San Jose

I recently went out to San Jose to attend some training for the document control software that I use at work. I hadn't been back to the Bay Area since I left in 2000, after Frank and I permanently separated, so I was both excited and anxious about being back there.

The good news is that I got to connect up again with my friend, Kathryn. Kathryn was a Godsend during my separation and divorce from Frank. She always knew when to propt me up and when to leave me alone. I don't think that I would have made it through those 2 years without her. I ended up being the Matron of Honor at her wedding in 1999 and while we have sporadically kept in touch, I hadn't seen her since she had visited San Diego in 2000. We had a really nice evening together where I got to meet her wonderful dog Inka, and then we went to Max's Opera Cafe http://www.maxsworld.com/ and I had a Niagara Falls Cake (dark chocolate cake with white buttercream icing)...something that I had thought about for 6 years! It was so good to see her.

I also did a little tour of memory lane...going by the house we had live in when we were last in Mountain View at 320 Palo Alto Avenue

and I noticed that they still had the screen door that Kelsey and I bought all those years ago (and Kelsey still remembers how we tried to bring it home in the Suzuki and the wind caught it and I had to put her in the back of the trunk to hold out to it so we could get it home!). I also went by our old house at 1797 Pilgrim Avenue where we lived from 1990-1991. It was still there and looked basically the same as well. I went by the old Target that the kids and I always used to shop at (and found See's Candies on the way!) and stumbled across my favorite restaurant on the West Coast:


I then went by where Adobe Systems used to be during the time that Frank worked there. I had been there so many times (especially as Emerald City Software, his previous company, had been located on the same street). Well, Adobe is no longer there and Google has taken over the old Adobe buildings and about another 10 blocks as well! It's amazing how many buildings Google has!

I guess time marches on! (and that was the Bad News!)

Lastly, I tracked down the Seti Institute for David (http://www.seti.org). David runs Seti on his home computer and I knew that it was in Mountain View so I went to find it. Unfortunately, they don't do tours, but at least I could get a picture for him. (They actually share office space with Symantec
All in all it was a nice trip...and makes me more appreciative of North Carolina.