Last Post of the Night: Ocean Beach in the City

(with "the City" being, of course, San Francisco)

Lily was asleep when we arrived. She woke as I was putting her in the wrap, but she was quite content to stay in the wrap the whole time we were there, making my job just that much easier :D Being at the beach in thick fog means I have to keep an even sharper eye on my kids, and only having one to keep an eye on was just fine with me!

We ran races, we investigated the statues, we watched the surf, we collected rocks, and we enjoyed the fog that was SO THICK that we literally got wet just walking through it.

I had a hard time picking which of the pics of Jack to put up. He's just so darn cute!

After an hour, we went to join Tim back at Node Knockout. Parking was a little tricky; the signs posted on the street had different instructions for different times of the day and different days of the week. As I was getting my kids out of the car (and Jack was dilly-dallying getting out), I commented to the guy standing nearby (waiting for a cab?) how hard it is to figure out if it's legal to park there, ha ha. He said "Yeah, that tow truck in front of your car is just waiting for you to walk away."

*gasp*

He was right! I'd seen it there but just couldn't fathom that it was waiting for me to walk away. I quickly re-read the signs and realized I had 20 minutes until I could park there legally. I got Lily back in the car and told Jack to buckle back up. As I was getting into the driver's seat, I noticed that two official-looking vans had stopped, on in front and one behind my car. They drove away as I did. WHEW! I was so glad I talked to the guy.... but then I was annoyed that he hadn't volunteered the info without being talked to.

Drove around for 20 minutes trying to find a place to park. (I miss Texas...) Finally parked back in that exact same spot, no tow truck in sight :D

Next post: Little Miss Independent!

San Francisco and Node Knockout

Tim's work is dealing with some revolutionary programming called Node.js. It's javascript on the server, which is remarkable b/c it always before only ran in the browser. Tim understands it pretty well and has been helpful in getting it publicized and in shaping its development. The guy who started it lives in San Francisco, and that is the biggest reason we now live here. Node is growing like crazy, and we hope it will be our ticket to fame and fortune someday, but for now it is still beta and changing too often to be doable for a large business. (So, that said, Tim's job is to make sure that with all this growing and changing, Node ends up being something that his company can use for their software; they get an inside voice in an awesome new platform, and Tim gets paid to work on Node. Win-Win!)

Anyway, Tim got to be a judge in a Node contest on August 27th. We got to go up to the City (AKA San Francisco) and explore while Tim was at another company (also in the City) chatting it up with the Noders. We took these pics there near Ghirardelli Square:

Lily was rather sleepy... but Jack was happy to try to help her! He loved exploring and had to be reminded a couple of times to stay close. I finally had to remind him that there are horrible people in the world who steal children, but he's safe as long as he stays close. He was MUCH better at keeping close after that :D

A statue of a mermaid nursing her merbaby would only be found in San Francisco, hippie capital of the world :D

We donated money to the street musicians and danced to their music, explored the boutique shops with frilly girl dresses and neat European toys, and were headed down to the beach when Tim called and said that some other guys had their kids there and he'd like us to come, too. So we went to spend some time with him and eat free food :D We walked into the building and were greeted by little boys between Jack's and Lily's age, playing on their Daddies' smartphones. It cracked me up, but made me feel a little better, seeing that other programmers' kids also get their fair share of computer know-how :P (As a side note, simply being the kid of a programmer is rather rare. Most programmers don't reproduce. We're not going to repeat here the jibes about the social skills or lack thereof.)

Jack had a blast playing on the arcade-game machines the company had there, I had a blast eating the food, and Lily had a blast napping, nursing, and playing with the ping-pong balls :D I even got to knit a little! At the end of the evening they had live music. It was a rock concert, in a typical business office. I found the whole idea hilarious :D Like a typical rock concert, it was LOUD. They had free earplugs for our protection :D I put some in, I put some in Jack's ears and he liked them, I put some in Lily's ears and she didn't like them. Jack and Lily loved dancing in the very front, until Lily found the little amps all taped on the floor in front of the band, and nothing I did could distract her from trying to investigate those, so we had to say goodbye to the live music and go back to the arcade games.

We went back the next day for more free food :D