Stan’s Obligatory Blog

I had to take a trip to the Bay Area for work. Since I hate to travel, I decided that I would try and make it as much of a fun adventure as possible.

The trip up was fine. It was a little unusual to see another airplane landing right next to us in San Jose, but it was interesting to watch. Since my last trip, I figured out that I don’t want to wait for the car-rental-shuttle bus. It’s stupid. 3 1/2 miles on the bus to get to a place that’s 400 yards from the terminal. So I did the overland bushwhack on foot to get to the car rental lot. They were out of the tiny little cars that I’d asked for, so I ended up with a big and comfy car. It was fine.

When I got to the office, it was all-meeting, all-the-time. Which was fine. We had lunch at a nice little restaurant in Menlo Park.

At the end of the day, I got out my directions and got in the car to go up to Sonoma State University. My old net.friend Sara was on a trip there. In nearly ten years that I’ve known her, this is the first time we’ve ever been in the same state at the same time. So I figured it was worth 77 miles to visit. On the way up, I played tourist a little bit. The row houses in San Francisco were painted some amusing colors. And I’d never been across the Golden Gate Bridge before.

When I got up to Sonoma, I found Sara in Target. The airline had lost her luggage, so she was buying essential items. We had dinner at Applebee’s, which was about the only sit-down restauraunt in sight there. And while we were having dinner, I got to see her geeky side, text messaging herself as a method of taking notes. We had a nice time visiting.

Tuesday was another all-day meeting. I also got to go in Building 2 for the first time. This is another of the buildings there that have been reinforced with big obvious steel girders on the outside. From the picture, could you guess that earthquake scientists work inside? Lunch was at Angelo Mio, which used to be my favorite restaurant there, but it’s apparently changed owners over the years. It was still good, but not quite as good as before.

For dinner on Tuesday, I met up with Grace, who was over the hill from Santa Cruz to get her knee injected. She also brought along the famous Malcolm. We had a nice dinner at the Left Bank, where they had tables outside so we could sit with Malcolm, and Grace could feed him little bits of calamari. Malcolm was very cute and friendly. He sat on my lap, but I think that was just so he could get a better view of the food on the next table. At the end of dinner, I took our souvenier photo Myspace-style. Single-handed with the camera at arm’s length.

Wednesday was more meeting, followed by the trip home. We got finished a little bit early, so I managed to get on an earlier flight back. Total time away from home: 54 hours.