obsolete vernacular

Yesterday morning I was thinking I hoped it wouldn't be one of those overblown weather events. I took this picture of our neighbor's house.



Here it is this morning:



We watched several movies yesterday. I watched Fellowship of the Ring for the first time in quite a while. Today I'm hoping to fit the other two in, or at least The Two Towers. My roommate and his girlfriend are trying to study though so we'll see. I'd rather watch them on the tv than my laptop.

I realized that I missed the anniversary of my first Livejournal - started it and joined the Harry Potter community back in Jan. 2003. It doesn't seem that long ago! I have been lucky to have met lots of fun, smart people through LJ. I'm not on here nearly as much - you're more likely to find me on twitter or sometimes tumblr - but it was a great place to start. <3

(Also posted at lj.)

I recently was in San Francisco, where I saw a number of old friends including some who have no online presence, which I cannot fathom. The first few days I stayed downtown, near Union Square. My friend Nancy likes to walk and we did lots of walking around the city. We went to Telegraph Hill and climbed to Coit Tower, where the views are amazing.



We also walked along the Embarcadero, went to Alamo Square which has some lovely Victorian homes, ate dinner in the Mission District, etc etc. The next day we drove to Half Moon Bay to see a friend I hadn't seen since high school. The drive was really pretty and less citified than I expected. We returned to the city and stopped at Cliff House near Ocean Beach, where the views again were lovely. This is the remains of Sutro Baths, one of the old attractions at the beach.



There was more touring and eating. Nancy left the next day and I met up with verity at the coffee shop where she writes, which is a great spot in the Mission District. She looks great, SF life is agreeing with her.

I stayed the rest of the time in Fremont with another old friend. She took me to Chinatown, where her father grew up and she spent time with family when her family would go back to visit. I got several squished pennies, which are some of my favorite souvenirs because they are cheap and tacky and SO FUN. I put them in my new squished penny passport.

Pam is also big on walking and hiking so I suggested we see some redwoods. She decided we should go to Big Basin. We hiked for several hours in beautiful country and perfect weather. Here is one of the trees we saw:



The rest of my pictures are here.

Then I went to a sales conference where I survived the team building (so much hate for those, pushes all my anxiety buttons) and drank a lot.

Then I came home and imaginarycircus, her husband and some of his friends and I all saw Avengers at the IMAX 3D and it was AWESOME. I loved all of the heroes except I wish there had been a little more girlpower. Oh well, classic comics and all. That's a minor quibble. AWESOMEx1000