The newly opened, state of the art Dougherty Valley High School opened this past Monday. Located in Windemere, the newest addition to the San Ramon Valley Unified School District begins with just freshmen and sophomores, and the first graduating class will be in 2010.

The $130 million dollar project was paid for by Shappell and Windemere BLC Developers as an incentive in order to be allowed to build 5000 new homes in the area. Featuring wider hallways, easily accessible classrooms, larger lockers and a boatload of new technology, prospective students helped come up with the high school’s design.

Dougherty Valley High School is also employing a new kind of security system in which teachers can use Columbine security locks if they spot intruders on surveillance.

The city of San Ramon used $9 million to share part of the costs in building the school’s Olympic sized pool and a performing arts center that can seat up to 600 people.

- Joseph Natividad

Thinking of something fun to do with your friends or the entire family? Boomers! might be the kind of place that fits what you’re looking for.

Located near the Livermore Airport at 2400 Kitty Hawk Road, this entertainment center offers a variety of fun activities for people of all ages. You can drive for the thrill with Go Karts and Bumper Boats or hunt down your friends with a full course Lazer Tag attack.

For birthday celebrations or special gatherings, the Boomers! staff is willing to help with food catering and invitations. Free parking is offered to everyone, unlike those annoying fees you’ll find at almost every other theme park out there.

Boomers! offers a black-light setting that has each participant armed with their own laser gun for the Lazer Tag course. The chest plates worn during the game let you know when you’ve been hit by opposing forces. When this is all done, a computer records the individual scores and printouts are handed out to each player.

With the Bumper Boats, each vehicle comes with their own mounted water cannons. You’re free to soak up those around you and maneuver into head-on collisions.

To add on to even more fun, Boomers! has its own Games Pavillion filled with arcade machines of a dizzying number (200 state-of-the-future games if you really want to know).

Boomers! rewards visitors who have done well in the classroom too. Bring in your most recent report card and they will give you four free tokens for each “A” and three of each “B” you get.

Click here for a coupon to their buy-one-get-one-free admission offer and 100 free tokens when you book a group of 20 or more.

Boomers! is open seven days a week, including on holidays. For more information, you can contact their offices at (925) 447-7275.

- Joseph Natividad

Emerald Glen Park, 40 acres large and still growing, has to be one of the grandest and most beautiful community parks located in the Bay Area.

I can’t think of too many places that could top a sprawling fountain, a collection of sports fields, its own skateboard park, and enough grassy room to hold a picnic for up to 200 people. It’s simply mind-blowing for any person who has seen Emerald Glen Park with his or her own eyes for the first time.

I loved to spend hours on the swings for as long as I can remember. The park’s playground, complete with water play features and an assortment of kid-friendly structures, will surely not disappoint the next generation of swing-indulged children.

Before summer comes to an end, be sure to soak up the sun and take advantage of what Emerald Glen Park has to offer. And if you’re in the mood to host an outdoor party for hundreds of guests, you can simply call and make reservations at 556-4500. The park is located west of Tassajara Road, between Gleason Drive and Central Parkway in Dublin.

- Joseph Natividad

(images courtesy of www.carducciassociates.com)

I moved recently and it was a local move from San Ramon to Dublin so I rented a U-Haul truck and hired the Tony MacArthur, the soundman in my band The GROOVE Doctors, and one of his friends to be the “muscle” for the lifting the heavy stuff. I went to the U-Haul web site and saw they charged $19.95/day for a 17 foot long truck and only $10 more for a 24 ft. truck with twice as much storage capacity. I thought that $30 was quite a bargain for renting such a big truck.

The U-Haul web site had me fill in a few answers such as the number of bedrooms in the house I was moving and they calculated how much packing materials I would need, such as boxes, tape, pads, dollys, etc. The estimate for the packaging materials was over $600, more than 20 times the cost of renting the truck. So that’s how they make their money.

I didn’t buy all the packing materials that U-Haul recommended but I did get quite a few boxes of different sixes and some packing tape. The boxes made the move go much smoother and faster, plus they helped protect what I was moving. The boxes have all the various rooms in a house labeled and you just check which room you are packing up, then at the new house the movers can put the box in the correct room without you being there to direct.

I have been told that moving, a death in the family and divorce are the three most traumatic situations one encounters in life. I would imagine losing one’s job would be high on that list too. Well, it was my turn for two of those events recently since a divorce created the situation where I moved out of my house two weeks ago.  

Moving really reminded me of how just much work my real estate clients go through when they move. It seemed like I was organizing and packing for two weeks, there was then an exhausting two days of moving and finally a week of un-packing. And that was just to get the house in a livable situation, I still don’t have every picture hung and every room set the way I want it.

A great real estate professional can make your move much easier by providing you with a list of local moving companies, utilities, gardeners, cleaning services, newspapers, etc. A professional realtor will also help prepare you for how the process of selling (or buying) your home will go and they will then guide you through this process so that you can concentrate on packing up your current home for the move