch at a deli in St. Helena, then went to St. Supery Vinyards. We mainly stopped here for the self-guided tour, but even at free, I’m not sure it was really worth it. The person in the tasting room seemed thoroughly bored with her job. Next stop was the St. Helena Olive Oil Co. Mary and I like to stop here to taste various olive oils, vinegars and other tasty treats. We finished off the day at PlumpJack Winery. This was one of our more dissapointing stops. The tasting room was small but crowded and the service was weak. The wines were the most expensive we tasted but not as good as most of the others. In all it was a fun day. There are a few more pictures in my Napa Valley gallery.

Yesterday I had to go downtown to City Hall to pick up the picture I had on display at the library falcon exhibit. I took the opportunity to scout for the peregrine falcons. I ended up going on quite a long walk around SJSU, downtown and along the Guadalupe River Park and Gardens. The park is a narrow strip of green along the Guadalupe River along the west side of downtown San Jose. There’s quite a nice path for biking or walking. I didn’t see any falcons along the walk, but I did see ducklings and egrets and herons (also pictured on left). I did eventually find a peregrine when I got back to City Hall. One of the young was sitting on the nest ledge. While I was fiddling with the scope it magically disappeared. It was a nice adventure in any case.

For the Independence Day weekend Mary and I are going backpacking with our friend Alta. We’ll be going to Lassen Volcanic National Park in north-central California. We’ve been to the park a few times before, but this will be our first backpacking trip there. It will also be my first backpacking trip longer than one night as this trip will be Friday through Sunday. Hopefully I’ll have some photos to post next week.

I spent most of last week on the 4th Street Garage in downtown San Jose watching the peregrine falcons on City Hall. I even had an opportunity to visit the mayor’s office on the 18th floor to view Meyye on the Brise Soleil (see picture on left). All three young peregrines have fledged and each has had their own share of (mis)adventure. Each one had to be rescued and returned to the top of City Hall and the young male, Mercury, has had two trips back up. Now they seem fairly content to take short flights near by then returning to the nest area. Up until last night, they are spending the nights together near the nest under their mothers watchful eye. Their flying skills are improving each day and it’s only a matter of time until they all go their separate ways. For more pictures, see San Jose Peregrines 2008.

On Saturday Mary and I hiked Mission Peak as usual. Nick has been joining us on the hike as well. We spent most of the afternoon downtown with the falcons. In the evening we went to see some exhibits for 01SJ, a biennial global festival of art on the edge. A lot of the art exhibits make use of digital technologies and there are events all over downtown. The most interesting exhibit I saw was the City Hall Rotunda Concert + Lighting by Craig Walsh (picture on right). It consisted of a large scale projection display on the glass walls of the City Hall Rotunda. It covered the first two floors of the building and looked like three dimensional tentacles growing and pressing against the glass. The tentacles kept growing and changing colors. It was pretty neat. I don’t think we heard the music that was supposed to accompany the exhibit. I didn’t see much else that I found interesting. You can click on the picture of the rotunda for to see a few more pictures.

On Sunday we spent more time with the falcons downtown, but we didn’t see much action. I’m sure we’ll visit off and on while the falcons continue to explore the city. In the mean time, I guess I’ll have to start thinking about what I want to do next regarding my career. Maybe I can just fly off with the falcons instead…

It’s Earth Day 2008, and there will be a celebration at the San Jose City Plaza. Even more importantly, the peregrine falcon eggs at the City Hall nest have started to hatch!. Three of the four have hatched so far. Breakfast was served at 7am (see the photo on the right from the SCPBRG’s Flickr page). The hatching even made the news this morning, with coverage by KPIX CBS5 and KGO ABC7. As always, you can watch the live action on the Santa Cruz Predatory Bird Research Group’s Nest Cam- San Jose. Hopefully egg number four will hatch soon and we’ll have four lovely white fluff balls to enjoy for a while.

Last week Mary and I went to downtown San Jose to walk around Christmas in the Park (see above). They have a lot of the same decorations each year, but the trees are all different. It was pretty chilly so we both really enjoyed a Mexican hot chocolate. It’s kind of like hot horchata with chocolate in it. It’s pretty yummy. For more pictures see Christmas in the Park 2007.

The rest of last week was rather uneventful. I went up to Berkeley nearly every day to work with Nate since he’s heading out of town for the holidays. I did have lunch with Ron and Steve in Mountain View on Wednesday. After lunch Ron and I went to Tide House to check out some Yuletide brew. THey don’t seem to make it anymore. I tried their current holiday brew, but it wasn’t very good. Saturday was pretty normal. I played basketball and Mary hiked Mission.

On Sunday, Mary and I went to Pinnacles National Monument. We hiked a loop starting at the Bear Gulch Visitor Center which included Condor Gulch Trail, High Peaks Trail (Steep and Narrow section), Rim Trail, Bear Gulch Cave Trail, Moses Spring Trail and Bear Gulch Trail. The total loop is about 6.1 miles. We saw a couple condors in the distance while hiking up the Condor Gulch Trail. We stopped for lunch on the Steep and Narrow section of the High Peaks Trail. While we were there, we had a really nice fly-by from a condor. For more pictures, see the Pinnacles and Condor galleries.

On Monday, Christmas Eve, Mary and I took a drive up to Berkeley. I needed to get a PC from the office so we decided to make a day of it. We planned to eat at a New Orleans restaurant there, but it was closed. We ended up at I. B.’s Cheesesteak. After lunch we walked along a street fair on Telegraph Ave. After our walk, we hit Cafe Strada for some coffee, then headed out. Before driving home we stopped in Emeryville to look for Espie, one of the falcons born in San Jose this past spring. She had been spotted there for the last couple weeks. We managed to find her and had a nice visit. More pictures in San Jose Peregrines 2007. We had a nice Christmas Eve dinner at Mary’s parents.

For Christmas Day we went looking for falcons in San Jose. We tried a couple new locations, such as the Five Wounds Church. We didn’t find any falcons, but we did see a nice red-tailed hawk on top of the church (picture left). After striking out downtown, we headed to Don Edwards. We were checking out a burrowing owl when a large bird flew by. We’re pretty sure it was a golden eagle, but I didn’t manage to get a picture. The park gate was closed, so we walked out and around the boardwalk. We saw a white-tailed kite at the bend in the road and a black-tailed jackrabbit along the boardwalk. Now we’re ready for a nice, quiet dinner at home.

Happy Holidays!