Summer days

It's been a while since my last update -- mostly because it seems like all the days start to flow into one another. I've been doing a bit of Rosetta Stone, a bit of reading, a bit of watching Degrassi with Andrew (his new favorite show), etc. I tried a couple of podcast yoga workouts, and am thinking about getting a mat and getting back into it. I've read Mansfield Park -- which I think is the most useful (for me) of Austen's novels. And I've started some of the reading I didn't have time for last summer -- Raymond William's Country and the City, and Gissing's New Grub Street. And I've booked my first trip abroad *ever*: I'll be doing a language study program in Montreux, Switzerland, from August 26th to Sept. 10th. Exciting!

So that's what I've been up to, in a nutshell.

Except for last weekend, which deserves its own paragraph. Andrew's father came out to visit us on the Fourth, and we gave him the tour of campus and downtown Palo Alto (which was complicated by the recent fire, which made a building unstable, thus rerouting all of traffic, both vehicles and pedestrians). We ended up at this random Thai restaurant on the Fourth, hung out at my new favorite coffee shop, and then took a Whole Foods picnic dinner to the Googleplex to wait for fireworks. We waited for hours for a 10-15 minute display -- which was nice, but after seeing the Boston display, it's hard to be impressed. Thursday morning I met up with Andrew's father for tea & breakfast at the Stanford bookstore, then we wandered around campus until it was time to have lunch with Andrew. In the afternoon, we read in the Bender Room of the library, and then met up with Andrew for dinner -- falafel followed by the movie "Once" at the Aquarius. Recommended. Friday I had some free time to do my thing -- Farmer's market, groceries, reading, etc... Then we all went to Three Seasons for a huge dinner (I tried to warn them, but they just kept ordering more). Saturday we headed into the city and took the ferry to Tiburon (it passes by Alcatraz & stops at Angel Island on the way), where we met up with Rachel, Josh, and the baby. Yummy lunch at Sam's, wandering around downtown, ferrying back... then Andrew's sporadic complaints of not feeling well solidified into downright sickness. I made a batch of soup, while he slept... he had a headache and fever, so we assumed a flu-like virus... Sunday he and his father still insisted on the Santa Cruz trip, so Andrew huddled in the backseat, cringing with every bump, and feverish in the sun. It wasn't until Monday, when he was too incapacitated to go to work and called a nurse, that we realized he had been suffering from food poisoning. After this diagnosis, we were able to actually start treating the problem. He's still on a "version" of the BRAT diet. His personal interpretation thereof.

Luckily he's much better now.