Katy Dickinson

Reading Christmas Books

We went to Christmas Eve church service with our daughter Jessica's boyfriend's family. The modern Christian service featured a large rock band, words to the Christmas carols projected onto big screens flanking the podium, a pastor ventriloquist with a puppet giving the sermon, and lighted candles for the congregation to hold up at the end. It was very different from the traditional Episcopal service (with processions, classical music and incense) with which we usually celebrate.

The next morning, our family had a lovely Christmas morning opening presents in front of the fireplace. Jessica made waffles for breakfast. We then cooked and hosted dinner for 12 (plus 3 visitors after) that night. I set out all of the china in the kitchen for John to plate then Jessica and Paul served the courses to the table. It was fun to try that instead of everyone serving themselves from big platters and bowls. By serving courses, nothing gets stuck (unpassed and uneaten) at the end of the long table or on the sideboard. I enjoyed being able to use lots of china, crystal, and silver. We are still working our way through the leftover food.

Jessica's big present was an Apple MacBook Pro with Intel dual processor. This computer was both a Christmas and birthday present. She has transferred everything from her old Apple PowerBook (which she said was very easy to do) and has been working on it happily ever since. John and I wanted to give her the new laptop during her last semester in High School so she was used to it before going to college. Jessica is also reading Terrier, the new Tamora Pierce book in her Tortall series.

Paul has been dividing his time between his three new movie DVDs (The Tuxedo, X-Man Trilogy, and Pirates of the Caribbean - Dead Man's Chest), and reading Eldest, the sequel to Paolini's Eragon. We go to see the Eragon movie tonight since I finished reading it yesterday. The book was long (needed editing!) and felt like a mishmash of four or five other sword-and-sorcery life journey novels. Some parts were just silly (metal armor for a dragon) but it is still an impressive first novel. I have also been looking through our other new books: The Complete Guide to Growing Cacti & Succulents - A Comprehensive Guide to Identification, Care and Cultivation and The Railroad Caboose.

There has been a rain and windstorm the last few days. Plastic buckets and palm fronds were flying around the neighborhood all yesterday afternoon. Today is cool and clear, good gardening weather.

Posted at 11:37AM Dec 28, 2006 by katysblog in Home & Family  | 

Last 2 Fruitcakes in Oven

After decorating the Christmas tree, our family held its annual fruitcake assembly and baking party last night. My son mixed pounds and pounds of dates and nuts and candied fruit in a big new gardening bucket I bought for the purpose. After much discussion, raisins and apricots were left out but dried figs were added. We have used the same recipe (from Mrs. Benziger of Knoxville, Tennessee) all of my life but the particular mix each year varies by the taste of the cooks. Everyone wore a tea cosy or Santa hat for the event.

My daughter and mother chopped and measured and mixed and discussed modifications. We baked one of the cakes in a rose-shaped Bundt pan this year. The tips of the petals are dry but otherwise it worked well. My daughter is brushing honey on the top now to moisten it. There is one big round fruitcake but the other 6 are loaf shaped. The last 2 loaves are in the oven now. They take over an hour to bake and no one wanted to stay up past midnight for two more to cook.

Today we visit the Dicken's Christmas Fair at the Cow Palace in San Francisco. My daughter has assembled a costume of sort-of Victorian clothes since she likes to dress up. My mother is looking forward to sitting down with mulled wine and listening to sea chanties and bawdy songs in Mad Sal's Alehouse. I plan to spend some of my fair time shopping and some listening to the songs or maybe watching a play by Gilbert and Sullivan.

Posted at 09:45AM Dec 23, 2006 by katysblog in Home & Family  | 

37 out of 49 SEEDs Matched

We have over 3/4 of the SEED Engineering mentoring participants matched with mentors already (37 out of 49). I hope to match a few more next week but most will probably be matched after the new year starts. For those who have next week as a holiday and end-of-year break week: have a restful time and a Happy New Year!

Posted at 09:15AM Dec 23, 2006 by katysblog in Mentoring & Other Business  | 

College Applications Done!

My daughter Jessica has finished all 9 of her college applications: hooray! She applied for admission to: Brown, Carnegie Mellon (& Conservatory), Lawrence (& Conservatory), MIT, Oberlin (& Conservatory), Princeton, Rice, Rochester, and Smith. This took an astonishing amount of work. We still need to send audio CDs to the schools which will accept them but those don't need to be mailed until after Christmas. Jessica is also still working with the alumni interviewers to schedule meetings. She finally had her interview with Smith yesterday.

Next steps: The regional auditions for Carnegie Mellon and Oberlin will be held early in January 2007. If they don't ask her to audition, she has not been accepted to those conservatories. Most of the rest of the schools will tell us their decisions in March 2007.

Jessica was under two restrictions until the applications were finished: her college counsellor at school said no reading novels that weren't schoolwork, and I said no scheduling holiday events. As soon as part 2 of the Brown application went in, Jessica immediately started reading 2 books and scheduled 5 events:

• A trip to the Dicken's Christmas Fair
• Christmas carolling on the cable car in San Francisco with her Grandmother
• Baking fruitcake with her Grandmother (with a sleepover)
• Her 18th birthday party (at our house)
• A New Year's Eve party (at our house)

Our party girl!

Posted at 05:51PM Dec 20, 2006 by katysblog in Home & Family  | 

35 out of 49 SEEDs Matched

I am surprised at how many mentor matches I have been able to make in this week just before Sun's winter break. So far, we have 35 or 71% matched out of the 49 participants. Our mentors matched so far include 17 Distinguished Engineers and Directors plus 9 Vice Presidents.

I think many of the remaining mentees are going to end up waiting until the first week of 2007 because potential mentors will be out of the office and not responding to my reminders. However, I was pleasantly surprised today when a potential mentor whose vacation email had just popped back saying he was out until 8 January sent me email and asked for more information on the participant. He said he would let me know his decision by Friday, 22 December. The SEED mentoring term officially starts on 15 January so I have some matching time after the winter break.

Posted at 05:22PM Dec 20, 2006 by katysblog in Mentoring & Other Business  |  Comments[2]

Seasonal Events

Last weekend was very full of seasonal events:

• Friday:
  I took a vacation day to go shopping in Chinatown. Two friends and I have gone on this day trip during each of the last 25 years. We take CalTrain up the San Francisco peninsula then take Muni bus to Chinatown. We walk through the Lion Gate that separates Chinatown from Downtown and proceed down Grant. There are shops we always visit plus new shops each year. We eat lunch at Sam Wo on Washington Street, go to the fortune cookie factory in Ross Alley, then come back down the other side of Grant before taking the bus and train home in time for dinner.

  Friday night, we joined our extended family for Hanukkah dinner, complete with dreidel games, potato latkes, and lighting menorah candles to prayers in Hebrew. Some of the toys from Chinatown were much appreciated by the smallest members of the family. They particularly liked the Froggy Squeeze toys and the Slinky walking coil.

• Saturday:
  My daughter had a wrestling tournament so we had to get up unreasonably early to get her there in time for weighing in. We put up Christmas lights on the house and did household chores most of the day. Jessica and Paul picked a tree at a local lot and carried it home to soak in a bucket before we bring it inside.

  We dropped off 5 bags of used clothes at Santa Maria Urban Ministry in San Jose. SMUM is an outreach ministry of the Episcopal Diocese of El Camino Real. They distribute food and clothes and provide educational programs to serve those in need within 8 Central San Jose zip codes.

  That night, we took Jessica and her boyfriend to dinner and the "Frolic" show (San Francisco’s first CircusDragBurlesque Festival) at the CounterPULSE performance space south of Market. We have been to several of their shows this year and always have a wonderful time. We particularly looked for our friend Susan Voyticky who was in two trapeze dance pieces by Eat Cake Productions.

• Sunday:
  Jessica had a college interview with Univ. of Rochester. As usual, she met the alumni interviewer at Starbucks. I think each of the 5 interviews so far has been held at one or another Starbucks coffee shop.

  At 12:30 p.m. we went to service at Santa Maria Virgen Episcopal church in Milpitas. Santa Maria's Vicar, Padre Efren Garza, offers a completely bilingual service in Spanish and English. Yesterday was the annual visitation by the Rt. Reverend Sylvestre Romero so we got to see our Bishop confirm about ten young men and women. Two of the girls were dressed like lovely little brides but everyone looked handsome and well dressed, mostly in white. There were about 175 people at the service so it was standing room only in the back.

  After church, we went to a Christmas party at some friends' house and then came home to work some more on Jessica's college applications.

Posted at 05:38PM Dec 18, 2006 by katysblog in Home & Family  | 

Caboose Stripping

WP668 is getting stripped of its old paint. We hired Avi Lenchner (whose daughter and my daughter were in school together and who has painted two houses for us) of Avi Decorative Painting (Menlo Park, CA) to strip and paint our caboose. We decided to get the paint done while WP668 is on asphalt before she moves on to the rail line in our backyard.

Avi has been trying out different ways of getting the ancient paint off. At the moment, the paint is coming cleanly off the wood (probably Douglas Fir) but the steel bracing is more of a challenge. Avi tried chemical strippers but tapping the steel with a hammer to shatter the paint seems to work best.

On one of the vertical steel framing pieces Avi found some decorative welding. The steel script signature says "Illinois" on the part we can see. It was probably added in 1916 when WP668 was first created as a box car by the Pullman company. It will be interesting to see what other mysteries lie under all of that old paint and dirt.

Posted at 04:23PM Dec 18, 2006 by katysblog in Caboose Project and Other Trains  | 

Over Half SEEDs Matched

I set a personal goal to match more than half of the 49 SEED Engineering mentoring program participants in our current Established Staff term before the start of Sun's winter break next week. (trumpet sounds!) Already today, we have reached 26 out of 49 matched (that's 53%)!

So far, we have 6 Vice Presidents plus 13 Directors or Distinguished Engineers who have generously agreed to spend six months mentoring program participants. All of the senior executives working on Sun's Beijing campus (the Sun China Engineering Research Institute in Tsinghua Science Park) have signed up as mentors this term.

I expect some slow down in the pace of matching as this week progresses and people take off on vacations. However, I will continue monitoring the conversations in email to see how many more connections I can make despite the holiday week. Progress is good for getting everyone matched before the term formally starts on 15 January 2007.

Posted at 03:57PM Dec 18, 2006 by katysblog in Mentoring & Other Business  | 

9 SEED Mentors Matched So Far, Phone in Meetings

Monday, I sent out 49 emails asking potential mentors, mostly executives, to consider taking a SEED Engineering mentoring program participant for their mentee for the six month 15 January-15 June 2007 term. So far, 9 have accepted that invitation. Our newest SEED mentors (some of whom have served as mentors in prior SEED terms) include a Vice President, 2 Distinguished Engineers, and 2 Directors. They are based in Beijing China, California, Colorado, Hamburg Germany, and New Mexico. I hope to get at least half of this term's participants matched before Sun's winter break week starts.

SEED just had its regular monthly phone in meeting. Today's speakers were a panel from Sales speaking on "The View from the Field". Tim Van Loan, a 2003-2004 SEED participant and Sun Sales executive based in San Francisco put together the panel. The topic was popular, with 52 people calling in from all over the USA plus Canada, Germany, Ireland, Israel, Netherlands, Norway, Russia, Texas, and elsewhere.

Phone in meetings work best when people who are not speaking put their phones on mute. Today, everyone was good and the sound quality was excellent. It is worst when someone puts the phone in call on hold and everyone has to listen to their bad "hold music" until we give up and restart the call. Second worst phone in behavior is when a caller is not on mute and has a noisy background. Listening to someone wash dishes or shout at their dog while trying to hold a business call is miserable.

Posted at 10:45AM Dec 13, 2006 by katysblog in Mentoring & Other Business  |  Comments[2]

Bronze Head Molds

My parents drove down the peninsula from San Francisco for dinner last night, as they often do on Sundays. John cooked a wonderful Italian stew (see the December 2006 issue of Sunset magazine for the recipe) and steamed artichokes. Paul helped by peeling potatoes, zesting lemons, and being the Sous Chef. We all enjoyed the evening until it was time for them to go. Then the parents mentioned that they had a few things to bring in from the car.

What they had in the car was five large plaster and rubber molds for bronze heads that my parents decided I wanted to store. This is the downside to having an artist in the family. My mother is Eleanor Creekmore Dickinson, retired Professor of Life Drawing from the California College of the Arts (CCA). CCA was the California College of Arts and Crafts (CCAC) when she started teaching there.

She is best known for her line drawings and paintings but artists like to try new media and about thirty years ago, my mother was working in bronze. She created two portrait heads: one of the model Lillian and the other of my father, Wade. Four of the plaster molds go with the Lillian and Wade bronzes. I was in college at the time but I remember that my younger brother Peter made good money polishing Wade's bronze head.

Here is my mother's bust of my father and a photo of Wade about that time:

The fifth mold is smaller and if you fold back the black rubber you can see that it is of just a face, not a whole head. This one was sculpted as a life mask of my mother by her friend Ruth Asawa. Ruth made a fired red clay face mask as well as the bronze face itself. My mother said that Ruth was using all of her friends as models for a show of bronze faces. You can see Ruth Asawa's current work at The Sculpture of Ruth Asawa: Contours in the Air, 18 November 2006 — 28 January 2007, at the de Young Museum in San Francisco.

All I can think to do is to buy some big plastic storage boxes and put the molds in my basement. Maybe some day someone will want to make more...

Posted at 09:38PM Dec 11, 2006 by katysblog in Home & Family  | 

Mentor Requests All in the Mail

All 49 of the SEED Engineering mentoring participants for the current Established Staff term got their Mentor Wish Lists in by this morning's deadline. Tanya Jankot had already prepared all 49 participant web pages for review by potential mentors. Once Tanya closed down the list submission web page, she cleaned up the request summary list (fixing name spellings mostly). Then, together she and I reviewed the list and prepared the first contact list. List edits during this review included:

• Removing names of requested Mentors who already indicated that they are unavailable to act as a Mentor.
• Removing names of Mentors who are still working with a SEED participant from a prior term.
• Removing names of requested Mentors who are not senior enough. (SEED mentors must be the global equivalent of U.S. job grade level 10 and above.)
• Removing names of requested Mentors who are too senior. (Executives above Senior Vice President don't have the time required by the SEED program of its participating mentors.)
• We made a decision in each case where more than one Participant requested the same potential Mentor. This is a common problem: as many as 15 people requested the same Mentor. The primary basis for this decision was the priority order on the Mentor Wish List provided by the Participant. The Participant's seniority (title or number of years at Sun) was used as a tiebreaker, with the more senior Participant getting preference. If they were the same seniority, we went with whoever wrote the most convincing reason for preference.

After this review, we had our working contact list with the highest priority eligible Mentor from each participant's Mentor Wish List. For 31 of the participants, the highest priority eligible Mentor was also their #1 choice. For 11 more, the highest priority eligible Mentor was their #2 choice. For the rest, we had to go lower on their list.

I sent out all 49 emails asking that each potential mentor consider the SEED participant who had requested them. Two Distinguished Engineers responded immediately, writing they were interested and will follow up with their potential mentee. We hope to hear back from the others soon. All 49 participants should be matched within 2 months.

Posted at 05:17PM Dec 11, 2006 by katysblog in Mentoring & Other Business  | 

Caboose Move Update

We have made some progress toward getting our caboose WP668 moved into our backyard:

• The new caboose roof is in good shape despite the current rain storm. Hooray!
• The San Jose city planner (intern) assigned to us said on Friday that we need a variance rather than a special use permit. John went to City Hall on the way home to pick up our original application plus the new variance form. He needs to read through what they gave him to find out what parts of the documentation they originally requested we can reuse for their latest request. We hope that a variance will be approved faster.
• I met with the Davey Tree man early today about getting 11 trees pruned and shaped around our property. This includes the two hawthornes, privets, silk tree (mimosa), two olives, plus the two big ash trees in the area where the caboose will go. We want the trees well back when the crane lifts WP668 into place. Davey Tree will also prune one of the almond trees, plus four unhealthy low branches on the big oaks on the riverbank. We checked but decided to leave the riverbank cottonwoods and pepper tree alone for another year. The new pepper tree we planted on the bank last Spring is growing well. The fruit trees in our little side orchard are short enough that we prune them ourselves so I did not ask him to look at those. We hope to schedule the tree work during the last week of 2006 or the first week of 2007. In accordance with the request of the water company, we asked Davey Tree to dump the pruned wood and brush down the slope to build up the riverbank rather than hauling it away.

We hope to start work on stripping and preparing to paint the outside of the caboose during Sun's winter break.

Posted at 04:37PM Dec 11, 2006 by katysblog in Caboose Project and Other Trains  | 

4 College Applications Done, 5 To Go

10 days ago, my daughter Jessica submitted her college applications to Carnegie Mellon (CMU), Oberlin, and Lawrence Univ. CMU and Oberlin had to be in by 1 December so that they could set up vocal audition schedules in January. Tonight, she finished and submitted her application to Smith College. Smith is the only all-women's school to which she is applying.

Tomorrow, Jessica plans to submit her applications to Rice Univ. and Univ. of Rochester. That leaves only MIT, Princeton, and Brown to finish. Other than CMU and Oberlin, the order of completion has mostly to do with how many supplements a school requires to the Common Application, or if they don't use the Common Application at all. Jessica is trying not to form opinions of a school just based on the ease of use of their web pages or application but sometimes this is hard.

Observing to Jessica work through the applications, Lawrence Univ. seems to have the friendliest and most supportive admissions office. MIT seems to have the most responsive and best web pages. Oberlin required the most work of those finished so far: she had to complete both the Common App. and the Unified App. to apply to Oberlin and their music conservatory.

Jessica has had in-person interviews so far with MIT, Oberlin, CMU, and Rice. She is playing email-tag with the Smith interviewer. Several of the schools have sent her letters asking for an interview after she had one. I can imagine that college admissions offices at this time of year are insanely busy. Jessica wants to get everything in before 15 December because in past years a number of colleges' admissions computers have gone down under the end-of-year deadline load.

Jessica has gently pointed out to me that "we" are not applying to college, she is. But it is hard not to feel that it is a family effort what with reviewing essays for spelling and grammar, checking forms to be sure the boxes are checked right, and paying fees for reports, transcripts, and applications.

Posted at 10:34PM Dec 10, 2006 by katysblog in Home & Family  | 

42 out of 49 SEED Wish Lists

The SEED Engineering mentoring "Mentor Wish Lists" are due in about 11 hours. SEED participants give us 15 prioritized names and reasons for preferring those potential mentors. Then, I work from their lists to find them a match. 42 out of the 49 participants have gotten in their lists already. Tanya Jankot and I have been reviewing lists and giving feedback all week. Tomorrow, we close down the list submission web page and start to contact potential mentors. I hope to match at least half of this term before the winter break.

Creating a potential mentor list is time consuming and challenging. In creating their Mentor Wish List, each SEED participant needs to make two hard decisions:

1. What they want to learn
2. Who has already accomplished the kind of things they want to do (that is, who is already down the path that they see themselves walking)

The SEED Engineering mentoring program takes a long-term view and does not have a preference for one kind of learning over another. That is, the mentoring partnership learning does not have to have anything to do with the participant's current job. Some people want to learn to be better technical managers, others want to know how to get their ideas to customers faster. Many want to improve their soft skills: public presentation or speaking, negotiating, conflict management, and coaching. Still others want to improve their work and family balance and still have a great career. It takes time and mature consideration to work through all of this. Creating the Mentor Wish List is probably the hardest part of the SEED program.

Posted at 10:05PM Dec 10, 2006 by katysblog in Mentoring & Other Business  | 

College Applications Submitted

My daughter Jessica has settled on 9 colleges to which she will apply. In the last six months, the college list has included as few as 6 and as many as 16 but we are done now. Really.

Two schools have music programs for which the applications were due on 1 December. Their submission dates are early because they need time to set up the January audition schedules. So, Jessica submitted both the Common Application and the Unified Application, SAT scores, UCSC Summer transcript, photo, Advance Placement scores, recommendation letters, High School transcript, fees, plus several essay and additional question supplements for those schools first. We had great difficulties with actual online submission mechanism because of the web sites having an real-but-unacknowledged aversion to Macs. Jessica ended up talking with tech support in the early hours before school. All of the other school applications are due at the end of this month.

Jessica spent quite a bit of Thanksgiving week preparing for and then producing her audition CD. She met separately with both her choir teacher and her voice teacher several times each to develop her presentation of four songs. Her Audition 2006 songs are:

• La lontananza (Gaetano Donizetti,1797-1848) in Italian
• American Lullaby (Gladys Rich) in English
• La mi sola, Laureola (Fernando Obradors, 1897-1945) in Spanish
• Silver Dagger (American folk song) in English

Some schools want only three pieces, others specify the languages and styles so we now have four songs ready to pick from. Of course, we had to develop a CD label and case design. For the case, John picked a memorable photo of Jessica from 1999 with flour blown all over her face:

In addition to being college application season, it is wrestling season. Jessica has been on the Harker wrestling team for four years and at varsity level for two years. She was beyond pleased last week when Coach K asked her to be Team Captain! She has been working with the Freshmen team members for months. It is good to see her hard work rewarded (and the announcement timing was excellent). Jessica was able to add "Wrestling Team Captain" to her applications just before they went out.

Image by Katy Dickinson (Copyright 1999)

Posted at 04:31PM Dec 04, 2006 by katysblog in Home & Family  |