"Mine -- Taken by Katrina"

The fate of the animals left behind when Katrina hit New Orleans a few years ago is an often untold story. People who were forced to evacuate often were also forced to leave behind their furry friends. Because of the devastation many evacuees did not return, not for their belongings but also not for their pets. Animal rescue teams from around the country swooped in to save them.

Years after Katrina some of the evacuees have their lives back in order and have gone looking for their pets, which have since been adopted by new families. The stories of some of these battles for the ownership of dogs is told in a new movie: Mine -- Taken by Katrina. I got a sneak preview of this movie last week, courtesy of my friend Erin who is one of the makers.

I'm not much of a pet person, but it is a touching story nonetheless. One thing I can't help but wonder is why people would not be happy adopting a new pet from an asylum instead of fighting for a dog that they abandoned and haven't searched for in a year. There are plenty of pets in need of loving homes.

The movie isn't finished yet and the makers would love your support so they can complete their work.

Personal Shopper

If you're shopping for a number of outfits in one go, or even one outfit that matches nicely, and you're not keen on fighting the crowds at Macy's, Bloomingdale's or another large department store, here's something I highly recommend: Use the store's personal shopping service.

Before heading to New York (you can read all about that in an earlier post) I went to the Macy's Men's Store at Valley Fair in San Jose to get a couple of new business outfits. It seemed smart to buy some new suits rather than wear the same suits that I have had in my closet for weddings, funerals, christenings and other formal events.

But Valley Fair on a Saturday is not my idea of fun. The crowds, the people grabbing clothes, navigating from one rack of shirts, pants, suits, ties, shoes to the other in a large department store, it is not my idea of a good time. Let alone the searching for the right size, tracking down a store employee to find a size somewhere in the back. That's a nightmare!

The solution is the personal shopper, and it is free. My new best friend at Macy's knows my size, knows my taste and will pull clothes off racks throughout the store, go into storage rooms and bring me all things that I might like while I try it on in a comfortable dressing room. The personal shopper even has her own, large and quiet dressing rooms for the exclusive use of her customers. Now that's the right way to shop for clothes!

I actually had two helpers this time. My good friend Jessica (from power shopping 1.0) came along and helped pick colors and fits. I went home with three suits, four shirts and four new ties as well as a new pair of shoes. And all of this only took about two and a half hours. Macy's also was able to tailor my pants within 24 hours, I'll be back!

Decadent Sunday

I'll let these pics speak for themselves:

Art at Artesa

Karma in a living room

My weekends have been packed with fun :-) Aside from the BBQ and abalone you can read about below, I also went to a concert last week. Not a concert in a big hall, but one in a living room. Christel had made friends on Facebook with South African singer and song writer Karma and when Karma needed a place to play and stay in San Francisco, she asked Christel. Apparently these "house concerts" are getting quite popular and lucrative for artists, better so than playing in a random bar. Christel emptied out her living room and filled it with about 30 friends who each paid $15 and many of whom bought CDs. It was a fun concert, which also included Steph Taylor, another singer and song writer. Personally my favorite was Karma, whose voice and music appeals to me more than Steph's. Still together they made for a fun night out. You can read more in Dutch on Christel's blog, also about taking the two musicians on a tour of San Francisco's tourist hot spots.

Abalone

Last weekend was spectacular in terms of weather, so I threw the season's first BBQ in my big back yard. Friend Pascal had been diving off the coast near Fort Bragg (Mendocino) and caught some Abalone (all legal, not more than three and all reported.) So, we wanted to prepare this supposed delicacy. The first challenge was to get the abalone out of its shell. We didn't get very far. Apparently preparing abalone takes a long time and Pascal was wiped from diving and driving, so the animal went into a ziploc and the fridge.

Sanctuaire

My friends Declan & Milana rented a fairytale type house on 29 acres of land in the middle of nowhere and invited me to enjoy it with them. I jumped at the opportunity. I am not one to skip on a weekend away. So, I am typing this using a satellite Internet connection, because this house is very well equipped, albeit far away from civilization.

To make the trip up a little more fun, I rented a red Mazda Miata convertible. (Great deal from Hertz, so I am not squandering money.) In the little red car I raced up 101 and through Sebastopol, past Guerneville (of Russian River fame) and to Cazadero. Then it is another 3.6 miles on a narrow, winding road, to get to this retreat.

Today (Sunday) is a relax day and we're staying close to home. The sun is out in force and the temperature is climbing. Soon it will be too hot to sit out here on the deck. The property has a hot tub (I am not going to be using that) and a creek down a hill (which has nice cold water, so maybe wading there is an option later today.)

On Saturday (yesterday) we headed to the beach at Jenner, a cute town on the Sonoma Coast on gorgeous Highway 1. While it was hot slightly inland, the coast was a frigid 60 degrees and windy. We chased some waves on Goat Rock Beach and had a mini picnic in the dunes, out of the wind, with banana bread and beer from Whole Foods.

At night I grilled some salmon, asparagus and baked some potatoes for dinner. Everyone also enjoyed the Thomas Fogarty Merlot, which I bought at the winery in the Sante Cruz mountains a couple of weeks back. All in all, another perfect weekend in California. Now I just need to do some work, instead of blog.

New England

Before starting my new adventure in public relations at McAfee I hopped to the East Coast to meet my parents and my brother, wife and little girl. We traveled from Boston to Cape Cod, Martha's Vineyard and down to Pennsylvania. A fun week, especially to see how my niece Paula is getting a real personality and understands both Spanish and Dutch. Here are some impressions from our trip through New England:

Gotta have lobster, but mom thinks it is kind of scary.

Fun on the beach at Provincetown with Paulita.

Gotta love the blossom.

And Paula loves Luke and Emily (Lynn's new twins.)

Power shopping

Because I am starting a new job soon, my friend Jessica offered to help me shop for some new clothes. She likes dressing up people, she said, and has done it many times before. So, why not, I thought.

The experience ended up being unlike any other shopping experience in my life.

It is a good thing we shopped on Monday night. That meant we had the stores essentially to ourselves. First we went to Banana Republic, which was pretty mellow, probably because it is not that huge.

But after entering the Macy's Men's Store at Stanford Shopping Center in Palo Alto Jessica stormed all the racks. She methodically went from area to area looking at shirts and pants and would load my arms with whatever item she thought would look good on me.

The store attendants would empty my arms every now and then and start stocking a dressing room. I'd also grab a shirt that could look good on occasion and add it to the pile.

After scouring the entire ground floor of men's designer clothing, it was time to try some of the collection on. I remember stores with limits on the number of items you could bring to the fitting rooms. If Macy's has a rule like that, we definitely broke it. There were at least 20 shirts (long and short sleeved) and a half-dozen pair of pants (jeans and dress pants).

In a race against the clock--Macy's was closing in 15 minutes--I tried on all of the clothes and discovered that there should be more hangers and shelves inside the Macy's dressing rooms for people who shop like this.

A selection was quickly made by Fashion Judge Jessica and clothes were discarded or put on the buy pile. When at the register, with lights already being switched off inside the store and the doors being locked, Jessica asked me to try on one more shirt. I did, but it was see-through, so not my thing. (No time to try on undershirts.)

Several hundred dollars and a Macy's card membership later I was outside with a full Macy's bag and some free hangers. My wardrobe is now well stocked with new clothes.

Babies "R" Us

Saturday morning, 10.00 am, Redwood City, CA. I pulled up outside the Babies "R" Us just after it opened. Today I am being introduced to a special piece of American culture: the baby shower.

The event is this afternoon in San Jose, but like all such parties it requires bringing at least one gift. Colleagues suggested the gift should cost between $30 and $40. Since the mom-to-be's birthday was just a day before the baby party, I decided that a bigger gift was in order.

It was a good thing that I arrived early. The Babies "R" Us is cavernous! Luckily there was technology to help me out. A computer placed right after the store entrance let me print my friend's five page "baby registry." (They seem to have gift registries for everything in this country, and this time I was really happy they did!)

Next up was trying to find some items on the list in the store. A scavenger hunt! An entire wall full of diaper bags had me perplexed. They all seemed to be olive green in color and all of the Eddie Bauer brand. So I ambushed an employee busy stocking some other baby items and she helped me out. I found the bag, I found a mirror for in the car and a set of "receiving blankets," another new term for me.

The gifts were a hit. But even after four years here I haven't learned that one is also expected to put a card on the gifts, even if you give it in person--no surprise Hallmark is so big. So I wrote on the wrapping paper that the gifts came from me and slipped my friend the gift receipt (which otherwise could be placed with the card in the envelope--there's a purpose!).

I had heard of silly baby shower games like measuring the belly with toilet paper and tasting baby food. Sounded like fun, somewhat. But we didn't play any of those. Instead, we played a game of the price is right with baby items and charades with baby-related term.

Another game was a quiz with questions on American nursery rhymes. No surprise that I didn't know any of the answers. We also had a raffle, I won some cookies from Hawaii. Those will be shared at work this week :-)

It was a fun look into U.S. culture. I can learn to like these baby showers. Pizza and tortilla chips + dip were served as well as a giant cake with a thick layer of icing. (My teeth and I prefer Princess Cake with delicate marzipan as a topping.)

I ended the day playing Xbox 360 with some of the kids. They had a lot of fun beating me at all of the games, though I did beat a 6-year-old on a racing game.

Rufus Wainwright

My friend Christel invited me to go see Rufus Wainwright in concert at the Palace of Fine Arts in San Francisco last Wednesday. I had not heard him before she asked me to come along, but then I am notoriously bad in remembering the names of artists and actors. At least one of his songs sounded familiar. Thanks to my subscription to Yahoo Music--highly recommended, though they jacked the fee recently--I caught up with his music prior to the concert. At the event though, much of what he and his band played was from a yet-t0-be-released album.

We had exclusive seats through sheer luck. Christel lost her original tickets and we called TicketMaster . New tickets would be waiting for us at the box office. We entered the auditorium and found out we were seated front row, center. The best seats in the house. The Wainwright fan next to us asked, after the show, how much we paid for the seats since they were being auctioned on eBay for $500!

The next day my friend Denis suggested I look up Rufus' history on Wikipedia. Like many artists, Rufus' is a pretty sad story that involves sexual and substance abuse. Wikipedia isn't always right, I know that from experience. But if it is even partially correct, then Rufus has had a rough life so far and he is still waiting for his big break.

I liked the concert, but it didn't make me an instant fan. The San Francisco Chronicle was also there and liked the performance more than I did. "Wainwright takes command, with talent overflowing," the review headline reads. It is hard to describe the music, a blend between pop and folk.

The outfits were impressive. In the words of the Chronicle: "Wainwright wore cream-colored striped pants, a gray vest and an ill-matching gold striped shirt, adorned with multiple brooches and bling. The seven members of his backup band also were attired in stripes with paste accents. They almost looked like a dance band from one of Jay Gatsby's little dos. All they needed were boaters."

Sinterklaas party in Burlingame

But that looks an awful lot like a Christmas wreath, what does that have to do with Sinterklaas?

Great camping with an urban view

If you book about six months before you want to go you can get a great camp site on Angel Island in the San Francisco Bay. There are three sites with fantastic views of the San Francisco skyline and the Golden Gate Bridge. You will have to hike in from the ferry, but it is a very easy hike and you can even carry a cooler for a gourmet BBQ. Highly recommended!