hi, yes, I know.

I'm so sorry. there's really no good excuse.

let's talk about san francisco. the trip out was kinda lame. I had a stopover in houston. it rained torrentially for about 15 minutes, which resulted in a nearly-hour-long tarmac delay. I could see out the window that there were about 8 planes in my field of vision that were ahead of us in line - turns out it was actually 15 and we had to wait our turn. jarrett had a direct flight that left 3 or 4 hours after mine and he got there before I did. so that was a long day.

it was about 9:30ish pacific (after midnight eastern - and it really felt like it) when we got to the rental car counter. jarrett decided to upgrade our car from a premium (which was already nice) to a convertible. 06 silver mustang convertible. fuck yeah.

so we drove the 40 mins or so to the hilton in san jose. it was okay. not great. we both had rooms that had 2 full beds instead of kings, which we had a "guaranteed" reservation for, so we made do for the night (actually, I wouldn't have cared too much but jarrett did) so they changed both our rooms the next day. the conference was kinda blah and it's more jarrett's thing than mine, so I took the afternoon on monday to drive to san francisco and look around. (I also needed to pick up our tickets for alcatraz on tuesday night.)

I'll tell you, driving on a freeway in central california is really not all that different from driving a freeway in pennsylvania. only the grass was all brown. unless it's supposed to be that color. but driving on a freeway in a convertible v6? I would have driven that thing all day long. and good thing, too, because after sending a few pictures to jarrett via camera phone, he wanted to have dinner there and I drove the hour back to pick him up and then went out again. we had alot of fun there.

tuesday, we saw alcatraz in the evening. it's one of those self-guided tours where you wear a headset. interesting, for sure. it's really windy up there and cold. I had to wear a fleece and was glad I wore long pants. wednesday, I dragged jarrett to the winchester mystery house. for those of you who don't know or don't care to click on any links, the house was built by the heiress to the winchester rifle fortune around an existing farmhouse. she was a lil bit freaky when it came to ghosts so when a psychic told her that in order for her not to be plagued by spirits of those who died at the hands of winchesters, she had to continually build onto her house and never stop. so she did. for over 30 years. 7 days a week, 24 hours a day. you get to tour 140-ish of the 160 rooms. most are fairly small, but it still is quite a journey. I had seen so many documentaries on her and her house, so I was totally psyched to see it for myself. I didn't feel any eery presences, unfortunately. or fortunately.

the big terrorist plot thingie happened on weds/thurs, so by the time my flight went out on thursday afternoon, chaos had broken out. I had to check my bag, which I don't ever do, because it contained my "liquids" - and I couldn't use my new $25 lorac lip stain because I was afraid that trying to sneak it on board would cost me both my freedom and the $25 I blew on it. and the lines? crazy. of course, my flight was delayed, partially because of the clogging of the runways and partially because other airports' runways were clogged, causing our plane to be delayed in even getting to the terminal. by the time I got home, it was 10:30. I got my luggage (45 mins later) and mark was nice enough to pick me up and take me back to his place where I had left my car.

so home free, right? not so much. 3 separate traffic jams on the schuylkill expressway. (for those of you not familiar with philadelphia roadways, this is one of the most infamous of highways getting out of the city - it's very narrow, curves alot, and is always clogged.) I got home to pick up bella at sean's (as he had to work the next morning) at about 2am.

bella had a fever. so I gave her medicine and she was up until about 3 or 3:30. took her to daycare at 8:30am and was on my way back home to get more sleep when I rear ended a lady who had stopped short in front of me, I think for a bird. I can't blame her, I would have done the same. but still. I clocked her. lucky for me, though, she only wanted to know if her brake lights still worked, and since they did, she wanted to take off. so I made her take my phone number and name (why?? stupid.) and then I went back home.

there were 2 bolts sticking out from the fender that was pushed in that made it nearly impossible to turn right or left without damaging the tires, and jarrett was nice enough to come by and take a look and help me fix it. we bent it out as much as we could and then took it to his house where he used a mini sledge hammer (!!!!!) to pop the fender back out. it's working pretty well. I can drive it (have been for a week now) and the immediacy of it being fixed is no longer freaking me the fuck out. so that's good.

later that day, daycare called and said bella needed to be picked up because of her fever. I took her right to the doctor's and they said she had hand foot and mouth - which is highly contagious. luckily it cleared up fast (by monday) and neither sean nor I had to take off work.

so that was my trip. pictures forthcoming. figure in about 5 weeks.

and for those of you who know my gmail address and have seen my status as "inked" - yes, I got a new tattoo on monday night. spur of the moment. it's a skull and crossbones on my left hip. pictures of that too when I get a chance. it's healing nicely.

I promise not to wait so long to post again.