Katie relaxes at her grandparent’s home.

The weather was sunny and warm in the bay area this past week. I flew down to the Golden State with eight others (my wife, kids, son-in-law and a friend), and we enjoyed some real spring weather with our extended family. We saw more uncles, aunts, grandparents and cousins than we could keep track of.

Hence, my Renton blogging slowed down.

The snow was an interesting contrast when I returned (but it is awfully pretty against the cherry blossoms in our front yard).

I’m in here on the right, at age 5, with my brother Roger (9), my sister Brenda (7), and my sister Sharon (3).

We’re standing in the not-yet-landscaped front yard of our brand-new split-level home in Livermore California. My parents had just purchased this home for $26,000 at the time this picture was taken in 1967. It just sold last year for about $600,000.

I think that to buy the house, they had saved money on our clothing 🙂

One of Livermore’s local newspaper photographers, Bill Owens, published a book with photos from my neighborhood during this time period. The book, called Suburbia, provided a critical but humerous view of Bay Area suburbs the way I remember them during my formative years.

Here is a link to a slideshow of these photos

and there is a great essay on this site

“In his renderings of neighborhoods without trees, wide thoroughfares without sidewalks and streets lined with identical houses, Owens’ photographs hint at things to come.” by Cynthia Morrill, Ph.D., from the Fall 2000 Foto/Text.

Lombard street in San Francisco, and Cathy and I attending my sister’s wedding (in our senior year of high school).

My friend Rebecca posted this, when she made the realization that 6 weeks of cabin fever (from all the cold and rain) has lead to people being short with one another in her online communities.

It’s so funny, you have to watch the video. While the muppets are complaining about cabin fever from being aboard ship for 6 weeks (five day without a breeze), and our problem is we have been stuck indoors too much, the outcome seems the same… here is Rebecca’s commentary, and the video. It’s cute:

Rebecca’s comment: “This is mostly aimed towards the LJ community I’m in, which has suffered from inappropriate snarky comments and entirely unnecessary snarky reply-posts lately. I think it’s because it’s February and we’re all suffering from cabin fever, which is demonstrated artfully by the Muppets in the following video.”