January 17, 2006So bye-bye two-thousand five..
Where did it go?? Did anyone see 2005? These last few months have been very busy (as evident from my lack of bloggage). So what have I been doing?
Let's see, Thanksgiving was spent in Bridgewater, with the Pollards. Jeff had a very busy weekend planned, so we came back to Richmond Thursday night. He spent all weekend doing some upgrades and changes to CustomTacos and in the process found out that he had damaged his ulnar nerve. After this self diagnosis, he decided to check with a doctor to be sure. Now he has to wear a 'sock' with a padded elbow during the day to prevent putting pressure on the nerve. His checkup this week was good, supposedly he's making good progress.
The first week of December brought our first good snow, and some snow days! Well, a day of leaving early a couple of delays and a cancellation after a delay, for rain. That's right, rain. We're not exactly sure what happened that day, it was snowing/sleeting through the night, but was going to warm up and change to rain by the next afternoon. Since we have multiple campuses, not all of them had the same forecast, so we closed because the roads were still slick. Didn't bother me much, I got a lot of my Christmas shopping done that day!
Somewhere in there I took a day to get my 'hair did.' This will be the third time I've done it in this shade of red, yet everyone seems to think it's a completely new color. Maybe I wait too long between appointments?
I'm not really sure what I spent my December weekends doing....Christmas shopping, Christmas decorating, stuff like that. Jeff & I ending up ditching both our office 'Holiday' parties. But we did go to Kelly & Jon's! Theirs was much cooler, they had an ornament exchange and hot cider!
Work has been crazy busy. Before Christmas was the worst, with everyone trying to get as much done before our extended Holiday break. I ended up working a half day on the 22nd so we could go to Fishersville and celebrate Jennifer's birthday.
We went ahead and packed for our Arkansas trip, including luggage, gifts and the cat, taking it all to the Pollards before meeting up with everyone for dinner. Dinner was at the Mill Street Grill, a very popular local restaurant; it was very good. We passed on dessert and went back to Jennifer's house for cake and gift opening.
Friday morning we left Bridgewater about 8am for the 12 hour drive to Arkansas. (Leaving from Bridgewater cut down a little on our time) We only stopped a few times for gas and food and got to my parents house about 10pm (that included the one hour time change); not too shabby.
Our time in Arkansas seemed to go by so fast, as it always does. We had quite an animal farm since my parents have 2 dogs and 2 cats, we brought Gizmo and my brother brought his cat, Mogwai, for a day. It was quite interesting, but worked out pretty well. I think Gizmo actually enjoyed being around other animals. Betty, a very boisterous beagle just wanted to play, so Gizmo got a little exercise running from her.
Bruce only had Christmas day off, but we got to spend some time with him and his girlfriend, Jenny. Later in the week we decided to see more of the area and drove north, with only a vague idea of a plan. We stopped at the Mystic Caverns up in the Ozark Mountains. It was really neat to be in a cave again, but felt weird to be taking a walking tour, not a crawling one. :) After that we continued up, past the state line, to Branson, Missouri. Jeff & I had never been there before, so my parents gave us the grand tour. It's a little like Vegas mixed Myrtle Beach, without the beach. And without the beachwear shops. And the casinos. And since it was winter, a lot of places were closed. We didn't really do much there, stopped at a Go-Kart track, went to a couple of shops in the downtown area, and then ate dinner. We got back to Arkansas pretty late, and we all slept in the next morning.
The next couple of days we just relaxed around the house, did a little more shopping, and got my parents hooked on Lost. We left there Thursday and drove the 14 hours back to Richmond. Maybe next year we'll host Christmas at our house.
Posted by Olivia at 12:30 AM | Comments (0)
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January 31, 2006A San Francisco treat!
Monday
Two weeks after Christmas Jeff & I hopped a plane to San Francisco for MacWorld. Well, for Jeff it was all about MacWorld, for me it was all about vacation and enjoying the sites in San Francisco. We left at the crack of dawn January 9th and arrived in sunny California by lunchtime. A bouncy cab ride to Hotel Nikko got us there before our room was ready so we left our luggage at the check-in desk and headed off to explore the city.
Hotel Nikko is located in Union Square, in the middle of downtown. We were within walking distance to most things so we didn't rent a car. Since Jeff had to be at the Keynote early Tuesday morning we went to the Moscone Center for him to check-in. Right next to the Moscone Center is the Metreon. It's an odd building with an assortment of resturants, stores, a movie theater. We decided to grab some mexican at Luna Azul before wandering around into the Sony & Playstation stores. The Playstation store was really cool; they had a console 'bar' customers could play games on. Even better than that was the Jelly Belly store combined with a interesting 'furniture' store that sold an odd assortment of plastic furniture, contemporary decorative pieces, and t-shirts.
We finally checked-in to our room, got settled in, and consulted a map to get our bearings. There was an informal Macintosh User Group dinner gathering later that evening so we had some time to wander the city before then. San Francisco has several public transortation options so we took BART (Bay Area Rapid Transit) a couple stops to get us closer to the bar. BART is very much like the DC Metro, so it wasn't too hard to figure out. A very intoxicated and possibly homeless man decided to help us out in buying our tickets though. It was kinda funny.
Tuesday
Jeff left about 5:30 Tuesday morning and with the time difference, I was awake and ready to go about 8:30. I didn't sightsee too much, just went down to the nearest Starbucks to grab some breakfast. After the boys finished at the Keynote and perused the show floor, they came to pick me up. John had rented a car for a couple of days so he offered to drive to Cupertino to visit Apple's headquarters. We were not allowed into the Apple Campus, but there is a merchandise store we spent quite a bit of time in. Lunch was at the Elephant Bar in Cupertino. It had a variety of foods and awesome jungle decor.
John had to turn the rental car in, back at the airport, so we went with him and took BART back to Union Square. At this point Jeff & realized we would be able to take BART from our hotel back to the airport and avoid another $40 cab ride.
Wednesday
Wednesday morning was the Adobe Users group breakfast. Adobe invited Apple User group members to this breakfast to preview their new or updated products and help advertise the Adobe User Groups which are starting to form around the US. Jeff & John went on to the Moscone center for a fun-filled day of sessions and computer-related stuff and I headed back towards the hotel.
I went in a few stores (Container Store, Crate & Barrel) before it started to rain more. At that point I went on back to good ol' Nikko to wait it out. After the rain subsided I grabbed some lunch at the nearest Boudin Bakery and continued my exploration. With as much time as I spent studying various maps (in the hotel of course), I had a pretty good idea of where things were. I ended up going to a couple of clothes stores, but not too much else. Most of the shopping out there is more high-end than I can afford, but that's ok, it was fun to look. In addition to the individual stores there are also several malls nearby. The one I went in, Westfield San Francisco Centre, is a 9-story mall laid out in circular form. Architecturally, the spiral staircases that run up the middle are supposedly the only ones in the world. The mall houses a 5-story Nordstrom complete with a restaurant, as well as over 250 other stores.
Later that night Jeff and I walked around some more, finding Chinatown, which, unfortunately, I never got any pictures of. Most stores were closing for the night, but the few we found open all carried the same merchandise. I was really hoping to find something unique, but anything worth buying was way out of my price range.
Thursday
Thursday I decided to be adventurous and see more of city, out of my walking distance. After consulting my many maps, the concierge and a nice lady in the BART station, I found myself on a 'street car' heading towards (so I thought), Fisherman's Wharf. Everyone I had talked to before the trip said that Fisherman's Wharf was definitely a place to play tourist, so I didn't want to miss it. Not wanting to look too touristy I had purchased a messenger-type bag to carry all my junk around instead of just a purse. I sat in the back of the streetcar with my camera slightly hidden below the seat trying to capture the scenery as it went by. So much for not looking like a tourist, huh?
A couple of people near me pulled out maps, so I did too, trying to figure out where we were. Unfortunately, it appeared I had gotten on the correct street car, 'F' but it was heading in the opposite direction. About 20-25 minutes into the trip we reached the end of the line, in Castro. I spoke to the driver who told me I could just wait there at the stop until he was ready to head back out. Luckily, I wasn't the only person doing that. Finally I was heading the right way! At least an hour and a half after I left the hotel I arrived at Fisherman's Wharf. Although unintentional, my extended trip allowed me to see parts of the city I wouldn't have otherwise, which was very cool.
Fisherman's Wharf was pretty neat. It wasn't too terribly crowded, which was nice. I started at Pier 39, which is home to the famous sea lions. I immediately walked to the end of the pier to see them, Alcatraz, and the Golden Gate Bridge. After getting my fill of the 'barking' animals I checked out some of the shops along the pier. Still unsure how I was going to get back to Union Square, and not having a bus schedule, I didn't spend as much time browsing as I could have. I stopped for a quick lunch at a large Boudin Bakery where they had a wall-sized map of San Francisco. I found out that the Trolley Car turnaround was fairly close by, so I wandered down the main road checking out all the sites. Saw my first
I ended up having to wait a while because only so many people can fit at once and the Powell Street trolley was very popular. The crowd had some entertainment though; there was a man sitting near the line playing guitar and singing. He couldn't sing very well, but he could play. It was finally my turn, and this Trolley car was packed. I found out that you can buy a one-way pass for $5 or a round trip pass, good all day, for $10. I stuck with the one-way, knowing I wouldn't get a chance to ride again that day.
I couldn't believe all the hills that Trolley car was able to go up and down! We stopped at Lombard Street, the crookedest street, but our view was blocked with all the tourists taking pictures of the street and then the Trolley. Ever wonder how many pictures you end up in that you'll never see? The ride took a lot longer than I though, but I rode all the way to the end instead of getting off at a stop closer to the hotel. By then it was about 4:30 and my feet hurt from all the walking I'd done, so I went back to the hotel for a rest.
When the MacWorld sessions were done for the day I walked up to the Moscone Center to join Jeff & John for dinner at Chevy's, a mexican restaurant with excellent margaritas!
Friday
Friday I leisurely made my way to the Metreon to pick up some more Jelly Belly's for the road and spend some quality book time in the courtyard until Jeff was finished with his sessions. He had scored me a free pass ($45 value) to the exhibit floor, so I got a chance to check out all the new gadgets and pick up some free schwag. Oh, and a spur of the moment purchase of Roller Coaster Tycoon.
Since Jeff had the rest of the afternoon free we decided to rent a car in order to see more of the city. We ended up with a red Jeep Liberty that we drove across the Golden Gate Bridge (missing the most popular photo-taking spot-we didn't know where it was) to Muir Woods, the closest redwood forest we could find. Good thing it was close cause we got there with only 20 minutes before closing time. We literally flew down the shortest path, quickly taking pictures and admiring the height of the trees. None were as big as the ones Brian's seen, but they were impressive anyway.
The sun was rapidly disappearing so we kept moving, driving up the coast, a view that was very reminiscent of Maui. Since it got too dark to see the ocean we turned around. We explored more around the Golden Gate Bridge, finding some good photo spots. Instead of going back downtown to find dinner, we stopped at a local italian restaurant in Sausalito. We were definitely the only tourists there; everyone seemed to know each other. But that was ok; the food was good and there was live entertainment. Sausalito is a really neat little town that I wish we'd had more time to see. Definitely a place to visit again.
The rest of the evening was spent packing, getting ready for our Saturday afternoon flight. We did end up taking BART all the way to the airport, which worked out great. By 10pm we were back in Virginia. There's so much we didn't get to see that I would love to go back, when it's not a business trip for Jeff. I always think it's funny that of all the places I've lives and visited, I still considered myself an East Coast girl, and would rather be here than anywhere else (Hawaii doesn't count ;) )
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Posted by Olivia at 11:11 PM | Comments (2)
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