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  Phones and Me (A Phone Rant) W ith the exception of my teenage years I have never been a fan of phones whether it's the telephone or those time-stealing “smart” cell phones. As a teen I did talk on the phone a bit with my friends, mostly with my girlfriend Maryann. This was in the 60's and most of my friends' families had what was called a “party-line”. For those a bit younger than me, a “party-line” is where multiple households all share the same phone line. If you want to make a call you first need to pick up the phone and check if anyone is using it from one of the other homes on your line. If you get the dial tone you can then make a call. If you end up talking for awhile with someone who had one of these you would hear clicks every now and then of others checking to see if the phone line is busy. If you stayed on too long you might get someone breaking into your conversation requesting you finish up your call. If your friend shared a line with someone who u

  Kris and I get Married K ris and I were getting married. The wedding plans were set. My brother Pete was to be my Best Man and Kris's sister Kathe was set to be, as like to call it, her “Best Woman”. Our plan was to not only marry in Sacramento but to also re-locate to the Sacramento area. There were a number of reasons we decided on this. The first and probably the most important reason was we wanted to buy a house. In the Bay Area I only wanted to live in either San Francisco (too expensive), Marin County (too long of a commute), or Santa Cruz (same commute issue). I actually owned a house in Sunnyvale with my brother at the time. My brother had been living in it but we were now renting it out as my brother had recently moved back to New York. That could have been an option. This brings up the second reason. Sunnyvale is right in the heart of Silicon Valley and to me Silicon Valley was more of a young single person's area and was maybe not the best environment f

Wedding Plans The Game to win Kris K ris and I decided to marry and we were officially engaged. It was time to inform our families. In my case that was just a phone call since all my family lived back on the east coast. Kris's family all lived in the Sacramento area and Kris wanted to drive up for a visit to tell them in person. I don't remember if we told Bill, Kris's dad or Linda, her mother first. I also don't remember anything significant about Bill's reaction, other than it was positive. I do remember Linda's and Max's (Kris's grandmother) reactions. It was in the “of course you guys are going to get married” category. It was like we were telling them something they already knew. Given our close relationship, I can see why they would think that. Kris was hoping for a bigger more excited reaction. I remember her being a little disappointed. From my perspective I was just glad they were happy about it. Even though they were happy, Linda

  The “M” Word At Kris's Dad's end of summer 1987 S ummer was bleeding into fall. Kris and I had now been together for about a year when the “M” word (marriage) showed up. If you have been reading the blog you will know that I had “M”ed twice already which was at least twice what anyone else in my family had done. I also had a history of not maintaining a serious relationship for much more than 2 years. Some of it mostly my fault, some not so much. I'd been through a few serious relationships where marriage did, and a few others where it did not factor in. I am not a religious person myself so I tended to look at marriage as more of a legal thing rather than a spiritual one. I did not necessarily equate marriage with commitment. Marriage for me is more of a government notification thing. Commitment for me is more personal. Once I became close with and truly love love them I feel committed. I also knew that things could change, and in my past, they generally ha

  On Thomas Pond – Maine Part II Thomas Pond - Kris on one of our inflatable lounger floats I t's July of 1987 and Kris and I are with my family in a couple of cabins on Thomas Pond in Maine. I think the most common things Maine is know for by the general public is Maine's rocky coastline and long cold winters, it's home to L L Bean, and most of all Lobster. Perhaps those who have visited might include Acadia National Park/Bar Harbor/Cadillac Mountain. Kris and I would do all that and more during our week visit. T hat first morning I walked out on the dock in front of our cabin. Everything was quiet and still with a little mist rising up from the water. It was early enough so that there were no ripples in the water. I went back in and put on my bathing suit and then came back out. I jumped in for a swim. The water was fairly warm and clear, I could see all the way to the bottom as I swam out towards the middle of the Pond. That is really my favorite time to s

Kris Meets My Family and we go to Maine Part-1 The view of  our cabins on Thomas Pond as we arrived I t was 1987, the year Reagan told Gorbachev to tear down the wall in a speech in West Berlin. The big song for the year was “Faith” by George Michael, the Movie: “The Last Emperor”, TV show: “The Crosby Show”. That year Kris and I were either both at my place in SF or at Kris's studio apartment down in Mountain View. M y Mom called me and said that she was organizing a mini family reunion vacation that summer. She rented two cabins for a week that were side by side on Thomas Pond in Maine. When I was growing up our family had taken a number of vacations renting cabins on ponds in Maine's Sabego-Long Lake Region. Sabego-Long Lake is a little West and slightly North of Portland, Maine's largest city. Thomas Pond is between Raymond and Casco and the Thomas Pond feeds into Lake Sabago, the 2nd largest lake in the state of Maine after Moosehead Lake that's up north

Running and the Bay to Breakers Kris and me in Golden Gate Park with our t-shirts after running the Bay to Breakers W hile I was living in Eugene there were plenty of physical activities I engaged in and I was doing something every day. It pretty much negated the need for me to set up any sort of exercise routine/program. I was playing 90 minutes of full court basketball two mornings a week. In addition, I was participating in rat ball (pickup basketball games at the university gym or under the freeway) multiple times a week. I was playing racquetball 2 or 3 times a week. I was swimming every once in a while at the university pool. I was doing Yoga. When the weather was nice I was going swimming in the river and playing softball once a week. All this plus I used my bicycle as my main source of transportation which meant I was riding it all over town everyday. I did many of these with my friend Frank. Frank was a runner. He'd run in high school and had kept up the

  Kris & Me: The Early Days Ready for the Consilium Holiday Party O ur relationship started on September 30 th , 1986 and from that point on Kris and I did pretty much everything together. We saw each other all the time outside of work and we also worked for the same start-up company, Consilium, doing the same job, Software Engineer. K ris and I were two young, OK not me so much as at 37 I was on the older side for Silicon Valley, Bay Area residents both working in the Hi-Tech industry. Being Computer Programmers we were making good money. Neither of us had much debt, Kris had a modest car payment and I had none. Neither of us had a mortgage and we both had reasonable rents. We had ample discretionary income. Being young, or youngish we engaged in multiple activities. We were out multiple evenings during the week and generally Friday and Saturday nights too. We did tend to stay in on Sunday evenings. We started sort of a tradition where Kris would steam some artichoke