Daylight Savings

View from The Fairmont San Jose, March 2009
Originally uploaded by suzipaw

…is here, and I'm so glad.

I arrived in San Jose bright and early this morning for our second event of the year. It's going to be a good show, one that I look forward to every year. I'm now holed up in the hotel room with bad TV after an evening walk with a friend, stuffed to the esophagus with take-out North Indian food. Spicy. I may regret it tomorrow. It's going to be a long week, so hoping to get a good night's sleep. I'll try to work in as much of the Sookie Stackhouse book and baby blanket project as I can, but there's a lot going on.

It's hard being away this week. M is starting his new, real lawyer life tomorrow. It's not a permanent position, but another new attorney has so much loan restructuring work that he's rented offices for himself and M and says he'll keep him busy. It's in a nice building in downtown Santa Rosa with a number of other attorneys. I'm sure he'll find a way to meet every single one of them. And hopefully get more contract work from them. So no more being a receptionist for him, and he'll teach just one more five-week course. The Small Claims clinic duty is also something he'll leave behind soon. I know he's nervous, and that's why I wish I could be home with him. But I know he'll be fine. It's what he's wanted for a while, been studying and sacrificing for. And frankly, it's what I've wanted too.

Not much to report lately--life has been relatively uneventful for me. Which maybe is a good thing, given the generally unstable state of the nation. Lot's of rain, which has been great for the roses and tulips. The frogs in the unfinished housing development where I walk Rex have also enjoyed it. Their croaking song trickles down to silence when I walk by, and I wonder how they know I'm there. Can they see me? Hear me? Feel my footsteps on the walkway up the slope from their little pond? One evening they weren't croaking at all, and when I got to the pond, I saw why--a sizable great blue heron was towering motionless above them, eyeing me as I walked by. What would a frog's perception of a heron look like, I wonder?

Speaking of frogs: In anticipation of our separation, on Sunday we hurried through our chores in the morning and left the house just after lunch, taking the Cadillac out for a cruise to the Marin Headlands overlooking the Golden Gate bridge. There was no fog and hardly any wind--a beautiful day. We drove through the Headlands from the aptly named Hawk Hill down to the beach and Point Bonita lighthouse, then through a disconcerting tunnel neither of us ever knew existed under the coastal hills to Sausalito. What a cute little town that is! But the tourists were out with the sunshine--including us, of course--so fighting our way along the crowded sidewalks just to ogle the odd art galleries and yogurt shops and views of the hills to the north and the City to the south tempered the quaintness a bit. So we headed north then west through San Rafael and out to Pt. Reyes for dinner. It was nice driving through the beautiful green countryside, unplugged from TV, computer, cell phone service. Even the radio was just so much mumbling static.Oh, and the frog reference for the Headlands visit? On the road down to the Headlands there was a classic sign that I wished I had snapped, something along the lines of "slippery when wet--beware of frogs." Eew.