Breakfast at Google

You know you've arrived when the name of your company becomes a verb. As in: Google it.

Cousin Jordana works at Google. We carpool to work as often as we can. Along came a day when we both had extra time after arriving in the South Bay and so she took me to breakfast on the campus and I got a first-hand look at the Google mystique.

People want to work at Google. The company has a reputation for product innovation and taking care of its employees.

Breakfast, like all meals in the gourmet-chef-staffed restaurants, was free. The cafe offered four hot entrees (oatmeal, egg tacos, scrambled eggs and French toast), a cereal bar, a fruit bar, a coffee counter, cheeses and bottled drinks in a trendy, modern tech setting with lots of natural light.

On the way out I stopped in the bathroom. And there I found those fancy Japanese toilets with seat warmers, dryers, bidets, music to disguise the actual reason for your trip to the loo, deodorization and masking fragrances (they are different).

Other Google employee perks include childcare centers and freebies like massages, gyms, pool tables, lava lamps, hair cuts, legal advice, bocce ball courts, a giant climbing wall and bowling alleys. There is also on-campus medical care and, although it's not free, it's very convenient.

Twenty One

That's the number of mosquito bites I have on my left leg below the knee. I am good eats if you are a hungry mosquito!

Neeracha and I are just back from four days at Canyon Ranch. We'd been to Miraval, another destination spa also in Tucson, a few times and wanted to try something new. Why there are mosquitos in the desert I have no idea.

Together we hiked, danced and ate. Separately I did gyrotonics, Pilates and golf while she biked and did knead yoga and Zumba. The teachers had big personalities and I enjoyed that. They worked hard to be entertaining. I liked the belly dancing class the best. And after that the hike. The topography of Arizona is beautiful, much different than that of Northern California and gorgeous in its own way. My golf lesson was so basic that I didn't even see a ball. Yup, I spent an entire hour on grip and stance. But hey, I got a video to take home to wow the kids.

We tried to watch movies at night but didn't stay awake long enough to actually get through one. Our room was beautiful -- fluffy beds, indoor and outdoor seating areas, two dressing areas and two closets, two flat panel TVs.

Southern Arizona has highs above 100F in September so our outdoor activities were done by 10am. Here we are on a 5 mile hike into Lower Bear Canyon the last day of the trip.

We had lunch in the demo kitchen on our last day there and sat with a woman who lives in Boca Raton and grew up in St. Louis. She mentioned she was Jewish and I gave Neeracha a lesson in Jewish Geography. It only took four names for me and Boca Woman to find a connection.

I used to think that Miraval and Canyon Ranch competed. But after visiting Canyon Ranch I see how different they are. At Miraval we met people who'd been to Canyon Ranch. At Canyon Ranch few people even knew what Miraval was, so loyal were they to the ranch.

• If Miraval is a svelte, hip yoga teacher then Canyon Ranch is an Ironwoman-now-Jazzercise instructor. 
• Miraval is newer, more innovative, a new age experience. Canyon Ranch is older, quieter, with a broader range of food and activity offerings.
• People who go to Miraval are looking for a vacation. People who go to Canyon Ranch are looking to change their lives. 
• At Miraval one signs up for the Equine experience to balance their mind, body and spirit. At Canyon Ranch one signs up for the Life Enhancement Program to learn how to live a healthy life and navigate a transition or meet a personal challenge.
• People visit Miraval for a long weekend or a week. The first people I met at Canyon Ranch spend three months a year there -- six weeks on each end of their Toronto to Miami snowbird trip.
• Guests at Miraval are in their 30s to 50s. Guests at Canyon Ranch are in their 40s to 70s. And they go back every year like clockwork.
• There are some hardcore fitness options at Miraval. There are many more super hardcore fitness options at Canyon Ranch.
• The quiet spaces, the pool, the meditation rooms are better designed at Miraval. The gym is better designed at Canyon Ranch.
• The food is great at Miraval. The food is good at Canyon Ranch.

It's hard to say which one I liked better; they are simply different. Miraval did not have hungry mosquitos.

Tomato Derivatives

My parents filled in their pool a few years ago. Replacing the diving board and cool oasis my kids loved so much is an expansive vegetable garden. My mom is really into her garden. She's so into gardening that she emails me and my brother gardening tips she finds online.

Don't get me wrong -- we like it and we benefit from it. There's something gratifying about planting seeds, caring for them, watching them grow and then pulling your accomplishments from the dirt and consuming them. We have such a temperate climate here in California that we can grow a huge variety of edibles.

My parents are away all month and left the garden's bounty to me and my brother. I'm not sure what prompted my mom to plant as much as she did knowing they'd be away.

On Saturday, after two soccer games and a big lunch, the youngest Pinks and I did some harvesting.

Here's what we picked in an hour. And we barely touched the cherry tomatoes. I'll go back next weekend and then do a drop off at the local food bank. Not even two tomato-loving families can eat so many tomatoes.

I roasted a big pan of San Marzano's in olive oil and Kosher salt and inhaled them for dinner. The way I make them turns them into tomato chips. I like them blackened because all the crispy bits turn sweet.

Then Sunday morning we headed to a friend's for a sauce and salsa making session. My friend has canning equipment and I enjoyed learning how it is used. She also has a food strainer, which takes far less time than my score, boil, ice bath, peel and blend method of turning whole tomatoes into puree for sauce.

Liberty really likes cooking so she was a huge help in that area. All that chopping is tedious. I'd never roasted chiles on the stovetop before so that was an adventure. It's a lot of work charring those babies then scraping the burnt bits off, the seeds out and then dicing, all the while wearing gloves.

It's shocking how little 30 lbs of tomatoes reduced down to. But we'll enjoy those tomatoes long into the winter. And so will my parents, whose pantry and freezer I am slowly filling with mason jarred tomato products.

Shiva

My friend's father passed away this week after a long illness.

Today I took the youngest Pinks to our friends' house to make a shiva call. Shiva is the formal, seven-day mourning period in Judaism, one that first-degree family members observe. The word shiva comes from the Hebrew shi-VAH, which means seven. During this time the family members receive visitors. It is traditional and expected that these visitors bring food. We baked cookies this morning.

My friend's family are Israeli emigres. His wife's family are Russian emigres. The two met at an American law school. Their home is a mix of Jewish artifacts and antiques.

Today's conversation was in many tongues and the mourning traditions from many cultures were tied together by Judaism. Russians, for example, don't leave keys on a table. Immediate family wears a keriah, or torn outer-layer-garment during shiva. Sometimes this is a tie. Sometimes this is a ribbon.

I did not know my friend's father but was glad to support the family and to teach The Pinks this part of our religion. It gave us an opportunity to talk about what you say to someone when they're grieving. "I'm sorry." "I'm sorry for your loss." Tori, our animal lover, insisted on paying special attention to the family dog as "he must be upset, too."

Shiva is not gloom and doom; it's story telling and laughter and memories in addition to tears. The Pinks played outside with the family's daughters, who they know from Religious School. And I ate some piroshki, Russian puff pastries filled with apples. Divine.

She was boring.

My friend said this to me recently, talking about someone she'd recently broken bread with.

I knew the woman she was talking about and I agree, she's rather vanilla, although the thought hadn't occurred to me until she mentioned it.

What makes someone not boring? Interesting hobbies? Engaging stories? Humor? A visible passion for something, anything?

I used to work with a woman who was pee-in-your-pants funny. She was completely and unapologetically selfish and her observations were often spot-on but things you'd never say out loud if your parents raised you with any sense of decency. She was not boring in the slightest.

As an aside, I'm beginning to think you are either born with the humor gene or not. My dad and cousin David are funny, and they have the same aptitude for one-liners. One of The Pinks says the funniest things.

One of my fairly new friends has an interesting backstory. Actually a bunch of my friends do. They're not Americans. They've lived outside the US. They've traveled to unusual places and will eat weird food without a second thought. Or they grew up in non-traditional families or have overcome tough odds to land on their feet. Dave tells me that none of my friends are alike. Maybe I am bored with people like myself?

I love the picture above, taken at our house Thanksgiving 2009. I am thankful for friends and family. And the people in this picture are all interesting. There are as many non-Americans as there are Americans. Dave and I like hosting an eclectic Thanksgiving -- the more the merrier.

Liberty tells me that she likes living in a small town because it's friendly and you often see people you know. I'd much prefer the diversity, the anonymity, of a large city.

In business and in social situations, it seems that unboring people are good storytellers. Jim is an amazing storyteller. You can visualize the people in his stories and he is dang funny. I think back to his stories days later. I wonder if Jim tells stories at work, too.

My CEO is a good storyteller. He comes up with clever lines and memorable quips during every conversation we have. Is this a common thread binding serial entrepreneurs?

Dave is naturally on, a natural people person. When we go out and I'm not in the mood I remind myself that I need to be on, that if I accept a social invitation it's my responsibility to bring it.

Go climb a rock.

That's the Yosemite Mountaineering School slogan, the one seen on t-shirts around the world.

And that's just what we did with The Pinks.

Day One: Drive to Yosemite Valley. We're told it's four hours from our house so of course we think we can do it faster than that. Nope. Summer traffic. A gutless-but-fuel-efficient Prius and windy, two-lane roads without guard rails. Night One was spent in relative luxury in a cottage at The Ahwahnee. Tech trivia: Steve Jobs and Laurene Powell married here in 1991.

We swam and played in the river. Don't underestimate the thrill of rock skipping, glacier-created sand between your toes and fast-moving snowmelt on a scorching day. Deer and squirrels were everywhere. The kids couldn't believe that the deer barely gave them a glance. Dave took a tour of the historic hotel, which opened in 1927 so wealthy people would come visit and see how worthwhile their support of this park was. Dolled up. Dinner with Jill and Wally for Wally's birthday. The sun went down and the kids played flashlight games with people atop Glacier Point, 3,200 feet above us and the valley floor.

The Pinks showed the appropriate amount of awe at the Valley. Unprompted. It'd easily been 20 years since I'd been to the park and it's magnificent. Granite rising from the valley floor. I doubt I thought the same when my dad forced me to backpack lengths of the John Muir Trail during my formative years. I traded backpacking stories with friends. All these years I thought I was the only one who cried on the trail, and it wasn't from the sheer beauty of the surroundings, either.

Day Two: Breakfast in the hotel dining room. The ceiling is 34' high and supported by immense sugar pine trestles. Fortunately there is no dress code for breakfast because two of three kids dined in their pajamas. Hike to the base of Vernal Falls. Beautiful. Hot. Many people doing the same thing. The chances of us getting heatstroke were less than of us getting trampled. Visit to the Ansel Adams Gallery.

Depart Ahwahnee for Tuolomne Meadows, up at 8,900 feet. Shoot requisite picture of The Pinks at Half Dome Overlook. Stop at Tenaya Lake for Yosemite Conservancy ribbon cutting ceremony at East Beach. Sand play for kids. Leeann, an accomplished open water swimmer, went for a dip while we played on the beach. She didn't even have the decency to shiver or to breathe hard after doing a fast mile in the 51F lake. No wetsuit, either. And then came the rain. Head for Tuolomne Meadows Lodge.

The Lodge is tent cabins with bear boxes, cots, wood stoves, and a communal bathroom. Eat protein-heavy dinner in dining room, the only option. Witness numerous backpackers come to Lodge hoping for a dry room for the night. No such luck. Rain eventually stops. Play in Merced River. Spend evening making s'mores and laughing. Doze off and on all night wondering if sound outside cabin is bear or deer and if we should have put our toiletries in the bear box, like the Bear Aware Policy suggested.

Day Three: Eat flapjacks and bacon in dining room. Fishing at two different lakes. Bag lunches. Explain to kids Tree Line. Notice that fishing spots at elevation 10,000 feet are making it hard to breathe. Drive back to Bay. Sleep like the dead in my own bed.

Girl walks into a bar.

Jen Pockell-Wilson and I giggled like young schoolgirls when we were waiting for Kim Drew. At The Ship, no less, an ale house at the corner of Battery and Pacific in San Francisco dating back to 1851, two years into the Gold Rush.

Girl walks into the bar. Her smile could easily span the 8-state-divide which usually separates us. She is blonde curls and turquoise eyes and Jen and I attach ourselves to her with a death grip for the rest of the evening.

Fortunately Jen and I are with good men, men who knew their role was to keep Kim's husband occupied while the three of us chattered nonstop on topic ranging from attachment parenting (we are way over it) to discipline (we are fans of it) to other Feb Moms (proud of our nationally ranked triathlete). Jen and Kim have the same quick, biting sense of humor. I am good at laughing.

The six of us ate mostly cow at 5A5 and took advantage of the last few days of foie gras' availability in California. Our visitors were quite adventurous and tried taco (octopus) salad and the lychee and berry palate cleanser.