Merry Christmas!

圣诞快乐
Joyeux Noël!
C Pождеством
Frohe Weihnachten!
Maligayang Pasko!
Selamat Hari Natal!

Woosh

Went to Sugar Bowl today for my first day of snowboarding this season. I have fond memories of Sugar Bowl as this was where I first really learned how to snowboard oh so long ago.

Unlike the powder of memory though, the snow cover was pretty sparse. The storm that blew through last week must have melted away or missed Sugar Bowl completely.

Nevertheless, it was a beautiful day, there were no crowds, and the runs off Lincoln were good enough to occupy me for much of the day.

Disappointment in a Cup

I've been a big fan of Barefoot Coffee Roasters ever since the wife discovered the place. It's not too much of an exaggeration to say that they've changed my life -- how I've thought of coffee specifically -- and I've been recommending it to friends at every opportunity.

You can surely imagine my sadness and disappointment then when I say that I can no longer recommend Barefoot. They've recently redone their menu, increased their prices, and changed their source for milk. I can handle the first two, but that third is a killer.

Now I'm paying more for less (smaller cups) for lattes that taste worst (mainly due to the milk).

Woe!

Their claim is their new specially-formulated-for-Barefoot milk by the Strauss Family Farms is superior, but my tongue begs to differ. I can only dream of the days when they served Clover's Extra Rich Milk.

I guess I should point out that Barefoot still makes good coffee. It's probably still the best in the area, but they no longer make great coffee.

White Elephant Waste

I've been to two white elephant gift exchanges so far this Christmas season and have friends that seem to be going to one at least once a week. The rise in popularity of white elephants has also coincided with the decline in popularity of secret santas, at least in this neck of the woods.

I have to say I prefer secret santa gift exchanges more, because you can then put some thought into what the recipient might like. White elephants, on the other hand, seem to be an exercise in finding the most generic gift that would appeal to the biggest audience.

More often than not, white elephant gifts are just kitschy items that you play with for a while before it gets retired to the junk pile, and I think this just contributes to the feeding frenzy of Christmas-time consumerism.

I'm going to avoid going off on a tangent on waste and consumerism here, but if you're interested, just google it. Celebrate Discardia!

I think from now on, if I'm participating in a white elephant, I'm going to follow a couple simple rules:

• Something old: instead of buying something new, I'll try to regift instead.
• Something new: if I have to buy something new, it'll be something consumable, like a bottle of wine or a box of chocolates. Something that won't just sit on a table or end up in the garbage can or be set aside for regifting...

A journey of a thousand miles...

... begins with a single step. And for our remodel project, that step was taken a long, long time ago. We have been thinking about it for what seems like forever and started working with an architect in July 2006.

And now, it looks like we're actually going to begin construction! It took two tries, but we finally got our permit to begin the job from the Los Altos building department yesterday.