November 2009

• This month started out with Tory's appearance in her schools first two plays of the year. Woody Allen's Death and God. In Death Tory played a boy. And unfortunately I couldn't figure out how to turn off the flash, so I don't have any photos. In God, Tory was part of the chorus and was on stage for about half of the play, so I have lots of photos...added here for that!
  
  Thanks to stupid Blogger, all of the photos are in reverse order.
  

This is Tory with her good friend, Marissa.

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• Then we did an event for our renaissance group, where we attended the IFMA Renaissance Faire (yearly party for their members) at a local hotel. We performed a series of dances for the crowd and had plenty of time for meet and greet.
• The following weekend we attended Kearney Park with our renaissance group. More information on this (including photos) can be found at http://danceanddestruction.blogspot.com.
• We were then lucky enough to attend San Jose Ballet performance of the Pirates of Penzance. What a terrific show. I imagine the play would be better, as then there would be speaking parts, but the show itself was wonderful! It was my first Ballet.
• Then we had our traditional pre-Thanksgiving potluck. This year we had twenty-two people in attendance.
• Eric went back to work the Tuesday before Thanksgiving, so it ended up being a good thing that we didn't plan on going to Pismo this year.

October 2009

More to come

September 2009

• September started with Tory in a water polo tournament in Los Altos. The team won 50% of the games they played. Not bad for a team that has done poorly in the past. Fortunately the tournaments don’t count towards their final scoring rubrics.
  
• September 10th – 12th we attended Pirates at the Library. A school event hosted by the library in El Dorado Hills. More information on the event can be found at http://danceanddestruction.blogspot.com.
  
• Tory’s water polo team played two games the following week (9/15 & 9/17) and won both. Tuesday's high school scores
  Mercury News
  Posted: 09/16/2009 10:34:04 AM PDT
  Updated: 09/16/2009 10:53:44 AM PDT
  Fremont 8, Harker 5
  Harker 0"‚3"‚2"‚0—5
  Fremont 2"‚1"‚2"‚3—8
  H — scoring not available.
  F — Mahoney 4, Nakagawa 2, Swan-Smith 2.
  Records — Harker 0-1; Fremont 1-0.
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  Thursday's high school scores
  Mercury News
  Posted: 09/17/2009 10:11:51 PM PDT
  Updated: 09/17/2009 10:48:54 PM PDT
  Fremont 8, Cupertino 4
  Fremont 1"‚4"‚2"‚1—8
  Cupertino 2"‚1"‚1"‚0—4
  F — Nakagawa 6, Damestani, Mahoney.
  C — Renfrow 3, Drake.
  Records — Fremont 2-0; Cupertino 0-2.
  
• On September 18th our good friends from Reno came into town. Desi and her husband Chris and youngest daughter Tia (15) came for a visit…the first visit in 7 years. I was really excited! Friday night we had a barbeque in the back yard…around having to take Tory to yet another Water Polo tournament, this one at Wilcox High school in Santa Clara. Saturday we all got up and headed to San Francisco. Another friend of mine (and past co-worker/boss), Bruce, had managed to score us tickets to attend the Presidio Employee pre-screening of the Walt Disney Family Museum (opens to public 10/1/09) [ http://Disney.go.com/disneyatoz/familymuseum/index.html ]. We went to his new apartment in the city and received the tickets from his wife, Rosemary, and received a tour of the apartment and the community room. Very nice! Then we headed to the wharf, as we had some time before our tour. We walked a bit and had lunch at the Rainforest Café [ www.rainforestcafe.com ], and then headed to the Presidio [ www.presidio.gov ] for our tour. We arrived a bit early, but took a look around the exterior of the building and then the gift shop. They had some really nice things, but the prices were kind of high. We knew going in that this would be dedicated to Walt and that it would contain art work that he was directly related to, but it was nothing like what we expected. It was fabulous. I think the only one of us who didn’t thoroughly appreciate it was Tia, who at 15 wasn’t very pleased with all of the reading required . Tory was completely enchanted, as were the adults. Desi, not even as big a Disney fan as I am was equally absorbed. We were in the ninth gallery (there are ten, plus the theater, which we never even got to) when the docents came around to tell us that they were closing! We couldn’t believe how the time flew, we were in there for three hours and had to leave before we had spent all of the time that we wanted! Being smart, the museum extended their gift shop hours, so we were able to go in there and Desi & Tia were both able to make one final purchase before we left. Our intent had been to return to the wharf after the museum, but there was a lot of standing in the museum and quite a bit of walking, so we opted to head back towards home, picking up dinner (and Wolverine…Eric made me stop at Target so he could run in on the last day of the first week it was on sale to purchase it) on the way. Sunday morning they headed back home. Making me quite sad, but very happy that they had come and that we’d gotten to share a first with them (Disney Family Museum…yay!). We’ll be seeing them again next year for Tory’s graduation (6/10/10) and possibly before then. We may head their way for Tory’s birthday week, who knows.
  
• Unfortunately Eric’s younger sister, Sheryl, passed away on the 21st. Our thoughts and prayers are with Steve, Randall & Mom during this difficult time. Sheryl was a very sweet soul.
  
• Tory played two water polo games the week of the 21st. Winning the first…
  Tuesday's high school scores
  Mercury News
  Posted: 09/22/2009 10:23:15 PM PDT
  Updated: 09/23/2009 06:54:12 AM PDT
  Fremont 9, Lynbrook 6
  Fremont 3"‚3"‚2"‚1—9
  Lynbrook 1"‚2"‚1"‚2—6
  F — Nakagawa 2, Rodriguez 2, Dugan 2, Paul, Swan-Smith, Owyeung.
  L — Fong 3, Diehl 2, Tsen.
  
• September 23rd we discovered that our very dear friends, Wil & Deb are having a boy. We’re so excited! Little whathisname is due in February.
  
• Tory, Anthony, Gio and I went to Marine World on the 27th. It was so hot! The crowds, while not Disney in nature, were much larger than anything we’ve seen there so far. If you have a season pass, there is a free pass for any Sunday in September. I think most people (like me) waited until the last weekend to take advantage of it.
  
• Tory reinjured her finger at water polo practice. That’s four for four. Four years of playing water polo, with injuries during practice all four years. *sigh*