Dear Parents:


Does your high school student communicate with you about school news?  Do you read the high school newsletter when it comes to your home?  Chances are you don’t hear about deadlines until they’re past and you gently inquire (of course) about why this is the first time you’re hearing about this and your teen shrugs and says no one ever announced anything about it.  Or maybe you get drift of an event because another parent asks you 
how your kid did on the PSATs or if you’re attending College Night. 


So you may not know this because your The PSAT (Preliminary Scholastic Aptitude Test) is scheduled for Saturday, October 17, 2009.  The test is administered by high schools, not at test centers and there is no online registration. Tickets are on sale now at your local high school All Juniors and any honors or AP students should definitely take this test for scholarship opportunities as scores are used to determine eligibility for National Merit Scholarship Programs.  Sophomores and Freshman may also take the test.


I, for one, am a mother of a fairly responsible teen who is an honors and AP student who never took this test for both the reasons stated above:  I didn’t read the newsletter AND she claims nothing was ever announced at school.  End Result: we don’t know if she qualifies for any National Merit Scholarships and parents faced with paying full tuition.   


My redesigned website (coming soon) will feature a College Corner so please check back for more tips on navigating the college preparation maze.  I 

In ones lifetime there are certain events that occur that are life changing: getting married, having your first child, buying a house, the death of a parent or loved one – not necessarily in that order.  Next year will be a watershed year for my husband and I, but mostly for me: my only daughter will be graduating from high school and going away to a four-year college and leaving me in the proverbial empty nest.  

Fortunately, this is an event I am able to prepare myself for and I’ve taken every step possible to make it a lifestyle change that won’t leave me with feelings of inadequacy, or send me into an identity crisis or the deepest throes of depression.  Some parents seem to be overjoyed at the prospect and barely able to contain their excitement about being set free from the bonds of parenthood, but I think they’re just pretending.  After all, you’re not totally free, you’re still tied to your spouse, your job, your house and ALL THAT.

But, I digress.  This blog was primarily born out of my desire to extend my interests beyond the nest, and becoming a more active community volunteer is another way. One of the school-related areas I’ve been involved in because of my daughter AND a terrific program to look into if you have a creative child who could very possibly be the next Alicia Keys or Midori or Robert Plant or Twyla Tharp or Richard Burton or, well you get the idea; is the Academy of Performing Arts in Huntington Beach.  ”We” are in the Commercial Recording Arts Department (CRAD), focus being contemporary music and recording technology.  Other areas include Theatre, Musical Theatre, Technical Theatre, Dance, and Orchestral Music.   

This is my fourth year as a Board Member of the CRAD Guild (similar to a Booster Club).  I’m doing Hospitality this year which is coordinating all the food for the performers during rehearsals and performances.  In addition to two main-stage shows in the historic and newly-renovated Huntington Beach High School Auditorium  (built in 1926, the Auditorium will celebrate its grand opening on Sunday, October 18, 2009), there will be a second-stage show in May and Aloha Wednesday monthly shows at Don the Beachcomber.  You should definitely catch one of these shows if you and/or your kids love rock or classic rock – if you’re more of a classical music and theatre lover, the theatre & musical theatre productions are amazing and award-winning shows. 


To rouse your interest, here is what I wrote about the May 2009 Retrofest show:

The tight two-lane, winding road that is Hwy. 17 to Santa Cruz is at once exhilarating if you’re channeling  Danica Patrick  yet intimidating if you’re accustomed to the parallel grid that epitomizes the multi-lane construction of most of the roads in So Cal.  When we arrived at the Hampton Inn, just as you enter town and the highway becomes Ocean St., I was ready to check in and start chilling the bottle of 2007 St. Clement Sauvignon Blanc that I had purchased at Cellar 360 in Ghirardelli Square specifically with a welcome-to-Santa Cruz afternoon aperitif in mind . But first I had to see just how far down Ocean St. was the ocean and show Chloe the famous Beach Boardwalk amusement park area; we were a few miles away but nature was calling and a comfy bed was beckoning my teen so sightseeing would have to wait.


I opted for Hampton Inn because I could use Hilton points and I (we) have done many one-nighters when all is required is a clean room, comfy bed, and breakfast the next morning at a reasonable price. We checked in and my teen crawled into bed and was snoozing in minutes (the curvy road had prevented any earlier zzz’s).  I promptly located the ice machine, began chilling the vino,  and decided to explore the town and locate a market for some munchies.  Just so happened that there was a Trader Joe’s – my fave – and I bought some pretzel thins, seeded flatbread, gouda cheese, and a sharp cheddar with stilton.  After checking out the local color – headed back to the hotel for happy hour.


Since this trip has been stretched out like a studio, summer blockbuster series (or maybe you’re a new reader ), allow me to refresh your memory as to its purpose;  college tours: 1. University of San Francisco and 2. University of Santa Cruz.  Based on what we had seen online and read in the ONE college guide that we purchased, Fiske Guide to Colleges, UCSC was my teen’s preliminary top choice due to the fact that it has a strong Linguistics department and, as of this summer, that is what she had decided she was interested in – specifically Language Studies which combines Linguistics and concentration in a language, in her case, French.


Roused my teen out of bed at 8:30 the next morning so we could head out to the UC Santa Cruz campus and possibly get on the 10:00 bus tour as a standby (all tours for August were already booked when I checked online in mid July).  No luck getting on the tour – everyone showed up!  All the folks that didn’t get on were given an upbeat, informative presentation by a student working in the visitor center and among the materials was a map designed for self-tours.  

We ended up spending nearly four hours on the campus and I’m sure a more thorough look at the campus then if we had gone on the bus tour because we actually parked the car and walked around several of the ten individual colleges, the sports complex and fitness center, the Baskin School of Engineering, the outdoor Festival Glen theatre where Shakespeare Santa Cruz was performing that evening, and visited Linguistics department where we had a 1:00 appointment with a department advisor.  We also stopped at the bookstore to buy a tee shirt with the banana slug mascot and meandered into areas like the back parking lot of Lick Observatory as a result of wrong turns.  

In the final analysis, UC Santa Cruz is definitely my daughter’s top choice now.  The campus is situated in a spectacular setting between the Pacific Ocean and redwood forests.  As with UC Santa Barbara, the joke is that this may be the only time in your life where you’ll have an ocean view, but my teen fell in love with the residence hall set into the redwood forest.
















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Following a memorable trolley car ride:  stopped by the “trolley cops” on a steep hill for being overloaded, all passengers had to disembark so the trolley could make it to the top, and then run up the hill and get back on; we continued our Asian culinary exploration with a tantalizing Vietnamese dinner at Ana Mandara.  Intrigued by the description of the restaurant on the Mark Hopkins’ website - ”with its exotic decor and delicious Vietnamese cuisine, Ana Mandara justifies its translated name: ‘the beautiful refuge’”, it turned out to be an excellent choice for our only evening in San Francisco.  Definitely romantic, the menu opens to “The Love Story”, an ancient story of ill-fated lovers, and the dishes bear names such as “Whispering Waves” and “Footprints in the Sand”.

As I’ve said before, the main challenge of traveling with a teen is the task of waking them early enough to get out of the room before noon if you want to make the most of your day.  Other than Chinatown, Chloe wanted to see the Golden Gate Bridge and we had to do it in the morning since we were leaving to drive to Santa Cruz before rush hour.  Of course we were greeted by the same thick fog that we had witnessed rolling in and enveloping the city the afternoon before, but we donned our sweatshirts and braved the damp chill to see the famous bridge from the top of a double-decker bus.  We were in the company of mostly British tourists and had two very entertaining tour guides – one Scottish and the other English, ironically.  Also saw the Palace of Fine Arts and the Presidio area and I think the fog adds a certain atmospheric and mysterious quality to my photo(s), what do you think?

Most FAQ:  Why isn’t the Golden Gate Bridge golden?  The name is derived from the Golden Gate Strait which is the entrance to San Francisco Bay from the Pacific Ocean.  The color of the bridge is actually International Orange which was chosen because it blends well with the colors of the surrounding landscape (when you can see it) and is easily visible by ships traveling through the infamous fog!

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