Busy days
Friday evening, went and had dinner with various folks (and got to meet Jeremy & Amy's infant daughter Alyssa!), then played Carcassone. Fun, but tiring; even though it was a small gathering consisting mostly of people I know (and the people I didn't know left before the game started), it mildly taxed my social energy. A funny thing, though: I'm seeing hybrids everywhere. J&A have a pre-2004 Prius (with the old-style reasonable-sized rear window), and the hosts have a Civic Hybrid. Everyone I know who has a hybrid likes it, which is nice to hear but doesn't help me decide between the Prius and the Civic. Prius: sleeker exterior styling; higher tech; better MPG. Civic: more elegant dashboard interface; much better visibility from driver's seat; significantly less expensive. Tough choice. Stacy made a comment about having put a Civic and a Prius together to see if they would breed, but then remembering that hybrids are sterile.
Saturday I whiled the morning away with journal entries (as you saw) and reading others' journals and this and that and whatnot. Kam slept 'til very late; I'd have woken her, but she's sick and hasn't had enough sleep lately, so I figured she needed it. Eventually we wandered over to Hobee's for lunch, then down to Ethan Allen for more waffling over fabric choices, then down Los Gatosward.
I wanted to see how the rented Civic behaved on hills and winding roads, so we drove out along Highway 9 a ways; through downtown Saratoga, and in among the trees. Accidentally passed Hakone Gardens, which Kam's wanted to visit for a while and which I hadn't heard of; but before I could find a place to turn around, Kam started spotting little signs for a "YSI Insect Fair." We weren't sure what that was, but it sounded promising (and Kam guessed, correctly as it turned out, that YSI stood for Youth Science Institute); eventually we found Sanborn Park and the Insect Fair, where we saw (and even touched) a bunch of bugs and other critters, and I took a bunch of photos that I may post at some point when I have a chance to get them off my camera, and we got a bee made of twisted-up balloons. Also spent a while watching an owl that was visiting from another YSI program—it has an injured wing, so they couldn't release it into the wild, so it became an educational owl.
Then back up 9 to Susan and Cadir's birthday party; good to see folks. But I only knew the hosts and Tim and Heather, and there were a lot of people, and though the company and conversation and sunshine were nice, I needed to head home fairly soon. (Oh, and in the hybrids-everywhere category, S&C have a Civic hybrid.)
Spent a while looking at couch-fabric options we'd brought home (narrowed it down to two, but still waffling about those two); spent a while doing gardening-type stuff (including a somewhat desultory attempt at mowing the lawn, and a bunch of weed-pulling); read submissions for a while.
Also poked around online to find out whether espresso has more or less caffeine than regular "americano" coffee; turns out a 2 oz shot of espresso has roughly 100mg of caffeine, while an 8 oz cup of coffee has about 100-200mg of caffeine (or a bit more), depending on the beans and on which site you believe. A bunch of sites characterize that by saying that espresso has a lot less caffeine than coffee (sometimes they did this by comparing to a 12 oz cup of coffee); I would instead say that a 2 oz espresso has roughly the same amount of caffeine as an 8 oz cup of coffee, though possibly as little as half as much caffeine depending on the beans and such. Anyway, either way it's clear that one latte has a lot less caffeine than several cups of coffee, which is what we'd set out to determine. Also, one site mentioned that a 100g dark-chocolate bar (3.5 oz) may contain up to 200mg of caffeine, so I'm not as caffeine-free as I usually think I am. Though Scharffen Berger bars are only 85g, and I usually only have 1/6 of a bar on a given night, so that's no more than about 30mg of caffeine; but still a lot more than I thought I was consuming regularly. And I tend to have it after dinner, which is a bad time for caffeine for me. I may have to reconsider this habit.
(And btw, in case anyone's always wondered what the various Starbucks drinks are, see the Starbucks Drinks Simplified page. I'm glad to see confirmed that the "creme" drinks are non-coffee drinks; good to know for next time I run into one.)
Anyway. We went on to watch the last three episodes of season 2 of West Wing, which turned out to be dark and sad. I cried pretty much all the way through the last episode. Tough stuff. Good, but hard to watch. For me, anyway.
Speaking of which, Jay sent a DVD he put together of a slideshow of photos of Peter. I haven't had the energy to watch it yet, but soon. Thanks for sending that, Jay; much appreciated.
Today: reading submissions, I think. And editing. And returning those fabric swatches. And trying to decide on both a couch and a car, because it would be good to order both before I leave for my extended travel in four days.
