Halloween 2009

Fort Bradley had its first “trick or treaters” and was even called "the cool house" by a few young creatures, which is always a good sign. Before the kids came in costume we headed out to Dave's Pumpkin Patch in West Sacramento (which if you could swim across the Sacramento River, is directly across from my parent's house) for some Corn Maze fun and I went on a few Mountain Bike Rides with a new group I found through Facebook and Meetup around Folsom Lake and Lake Natoma.

In other news Royal Caribbean's newest ship set sail this week, the Oasis of the Seas is heading from its ship yard in Finland to Florida this week and will be on Good Morning America on November 20th, so set your DVRs (or wake up early), because this ship (floating metropolitan city is probably a better term) is truly amazing.

Also a reminder that Social Media Weekend is this coming Friday and Saturday, if you want to learn about Twitter and everything else, this is the place to be.

Where Have I Been ....

Well as many throughout Roseville (and especially my roommates) know, I have not been at Fort Bradley much over the past few weeks. About two weeks ago my brother called my mom and me saying he needed some help as they were moving out of their Mountain View house and into their Redwood City house. My mom and I helped paint over beautiful wall colors with a very ugly white in every room of the house and shampooed the carpets over the next two days.

That Friday we headed back from Redwood City, picked my Dad up in Livermore, traded cars in Sacramento, went back to Lodi and headed to the Bradley Lodge for the weekend. We stopped at the world famous Murphys Hotel (Mark Twain did a lot of work there) for my Dad's birthday and then enjoyed a great weekend at the Lodge. I was then in Roseville for a few hours before heading back to Redwood City to help unpack, organize, shop and build (O, how I loathe IKEA) furniture. While shopping with everyone, including Luke, I realized that not only does buying Luke a new toy from the movie Cars make him happy, so does my BlackBerry when it plays Cars clips on YouTube, he was fascinated for a few hours until the BlackBerry ran out of battery.

So that's where I have been lately ... still looking for a job though, so if you know of any PR, Marketing, Social Media type jobs, let me know. While I'm at it I will be attending Sacramento's 1st Annual "Social Media Weekend" November 6th and 7th, so if you're free and want to learn about Social Media, it will be a great opportunity.

Happy Halloween! (pictures: Fort Bradley's Front Porch and a stack of soda boxes at Wal-Mart in West Sacramento)

Capitola

While attending The Shore's fall retreat, "Rumors," in the Santa Cruz Mountains this weekend, I not only got to hang out with friends, I got to go to some of my favorite places, Santa Cruz and Capitola. The retreat was a great opportunity to listen to Glenn Packiam speak about his book Secondhand Jesus: Trading Rumors of God for a Firsthand Faith and meet people, while also getting me close to the coast. On Friday we spent some time walking around Santa Cruz, taking pictures of a very empty (and closed on weekdays) Santa Cruz Beach Boardwalk, while also getting a picture of the house my family used to rent every summer near Seabright Beach. Saturday afternoon a large group of us decided that we should check out the world famous "Mystery Spot" and then headed to Capitola's "Pizza My Heart" for some great pizza. After a late night camp fire and s’more making session we went back to Capitola on Sunday to spend more time walking around Capitola Village, speaking with my brother's good friend Harleen (In The Raw, owner), cleaned the brick my brother purchased years ago and ate at Zelda's on the Beach before heading back home.

Happy 38th Anniversary!

In a day and age when only 20% of couples make it past their 35th anniversary (not sure how accurate that is, but I'm going to go with it), my parents have been married for 38 years today! They were married on this date in 1971, since then they have been through a lot (see last year's post) of good times and I'm sure many bad times, but they are still together and are amazing parents to my brother and me and great grandparents to my nephew, Luke.

There is not much to say, other than thank you for everything mom and dad. Thank you for staying together and thank you for being so supportive. Thank you for helping with my new house, thank you for raising me the way you did. Thank you.

A Week of Ups and Downs

As many of you know my week started out with expected news, but none-the-less sad news. I and two other employees were the latest laid off from Perry Communications Group. Once I got the official notice, I mobilized my network of contacts and began to do outreach asking everyone to keep their eyes open for jobs that I would be a good fit for through personal e-mails, Twitter and Facebook. On Tuesday I got a phone call to schedule a third round interview (round 1 was an interview, round two was writing an op-ed) for Monday (tomorrow), went to a small career fair at William Jessup, got my Blackberry working and contacts synced with my Google contacts, and calendar and continued my job search. Wednesday I was fortunate to attend an informational event on stem cells and current research at UC Davis Medical Center as part of Stem Cell Awareness Day sponsored by the Northern California chapter of the Huntington’s Disease Society of America. Not only did I get some great food and learn lots, I got to see what will be a very impressive, state of the art research center. Thursday, as I continued my search there was an opportunity to go to the Casting Crowns concert, sponsored by World Vision. It was a great concert and a good opportunity to escape from my job search world for a few hours at least. Friday, I attended the Jesuit High School Alumni Summit to reconnect with alumni and learn about some of the outreach efforts the Alumni Association will be taking in the next few weeks and months to make Jesuit an even better institution. That afternoon I went to an informational meeting on “how to get a state job,” which was very informative.

Over the weekend my mom, dad and I all went down to my grandma’s house in Lodi for a busy weekend. My mom and grandma put on another very successful garage sale, while my dad and I installed a new kitchen floor. Once the garage sale and kitchen floor were done, my dad and I demolished an old shed at my grandma’s neighbor’s house and took a large load of debris and garbage to the Lodi dump/transfer station.

Camp Bradley

It was an amazing Labor Day Weekend at Camp Bradley. With over 20 people coming to camp, we had plenty of time to catch up on one another lives, watch slides from yester-year (and a few from a little closer to current times), take "nature hikes" along the Sacramento River, go swimming in Lake Bradley, play in the new sand pile at Bradley Beach with Tonka trucks, look at the giant "ice chest" (a fridge), post a lot of "Twitpics" and eat lots of amazing BBQ. We even took a field trip to the Old Sugar Mill and Bogle Vineyards for some wine tasting in Clarksburg before sitting around the camp fire to have s'mores and port.

Sorry for all of the pictures, but it was a busy weekend :-).

An Invitation to Lake Bradley

As Camp Bradley/Lake Bradley continues to get prepared for a Labor Day staycation "tradition" (last one occurred in 1997), I wanted to share with the rest of you the "evite" and remind you to follow me on Twitter for constant updates and pictures.

No Stress Camping Weekend

Gather around the Weber to roast your marshmallows, swim in Lake Bradley, sleep under the stars and street lights, and view the ranger show with vintage slides of yesteryear. We will be continuing the backyard tradition of camping without the fuss and expense of campgrounds. Three bathrooms with showers and flush toilets!

We even have extra tents and air beds. Special feature: indoor real beds for the pregnant and/or over 80 years old.

So pack up your guitar, sleeping bag and your sense of semi-adventure and head to Sacramento for one or two nights...holding the best campsites for your reservation!

21 reservations so far … including one requesting a lake front site for two.

Other amenities include: limited cell phone coverage, free secured wi-fi access, wildlife sightings (a "lazy" domesticated cat), HD satellite television, indoor cooking facilities, a dishwasher, running water and so much more.