Day #5 – Last Day…

This is my last day in Foster City (San Francisco). There are beautiful blue skies and it’s short-sleeve weather. It’s going to be hard to return to Washington where the weather prediction for the next week is rain; every…day…rain.

Amber and I headed out early and went to San Mateo to check out the Three Bees coffee shop. Although they did have Mexican Mocha (add a little cinnamon), to me is was “just coffee”.

Patrick’s back home after his Spartan race – thank goodness he’s not as banged up as he was last time.

I should be home well before bedtime, and Mike and Jessica have already dropped Bailey off at my home (thank you!) so my “welcome home” committee is ready and waiting for me.

I finally got up enough nerve to try and paint Kate – but no way was I going to try and capture her cute little face. Hence this journal entry is either an abstract, or Kate playing with her socks:

 

Day 4 – Weekend!

Our Saturday started out a little rough! Patrick was participating in his first race of the day (Hurricane) and right out of the gate he lost one of his shoes in a mud pit and has to withdraw from the race. Disaster! Thankfully Amber searched the ‘net, found the same shoes in a store within driving distance for the second race and got Patrick back up and running. We’re waiting now to hear how the Patrick and his friend (Dave) did in the Super Spartan race.

As for The Girls, we headed out early and had some nice bagels at the House of Bagels (chewy!), tried to go to a local farmer’s marked (closed until spring) and ran some errands.

Amber took some time off to be with a mom’s group and I had a chance to walk the S.F. Bay Trail by myself (it’s a LOT busier on the weekend) and do a little painting.

To commemorate the It’s-It treat I’ve had here on two different trips (http://www.itsiticecream.com), today’s journal entry:

From the wrapper:  It’s-It is a name that will ring the bells of nostalgia for every long-time San Francisco resident. Invented in 1928 it is a part of all our memories and certainly was part of our growing up at Playland-at-the-Beach. It’s-It consists of a scoop of vanilla ice cream sandwiched between two old-fashioned oatmeal cookies and then lavishly dipped into dark chocolate coating. The entire combination was frozen and its unlikely combination of flavors was released as it slowly melted. Tastes deee-lish. Comes in vanilla, chocolate, mint and cappuccino (I’ve only had the vanilla, but I must admit that the coffee variety is calling my name).

The bad news? 5.5 oz. each, 340 calories, 18 g. fat and 17 g. sugar. Can I chalk it up to nutrition if it has 8% of my daily calcium and 10% of my iron?   LOL

 

Day 3 – Nice and Quiet!

Another nice quiet day. The weather is beautiful and after a couple of naps (Kate, not me), and a quick run to Costco, The Three Girls went for a two mile walk along the San Francisco Bay Trail. Oddly enough, this wonderful path goes along the San Francisco Bay! Beautiful walk, paved trail, a few bike riders, some skaters, and joggers; what could be better?

Patrick flew out of SFO heading for a both a Spartan and a Hurricane race near Temecula, CA. It’s crazy stuff; here the website if you’d like to investigate a little. http://www.spartanrace.com/ .

Below is my latest journal entry, showing our portion of the SF Bay Trail. Amber and Patrick’s house is marked with a yellow star in Foster City.

 

Kate Lynn O’Leary

My first grandchild will be four months old this week. My how they grow. Since I see Kate every month or so I get to see dramatic changes. She’s holding up her head now! Sitting in a bouncy-swing! Even sleeping a little better at night.

Lately one of her favorite toys (ok, other than mom!) is something called Freddie the FireFly. He’s a toy that hangs down from something. He has a gazillion wings, colors and textures. Some parts of him are crinkly, shiny, textured, smooth, mirrors – and did I mention COLORS?  I couldn’t resist trying to capture at least the essence of Freddie:

Available at Amazon.com  (lol)

 

Day 2 – In Foster City

My flight from SeaTac to SFO was delayed just a tiny bit by fog at my arrival airport – but it was fantastic to get here. There were blue skies!!  The O’Leary’s live in Foster City, which is about 15 minutes from the San Francisco airport. It’s fun to land here – you text them “I’ve landed” and they reply “ok, we’ll get in the car and head to the airport”.  I’m so used to being 1+ hours from the airport that a short 15 minute drive just doesn’t seem possible.

Little Kate is terrific and I got the chance to do a little babysitting last night while Amber and Patrick ran out for a dinner alone – just the two of them!

Today, Thursday, we’re spending time at home.  Of course, there *was* the obligatory run-to-Starbucks, and some grocery shopping, but we’ve been hanging close to Kate’s nap spot since then.

I’m loving the quiet time because I get a chance to blog – and work on my watercolor journal. My plan is to paint one picture for each day of my trip, and I’m not counting my title page.

Yesterday I spent some time waiting at the airport and trying to figure out what I’d like to paint, that represented my first day – a day spent mostly spend in airports. I was leaning toward a picture of a Virgin America airplane, but I’d done something similar for my recent trip to Arizona.  I was sitting there, thinking, and kept moving all my carry-on luggage around and it came to me – paint my luggage! So, here’s my journal entry for my first day of this trip:

 

Day 1 – fly from SEA to SFO

No matter when I take a shuttle ride to or from the airport, there always something that happens. This time, as you might imagine in mid-January, with rain, at rush-hour, there was a LOT of traffic. I was picked up in Lacey at 7:45 and it took us until 9:00 to get to just the Tacoma Dome – normally a 20 minute drive?

Thankfully none of this bothered me since I’m a bit obsessive about time (a bit obsessive?) and had already planed on getting to the airport three hours before my flight. Even with all the traffic problems, I still got through security and am now sitting at my flight’s gate with a mocha and scone and two hours to spare.

The elderly couple on my shuttle ride weren’t quite as calm about all this as I was. They got to the airport just 60 minutes before their flight and were a bit worried about getting a wheelchair and getting through security with a pacemaker. It was nice to see the airport folks helping this couple through security and such. It looked to me like they should have made it to their flight (to Hawaii!) in time.

This trip?  I’m flying down to visit Amber, Patrick and little Katie. Patrick is taking off for a day (two?) to participate in an athletic event – someting crazy wild and extreme – and Amber wanted some help with Kate. And heck, any excuse to be with Amber and her family!

Not only will I be hanging with, and visiting with Amber and family, I’m also hoping to do a few more watercolor journal paintings. I’m not sure how many I’ll be able to post in real-time, but I already fudged just a bit an pre-journaled a title page for this section of my travel journal:

Admittedly, this is not true watercolor, but it is made with water soluble brush pens, so I think that’s close enough. I’ve been taking a short online class in “calligra-fun” and this title page was created using the things I’ve learned in that class. I still need a lot of practice, so I’m hoping for many more title pages in my travel journal.

Going through security is always worth writing about. I usually don’t have problems (although I’ve had my liquids checked, my hands swabbed for explosive residue, and my suitcase opened once when going through customs here in the USA). But… wow… there are still folks who have never been through security, or they’ve never had to go through US security. In front of me were a family of about six people, possibly Indian or Iraqi, or…? Either way, they didn’t understand much English and it was a huge bottle neck in security. After them was an elderly lady with a cat in a carrier. The cat had to be removed from the carrier, and apparently the lady had a bag of stuff crammed inside the cat-carrier! So that had to be removed and gone through – item by item. It all appeared to be contact solution, makeup and such, but weird. The lady was getting upset about folks pawing through her stuff too. Naturally, she then wanted a pat-down instead of going through the more normal security. A female patter-downer had to be called in and that took time too. The good thing about all these folks in front of me? They didn’t give me a second glance and just rushed all my things through!

Enough for this post, I should be in the air about an hour from now, so that means about three hours until I see Amber and her family!

 

for my daughter

LOL

my ID "necklace"

 

We’re Glad for These Things…

It’s so nice to be back in the USA.  I even made sure one of the security agents at the San Francisco airport said “welcome home”. We’re so glad to have:

• Water that runs without a noisy pump also running
• Electrical things that turn on when you turn them on – there’s no extra switch for every darned thing near its wall outlet.
•  Ice in water!
• Soft beds.
• A big shower.
• Unlimited hot water.
• Our own soap.
• Our own pillow.
• Breakfast at IHOP.
• A clock next to the bed.
• Real mochas.
• Driving on the right side of the street.
• Fast internet.
• Knowing where things are.
• Not living out of a suitcase.
• A second pair of shoes!
• A full-size washer/dryer.
• A different color shirt!
• Food with enough salt (lol)
• Accents we can understand.
• Not having any plans for the day
• American toilet paper!
• Waking up and knowing where you are.
• Toilets that flush completely, the first time.
• Cell network service – no more airplane mode

 

Just One More Time Through Security

Let’s go over today and the previous two days:

Friday, leave Cork, Ireland and go through security, they require that I dig out my umbrella and prove it’s a real umbrealla; land in London, Heathrow and somehow manage to skip customs and immigration.

Saturday, leave Heathrow and go through security; they randomly test my liquids. Land in San Francisco. Of course in SFO they not only ask me to remove my glasses so they can compare me to my passport photo, but they decide to randomly go through my luggage! I’m glad I had all my underwear  in a little zippered cube!

Sunday (today), leave San Jose and get to go through security one last time. I’m wondering what will happen this time? I’m beginning to think I’m flagged in some security system?

So for Friday through Sunday, these airports: Cork, Heathrow, Heathrow (again), San Francisco, San Jose, Seattle!

 

Flight Back to SFO

Luckily it was boring, but it was a long flight. We left Heathrow airport, London at about 1:00 pm London time. The flight was 10 hours long. Even if all we did was fly around in circles over Heathrow, that would make it 11:00 pm. Add in the time change as we fly with the sun back to San Francisco and we landed at 3:30 pm after being awake for 20 hours. It was kind of odd… I woke up in the London hotel at 5:30 a.m. London time and was in bed here near San Francisco at 5:30 pm.  

Thankfully Amber got us all aisle seats so we could get up and walk around a lot during the flight – we did not pay to have the fancy bed/seats on the return flight. And Amber signed us up for “premium economy” seats – not too bad! They served us something to eat constantly, there was room for my legs/feet and it really wasn’t too bad.

I thought that the flight was only 9 hours long… then I started kidding with the gentleman next to me that it was really only 6 hours and that after 3 hours we were already half way there. I think it kind of worked! I didn’t watch any TV but instead worked on some zentangles, played some games on my iPhone, edited some photos on the baby laptop – and honestly it really seemed much shorter than 10 hours.

I had also been getting a bit worried about the volcano situation. It looks like several non-stop flights from San Francisco to London were cancelled, but we’ve heard that flights from London to SFO were OK. In fact, I checked the Virgin Airlines blog on 5/27, and their lastest post was from 2 days earlier and read:

Whilst the eruption of Volcano Grimsvotn did not disrupt any of our flights the latest advice from UK National Air Traffic Services (NATS), the Civil Aviation Authority and the Met Office confirms the volcano has stopped erupting and the high concentration ash cloud is moving away from UK airspace. In view of this very positive news we foresee no disruption to our flying schedules over the coming days.

Also in the lucky category, Patrick and Amber live about 15 minutes from the airport – so the drive to their home was blissfully quick. Once home we ran out for some quick breakfast foods, a stop at Taco Bell and then…Ahhhhhhhhhh – a comfortable bed! Good tasting tap water! Real mochas! And sleeeeeeeeeeeeeep.

Tomorrow (Sunday) I fly from San Jose (the other airport nearby) back to Seattle. It’ll be good to get home and crash in my own bed.