Thank you for this thread! My husband now thinks this happened to us last year (we have a high-deductible plan, with an HSA, and use TurboTax). We will be vigilant this year!

We've had snow on the hills here (in the Bay Area) since last Tuesday morning! We get snow on our "hills" (which are up to 4000' in elevation) once every 4 or 5 years, but it NEVER sticks around for a week. Sooo pretty! Of course the almond trees are blossoming now and the daffodils are about to bloom, so for us the snow is just a novelty ... 🙂 My son in Utah, on the other hand, is getting tired of trudging 2 miles to the train station/bus stop in several feet of snow ... he stepped in an icy puddle (the day he forgot to wear boots) a few days ago – luckily he had a second pair of socks in his backpack!

I know wealthy people in Silicon Valley and LA who take Uber but don't want "some kid driving his parents' Kia" (as a PP said) & get the highest-level Uber, whatever it's called, with a professional (?) driver in a nice car. My husband's uncle was a medical doctor, chief of something at an SF hospital, and he cheerfully pumped his own gas (back when there were two options) to save the pennies per gallon vs full-service. I've seen my richest friend (whose husband has been employee #2 at several start-ups) agonize for 15 minutes over a $10 tank top at the Stanford bookstore. I think it's a combination of frugality being part of wealth-building (they both grew up solidly middle class), combined with the tendency never to think of oneself as "rich" – there's always someone richer. Even in Atherton, presumably 🤔🤣

My mother would have died decades ago if she had not been treated at Stanford. (Seriously. She knew people with her same brand of lymphoma who went to Kaiser, and they were dead within a few years.) Best in the world for her kind of lymphoma, and as a PP said, pioneering treatments used nowhere else in the world. People come from all over California – and the U.S. – to consult with their doctors. They are excellent – smart, caring, collaborative, organized, professional. Please get an opinion there! ETA: Oops, I hadn't read all the replies. Glad you are going!!!

Yes, it can be 110ºF where we are, and with a quick hour's drive to the coast we can enjoy a foggy 65ºF on the beach. Middle of the day, in high summer. I've lived on the East Coast and Europe, and had extended stays in Asia, and have never seen anything like it. And we inland folks (usually) get that foggy air in the evening, so even on 100º+ days, it can be in the 60s or even 50s at night. (Many houses here don't have A/C, despite the extreme daytime heat in summer.) I've gotten very spoiled!! Plus NO humidity 🙂

... yes, and getting his life threatened! People are so disgusting. LA Times article: That situation — and the multiplying trash — has spurred volunteerism, but it also has many locals nervous. “I’ve gone through 500 rolls of toilet paper,” said Rand Abbott, a Joshua Tree rock-climber and volunteer who started restocking park toilets on Saturday, the first full day of the shutdown. “And I’ve been emptying all the trash cans that are there and putting bags in. And then I’ve been giving out trash bags to people. I’ve probably put 60 hours in.” Abbott, a 54-year-old Marine Corps veteran and paraplegic who is well known in the climbing community, said he has also been trying to talk visitors out of illegal fires, illegal parking, littering and other forbidden activities. Some comply right away, but “70% of the people I’m running into are extremely rude,” Abbott said. “Yesterday, I had my life threatened two times. It’s crazy in there right now.”

https://kidsbikelane.org/ This is a local group run by a friend. We've donated to them, and our church has volunteered with them. It's a local group, though.

Katie, I'm rushing off to work, but please PM me. I work with someone (I'll see her in half an hour) who is friends with someone at Tesla (Palo Alto office, though). We've seen his car (a Tesla 🙂 ) at dance events. I will ask my friend if I can put you in touch with him. ETA: she says he is not the most communicative person, but if you have a specific question, she can ask him. I asked her to ask him if he had any idea where some of the Fremont employees live. And we live in the East Bay and it's fantastic and we love it (neither of us is a native Californian), but yes, traffic is a BEAR. My husband and I can both bike to work and we consider ourselves fortunate. Many, many people live in Manteca or even farther east b/c they can afford a house for a reasonable amount of money ($350k vs $1m +); but then they spend HOURS a day on the freeways (580, etc.) which, apart from being a burden for them, affects those of us who live between the Central Valley and Silicon Valley. If we go in to SF for a weekday outing, we try to leave either by 1pm or 2pm at the absolute latest for the drive east, or have dinner there and leave after 7pm. It also affects what flights we get from SFO, OAK, and SJC – we time our flights around traffic. One more thing – my brother was lured away from an Ivy League school (in a relatively low COL area, compared with CA) to Los Angeles, and included in his "package" was not only a higher salary but help with his mortgage - something like the school pays 1/3 of the down payment or something. Of course this depends on how deep the company's pockets are and how much they want someone ... but it's definitely on their radar (COL differences for new hires). Palo Alto's median house price is now well over $3 million – and we are talking regular ranch houses for the most part, not mansions. Silicon Valley is crazy and I worry about my kids being able to afford a house. Well, neither lives in-state at the moment. The weather is never muggy, which I appreciate, as I grew up back East. And no bugs! (well, very few – there are a few flies, mosquitoes, etc. but nothing like NY or NJ). That still amazes me. You may not know that the Bay Area has a huge number of microclimates, so that might affect where you want to live. In the summer if we want to escape the heat (110º Stockton/Modesto, 100º Pleasanton/Livermore), we can just drive west and San José will be 90º, Berkeley 80º or 70º, SF 65º, and the beaches also low 60s. In a ONE-HOUR drive. Crazy, but a great way to escape the heat. When I tell out-of-towners to bring a jacket if we're going somewhere like SF or the coast in the summer, they think I'm nuts! In the summer the Half Moon Bay park gift shop sells a ton of sweatshirts to foreigners who land at SFO and immediately head to HMB, then proceed to freeze 🙂 "Of 24 climate zones defined in the Sunset Western Garden Book and the 20 zones defined by the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA), California has 20 and 16, respectively." from this site.

I picked up Blackwell's Carols from Oxford CD last week and can't get enough of it. Especially track 2, Coventry Carol, sung by the choir at Christ Church. I'm in heaven!

Kathy, I totally understand! Enjoy your precious time with your kids & Happy Thanksgiving!!

Kathy, we made sure to clean up the air before you arrived! 😊 Enjoy your Thanksgiving!!

Ellen, praying for you and your family!

I would like this also. Thanks.

My husband has been sent home from work Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday. (Why they couldn't make the decision (to be closed for the day) early in the morning, before all 6000+ employees did their commutes across the Bay Area, we don't know ...). I've had to put off projects like painting and yard work, but that's minor compared with the horrific things going on in the fire zones. Luckily we didn't get around to buying tickets to Big Game. Of course that's (finally) been postponed ... but to a date we can't attend. Go Bears! / Beat Cal! (I have mixed loyalties.) On a more serious note, our HEPA air purifiers just arrived today. I was wearing a mask at my job at the library today (as were most of the employees) but still got a headache and left early. We are in the purple zone in the OP's screenshot. That brown (emergency-level) blob was getting dangerously close (within a few miles) today. I think someone said Tracy was in the 400s today – yikes. I need to ask my elderly parents if they'd like us to get them an air purifier. We got two for ourselves; as my husband says, we will unfortunately need them again, more and more often, it seems.

When we arrived at our hotel at a town outside London on November 3rd last year, we were surprised to see a (lit) Christmas tree. (It was cosy, b/c it was dark and dreary outside; we didn't mind!) Yes, it's considered taboo to decorate in the U.S. until after Thanksgiving, but as you say, they don't have that natural barrier (although many of them knew of our Thanksgiving observance, which also surprised me – some people decorating a UK museum for Christmas in early November were chatting with us and mentioned how they didn't have Thanksgiving). And yes, there was a lot of Christmas merchandise in stores already in early November. They also have "black Friday" in the UK now (sigh) – apparently Amazon introduced it a few years ago and of course other merchants followed suit. That is also (here) a Thanksgiving-dependent holiday ... (In Romania a few years ago we were surprised to see "Black Friday" sales that lasted for th entire month of November!) The pretty street lights in London on Oxford Street, etc. were installed by mid-November, but I think they don't light them until late in November. Not sure, though.

Here is one of the seat-view sites for the SF venue, with photos from many of the seats. It reassured us that our cheap seats would be fine. And here is my favorite site for London shows, including Hamilton – tons of information to wade through, about pretty much every single seat. Enjoy! it's a fantastic show, and I'm fortunate to have seen it twice in SF (also within driving distance) and once in London – but each time our seats were ~$150. I just can't see paying any more than that for anything that lasts only a few hours, no matter how wonderful. I know people who've paid way more for tickets to concerts for pop stars and I don't know how they do it.

We got these! b/c I was not willing to pay much over $150. Friends who'd had these seats said they were fine. It's true we couldn't see about 10% of the stage (the far back right-hand corner, as we were sitting on the right front). Before we bought the tickets I looked at photos taken from the actual seats that people post on various websites of their seat views – very handy. You could see if you can find such site for the venue you're considering, and then make your own decision. There is so much going on simultaneously on stage at any given time that we didn't miss the far back corner's action. And any solos are going to be (mostly) front and center, sometimes back and center. And of course you can hear all the music and singing. But I agree with Seasider, too – my husband felt like he needed to see it again so that he could see the action as a whole and not miss anything. In that case the partial-view seats would be a false economy! I will put in a small plug for the London show (I know not everyone is fortunate enough to travel there easily, but my husband had a business trip to the UK last month & we had enough miles for a ticket for me). Tickets are a lot cheaper and the performers are fantastic, especially their Hamilton (he is only 25 years old) and the king.

"Pudding" is just a general term for any kind of dessert. (In the UK.) They'll say "what kind of pud do you want?" ? They also use "curry" to mean any kind of Indian food. A "starter" is what we call appetizers, and they call the main dishes "mains" (which makes sense, as opposed to what we say here, entrées, which is French for starter lol).

My husband swears by melatonin (he started using it for jet lag), and I finally tried it & found that it doesn't help me fall asleep, but it does help me sleep through the night better. So I started taking it every night. However, we just got back from England and found out that there, one can get melatonin only with a doctor's prescription, and only for people 55+ who have sleep disorders. Doctors in Europe have misgivings about melatonin's effects on body/brain chemistry (as Chris says). So now I am re-thinking my habit. P.S. We met someone (a Brit) who buys melatonin when in the States, then smuggles it back into the UK in a candy jar ....

just an FYI in case it helps anyone ... my son took the AP Comp Gov test at a public school in Danville. I'll look up the name. Oh, Monte Vista HS. They were very helpful (at least a few years ago they were) to outside test-takers. (but oh my gosh – the cars in even the student parking lot for juniors – nicer than anything I'll ever own!)

I've lived in CA on and off for 25+ years and thought Alcatraz was a "tourist trap." I finally went (at the urging of my son) a few years ago and loved it. The guides were awesome; the natural beauty is astounding (views of the city and the Golden Gate); the history is fascinating. I spent time out of the prison fray just sitting in a garden looking at the water, watching the ferries, container ships coming in from China under the Golden Gate Bridge, seagulls strutting around, a military plane flying low overhead, etc ... just lovely. We got the last boat off the island and it was so peaceful. Yes, there were lots of large tourist groups, but it's not a small island and I was able to poke around in peace.

Others like @Kathy in Richmond will know better than I, but wasn't there some muttering about public- or private-school kids pretending to be homeschooled so that they'd be in a smaller "pool"?

Rick Steves has done some research on making cruises, and land excursions, work for your budget and style. I think he has videos and now a book (?). Yes, there's a book but it's just about Mediterranean ports, I think. I'm pretty sure he's talked about ports in other parts of the world, too. I know I watched a video where he talked about "cruise ship survival for independent travelers" or something. I'll try to find it. Ah, here are 3 hour-long talks by Rick's sidekick Cameron Hewitt about cruising. You can really do your research now, haha. & yes, I wouldn't say that planning a trip is half the fun, but it is often very enjoyable!

I could have written Susie in CA's post! My sons loved the program and one son took OSU German through AP. (The other son decided to go to public high school and took German there; he had no problem making the transition to the high school class.) He ended up not taking the actual AP exam (it was hard to find a school that offered it; our high school used to, but they dialed back their German program to only 3 years or so). He did take the SAT subject test; I'll look up his score and add it here. I think he did pretty well. The boys enjoyed the weekly 15-minute Skype call and it helped keep us on track. By the advanced levels, definitely AP German, the weekly Skype call was with Sabine, the native German speaker who runs the program. It was great to have my son talking with a native speaker. (In lower years, our calls were with graduate students who are studying German at OSU. Since I speak German & lived in Germany and Austria, I would occasionally hear mistakes they made while speaking German; I would quietly tell my kids after the call that the person had used the wrong article or past participle.) It definitely helped that I speak German and could help the boys with their assignments if they were confused; however, the program works fine even if the parent doesn't speak any German. It is very well-organized, and was perfect for our needs. I should add that our experience is dated; my older son took the AP German class in 2013–14, so things may have changed. My only gripe, and hopefully their policy has changed, is that my son was accused of cheating and received a zero for one of his assignments. A quick call to Sabine cleared his name. My gripe wasn't that my son was suspected of cheating – I know this is a HUGE problem for online classes, and the graduate students grading the assignments must see this all the time and be annoyed by it – but that my son simply received a zero on an assignment and we weren't notified why. He was devastated and near tears to see, when he logged on to check his grades, that his hard work had resulted in an F. Apparently his work was too perfect (my son has a near-photographic memory plus a gift for languages), and his essay, which was supposed to be based on a reading assignment, was very close to the original reading selection – almost verbatim.

October is the perfect time to visit! "Summer" is often too cold, and it's a shock for people who've visited from back East or places with a normal summer. (Like, today's HIGH in SF is 61º, while further inland – only an hour's drive – it is in the 80s.) Just be careful during Fleet Week because traffic will be a BEAR. If you are planning to drive anywhere, getting in or out of the city (either Golden Gate Bridge or Bay Bridge) will take hours longer than it should. And traffic within the city can be tricky, b/c the Columbus Day parade (oops, renamed the Italian Heritage Parade) (on Sunday) always coincides with Fleet Week and will snarl traffic within parts of the city (but is a lot of fun). Public transportation is the way to go within the city, though – BART trains, retro trolleys, buses, and of course you must ride the streetcars (oh, I see you put that as a "must"! Definitely!). Note that the trolleys are different from the streetcars. (I'll do another post – have to run now.) Enjoy!! ETA: I just saw that your SIL lives here. She will know about traffic!