Away for a Week

View from the Marriott San Jose, July 2009
Originally uploaded by suzipaw

I'm in my hotel room in San Jose, stuffed to the gills with exceedingly, painfully spicy Thai food. "Mamma Mia" is on the tube, planes soar unnervingly close to the window as they approach the nearby airport, and the sun is slipping behind the coastal range, giving the mist clinging to the tops of the trees and office buildings lining the floor of Silicon Valley an apropos gold and silver glow. I had a nice walkabout earlier, marveling at how empty the downtown area is on a Sunday, and how many lovely gingerbread-bedecked Victorian homes and old wooden churches and beautifully tiled public buildings are butted up against parking structures or homely concrete office towers or skanky bars. It was probably a very charming little city for many years and at least they're trying to keep the charm alive with new public art and historical preservation, despite the aesthetic chaos.

It was a week of cleaning and sorting and reorganizing. The new water filtration system makes strange sounds and the kitchen floor is in even worse shape than before (I think M was getting a little frustration out on the baseboards), but the new paint, countertops, and just general level of cleanliness is wonderful. It's odd how strongly I feel about the granite countertops. I confess to feeling very protective of them and caressing them often with sponges and dish towels. I still haven't had the heart to put anything really hot on them yet. It's been like Christmas for a week straight, waking up to seeing them. I hope that feeling will continue for quite a while. I'm not jettisoning nearly as much crap as I thought I would, which I think is a good thing--my various acquisition decisions over time have held up! But next month will bring that process to the rest of the house. I foresee many hard decisions ahead, particularly with regard to my many potential craft room projects.

Nice tidbit: I witnessed our very own version of the Free Hugs campaign on a corner in downtown Santa Rosa, and wished I weren't driving so I could've had a free hug from a stranger. (That video and the cartoon of the bulldog bringing home a kitten make me cry without fail.)

Time to make my call home and get ready for bed. Hopefully I'll finish off Hitch Hiker's Guide tonight (what a fun read it's been!).