This blog used to get written every single Sunday. We had to get it done in time to email our news to Jason in Guadalajara. Jason always checked email at the same time, so we had a strict deadline. Then we moved to Switzerland and the time zone difference gave us until Monday evening to write the blog. We got lazy. Then we switched to sending mail to Jason via DearElder.com, and their deadline was Thursday. We got really lazy. Now Jason is back home, so our deadline died. If our blog gets really unreliable from now on, it’s Jason’s fault. 🙂

We’re still in California for my work. The Google campus has so many people talking about it (and writing articles about it) that I was expecting something larger than life. It turns out this is just a corporate campus. I guess I thought that people would be dancing through the hallways, singing and wearing bright colors. I was expecting to have lunch served by sushi chefs who put on a show like at Benni Hanna. 🙂 The truth is that we get free pizza and pasta. That’s cool and all. Maybe someday I’ll learn why some coworkers think this is so earth shattering. One of my coworkers tried to convince me that it’s more important than being offered health care. Hopefully HR wasn’t listening to that, right? 😮

Elisa and I went to go enjoy the free food together on Wednesday night. Elisa felt really out of place, with the crowds and especially with all the employees around. She was a little worried about being kicked out. I just felt really out of place and like I was invading the Googler territory. Plus after hearing a number of employees brag about how great they are, I sort of feel a little insecure, well dumb. She didn’t eat and she didn’t enjoy it at all. That’s not the kind of behavior you’d expect from a social butterfly. Elisa can cast a spell on people with her charisma, but what she really wants is to be one of the little old ladies that shuts herself in at home.

While Chad was working I was doing some day trips with my parents who came to visit for a few days. We went to the Santa Cruz waterfront. I could imagine our grandparents when they were teenagers playing in the penny arcade, walking down the boardwalk and going on the old wooden roller coaster. We walked out on the pier and saw the light hit the water so it looked like it was thick with millions of silver fish. Then we realized it really was. We took a old steam train into the Redwoods and it made all the Trees Are Our Friends’ (a children’s tape I sang on when I was 8) songs run through my head the rest of the day. We went to the beaches up the coast and watched the surfers. We also had some adventures using my dad’s GPS to direct us home. Note that the “Shortest Route” will take you on just about any road! We had a lot of fun.