America Vacation 2007 (and 2008): San Jose

(Note: I've tried several times to upload pictures, and it's not working tonight, so I'll have to add the pictures later. Update: the pictures are finally uploaded, but smaller size than usual. As always, click on a picture for a larger version.)

On January 2nd, I flew from Portland to San Jose, California to visit family and stay with my cousins. I stayed much of the time at Elaine & Tim's house and also visited Vic & Mary's place (uncle & aunt). My other "grew up through childhood together beloved cousin", Paula, (sister of Elaine) also spent an extended weekend there with us.

Elaine picked me up at the airport on a beautiful, warm, California afternoon with the greeting, "enjoy the weather today-a storm's coming from Alaska tomorrow!" So we made as much as we could of the weather that afternoon and early evening. We went to a nearby park and played Bocce (an outdoor, Italian version of bowling-very fun!) and watched a beautiful sunset.

The next day we went to San Francisco to take our "What's Up Doc?" movie location tour. In spite of the beginning of the arrival of the storm and the rain it brought, we had a VERY fun time finding and taking pictures of locations from our favorite movie (our meaning "Elaine & I"-Tim,thanks for putting up with our craziness!). I have several pictures of that part of the trip, of course, but I'm going to make a whole separate entry for that adventure, possibly on my auxiliary blog. I'll keep you posted, so to speak.

Even though the weather got nasty (with wind so strong that it knocked down trees and cut the electricity at Tim & Elaine's house for several hours), Paula braved the storm and (thankfully!) arrived safely Friday evening. Much of the rest of the weekend was spent hanging out and playing games including Carcassonne, Ticket to Ride, and various new and old card games. I also showed pictures that I'd taken in Japan during different trips with visitors. Paula and Caitlin had to return home at the end of the weekend, and fortunately the storm had mostly passed through by then.

Other fun activities included playing a variety of funny Wii games ("Now what do I do with this controller?) and listening to old 45s of disco songs (you know, 7-inch 45-rpm records, those little records that only have one song on each side-they used to sell them so that when you heard a song on the radio that you liked you could just buy . . . oh, never mind . . . ) I had Mexican food three times and In-N-Out Burger, hurray!

So again, Elaine & Tim and Vic & Mary, thanks for hosting and for rides from and to the airport, and Paula, thanks for making a long drive for a short time to visit while I was there!!!! I had a great time!