SWIM-A-MILE 2011

Last Saturday was my day to do the Swim A Mile for Women with Cancer. It is a benefit for the Women's Cancer Resource Center (WCRC) in Oakland, California, an organization that provides FREE support and resources to women with cancer. This year, WCRC celebrates its 25th anniversary.



The Swim was at the Mills College pool, a wonderful swim venue.

As I have for the last 14 years, I swam the entire mile and had a wonderful time doing it. So far, I've raised $3175.24 for WCRC.

And, I had the privilege of being interviewed by two UC Berkeley Journalism graduate students who were covering the Swim for OaklandNorth.net. The interview and their beautifully-produced video are online. To see the video and read their article, click the link in this paragraph.




As always, there were a large number of volunteers checking in the nearly-600 swimmers.



Harriet swam with me and Pat had already completed her swim by the time we got there.



As always, Judy came along with Pat to cheer her on and, of course, take great photographs.

Another special swim buddy, Mary Jo, was also their with her group from Club Sport.



Here we are after our swim, still dripping wet, but very happy.



Harriet, who was doing her 6th Swim-A-Mile and I got to share a lane again. We had a few others in the lane with us as well which kept our lane counters very busy.



About halfway through her swim, Harriet had an equipment malfunction!!! She dropped her kick board into the pool gutter and it floated downstream.



We had to call in emergency help, who retrieved the kickboard, knowing exactly were it would have landed. And Harriet was back on the road, so to speak.



And, Harriet had a glorious finish to her mile.



By the way, the Swim-A-Mile is a fun swim not a competitive swim. Swimmers can use fins, kickboards, paddles and any other gear they wish. If they get tired, it's OK to rest. Even those who can't swim participate by walking the mile.



These two walkers had a great time and finished their mile. One of them is in the same video and interview on OaklandNorth.net as I am.



As always, there was a delicious array of food for everyone to enjoy...that everyone included swimmers, their friends and family, and all the staff and volunteers who worked to make the Swim A Mile a successful event.



This is one of the booths around the pool where everyone who swims gets a chance to win a prize by spinning the Cancer Question wheel.

Since 2000, the person at WCRC with whom I've most been in touch has been Ali Vogt, who has produced and publicized the Swim-A-Mile.



Whether I've forgotten my password on the donation page or need more cards to fill out for those I'm honoring in the swim, Ali has been there with a prompt answer/solution. At the swim and any other WCRC events related to the Swim, Ali is always there to greet everyone. She's been a great inspiration and supporter but, sadly for we swimmers, this was Ali's last year to produce the Swim-A-Mile. She's decided that it is now time for her devote herself fulltime to building her psychotherapy practice. Ali has offices in Oakland and in San Francisco, Good luck, Ali; it's been my pleasure to have been part of your WCRC life.


As I prepared my “In Honor Of” and “In Memory Of” signs that I posted at the swim, I stopped to count the number of names of people for whom I was swimming. The count was a shocking 45 whom I honored and 22 whom I remembered.

I remember 14 years ago, at the time of my own cancer diagnosis, that I knew exactly two people with cancer and none who had died from it!!!

Here are those for whom I swam:









Thanks, WCRC for a wonderful day. And a special Thank You to all my generous sponsors for supporting me and WCRC!

THE LIGHTS HAVE GONE OUT: REMEMBERING STEVE JOBS

The world became a little different yesterday when Steve Jobs, co-founder of Apple died at age 56 of pancreatic cancer.

And, the lights went out, literally! For the first time in the history of Apple Retail stores, the big Apple logo that identifies each and every store and that is illuminated 24/7 has gone dark. It's hard to see in daylight but will be an eerie reminder into the evening...Apple Retail's version of a flag flying at half mast.

Steve Jobs showed us how to "Think Different." And in the last 30 or so years, we have done just that, no matter what the level of our technical expertise. He made tech stuff understandable to just about everyone. Apple products are loved throughout the world from seniors who use their iPads to email and keep in touch with their families to film producers who create blockbuster movies on their Apple desktop computers.

In fact, the way I learned of Jobs' death was through a text alert from a local radio/TV station that I received on my iPhone at 4:40 p.m PST yesterday...Just the way Steve wanted it to be.

In my household, we've had a least one of every Apple product that has been introduced since my very first Apple IIsi in the 1980s.

Apple products are beautiful, intuitive, functional, easy to use, fun to use.

I am such an Apple fan that I belong to Apple clubs, go to Apple conferences, wear Apple-logo clothing that I buy at the company store on headquarters campus in Cupertino, and even worked at an Apple retail store in my home town for several years.




Around the world, the Apple curious and faithful are paying tribute to Steve Jobs at Apple stores.

I visited mine this morning and the memorials to him were starting to be placed outside the store...flowers, post-it messages on the windows...Inside, I hugged and talked to several of my former colleagues...we are family and it felt good to grieve together.

Thank you, Steve for enriching my life.

September 2011 Dinner with Friends

Saturday was our Cooking-With-Friends night. This time it was at our house.

As many of you know, 5 of the six of us worked together many years ago and we started making meals together. Now, probably more than 30 years later, we are still friends, still cooking together, and still laughing a lot whenever we are together.

We get together every 3 or 4 months. There is no advance planning other than determining a date. The host house makes the main course, the others bring appetizer or dessert. We rotate from house to house.

Our dinner started with Arlene & Jim's Bacon-Wrapped Goat Cheese Stuffed fresh figs on a bed of Arugula salad. The two Jims grilled the figs on our barbeque.




Arlene and Jim bought the figs and arugula that morning at their Farmer's Market.







Next was the entrée by me and Jim: Chicken with fresh Tomatoes and Portobello Mushrooms.



Our side dishes were fried fresh Padron Peppers, Red Corn on the Cob, and Garlic Cheese Bread Sticks.



In case you want to make the Chicken dish, the recipe is on Whole Foods website; it's a version of Chicken Marengo, a dish that was named by Napoleon in 1800 after he defeated Austria in the town of Marengo in Italy...this is what he ate after the battle!

Padron Peppers seem to be the trendy vegetable of summer. On our recent Napa Valley vacation, we saw them on the menu of just about every restaurant where we ate. I find them at Farmer's Market and also in Whole Foods and Diablo Foods...buy them as small as you can as the bigger ones can be hot.




Dessert by Colesie & Frank was an amazing Meringue "cake" with an equally amazing Creme Anglaise-like sauce.




We lingered over dessert and enjoyed our perfect evening with good friends, good food, and good wines.




Bon Appetit!!

AN EXCITING MORNING AT TARGET

About the only time you'll find me lined up in front of Target before opening time (8 a.m. for my local Target) is for Christmas sales.

But there I was this morning at 7:45 a.m, along with my 100 or more new BBF's, most of us with shopping carts, waiting for the doors to open. Most of us were women, many very nicely-dressed women. One poor man was in line behind me, puzzling over why there was a line halfway around the parking lot; he stops here each morning for coffee before heading to work and always simply walks in the door to the in-Target Starbucks.

So, what brought me to Target in the early hours of a mid-September day...what was enough to make me skip my Tuesday morning bike ride?

TODAY IS THE FIRST DAY OF THE MISSONI FOR TARGET line of clothing for men, women, & kids, housewares, shoes, luggage, electronic accessories...and on and on. And, Target is featuring this special designer line for just a month or so. Missoni is a distinctive and very expensive line of Italian knitwear that is best known for its colorful zig zag chevron patterns.




At 8 a.m., the doors opened and we all set out...there was danger of being trampled or run over by a shopping cart.

Women's clothing is right by the door and that's where many of us stopped. It was not a matter of picking and choosing, but, rather, a matter of grabbing everything I could get my hands on and tossing it in my cart.

Then I started going through the store...picked up some cereal bowls here, some lingerie there, some socks, some tights, a nightgown, dinner plates, a serving tray, a throw pillow, some dish towels, and who knows what else. It was a true shopping frenzy.

By the time I got to shoes, all the women's ballet slipper shoes were gone. A few pair of pumps and rain boots remained.

I made another quick pass by women's clothing, hoping some items might be returned to the racks...not a chance; in fact, by 8:30, most of the racks were bare. About an hour later, some Missoni coats were set out, to be swooped up immediately.

Groups of shoppers met up with their friends and traded.



Trying on my stash of clothes was out of the question because one is only allowed to bring 6 items into a dressing room at a time. The dressing room attendants would not watch our carts and no way was I going to leave mine unattended.

So, the next activity was to go back to the mode of my youth when my mother took me shopping in Filene's Basement in Boston. With no dressing rooms, you just try on the clothes on the sales floor.

I found a mirror and started trying on stuff over and under my clothes. There were a few of us at my mirror so we traded and critiqued. Eventually, I narrowed my selections down to those which I'd either keep for myself of give as Holiday gifts.

At checkout, all of us in the lines had shopping carts piled high with MIssoni items. I spent a lot of money for my cartful of "stuff" but my total was far less than the cost of one "real" Missoni sweater and my purchases included three Missoni for Target sweaters.

I paid and am home sorting my stash. What a wonderful day!!!