Thu Oct 23 07:49 EDT 1997
California: There and Back Again

It was 26 degrees this morning and I had to scrape the frost from my
windshield.  White clouds of carbon dioxide plume from my mouth.  I've
broken out my winter coat, gloves, and fedora.  We're back in New
England, Toto.

After our arrival in San Fransisco, Joy and I went for a joy ride up
and down some hilly streets, down to Fisherman's Wharf, over to the
Golden Gate Bridge (though not across it) and through a few parks on a
scenic shoreline road.  Later we went to dinner with some colleagues.

On Thursday and Friday, I attended a corporate education class on
"People Skills."  We'll see if anything stuck.  On Monday and Tuesday,
I attended a mini-conference about Publications at Cadence.  Aside
from these two business items, the rest of the time was spent with
friends.

On Thursday evening, we had dinner with Raphael and Nancy Morales and
their two boys, Matthew and Clayton.  It was a very nice evening,
spoiled only by jet lag catching up to us earlier than we would have
preferred.  Nancy took Joy out on Friday, too.

On Saturday, Steve and Rosita Yates flew into San Jose from Burbank to
visit for the weekend.  We haven't seen Rosita in over 13 years and we
tried to cram 13 years of catch-up into 36 hours.  Nevertheless, we
were able to get out to Santa Cruz, onto a pier and beach on the
Pacific Ocean on Saturday.  On Sunday we found park with a mountain
lake and enjoyed the foothills around San Jose.  Their children Julian
and Taylor (sp) were with their grandmom, as were my kids back home.

Monday night, my Cadence group got together for dinner and fun,
handing out silly awards and providing silly entertainment. An award
was given to me for disproving dietary claims by the tree-hugging,
spotted-owl kissing, tofu pushers -- the "Things Go Better With Coke"
award.  In addition to this, they planted me in the audience to be
taken out of the room.  After intimidating several others, they
whisked me away.  Led in by my abducters, I returned a few minutes
later wearing a pink Everready Bunny suit.  They needed someone who
had no dignity to lose (or someone who could do the deed and still
come out unscarred) so they asked me and I said, sure.

Two other business-related piece of news came out on Monday.  Joe
Costello resigned from his CEO post to pursue some society-impacting
venture in education.  Cadence also announced a 2-for-1 stock split.
The first news item shocked everyone but the second softened the "Joe
blow."  Joe's left a very good team in place to move Cadence to the
next level, and as the major stock holder, and a very shrewd
businessman, the stock split isn't going to hurt anyone.  I told Joy
that it means that Cadence is growing up (to a bigger company, which
needs a transition from the small company to the mid-size company
mentality and strategies).

We're glad to be home and hope it isn't too late to pick apples.  I'll
need some apple pie soon, I think.  Our lawns have a colorful carpet
of leaves, half of which haven't come down yet, though.

Special thanks go to my mother for watching my children.  I hope she
didn't go stir crazy in Mayberry; she's more of a city girl, I think.

Love from the Manor,

Mark
  .+*+                .....Cadence Design Systems, Inc.
 ***+*+.        __..'''    270 Billerica Road             A house is made
.*+*+**.   _____[]_        Chelmsford, MA 02184           with hands.
'**++**.  /___/\___\    ^  (978) 446-6451     ,
 '*I*'.::/___/__\___\  /*\                    \_0__,      A home is made
 ..I *..: |[] [] []| .:/*\                      M         with hearts.
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 -------------------------- 'O====O='   metcalfe@cadence.com