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.

Saffron

On November 21, 2006 one of our kitties died. Her name was Saffron, more commonly known as "Saffy". She was about 11 1/2 years old and had been adopted by us in 1995 from Kitten Kaboodle here in Raleigh. Frank and Duncan picked her out as Duncan wanted a cat of his own (Cameron had Flower at the time and Kelsey would soon have Misty) and Frank liked her as well so he said he would take partial responsibility for her. (Of course, you know who ended up taking the most care of her!). She was the sweetest cat that I had ever met and she immediately took to Shasta who came into the house just a few weeks after Saffy:
[insert picture of Saffy and Shasta here].
While Saffy had been born in North Carolina, she flew to California in 1998, rode in the car from Mountain View to San Diego in 2000 and took a cross country trip back to North Carolina in 2001. She was a well traveled cat and except for "p**ping" on herself during the Mountain View to San Diego trip (which the kids still vividly remember) she always did quite well. She even recently weathered the middle of the night evacuation (in October) of Apex due to the EQ plant exploding!
But, when David and I got back from Reno on November 14th, she wasn't in the house and the kids didn't think they had seen her since the day before. I finally found her out in the yard on the evening of the 15th and while she looked a little thin, I thought it was just from being outside for 2 days. She seemed okay but as the days went buy I noticed that she was not eating and that she was hiding herself away from everyone. I took her to the emergency clinic on Sunday (the 19th) and they found a tumor in her stomach. They said it didn't look good, but she was still as friendly as ever. I took her to her regular vet on Monday evening and by then she was fading. She still would come to you and talk to you, but she was weak...and refused to eat. She died very early the next morning at home. Duncan heard her crying and went out to check on her and came and told me that she was crying and growling. By the time he got back downstairs, she had died. We had her cremated and she will join the remains of Ivy, Flower and C.B. on one of the kids's bookshelves (probably Duncan's if he wants her). The vet said that it turned out that she had Sepsis and probably the tumor had burst at some point and the bacteria from the dead tissue had gotten into her bloodstream and basically slowly shut her organs down. I'm sorry that she had to suffer and if I had known we would have had her put to sleep, but we kept hoping we could find someway to get her health turned around as she was only 11 1/2...she should have been with us for at least another 5-7 years.

So Rest in Peace, Saffy. We miss you and we won't forget you. Jewel is still looking for you and doesn't understand where you have gone.

The Mother Road and the Porsche

For about the last year, we have been looking for an ice green metallic Porsche 912E. The 912E was only made one year, 1976...and only 2099 were made. So, the chances of finding one that was the color that we were looking for with the sunroof (which I wanted) was kind of slim. We had only found one in the last year and it was too expensive. Well, imagine my surprise when perusing the 912 registry www.912registry.org and seeing an Ice Green Metallic 912E for sale in Reno, NV. David called the gentleman who owned it, a decision was made, tickets were bought and we were on our way to pick up our new car. (For those of you wondering, the Corvair will be sold in order to help pay for this new "toy").

We arrived in Reno on Saturday, November 11 and after picking up the car we headed south as there was snow forcast for the northern route. The first night we stopped in Kingman, AZ (we would have stopped in Las Vegas but there were no rooms available in our price-range [less than $300]). The next morning we headed out on Route 66 towards Flagstaff. Most of it is bascially desert, with little tiny towns tucked here and there. That night we stayed in Tucumcari, New Mexico...and old stop on my parents's trips across country. The next day we went through Texas and Oklahoma


and that night we stayed (we thought) in Ft. Smith, AR (where Frank grew up) but it ended up that we were actually in Van Buren. The last night we stayed in Nashville, TN because we wanted to see the Parthenon the next morning (www.nashville.gov/parthenon/):


The Parthenon has a full sized gilded statue of Athena within its walls:




We arrived home safe and sound 4 1/2 days after we arrived in Reno. And now we are a two Porsche family!