Every Chinese New Years, we go to a restaurant in Mountain View called Kirin.  Once the family assembles, Mom orders one of the restaurant's banquet menus, which usually consists of a soup, a chicken dish, a seafood dish, a whole fish, a beef dish, something with pork, and rice.  There's often a vegetable dish of some sort, and there's usually one ( Read more... )

I have never been a member of a book club ( Read more... )

Author Event: Chris Taylor and How Star Wars Conquered the Universe
at Books Inc. in Mountain View


( Read more... )

Warrior Class
By Kenneth Lin

Son of Chinese immigrants, decorated vet, and a charismatic speaker, congressional candidate Julius Lee is dubbed “The Republican Obama.” But when word of a youthful indiscretion threatens scandal, he discovers the dangerous intersection of politics and idealism. In this taut, topical saga of backroom electioneering, ( Read more... )

Of Mice and Men

Tonight I watched a stage production of Of Mice and Men with Jeans. It’s one of my favorite novellas; in it, John Steinbeck really captured a perfect balance of humor and pathos. I think it’s the perfect representation of the power of the American Dream, as well as the brutal reality of the world - we can’t all live in a dream.

This ( Read more... )

A couple of nights ago - the twenty-sixth, in fact - I went out to meet some friends in downtown Mountain View. We had arranged to meet at five o'clock; in order to make it I had to leave the Buckley Christmas gathering early. But hey, my friends and I had made our plans long before Seanie's mom decided to move Christmas, so I gave them priority ( Read more... )

The Secret Garden
presented by Theatreworks

Last night, Jeannie and I saw a musical version of The Secret Garden at Theatreworks in Mountain View. It's a beloved childrens' classic story, after all, and I thought it'd be fun to see it performed on stage. A little girl named Mary Lennox is orphaned and forced to move from her home in British India to ( Read more... )

Sense and Sensibility
(The Stage Show)

I was rather underwhelmed by Sense and Sensibility when I read the novel two years ago. All the characters annoyed me for one reason or another: Elinor was too cold, Marianne was too emo, etc. I think that, too, I was mentally comparing it to Pride and Prejudice, which is a much more energetic book. Sense and ( Read more... )

Seanie took a batch of books up to Bookbuyers in Mountain View on his lunch break. Poor guy had to carry in two mail bins full of my books, and two red crates full of my mom's old classroom books, all by himself. We were hoping that Bookbuyers would take most of the books and give us a decent chunk of store credit. Previous visits had netted as ( Read more... )

Jeannie and I went shopping in downtown Mountain View today. Officially, we were shopping for presents for her mom and my mom. Unofficially, we were having fun checking out Therapy, one of my favorite clothes/random stuff boutiques, and Bookbuyers, an excellent used bookstore.

At Therapy, we found some great fingerless gloves. One pair was a deep ( Read more... )