Congratulations? to Violet

Gee, I almost typed her name as Violent, which would be appropriate considering what happened this morning. I noticed she was playing with a gray fuzzy object on the living room rug around 8 this morning. First thought was "Please tell me that's a toy." I looked closer and thought it might be a gray mouse or shrew. As far as I know though there aren't shrews around here. What it looked the most like was an owl pellet. It turned out to be a bird, probably a bushtit. She had managed to bag her first kill, at least the first one we have found. Yuck.

Yesterday we took the ferry from Vallejo to San Francisco. Owen loved standing outside on the side and feeling the intense wind. The ferry goes to the SF Ferry Building where we had lunch (Owen had a burger and fries at Taylor's Refresher, one of our favorite spots to eat in St. Helena). We then went down to Pier 39, which has a small aquarium and some sea lions to look at. We then took the Muni down to AT&T Park, and the kids had fun playing ball in the Little Giants Park in the Fan Lot. We met another boy named Owen and his brother there, entering third grade, who lives in Noe Valley in SF. It was interesting talking to his mom about life with kids in SF. I asked whether they are in Little League and she said they were for a while but they kept having games out on Treasure Island, which was really inconvenient, so they ended up just playing in the city rec league. I also asked about schools - I'd heard they have a choice - and she said "They say you do but you really don't. We signed my older son up for 3 when it was time to register for kindergarten but he didn't get into any of them; they instead assigned him to Hunter's Point which is the worst neighborhood in the city, so they're in Catholic school instead."

I heard kind of an interesting interview this morning on the podcast I listen to from Fair Game with Faith Salie. She was talking to a sports reporter for the Louisville Courier-Journal who was kicked out of the NCAA semifinal for live blogging the game. ESPN had paid for the broadcast rights to the game so they didn't want anyone else 'broadcasting' information about the game who hadn't paid to do it. The Courier-Journal is going to sue based on the first amendment. I suspect the NCAA is going to lose that round. Here's a link to an article about it.