April 8, 2001

Went to Susan's for her birthday the weekend of February 23rd-25th. She and I went to see her new boyfriend Joel perform violin with the Auburn Symphony. It was a great concert, and fun to just spend the evening together. Then we went out the next night for her birthday, which was also fun.

While visiting I got to see my friend Laurie, who lives in Sacramento. Laurie and I met when she was the beneficiary of some leftover fertility drugs I had. She is now pregnant!!

We've been getting to know our neighbors more. Katelyn is quite taken with Jeremy, the 5-year-old boy next door. She says he's her boyfriend. Unfortunately Jeremy and his mom will be moving to South Dakota in a couple of months. I know she'll miss him a lot! But Maureen (the grandma) and Julie (the great aunt) will still live there. We had them all over for dinner on March 2, which was great fun.

Katelyn went to her friend Jessica's birthday party on March 3. She had a great time...they had a Cosmo Jump! Then on March 24 Katelyn went to her friend Elizabeth's birthday party. More fun there! They're really cute together, and her moms Donna and Leslie are wonderful people.

Then, the following day, I threw a surprise birthday party for Mom. It wasn't your typical party, where you take the person away and come back to everyone at the house. Instead, people just started casually "dropping by". By about the 4th visitor Mom was suspicious. She was definitely surprised.

I recently re-connected with a couple of friends, Jane Moyer, whom I knew from my days at Xerox, and Tina Tang, who has been at Oracle all this time but we hadn't really kept in touch. I've also spent some fun time lately with Deborah, Owl & Jan, Nannette, Jennifer & Selena, and others. It's been really fun!

Speaking of fun times with friends, I'm continuing to coordinate the North Peninsula Lesbian Social. I've met some really nice women at our almost-monthly gatherings.

I spent March 8-10 in San Diego visiting an old high school friend, Sabine Apitz. What a delightful weekend! Her husband and kids are really sweet, and we just talked and talked and talked, like it hadn't been 20 years since we'd seen each other. Unfortunately she's moving to London in a few months, so who knows when I'll see her again, but it's great to know we still kept our spiritual connection after all these years. I've put her in touch with my friend Mary Ellen, who moved there a few years ago.

I judged the St. Patrick's Day Parade in San Francisco on March 11, as I have for many years. It was good to see Jenny and Tammy, my co-judges who have been doing this with me all these years. I missed seeing them for the fall parade season because of having Haley. They had to cover for me!

I spent a little time with Bekki Stuart, a young woman I've been informally mentoring as she was preparing for college, and continue to do so now that she's a freshman at USC. I think mentoring is such an important thing...more people should do it.

Haley got sick in the middle of March. Nothing really serious, just a nasty lingering cough that sent us to the emergency room once, kept us up at night, kept her home from school, and had her on medication for a while. She seems to be over it with no ill effects. However it somewhat disrupted her sleep pattern. She began waking up at least twice a night again while she was sick. She's back down to once a night now, thank goodness. Still hoping for sleeping through the night!!

The kids in general are doing really well. Haley is almost sitting up on her own, and is getting good at holding her own bottle. She's also started to take baths in the big tub with Katelyn...they have a great time! Katelyn is getting very close to reading, being able to sound out all her letters and recognize them. She's also listening to music more, and continues to have fun playing with her Barbies, horses, and kitties. Her latest toy is a mechanical pink poodle which walks and barks.

The kids are both still at Hoover Children's Center in San Bruno, and both LOVE IT.

I've been doing a little bit on the house lately. I finally got a curio cabinet for my room, so the cleaning lady doesn't have to dust all of my little things every week. She's quite happy about that! We also tore down the ugly wood shed on the side of the house. Thanks to Glynis & Susan, Mikie & Andrea, and Andrew for helping out.

I still need to hang the family pictures, re-install my fallen towel rack, buy new faucet handles for the bathtub, and a myriad of other small projects.

I'm once again a motorcycle owner! Kathie didn't need two bikes so I bought the Honda from her. It's a 1993 Shadow 1100 with low mileage, and she gave me a good price. Now I just have to work on clearing out space in the garage, finding my motorcycle gloves, and installing a garage door opener on that side. I think my Mom thinks I'm nuts, but oh, well.

I took Mom and the kids to Seattle from March 30-April 4, mostly for the CHI (computer-human interaction) conference. We had a great time! We stayed at the Sheraton, on the 24th floor (what a view!). We met up with some women from the lesbian mom's e-mail list I'm on, hung out a bit, and took the kids to the Children's Museum at Seattle Center. What fun! It's great to be able to travel and find new friends everywhere. Click here for a picture of all of us at the monorail station.

We also shopped, went to the conference reception at the Museum of Flight, went swimming (in the indoor pool on the 35th floor - better view!), and had room service a lot. One day I put the kids in day care so Mom could have a day to play. She took some tours and walked around a lot, really got to see the city. The conference was great also. Bill Gates was the keynote speaker, the tutorial I attended on Web Design was very useful, the conference sessions were informative. I got to meet up with some friends like Sara Bly, Terry Roberts (and her daughter Carmen, whom Katelyn really likes), Dave Curbow, and an old acquaintance, Anita Kapadia.

The day after we got back I went in for arthroscopic knee surgery. I had a "lateral release" done to realign my right kneecap. The surgery was done at Mills Health Center by Dr. Paul Hazelrig, who's supposed to be one of the best. I was there at 6:30 and on my way home by about 10:45. Amazing. The operation was a success, and I've been at home for 3 days now recuperating. Kathie has the kids, so I've been doing little but laying around, catching up on reading, doing some computer work (can't sit in a chair long), and watching way too much TV. Glynis and Susan came over yesterday to help me with a shower and came back later to have dinner and watch movies. What great friends. My knee is feeling pretty good, considering. once I'm all recovered...I get to have the other one done! What a thrill.

Check out the new pictures of Haley and Katelyn.