Bay Area Book Festival 2026

Posted on June 7, 2026 by Pamela Rentz

You guys! Guess what? I talk with my hands.

Here’s a quick wrap up of my panel at the Bay Area Book Festival last weekend.

First of all, our trip to San Francisco was fantastic. We had an amazing time and I have more pictures that I will not promise to update later because things are hectic right now and I probably won’t get to it.

We stayed with friends who were terrific hosts. We had an amazing tour at Internet Archive. That was the only time during the trip I took very many photos so hopefully I will get some of that up here. We did a few touristy sight-seeing things – it’s was a picture perfect day. Super amazing.

Here we are. It’s L to R Naomi Darling who was the moderator and she is a book influencer and really good. And then Tashia Hart who is a writer but also does arty things, film making and things with food. (Here’s her YouTube Channel), Me as Pen Name, and Dani Trujillo who has 2 books out and some other writing out there.

Bob and I went to the book festival both Saturday and Sunday.

Saturday was a test run on BART and an afternoon to look around and check it out.

And Sunday was the panel.

We didn’t see as much of the festival as I would have liked but we did catch a couple of panels and walked through a lot of the booths. So many people selling and buying books. It was wonderful to see so many book lovers.

Also: my books I bought and had shipped for the book signing arrived a week late. So that was fun. I had a few books to put out there. Lots of support from family and friends. I really enjoyed meeting the others and chatting with them.

All in all a good experience.

I did a terrible job of taking pictures but we had dinner at the classic Scoma’s and outside are the fishing boats and there were a whole bunch of birds hanging out. This is an example of 1 bird. A man explained to us that there are anchovies under those screens to be used for bait and the birds were waiting for an easy snack.

That’s the scoop! Hopefully more later.

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Beautiful Beasts

Posted on May 30, 2026 by Pamela Rentz

I could tell something had been chewing up the strawberries but when I saw the hoof prints, everywhere!, I knew they’d been through. I only had time to watch a few clips and they chewed up both plum trees, the apple tree. The big one got INSIDE THE RAISED BED.

Last year I bookmarked a bunch of stuff to help discourage them but, if you are a regular reader you already know, I don’t have a whole lot of time or energy to deal with yard stuff. I’m glad they have a nice buffet here to enjoy.

I think squirrels are also into the strawberries because I keep finding them strewn about the yard.

The everbearing raspberries have popped awake and I’m picking ever growing bowls of those every day.

I should have a good update next weekend.

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And Now A Word From Our Sponsor

Posted on May 25, 2026 by Pamela Rentz

Pen name is going to be at the Bay Area Book Festival this weekend (May 30-31). My panel is on Sunday at 12:45pm.

I will be on the panel with Dani Trujillo and Tashia Hart and the moderator is Naomi Darling.

Check my social media for more info.

Just kidding. This is my social media. I downloaded Instagram to my phone again and, oof. It’s hard to believe that app could get worse. They must have teams of people sitting around figuring out how to make it more terrible.

“More ads!”

“More recommended posts!”

“She looked at the bra ad. Thirty more bra ads!”

“Partial snippets of posts to a completely different app.”

“More bra ads!”

“Ways to accidentally tap something that plays a horrible song.”

My website was dead during flower season so here is a picture of my beautiful tulips. Because of the chaos in my personal life, I barely remembered to enjoy them. I also dug up some bulbs because I’m trying to put more native plants in here.

I liked this because of that one tulip next to that plant that I am completely spacing on the name of. Some kind of rose something.

Oh. I forgot to mention that giant online retailer sent me a note that the giant stack of books I ordered for the event is delayed. So unless there is a Giant Online Retailer miracle, I just bought a stack of landfill. The books are being delivered to the festival.

Everyone cross your fingers!

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Yes — I’m Back. Kinda.

Posted on May 17, 2026 by Pamela Rentz

I think at some point I mentioned I was going to be doing something behind the scenes to my website and it might be broken for awhile.

Well, it was worse than I imagined and let’s just say people weren’t helpful and it was super demoralizing and I don’t want to talk about it.

St. Jessica of Very Mom was kind enough to come to my rescue, completely saved my butt, and we are finally getting things back together here.

April was the 30th anniversary of this website and I had all kinds of things planned and then was out of commission the entire time.

But it wasn’t just technical issues. Life is kicking my butt at the moment and I really struggle with extra brain juice during my little patches of free time.

Even up to a weekend ago, I didn’t have the time/juice to do little things like bake. I’m still working on getting a healthy self-care routine and getting the yard whipped into shape. Also, writing is not happening right now. 🙁

Hopefully I am going to get back up to speed in the next few weeks. I have things to update.

The video clips are from a surprise visit from the deer. I haven’t seen any sign of them in long time and I noticed my plum tree looked raggedy and checked the card. Two returned. Look how big they are. I’m sad that they rip up my fruit trees but I like having wildlife in the neighborhood.

Pen name is going to be at the Bay Area Book Festival the weekend after Memorial Day. Hopefully more details to come.

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Broken Puzzle

Posted on March 29, 2026 by Pamela Rentz

I’ve always enjoyed jigsaw puzzles but I never really did them at home. We usually do them during family holidays.

My sister-in-law gave me a puzzle caddy for Christmas and I have been puzzling away. I am dealing with some stress in my life and I find listening to podcasts or audiobooks and working on a jigsaw puzzle to be very restorative.

But I already finished all the puzzles in the house so my brother-in-law loaned me a five-pack of puzzles with different sizes.

500 pieces is a good weekend size but I also like the bigger ones.

This Florida one is a 750 and also a good size. This was brand new — I cut open the bag and look: missing pieces.

At first I blamed myself and crawled around on the floor and moved furniture in case the pieces jumped and ran to hid on their own.

But then I realized: how could I have lost just these pieces in the corner? Must have been a factory error.

Warning: I am planning to make some changes to the website which means it probably won’t work for a while. Stay tuned.

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Rototiller

Posted on March 24, 2026 by Pamela Rentz

The yellow is roughly the edge of the garden bed. The left is the part I already did. You can hardly tell. Clover is tougher than advertised.

I borrowed a rototiller from a friend a couple of weekends ago and then it seemed like I either had time and no weather or weather and no time.

Or time and no energy.

But he needs the rototiller back which lit a fire under me to get this going.

The top picture is the main bed. I have been growing clover as a cover crop and I thought it was going to be a breeze but instead the stems are kinda ropey and they just get wound up in the blades like when you get hair or long strings of your disintegrating carpet wound around the vacuum floor brush roller.

After every row I would have to unplug it and then sit in the dirt and cut the stems off. Going more slowly or trying to break up the clover clumps in advance didn’t help.

I ran out of time because I had another situation to deal with so the main bed is only half done. I’m going to try to do it on Thursday after work.

This is the lower bed which did not have clover and was a breeze to do.

Using a rototiller is like wrestling a wild boar. It’s not like you smoothly drive it across the dirt. It’s bucking and pulling and jumping around.

Between prepping the beds for the rototiller and doing the job, I was exhausted. My arms were like noodles. But I slept like the dead.

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A New Hope

Posted on March 14, 2026 by Pamela Rentz

When I was at the bus stop I saw this little sign. I did not take it because I felt certain there are those who need more hope than I do.

I am kinda frazzled at the moment and really phoning in these posts.

I have a huge note in my phone with ideas and partially written posts but it seems like when I finally am seated here, ready to write something, I’m tired and in a big hurry and figure I’ll get to it later.

I will eventually. But not today.

If anyone is keeping track, next month will be 30 years since I started my blog.

I’m not sure if that is the actual original first date that I posted or maybe when I got my domain.

My blog had 3 phases. I did the HTML by hand — I was a very early adopter. But later when Blogger started, I used that for better archiving and RSS — I had reasons. But then something happened with Blogger — I know it still exists because that’s where my list of books read lives. (And now that I look at that, I haven’t updated since the beginning of the year.)

Maybe they no longer hosted domains. I don’t know. Then I started with TURDPRESS which I still don’t like — it’s constantly bugging me to update things. Sometimes I type into the search bar, leave me alone, just so I feel like I’m expressing my thoughts.

But here we are and I am not promising anything but I will try to re-post some old stuff and maybe reflect or something, if I’m feeling frisky.

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Real Items Found in My Dad’s Mailbox

Posted on March 8, 2026 by Pamela Rentz

This isn’t the first daffodil I saw nor the first from my garden. But, this is the first I remembered to take a photo of. The orange cup are my favorites.

In case there is anyone reading this who doesn’t already know, my dad is 95 and lives in a retirement home.

Item #1 — He received an invitation to a free meal at a nearby Red Crustacean (name changed for privacy) and a free seminar on cremation. Then there is a list of what will be on the menu — popcorn shrimp, garlic shrimp scampi and a few other choices. There will be three sessions.

People attending this seminar will be planning ahead to take the burden off their loved ones.

I did a little research into this company because of its ridiculous name and learned that the founder used to be with a different cremation company but was let go. Also, there were numerous terrible reviews that referred to this organization as a ponzi scheme.

Dad is gonna miss this one.

It took three sessions but I cleaned up the berry patch. I was pretty aggressive. Hopefully I will remember to take some photos to compare when the berries are in full season. Our favorite time of the garden!

Item #2 — He received a flier asking as a renter, if he’d ever dreamed of owning a home. The home buying team will go over first time buyer programs, what the process looks like, how to tell if you’re truly “ready” (quotes, theirs.)

Bob and I got a good laugh out of that one.

I’m going to guess that they must buy a mailing list of renters and whatever they paid, it was too much.

I should have one more for the rule of three but I don’t and I don’t want to keep these on my desk hoping a third item will show up, so that’s it for today.

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Gym Fan

Posted on March 1, 2026 by Pamela Rentz

We did our semi-regular visit to Corvallis to watch an NCAA gymnastics meet.

I wish I could take better pictures of gymnastics. This was Stanford visiting Oregon State. Stanford is ranked tenth and had one of the highest scores in NCAA last week. It was amazing to be there. Gymnastics is like a different sport in person. Oregon State is currently 25th and in a rebuilding year. They have some really great gymnasts but it’s a young team and they are missing some of the details.

The band seemed like they were having a lot of fun. I counted the tubas. I think there were 12. That seems like a lot of tubas.

We’ve seen a few other meets there. We’ve seen UCLA (which is my favorite team) twice and Utah (another of my faves) once. One time we had tickets but we were both sick and I think one time we had tickets but the weather was too dicey.

We’ve done it as a day trip but this time we had a nice dinner and spent the night. I didn’t bring a laptop and stayed mostly offline except to peek at my phone for gymnastics scores.

In other news, my teeth love me so I had the opportunity to get 2 cavities filled and one crown replaced and one new crown prepped. It was about as fun as it sounds. I’m not an expert on dentistry but it is my understanding that I didn’t inherit the greatest teeth. My dentist insists they are great teeth, they just need extra care. I could have taken a very, very nice trip on the amount of money I’ve put into my teeth.

Finally, I already put 2 days into cleaning up the berry patch. I’m going to try to take a photo because I feel like I’m really cutting them back but it seems like I did that last year and I had huge bounty. Fingers crossed for the same!

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Rainy Day in Feburary

Posted on February 22, 2026 by Pamela Rentz

“A Pie Eating Contest” Sandie Wendell Mitchell artist, Library of Congress, I’m not clear if the artwork is from 1909 or that was the date it was added to the LOC collection.

All weekend I intended to bake something. My top candidate was Cookie Butter Blondies but I never managed to get started on that project. I have all the stuff ready for next weekend. I did make a new batch of granola for my breakfast and I baked a loaf of bread that we will cut into tonight.

Today’s Dad quote: I’m fine, I just feel like shit.

All these tech bros who want to live forever haven’t spent much time around people who are in the process of living forever. Seems kinda hard.

On Wednesday, Mom and Dad will have been married 65 years. Wow.

This weekend I finally tried using that spicy bird food that’s supposed to keep the non-birds away. I am cautious about using it just because I imagine getting it on myself and in my eye and creating a new problem. At one point I spotted a squirrel sprinting across the yard and then stopping and rubbing its face. It felt mean to trick them. But also, they kinda ruin my enjoyment when I restock the feeders and I have 4 fat squirrels parked out there stuffing their faces. Later, I saw a squirrel in the fly-through feeder so maybe the rain made it tolerable or maybe it was a squirrel with a palate for high heat foods.

I spotted a woodpecker on my suet feeder and now I am looking to try to identify it and I wish I’d paid closer attention. It was small and raggedy looking (it was raining) and had a small red marking on it’s head. The bird ID websites that are coming up are garbage but maybe it was a downy woodpecker? I’ve seen a woodpecker on the utility pole in the backyard but never on a feeder.

Today I did some tree pruning. I intended to be aggressive — it felt aggressive but I think for a real tree pruner it barely passed as pruning. I may take another pass and I didn’t do the front yet.

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