We began the new year of 2011 with a fun evening at the Chasey’s and then Pat’s Birthday at Neil and Flo’s pseudo German restaurant as detailed in our Christmas blog

Next up in a very busy month which is also Tina’s birthday month, was Tina’s birthday. We went to visit the impressionist and their post (perhaps I am taking the name too literally) at the De Young. It is a generally very special show but there was one painting which really blew my mind. I had never seen Starry Night in the flesh - it is a heart stopping painting - perhaps one of life's Grand Canyon’s - you know, those things that are a waste of pixels to photograph because the image can never carry the impact of the reality. After dragging me away from the painting, off we went for dinner at a true find - the Bistro Central Parc. It can be so fun living in this city. Even the walk through the pan handle was fun but the restaurant is just amazing - a little patch of France in San Francisco. I’m so glad almost no one reads my website because it is already too hard to get in there :)

I treated myself to a new camera body for Christmas - Sony A33. I recently added a nice wide angle zoom (timing was perfect because my wide range zoom stopped zooming at the same time). The combination of new camera with new capabilities has reawakened my enthusiasm. Re-calibrated my monitors and everything. Playing around with indoor and low-light images with the multi-shot capabilities. It is just fun to be photographically awake again.

The downside of the month as been my health - worst pain cycle in long time. Also discovered another friend has cancer - damn this getting old is getting old. Did kick my butt enough to visit Corinna and Tiffany - and I promise to get back into a rhythm but there are a few dependencies that might not resolve themselves until February or March.

January also saw Kim doing jury duty - which was really depressing. She spent 4 days adjudicating a fender bender where only one party showed up and there was no evidence to speak of - how in god’s green earth does that become a jury trial? Must have cost the city a fortune and in the end the “pain and suffering” payment was minimal - there are so many things in this system that are just plain “messed up”.

To cheer ourselves up we went back to the Stevenswood - which is now the Stevenswood Spa. Nice as always and they have a new friends for us to play with - Mark Antony - a very sweet rescue cat who likes to be petted. Fantastic dinner and the wait-staff are consistently fun - it is a bit of a Hawaii thing; why be miserable when you live in Mendo? Have to say we did had a few problems on our first night but a little complaining from Kim and they were rectified in world class style and they are even proposing some upgrades to fix them for good.

As you might have noticed, I have done a site upgrade - switched the main welcome page to a blog style and have found a good way to handle special events blogs like Christmas and Hawaii - I like it and I notice that the Bistro Central Parc uses iWeb too, someone likes the same feel I do.

Third weekend was back with Tina and John, this time with Erin and Ben - John got his grill head on and the good wine was flowing - by the end of evening the nerds were heavily into techo nostalgia and Kim and Tina watched in amazement :) Kim and I as blessed with great and interesting friends - if only there was more time to spend with them. John had potential good news, so everyone cross something that brings luck.

We spent the last weekend of the month having dinner with one of Kim’s oldest friends - Mike - the venue was http://www.anamandara.com/ were Kim and I had been with Pat and Carole. It is a Vietnamese base with funkiness thrown in. The food is great and the decor is an outdoor feel indoors. Well trained and pleasant staff and decent wine list. We will be back here a lot. And hopefully will spend more time with Mike - he and I can spend hours talking about cars, British TV and life in general.

One last thing - I had been looking forward to RED, the movie about retired spies with one great cast for this kind of human cartoon movie - but sad to say they missed out on story to string it together. Everyone seemed to be having fun but that didn’t translate to Kim and I doing the same - shame, I had been looking forward to it for several months - Oh Hum.

Might have interesting news next month, plus Superbowl Chez Toebe, even though I don’t care, should be a good excuse to try out more camera tricks.