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.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
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<\/a>, 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<\/a>); eventually we found Sanborn Park and the Insect Fair<\/a>, 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.<\/p>\n 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.)<\/p>\n 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.<\/p>\n 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<\/a> 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.<\/p>\n