April 15 ~ Spring Cleaning
This weekend was yard work and cars , they had piles of filth that needed cleaning… both the cars and the yard. I pulled about 7 bags of weeds out of the yard and mowed the winter growth. It look so-so now. Still more to do. I think that we will not have a garden this year. Just no time to properly tend it.
Jack is starting to focus on what he is playing with. Instead of just throwing and banging stuff he is taking one toy and manipulating it for an extended period of time. This makes watching him much easier. Jack and Tristan are playing together. Tristan forgets sometimes that he is bigger and wants to wrestle and play. He is a great big brother and likes to play with Jack, sometimes at least.
Tristan was a seal lion all day today. His imagination and story telling are exceptional. Definitely keeps us on our toes.

April 12 ~ San Francisco
A great trip! Check out the photos. We flew out to Frisco (don’t call it that, its not “local”) for an extended weekend to visit Maria. It really makes Jacksonville look like a dump. I can see why people pay so much to live out there. It was very lush, green and beautiful. Maria’s place overlooks water, not just a little retention pond like in Florida but a bigger manicured area of water. Seeing the sloped roads of San Francisco is surely awesome and the redwoods are breathtaking at 300 feet high.
If anyone goes out there I recommend picking up a bread-bowl of chowder at the pier. Fisherman’s wharf is a bit touristy but classic. There is so much to comment on about the area but I’ll keep it short. Wine country is cool, but its really more like glorified bar hopping. I don’t mean to diminish it as I really did enjoy it but I was expecting to see the making of, but it was mostly sipping wines in staged bars at various locations. There may be more extensive tours that we could have taken though. Gorgeous county.
Stanford’s church/cathedral rivals any that I’ve ever seen. I had a creepy horror movie experience there. After taking Jack out of the service due to volume control issues with his larynx, we found this freestanding building off in this strangely dark shadow of a big tree. It was marked as the men’s room. Per chance I had to visit just such a facility. As I moved for the door though I found the building was covered in cob webs that seem to be coming from little caterpillars. It looked as if no one had been in there since the church was built in 1904. I decided to at least try the door. So I pulled an Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom move by sticking my hand through the bugs and pulled on the door. It opened. Inside was a surrealistically clean bathroom decorated in a 1920s fashion. Spotlessly clean, well lit and fragrant… except for the gazillions of caterpillars crawling over every surface. I was just waiting for some waiter from ‘The Shining’ to offer me a mint or something. Strange experience.
Well, here is the short list:

Thursday- Travel, aviation museum (www.hiller.org), The dish (www.dish.stanford.edu).
Friday- Muir woods national monument (www.visitmuirwoods.com), san Francisco and the pier
Saturday- Napa Valley, the pier (www.pier39.com)
Sunday- Easter Mass at Stanford (www.stanford.edu/group/religiouslife/memchu.html)
Monday- Narrow gauge railroad (www.roaringcamp.com) , Santa Cruz
Tuesday - Travel

Spring 2007 Archive

Fall 2006 Archive