Down by the Bay...

We're back from a 9 day trip up to the Bay area - 4 nights in a dorm room in Berkeley and 4 nights in a motel in Stanford. I missed my kitchen.

It was a nice trip - Matt had a workshop in Berkeley and B and I explored the campus, as well as going in to San Francisco twice. In San Francisco we visited the Modern Art Museum and took in the Frida Kahlo exhibit. Bronson liked the monkeys. We also went to the De Young and saw the Chihuly exhibit - I really liked this one, it was really neat. See pictures of it here http://www.chihuly.com/

(these photos courtesy of Chihuly's website)

Bronson really enjoyed the Berkeley grounds, he hasn't had much of a chance to play with fallen leaves and needles, and he made lots of piles around campus of these. He also found many half cool pine cones, and squirrels got quite upset with him invading their turf, and stood in low branches chattering at him. But, the best part of Berkeley is their mascot - the bear.

Our dorm room in Berkeley overlooked the Greek pavillion, where concerts are held. It sounds like you're right in the stadium, it's so loud in the room, and it was too warm to shut the windows. So, not only did we get to hear the warm ups in the afternoon while we tried to nap, but the actual show, screaming audience and all would be later that evening, while we (well, B and I) tied to sleep. The first show was John Cougar Mellencamp, it was alright because I recognized some of the songs, though the women screaming was a little much. The day we left was Dolly Parton - I was glad to get out. I'm not one for country.

On to Stanford in Palo Alto. A very interesting place, much more us than Berkeley. By the time we got here, I was tired, however so we did not do too much sight seeing. We saw the beautiful campus and the amazing cathedral in the middle. The campus is huge, 2nd largest single campus in the world, second to Moscow, Russia. We went to the nice outdoor mall and saw nice relaxed computer people who were on break from Google, meeting up with the wife and kids for lunch. Everyone here wears their phones clipped to their ears, and are most likely wealthy, but not in a showy way. Matthew was excited by Silicon Valley "there's the Sun headquarters... you know what they say about Sun...chuckle chuckle" and "There's the company we bought our oscilloscope from!" It was nice, great art store near the motel, but the motel had an outdoor pool that was not heated, which put a damper on the stay for me. We even heat our pools down in So Cal - why would you not in the cold cloudy Bay area!!! To be fair, Palo Alto had "civilized weather" as Matt put it, but still!

Anyhow, we made the 7~ish hour drive back last Saturday. B was great on the drives, on the way there we stopped at a few rest stops to play soccer, but on the way back we stopped mostly for me needing to eat and visit the washroom - which brings me to my news, and proves to me who reads my blog and who just looks at the cute pictures - we are having another baby. I am 8 weeks pregnant and quite ill, but yes, alas Bronson will be a big brother and I will have to cross out the "You don't have these" notes I wrote in to his books when they say "Here is my sister/brother".

In yet other news, my good friend Christina (Spence) Proteau is in the new edition of Sports Illustrated profiling some golf thing she was at. She represents team Canada in international womens golf play and is pretty good at it :) So take a look and I cam probably get her autograph for you if you want... I've been saving them up over the years :)