A Holiday Reminder

I just wanted to give all of you Bay Area KroBlog readers a reminder of the perfect family holiday weekend in San Francisco. For starters, book a room using Hotwire. Select a 4 star hotel in the Embarcadero Area, so you're near the Embarcadero and Justin Herman Plaza. It'll only cost you about $100/night. If that option is not available to you, then chose the 4.5 star option in either Union Square West or East and you'll get something nice like The Palace for only $129/night.

Day 1:

• Arrive in the a.m.
• Get on a street car on the Embarcadero and head towards Fisherman's Wharf. Take the street car to the end.
• Head up the hill to Ghiradelli Square for a sundae...hot fudge or caramel. There's usually a guitarist in the Square and if you're with the kids they can run around the fountain after the sundae snack.
• On the way back down the hill to Fisherman's Wharf and the street car, stop and get a charicature done of you, the kids, the family, whomever.
• If there's time, back to the hotel for a quick rest, otherwise head to the Ferry Building for a stroll and some dinner/food.
• By now it's dark, so it's time to head to Union Square for a good look at the tree. Take a cab or if you have time and the energy, you could take a cable car up California Street and transfer to the Powell line which will take you directly to the Square.
• Head back to the hotel and enjoy a good night sleep.

Day 2

• Wake-up and order room service.
• If you're staying in the Hyatt Embarcadero, walk around the lobby and enjoy the holiday toy train display.
• Head out to Justin Herman Plaza and enjoy an hour or two of ice skating. If you're staying closer to Union Square, the City set up a rink there too this year.
• If you have more time, head over to the Metreon...more ice-skating, a bowling alley and the carousel!

Sound good?

Enjoy!

We Need to Change the Law

I was driving down El Camino yesterday and there was this guy getting a sobriety test by three or four cops on the sidewalk. It was a beautiful day, two o'clock in the afternoon on a Saturday. So I started thinking...

There should be different levels of punishment for drunk driving depending on the time of day you get busted for DUI.

The base-line DUI is the level of punishment you receive today for drunk driving. You should receive whatever punishment this is for drunk driving any day of the week from 10pm to like 4am.

But if you get busted for drunk driving during the day time...say 2pm to 10pm, your punishment should be like 2X the regular punishment. 4am to 2pm should be like 1.5X.

Now that I think about this more, if you get busted during a week day then the punishment should be like 2X the punishment listed above.

Moreover, the weather should be factored into this as well. The nicer the weather, the worse the punishment should be.

More on this subject later, but you get the point...

The Good Book

I just finished a good book by AJ Jacobs. The book is called "The Year of Living Biblically." It's an attempt by the author to live an entire year through the moral lens and written rules of the bible.

It's real and it's funny. It's funny because Jacobs is self-deprecating. It's real because he exposes himself and the reader to perhaps every religious denomination across the country and and goes into each of these interactions with an open mind and learns from every person and every experience.

Here's the overview Wikipedia: "He relates a year he spent trying to follow all the rules and guidelines he could find in the Bible, which turned out to be more than 700. For the first nine months, from August to May, he followed the rules in the Old Testament and immersed himself in Jewish culture before focusing on Christianity and the New Testament in the final three months. In the book, Jacobs confronts a majority of the biblical rules, both the obscure and the well-known, and tries to follow them as literally as possible."

I also recently checked out Jacob's Wikipedia page and realized that he was the guy who wrote a funny article for Esquire (he's the editor at large) on outsourcing his life to India.

Check out the book, it's a good one, and while you're at it, read his other stuff.