I forgot to mention it last week, but we have been in San Jose since Wednesday. That explains the silence around here. SNG took a few days of vacation and flew out with e-baby and me. E-baby traveled as well as you can expect for a 7-month old confined to a carseat for many hours at a time. She flirted with everybody.

The trip was a whirlwind. Wednesday we flew all day, checked into the hotel, found a grocery store, chowed a quick pizza and called it a night. Thursday I did a conference and SNG played "driving miss e-baby" around San Jose. By the time he picked me up, his eyes had that maniacal, vaguely deer-in-headlights look I'm familiar with that comes of spending the entire day driving around in the car with a baby.

Friday we drove up to Bolinas and found SNG's grandmother's old house-- at least, we think it was her house. We took a few pictures from the driveway and a lady sent her dog out and then came out with a phone looking menacing and before I had a chance to ask whether it was SNG's grandmother's old house, SNG drove away looking guilty enough to justify the call to the police.

From Bolinas, we went lunch in Stinson Beach and then on to Muir Woods for a hike among the giant redwood trees. It was spectacular. Trees 10 feet across at the base and 1500+ years old can make you feel very small. There are some nice pictures that I'll upload soon.

On the way back from Marin county we stopped in San Francisco at Tadich Grill for (what else?) cioppino. It was worth the $10 for parking. It might have been worth the speeding ticket I got on the way back to San Jose.

Early Saturday morning we walked from the hotel 5 blocks to catch a bus to the CalTrain station, and then rode the train up to Atherton to do breakfast with my aunt. We had such a nice visit, and SNG had never been to her house so he got to see her beautiful gardens for the first time. It was wonderful to catch up with her. The blessing and the curse of a spread-out family are that there's someone to visit almost everywhere, but there's never enough time to see them and in a big family, there are just that many more people to miss.

From Atherton, we took the train another hour into San Fran, caught a bus 6 or 7 blocks, walked another 15 or so to the Ferry building farmer's market, where we bought a nibble of this and a bite of that for lunch: four kinds of sheep's milk cheeses, a loaf of walnut-wheat bread, some smoked ribs, fruits and veggies, gumbo... topped off with a few chocolates at See's. And by then it was time to go back, so we hoofed it the whole 20-25 blocks to the train station where we caught a 90-minute train back and then a bus and then walk 5 blocks to the hotel to meet up with PIC and LeBon and c-baby who were coincidentally in town on Saturday. We had a great time at a little Italian place, where the baby girls could tell their baby jokes and laugh together.

To continue the theme of 5-straight-days-in-transit, we flew all day today to get home. E-baby has been in a reasonably good mood all day, except that she will not go to sleep tonight.

Oh, and if you were wondering what DOTi was up to in our absence, she left a diary on Dianaverse's blog. See the May 9-11 entries. And THANK YOU, Dianaverse!!