diary : 2000

The year started off with my first art exhibition since high school. The building management company for Howard's business offices puts together a display every other year featuring amateur artwork by building tenants. The result was quite good - my 20 year old landscape photograph, taken on my geology field trip class (as a Vassar freshman!), held its own.

While I was reliving my high school days, Howard started the new year by getting on the Internet-startup bandwagon. With some friends and associates, he founded ASPdq.com, anticipating the move of software applications from your hard drive to the Internet. This all while continuing to manage modest growth for PCG, his 9-year old computer consulting firm. No easy feat. The real trial has been finding funding in an economy that's busily shaking out the high-tech startup deadwood. (If you have a couple million you want to invest...)

The startup gave me a chance to cultivate my own recent interest, web site design. You can see some of my handiwork - and learn more about ASPdq.com - by checking out the site. As many of you know, I've been trying to migrate from environmental geology to something computer-related for several years. I've found my niche! Something technical, but arty... After working on a couple free-lance projects over the year, I landed a job just days ago at Goodwill Industries right in the City and start full-time in January. I'll be developing their new Intranet as part of an effort to cross the "digital divide"; the idea is to get temporary staff who are in the work training programs comfy with using a computer for information gathering and communication. It's a pretty exciting initiative and I can't wait to get started.

Of course, the learning curve will be pretty steep & I expect I'll start next year working pretty hard. Hopefully, Howard will have it a little easier - with the 2 companies, he's been working round the clock all year. Okay, well, not completely. He did find time for arthroscopic surgery on his shoulder, which he says was quite fun. The rest of his "down time" he spent speed dialing the numbers for "Win Ben Stein's Money" and "Who Wants to be a Millionaire". His secret fantasy is to prove his trivia prowess on national television. He actually was invited down to an LA audition for "WBSM" this spring. My friend Don Prothero, another brain and trivia wonk, got on the show last year and kicked Ben's brainy butt on an episode that aired in May! (Note: Ben apparently suffers from hideous self-esteem, despite being a brilliant and accomplished actor - speech writer - professor – novelist - lawyer, and deconstructs EVERY show, EVERY night, with his Dad on the phone.) Howard (and his brother Dave, who is similarly brain & trivia afflicted) has made it through numerous phone trials for "Millionaire" but has yet to be called for the show.

Now that I think about it, Howard couldn't have been working 'round the clock, no matter what he tells me, because we had some awfully great adventures this year. First - if you cruise around my web site at all, you'll see evidence of some of our travels - the highlights were the English canal boat tour in the spring and the Tuscany home exchange in the fall.

But we didn't have to leave town to have fun. One of the benefits of living in the City is proximity to all kinds of cultural - or quasi-cultural - activities. And the variety is huge:

We also indulged in a couple of uniquely SF activities: I caught my first Gay Pride parade in June, and, yes, it is as - um - revealing as people say it is. (IMHO - Some people just don't know when to stay dressed.) Mostly it's great fun, great music, and great headdresses.

I also went to a popular fundraiser for Pets are Wonderful Support (PAWS) called "Petchitecture". PAWS helps people suffering from AIDS keep their pets by providing vet care, food, walks, whatever. For "Petchitecture", area designers are asked to build custom dog & cat houses that are then auctioned off at a huge gala. The designs are practical (huge carpeted cat playgrounds), elegant (cedar dog house built like a log cabin with a copper covered porch), and wacky (Elizabeth Taylor donated a dog bed that was a miniature of her own luxurious canopied bed!)

Howard persisted until we got one of the coveted tours of the Scharffenberger chocolate factory, the premium of premium chocolates in this area. Scharffenberger is one of the (if not the) newest entries in the US chocolate market - they command a very small piece of the high-end market. The factory itself is tiny - housed in what looks for all the world to be part of a store-it-yourself facility in the industrial South San Francisco. We got the soup to nuts - er, bean to bar - tour, starting with tasting an unroasted cocoa bean, and ending with licking the spoon from the still-melted chocolate vat!

Finally, I toured the Marin Marine Mammal Center - another unprepossessing facility that hides greatness. This organization, across the Golden Gate Bridge from the City, rescues orphaned or injured marine mammals (mostly elephant seals, harbor seals, and sea lions) for rehabilitation and re-release into the wild. It also happens to be the top research facility for these creatures in the US, maybe the world. Volunteering there looked like a good idea (nursing all those cuddly seal pups?) until we got to see some of the volunteers in action. It took 4 of them to coax a medium sized seal into a cage for weighing, and they protected themselves from its ferocious protests with huge pieces of plywood constructed like full-body shields. Yikes!

Another big advantage to living in the City is that friends & family actually make a point of visiting! We saw college buddy Betty Anderson & her husband Tom Dworschak, my old high school buddy Matt Sullivan, Gal Pal Jenny Bryson and her little girl Megan, Howard’s friend & business associate George Edwards, and Howard's niece Jordan, who spent time with us in Tahoe to learn to ski in REAL snow (she's from Pennsylvania!) (If I forgot anyone, sorry!)

Howard & I both made it back east to visit family. In July, we attended my - gasp! - 20th high school reunion back in Chesterland. Then Howard finally came through on something he'd been threatening for at least 3 years. It seems that when he and Dave were kids, his Dad, Arn, had an early Ford Mustang that he adored. Well, Howard got a bee in his bonnet to help Dad relive his past love. After literally years of stalking, he tracked down a likely candidate using the Internet - in New Jersey, not 30 miles from where he grew up and his Dad lives now. Through an unlikely series of events, we ended up arriving on Arn's doorstep in August with the car and spent a long time convincing him that it was his. Kind of a high school graduation present in reverse?

The only real sad note to the year was the death of my Uncle Mike, Dad's last remaining brother. He was the quirky, stubborn, highly individualistic and ultimately charming oldest kid in Dad's family. Never married, he swore he was born a century too late and sought out adventures in Brazil, Central America, and in the American West before the freeways made this easy. He and his dog Blue lived with a wood stove and hand-pump well out in the sticks at the Ohio - PA border on 50 acres of woodland where he tried his hand at raising steer, farming, and hunting. When I was back for my reunion, I got to spend a little time with him before he passed away in August - my last visit included helping him flush 2 confused and sooty sparrows out of the flue of the wood stove. A funny (strange) memory to have.

And just when you thought it was over, I must tell you about my own little part in the stunning historic 2000 presidential election. In February, when there were even more folks vying for the presidency, our good friend Thor Hesla arrived in town, serving as political consultant for the Bill Bradley campaign. After a couple of drinks, I found myself volunteering as a motorcade driver for his SF visit! It was pretty much as you might expect - mass chaos, piling into cars with press & politicos, traffic, dumping off press & politicos at a rally that I couldn't hear or see, more chaos collecting the tired and cranky press & politicos to dump them off on the tarmac at SFO next to the Bradley private jet. I got to see Bradley up close, and he just looked tired (oh, and smart. Real smart.) The real fun was the motorcade trip to the rally. The police closed down the entire highway (101, for those of you familiar with SF) from the airport to downtown! An astonishing feat in traffic-congested SF. With police escorts, we booked at over 70 mph in a shiny snake north to the financial district, then through barricaded streets past crowded sidewalks downtown to the rally site. I felt a little like Steve McQueen in Bullit but tried to keep it in check.

And with that mental image - of Allison, fearlessly white-knuckling the steering wheel of a Chevy minivan as she sails over the hills of Our Fair City with a crew of cowering journalists - I'll bid you a turbo-charged holiday season and an exciting, glorious new year!