Category: Friends & Family

My friend Lucia’s list of what a home needs is way spot on. I think mine is a little long on communication devices, a little short of balance. I’m working on that.

So last night after the Mission Minyan, my friend Brian invites me to Shabbat dinner at a strangers house. Amongst the guests were the hostess, a fellow reviewer for the Chronicle book section, the director of this documentary about Israeli punk rock, the founder of Negative Progression Records and a mathmatician working on ranked choice voting.

If that ain’t a stranger/new friend discovery of a lifetime, I’m staying inside from here on out.

Not bad eh?

This fellow and I grew up on the same block and rode big wheels together. I’d vote for him.

The other night I attended a “craft night” with my friends Lucia and Kristin. Since I’m about as artistically inclined as a sleeping penguin, I decided to learn how to fold paper cranes.

Some samples of my work (photos by Kristin).

Thanks to my friend Scott Andrew, I discovered Frappr!, a piece of mapping software where you can create a “group” based on geographic location, or simply as tacks on a map.

So tell ya what: I want to know where all the Friends of Kevin and Readers of Where There’s Smoke are. Where ya at?

Go the Friends of Kevin map and add yourself. Only takes a sec. I’ll post the results soon. Then we’ll have a worldwide FOK party in the words of that old Madonna song…

“All across the world
In ev-ary nay-shan!”

So my old friend Pamie Ribon has redesigned her site and relaunched her forum. Pamie’s forums is where I got started on the whole Internet thing way back in 1999, made a lot of friends, was a sex symbol for about 5 minutes (ask if you want. It’s really not that interesting), and pretty much started off down the path I’m on now. Going back to the forums feels a little like visiting high school the week after buying your first house, charming yes, nostolgic of course, but mostly very weird.

Wow, what a lovely birthday! Suzan and I went to brunch at Miss Millie’s then took a walk in the crisp fog of a summer Sunday in San Francisco. She then left for the Stern Grove concert series with her sister while I drove down to San Jose to take in California Extreme, 300 classic video games in one room. Two hours of playing the Journey video game suited me just fine so I split for home and cleaned up the house until Suzan got home.

Our guests arrived at 7 and we spent the better part of the night eating chinese food and cake, playing Cluesome and enjoying each other’s company. Since I hadn’t seen most of them at all this summer, that last part was especially sweet.

My friend Leslie made lemon bars, the last of which I just ate. I want that taste to stay with me a while.

*George Washington creates the Purple Heart, a miltiary honor for soilders wounded in battle (1782)

*Explorer 6 takes the first picture of the earth from space (1959)

*Ivory Coast declares its independence from France (1960)

*The Bee Gees have their first #1 hit “How Can you Mend a Broken Heart?” (1971).

*Frenchmen Philip Petit walked across a highwire strung between the twin towers of the World Trade Center (1974).

Born Today: Garrison Keillor, Louis Leaky, Charlize Theron, Grandma Moses, David Duchovney…

and me! I’m 32 today. Much celebrating to be done. I’m off.