Category: Uncategorized

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Copenhagen, beer festival

On May 2nd, Olivia and John went through a Warriors game at the Chase Center in San Francisco. It was the first game in the playoff series and, sadly, a prediction of things to come. The Warriors lost. Not by much, but still. It was fun to be in a sporting event at the arena. Olivia and John had only been there for concerts before.

Later that week, John went to Denmark with Chris, a good friend, and former Akamai colleague. John arrived Thursday morning, immediately visited his mom, and later had dinner with Gurli in Central Copenhagen. 

Chris arrived Friday morning, and after he had some breakfast and a shower, they went to central Copenhagen to walk around. Later that afternoon, they booked an architectural bike tour of the city and had four great hours with a local architect who showed both old and new architecture.

The main reason for visiting Denmark this time was the Mikkeler Copenhagen Beer Celebration event at Øksnehallen. It’s a two-day-long affair split up into four segments. For John and Chris, the fun started at 4:00 p.m. on Saturday. After paying a hefty entrance fee, you could walk around for four hours and taste beer from all over the world. Unfortunately, there were many rumors that this year’s event would be the last. However, it’s part of a ten-day beer week in Copenhagen, and if it survives, it’s definitely worth a visit. 

The Sunday was spent on a couple of rented bicycles, riding through much of Copenhagen and the surrounding areas. Weatherwise, the wind had finally died down, and it’s such a fun and safe way of getting around. The bike rental itself was a challenging experience, and threatened to put a kibosh on the whole thing, but it all worked out in the end.

The pool is still giving us trouble and driving us nuts. The latest is that the motherboard controlling the heater and pumps is faulty and needs to be replaced, luckily under warranty. Hopefully, that will cover the remaining issues and set us up for a fun summer. Sadly, we had another downed tree from what looks to be damage from the larger tree that fell in February. That case has still not been closed. The city is taking its sweet old time processing the claim. On a brighter note, we got the Pergola installed. We moved all our garden furniture under it, making it a nice place to sit when the sun is out.

This past Thursday brought a welcome reunion with many of John’s former Akamai colleagues. The San Francisco office on Market Street is shutting down, and everybody was invited for a last farewell. John has many fond memories from that office, and it was great to see people who he had interacted with daily. Earlier in the week, Fastly organized an evening at the AT&T ballpark. John took his cousin Nick to see the Giants beat the Phillies. Cold as always, but still a good time.

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Fifteen Years

Today, it’s been 15 years since we lost Lyne. There’s not much to write that we haven’t mentioned in years past. She’s forever present in our minds and hearts, and we continue to feel blessed that we got to know her.

Let this instead serve as a reminder that overall, the average risk of a woman in the United States developing breast cancer sometime in her life is about 13%. This means there is a 1 in 8 chance she will develop breast cancer. It also means there is a 7 in 8 chance she will never have the disease.

Breast cancer is the second leading cause of cancer death in women. Only lung cancer kills more women each year.

Breast cancer mainly occurs in middle-aged and older women. The median age at the time of breast cancer diagnosis is 62. This means half of the women who developed breast cancer are 62 years of age or younger when they are diagnosed. A very small number of women diagnosed with breast cancer are younger than 45.

Breast cancer death rates have been decreasing steadily since 1989, for an overall decline of 43% through 2020. The decrease in death rates is believed to be the result of finding breast cancer earlier through screening and increased awareness, as well as better treatments. However, the decline has slowed slightly in recent years.

(in large parts from cancer.org)

Lyne’s memorial site remains www.lynepilon.com

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Done and Doner

We are closing the books on our pool and backyard project after five months and three weeks. That’s not counting the weekends spent on setting back the two retaining walls.

There is still an issue to be worked out with the pool, but as we can file it under regular maintenance, we’re not counting that as part of the project.

We are thrilled with the result, and it’s strange to look at the before and after pictures, realizing just how much has changed since June 6.

We’re still waiting for a pergola from Italy. It is scheduled to arrive in late February.

Here’s a before photo – working on some nice ones of how it looks today

545 Darrell Road – listing. Formatted for iPhone X

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One thing remaining!

Our landscaper – Erick Jacinto – and his crew have been working hard for the last three weeks. On Friday, they finished the last thing they could. We’re still waiting for one olive tree for the back patio, but all the prep work is done, so we’re willing to look past that to put a checkmark next to the to-do item.

It is great to see all the new plants and trees. The whole lot looks great all cleaned up with new mulch. In addition, we installed almost 40 new lights, and the backyard looks fantastic at all hours.

The pool bottom is looking better and better, but still not great, and we still don’t quite understand what happened. Given how much it’s changed in the last few weeks, there’s no reason not to think it’ll eventually be even, but it’s darker now compared to when it was first poured.

Work has started to tear down the water tanks next to our lot. That is excellent news, but the sad fact is that they will be replaced by a massive two-million gallons tank built right next to our lot. We sent the city a letter last week, which has resulted in a planned meeting on Tuesday. We are hopeful they will work with us to find a solution.

Landscaping almost done!

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Prepping the garden

We’re still waiting for the pool water to do its magic and harden the plaster. The calcium deposits are still present, and we can see tracks from the pool robot. We trust the company behind it, and they’ve told us to be patient for a week or two. It does look a bit better but also darker than we had expected.

Outside that, the pool and patio are pretty much finished. However, we need the coping done, and there’s a tile that, unfortunately, was chipped, which will also need replacement.

The garden is coming along nicely. Plants and trees were ordered Tuesday and will be delivered on Monday. The crew found good spots for the existing pots and worked hard to get the Buddha head water feature back in place and connected. Josh and his team got the electrical feed rigged, and we got the fire table and BBQ set up. Things are slowly getting back to normal.

We had the house power-washed. Looks so much better without all the dust, marks, and spiderwebs. The Christmas lights went up the day after although we’ll leave them off for a few more weeks.

Power-washing the house

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First Porcelain Pavers in Place

Monday morning, the paver crew started what seems to be a very tedious process of covering our patio with pavers. The first stone took a very long time to put down, and at the end of the day, they accomplished installing only four(!) pavers. The tempo has picked up a little over the week, but at present, it’s hard to see how they can be done by the 20th. Fingers crossed, though!

The company we’re working with for turf came by for an initial inspection. It must be nice that they pretty much have a clean slate. No irrigation to dismantle and no lawn to remove. The turf area is smaller than we had planned but still a good 1,800 square feet. Let’s see if Hillsborough will give us some kind of credit for switching to turf. Foster City just introduced something like that.

We finally heard back from an available landscape architect and look forward to meeting her early next week.

First porcelain pavers in place
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Light at the end of the tunnel

On Friday, the contractors poured cement in the area that will soon be our patio. Up until then, they had done a good job with drain, base rock, and rebar. We’re quite happy we upgraded the planned drain to what’s known as a slot drain – the look will undoubtedly look better than traditional drain scattered throughout the area.

Now that the base has been set, they can move on to setting the tiles. They estimate it will be a three-week process. Once that’s done, only the turf remains.

We still need plaster in the pool, and the pool equipment is (also) still missing. They have held off installing anything should the pipes suffer a puncture during the recent excavation. Now that the cement is in place, they’re free to move ahead.

Since the last update, it also bears mentioning that John picked up COVID somewhere between here and Singapore. Overall it’s been mild, and from all we know, no one caught the bug from him.

Concrete base for the tile being poured
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All Tiles in Place

Things have been tranquil around the pool. Literally! Our contractor was supposed to start the week around July 4, but this past Friday – August 5 – was the first day they showed up. Supposedly scheduling issues and a customer kept adding to the scope of things. So they’re starting tomorrow, and the whole area should look very different in the next week or two.

The delay did give us time to rethink the drain situation, and we decided to upgrade to a brick slot drain around the pool.

It’s not like there’s been no activity at all. We have had two guys put tiles up inside the pool and the spa. Challenging to pick a tile, but we love the look of it – especially when there’s a blue sky above. Indeed the color or the water will help as well.

Tiles around water line and spa