By SAM WHITING, San Francisco Chronicle

Spring is peak pupping season at the Marine Mammal Center in Sausalito, Calif. This means Beth Wise, 45, of San Francisco, will be lifting and feeding newborn sea lions and elephant seals. It is heavy lifting, which is why Wise hired a personal trainer.

Excerpts from an interview:

SAN FRANCISCO - The photography show is called "The Last Kodachrome," but the last Kodachrome images aren't in the show. They are still in Pat Willard's Nikon camera.

Matt Warshaw's new book, "The History of Surfing" ($50; Chronicle Books), is his eighth on surfing and its culture. Here are excerpts of an interview with the 50-year-old author:

Q: Is this book heavier than a surfboard?

A: It depends on the board. It's heavier than the boards I ride.

Q: Surfing used to be for dropouts. What happened?

The rehearsal dinner has potential to be even more fraught with peril than the wedding reception. It is the one opportunity for the groom's family to get revenge on all the perceived slights inflicted by the bride's family over the course of the long engagement season. Kathy Goodman, 34, offers a service to keep things smooth and apolitical. She runs Well Rehearsed (www.wellrehearsed.com).

SAN FRANCISCO - Four cameras sit like hawks atop the light towers, watching every fielder in every inning during baseball games at AT&T Park.

When the ball leaves the bat, digital video records the reaction of each player in an attempt to do what has never been done in the long history of baseball analysis -- attach numbers to the defensive intangibles of the game.

Fifteen months ago, Chris Downey was just another green architect, based in Oakland, Calif. Now he has an expertise that sets him apart.
Downey, 46, is a blind architect dedicated to planning buildings for blind people, a niche brought about by his sudden loss of sight after surgery.

The unearthing of evidence pointing to the lost tomb of Mark Antony and Cleopatra at a 2,000-year-old temple in the Mediterranean has raised skepticism among some Egyptologists even before the first remains are raised.

A parent can no longer bark out an order to do a household chore and expect it to be completed. A request must be filed at Handipoints.com. The child will then log on, weigh the reward assigned to a given task, then either accept or decline the task, all by interface, as opposed to face-to-face.

Pinched by recession, Christmas shoppers will skimp on people, sure. But never a dog.