A visit from Renata, Matt & Forrest

Renata had been saying all term that she, Matt & Forrest would take a road trip to visit me in Santa Clara. Since this weekend was their last shot at doing so, they finally made it over. They didn't have any trouble getting to my place, although Forrest seemed to be completely exhausted from the previous day.

After giving him a little while to rest, we went to visit Matt's brother Jason at Stanford. He showed s around his dorm & then we went off-campus for lunch. Before eating, we spent some time poking around the UN store, which reminded me of 10,000 Villages. Jason treated us to lunch at this Mediterranean wrap restaurant, which was quite good. We ran across a bubble-tea place so I insisted upon going in, since it had been months since my last one.

There are an impressively high number of indie cinemas around campus but we didn't really want to spent 2-3 hours watching a movie when we could be enjoying the sun instead. While we were finishing off our desserts, I spotted a fellow Sun intern, Ryan Singer, who was wandering around town in an attempt to avoid writing an essay. I introduced him to the Sacramentonians before we decided to drop Jason back, since he had an exam for which he needed to study.

After depositing Jason in his dorm, we went to the Stanford Art museum, which had a most impressive collection of sculptures. I especially liked Rodin's The Gates of Hell, which is the most awe-inspiring piece of sculpture I have ever set eyes upon. Another interesting thing we saw was the Stone River, constructed out of hundreds of rocks formed into a curvy wall inside a long pit.

By this point it had started to get dark so we soon left, stopping to rent Bruce Almighty en route to my apartment. Renata & Matt made jalapeno poppers, which were terrific but very spicy. Fortunately, I had enough eggnog to deal with that :-)

I gave Renata my plant to take home, since I won't be here too much longer & she promised to continue the excellent job I'd been doing nursing it back to health.