A couple of months ago, my wife and I stayed over our friends’ house in their redone guest room when I received a phone call a little after 10a. It was another friend who had 1p reservations for 3 at The French Laundry, a 3 Michelin Star restaurant (as of 2010, the only one in […]
Over the last 16 years, since I was of legal age for paid employment, I have been inundated with advice about how to take advantage of tax laws while planning for retirement. Never mind that traditional retirement was 40+ years away. Most people have seen the graphs illustrating the power of compounding e.g. if one […]
Jump to PhotosIf you haven’t already, you might want to read part 1 Now came the hard part, should we make an offer and if so, for how much? We had not previously reached this point in the process and having < 12hrs to make a decision on a house we had seen for the […]
I graduated college in 2000 and after spending the summer in student co-operative housing, girlfriend and I moved into a < 500sqft studio apartment in Berkeley on the corner of Ellsworth and Dwight. Location and price drove our decision as she still had a year of college left and I had a job in San […]
Jump to MediaI have been a Yankee fan for almost 25 years; the Yankees failed to make the playoffs during the first 9. In 1995, I got my first taste of the postseason, which ended with a crushing extra-inning game 5 loss to the Seattle Mariners in the American League Division Series. Luckily, the next […]
I did something out of character during lunch today; I bought a McDonalds Double Cheeseburger for a stranger. In most cases, I am strongly against any type of handouts, so I’m still trying to figure out why this transpired. I had gone for a run during lunch, so perhaps elevated endorphins are to blame. Nevertheless, […]
Last year I read an article about the White Elephant Sale and went on the last day. They neglected to mention most items are 50% off on the final day…so the single item we purchased, a copper trivet with Ganesha on it only set us back $0.25. We felt we had to buy something… This […]
Last weekend my wife and I went to the Santa Cruz Boardwalk and I had a moment of clarity after playing Whac-A-Mole. We had run out of tokens, and had already burned through about $20 on various games, but I wanted to play a few more. When I was a kid, running out of tokens […]
Last Tuesday I reported for jury duty at the Superior Court of California, County of Alameda’s Wiley W. Manuel Courthouse. The last time I actually had to go to report for jury duty was in May of 2006. It was for a civil case relating to this: Esteemed UC history professor hit by truck and […]
Our loft is now ChristmasTree--. It was a nearly 14′ tall Red Fir (commonly known as Silver Tip) and came from the East Bay Nursery. We purchased the tree on 2008-11-30 and used a 20% off coupon from the East Bay EcoMetro book. This was the first year we used LED lights. The ornaments were […]
