Tag: Bay Area

Happy Things Friday

Bunch of flowers in a shopping back.
Flowers I took to the tea party

It’s so hard to think about happy things right now with the news being what it is. Just last night I fell into the doom scrolling hole and of course went to bed too late again. Maybe I should start a rule no news and social media after dinner? I definitely should.

Inspired by Elisabeth and San I am going to try to think about the happy things in my little life this week even if the world seems to be falling apart:

We celebrated a friends birthday with a tea party at another friends house. I got to catch up with a lot of women I have not seen in a long time. We had a little sharing circle and the resounding plan for 2026 to look for more in person connection. I think it’s an excellent plan. My contribution to the event were some flower decorations (thanks to our backyard and Trader Joes).

I organized tickets to go to the Art of Manga exhibit at the De Young Museum in San Francisco. My daughter loves drawing and since it was about Manga even my son agreed to come along. It was really cool and got me more interested in checking out books by some of the artists especially Land by Kazumi Yamashita, Mao as well as the Mermaid Saga by Rumiko Takahashi or a book about Steve Jobs by Mari Yamazaki.

I got to meet with my fiber arts buddies on Monday via Zoom. We started this sometime last year and it’s nice to have some company while working on projects and chat about it. I met both of them through my German online book club and it has been a lot of fun.

The students are back! It was a long winter break here on the Berkeley campus and this week the students are finally back. The undergrads make the whole campus come to life and our lab gets busier again.

My daughter had her interview for an exchange program with our sister city in Japan. It’s competitive so even if she does not get to go in the end, getting to the interview stage was already great. I keep my fingers crossed for her and we should find out by mid February.

What was a good thing during your week?
Are you interested in hearing more about any of these highlights?

One step in front of the other

Watch your step

I have a hard time putting my feelings about what is going on in the world into words. I am still as heartbroken, disillusioned and deflated as I was 2025. I had to be offline for a while. Reading the news each day to find out what hellish thing the government is cooking up next was and still is a lot. The only other thing I kept holding on to was Instagram to have something easy and quick.

I tried to make and keep up with in person connection. On a personal level the year has been good to me. I still have my job what is a miracle in itself considering the turmoil the US academic research is in, my online book club is keeping me reading (stumbled on via Instagram and met in partly person for the first time last summer), the kids (both in high school now) are doing well, made some new friends, caught up with some old ones and managed to finish a couple of house projects including a complete rewire. We got to visit our families in Germany last summer, vacationed on Corfu, Greece and visited our friends in Las Vegas. So on we go, one step in front of the other. I know I am lucky and am thankful for it.

The local county has a winter walk challenge I joined. They send out an e-mail each week with prompts what to look for during your walk and you can submit a picture in order to win a price. The above is my submission for week 1’s “Watch Your Step”. I am going to start posting about this weekly from now on – maybe it helps me getting back to my online community that I neglected for way to long. I hope you can forgive me.

Something to look forward to: my friend’s birthday tea party

What are you looking forward to?