What a truly strange and bizarre year this has been! Wonderful, painful, difficult, successful and even sometimes traumatic. I’m sort of glad it’s almost over. Meanwhile…I want to thank all of you who take the time to read this blog and who actively participate in it. You’re all wonderful and I’m grateful for the fun interaction. I want to sincerely wish you all the best in the next week or so…I hope you and your families have a terrific conclusion to 2010 and a very Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year. I’m shutting it down until after the Holidays…I’ll look forward to seeing you all back here in 2011!

Sorry folks…travel day. No foto contest until next week. Have a great weekend! I hope Thanksgiving was great for you!!

OK, I realize I’ve sort of abandoned the whole real estate concept lately, but Holy Cow!…have the Giants been fun and amazing! I went to the game last night…without a doubt it was the most incredible sporting experience I’ve ever had. I’ve been to numerous NFL playoff games, a couple of conference championship games, a US Open in golf, A Final Four in college basketball and a college football championship game and absolutely nothing has come close to the experience of being at the World Series last night! My friend Gil and I figured we’d leave a little early so that we could get a bite to eat before the game started at 5:00PM, so we got on Caltrain at 1:53 at San Carlos. The train was packed! Apparently we weren’t the only ones with this idea. When we got there we discovered that King Street was closed to auto traffic and the crowds were thick. I’m betting that folks got there before noon. There were lines a couple of blocks long to get into any of the restaurants on King Street. Momo’s, Public House, Pedro’s Cantina and Amici’s were packed…no chance for us to get in there!

There were probably triple the number of folks wanting tickets vs folks scalping them. I’ll bet I only saw 8 to 10 tickets available while we strolled around that neighborhood. One guy wanted $1000.00 for a single standing room only ticket. He probably got it. A friend of mine who went up without a ticket told me he finally got one in the 4th inning…for $275.00. I’d guess that there were an additional 20,000 people in the neighborhood that didn’t have game tickets. Most wanting to just take part in the incredible carnival atmosphere.

Gil and I walked up to Townsend Street and checked in at Tres Agaves…there was a 2 hour wait for a table. Same thing at Paragon. When we drive to games we routinely park in a garage across the alley from Tres Agaves. It’s always $20.00 to park there. Yesterday it was $70.00! We finally got lucky and got a table (someone had just canceled a reservation!) at Ironside on 2nd Street. It was great…I had the Pressed Cubano sandwich, Gil had a personal pizza. Walking around that neighborhood before the game, I’m not sure I had smelled the unique aroma of pot more frequently with the possible exception of a Doobie Brothers concert I went to in 1978. This was NOT the usual Giants game experience!

The game itself was surreal. For awhile I thought Tim Lincecum had spent too much time outside of the ballpark, especially on the weird play in the second when he chased the runner back to third without a play! Still, the Giant’s scoring blast allowed the accumulated release of a ton of tension from the 43,000 plus at AT&T. It was an incredible night and really the only sour point occured when the train back to San Carlos had to stop at Hillsdale so that the police could board and arrest some drunk fans. Actually that just added another story…so maybe it wasn’t really that bad!

Anyway, I’ll be back to real estate soon.

OK, so it’s not about Foster City, or real estate. Did you see that game last night? Amazing!! In case you haven’t seen this video…it’s a classic! Go Giants! Here’s to winning the penant tonight!

I’ve written about this before…my daughter Christina has a rare skin condition called Epidermolysis Bulosa (EB) which basically means that she’s missing a protein in her skin that allows her to absorb friction like the rest of us. As a result she blisters. Sometimes she can walk, other times she needs a wheelchair. She’s probably always going to need a wheelchair for certain places where lots of walking is needed…a big school campus, the Mall, the airport or Disneyland. The truth is, she’s got the mildest form of EB. She’s going to lead a fairly normal life. The video above is about an amazing family that we know who have a son with the worst form of EB. The Spauldings are truly inspiring!

Since this is the national EB Awareness Week, my wife Lesley is planning a fund raiser next Saturday the 23rd with the theme “Eat Ice Cream for EB”. It’s going to be at a place called Sweet Connections in San Bruno. It’s at 430 San Mateo Ave, right next to La Petite Baleen Swim School. It’s going to go on all day long, so if you get around to it, stop by for some ice cream and contribute to an incredibly worthy cause.

My wife Lesley is a flight attendant with United Airlines. Nine years ago today she worked the redeye into Washington DC and got in about 8:00AM their time. 9/11 has always been a pretty significant and personal day for us. Here’s a tribute to fellow flight attendants lost on that horrible day…

So…I’m actually doing something that I haven’t done since 2005. Taking a vacation! We went to the Grand Canyon in Arizona (amazing place!) and are stopping in Las Vegas for a few days on the way home. Anyway…I’ll be back on Friday for the next foto contest. All the best!

Sunday was not only Father’s Day…it was actually my daughter Elena’s 10th birthday. That fact trumps Father’s Day for me all day long! Because of this milestone event, we decided to do something a little different to celebrate. My wife Lesley has been a flight attendant with United Airlines for about 25 years so we came up with a sort of unique plan. Elena and I went out to the airport on Saturday night, bags packed, and ready to get on an airplane…and go somewhere! We weren’t sure exactly where we would go but we made plans and packed for a short trip to either Los Angeles, San Diego, Denver or Seattle. Since we fly on an employee pass we just figured we would get on whatever plane had a couple of open seats and just go there. Wherever there ended up being.

Over the 21 years that Lesley and I have been married we’ve done quite a bit of traveling…and we’ve missed a ton of flights too. It’s not been an uncommon experience for us to spend alot of time in airports trying to get somewhere and wasting alot of time in the process. Particularly in the last few years it’s been tough to fly standby since most every flight is full. At any rate Elena and I were prepared for an adventure. We actually got on our first choice and went to Denver.  Upon arrival, we rented a car and drove up to Boulder where we spent all day Sunday and the morning on Monday before heading back down to Denver, where we finished our trip and came home last night.

You know what? We had a ball! Elena got the tour of the University of Colorado (my alma mater) watched a ton of street performers in downtown Boulder, went to the famous Red Rocks Amphitheater, and ended up having a fabulous meal at Jax Fish House in lower downtown Denver. That’s the birthday girl up there in that picture…I think that was right about the time she found out the waiter was going to give her a piece of chocolate cake, on the house, to commemorate the big day.

As always seems to happen, I got offers on two of my listings while I was gone and probably ended up working too much at the expense of our time together while…but the truth is it gave me some real perspective. It was amazingly wonderful to spend that time with my daughter. She’s a terrific kid and I adore her and wish I could spend more time like that with her…as well as her sister Christina too (who can’t wait for her turn to go on a trip now!). I couldn’t think of a thing to write about all day today that had any Real Estate or Foster City application. I also couldn’t stop thinking about our trip and how grateful I am to have done it.

I think being a Dad beats being a realtor all day long!