I am ever so ready to be back at home in Charlotte, which is where I’ll be at 11:30 tonight. 🙂 I miss Brad, Rascal, my bed, and my kitchen. This probably goes without saying, but this conference hasn’t been very blogger-friendly in the sense that I have had zero time to do anything blog-related, hence the lack of posting this week. Here is a post I started writing last Saturday night before the conference took over my life.
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Last night’s dinner went completely undocumented. I ate alone, in a restaurant, for the second time ever in my life. I’m staying in San Jose at a Holiday Inn near the airport. I waited too long to register so all of the conference hotels near the convention center were completely full by the time I booked my hotel. Luckily, there is a light rail that I can use to get into the downtown area.
I woke up super early (by west coast time), had a Kashi pumpkin spice flax bar that I brought from home, then hit up the gym.
The hotel gym is a little sad. It has two treadmills, an elliptical-esque type thing, a stationary bike and NO free weights. Thank goodness there are plenty of strength training moves you can do using your own body weight. I ran three miles, then spent another 30 minutes doing pull downs (on the only weight machine), stomach exercises, pushups, tricep dips, two different kinds of lunges, and an alternative squat method where you only stand on one leg and try to touch your toe with the opposite hand.
The hotel restaurant is modest, but has a few things on their menu I can live with. I ordered plain oatmeal (instant) with a banana yesterday morning. It also came with raisins (which I added) and brown sugar (which I did not). I also whipped out my stash of Justin’s almond butter and squeezed half a packet in the center.
This was an enormous bowl of oats and I only finished a little more than half of it.
No coffee today, I had a Tazo green tea instead with lemon.
I didn’t have any conference related activities today so my friends Jon and Heather, who live in San Francisco drove down to San Jose to pick me up. Jon is a coworker and friend of Brad’s and he and Heather used to live in Charlotte. Now they live in San Francisco and he works out of the west coast office.
They just renovated and moved office locations so he showed Heather and I around the new space.
What an awesome kitchen, right? Swanky. 🙂
We spent the rest of the day getting Heather and Jon’s new house ready for their baby. Jon put the crib and stroller together while Heather and I arranged the bedding and went to buy a mattress. This was a good lesson in how complicated baby stuff is. Who knew infants and toddlers needed different firmness in a mattress. Apparently you can buy one that can be flipped for different firmness on each side OR you can buy two mattresses. Heather opted for the flipped version.
We also made pizza with a ready-to-bake crust, pasta sauce, mozzarella, red onions, and green peppers. No photo to show but I was impressed that we could pull this off with only tinfoil and plastic utensils. They haven’t moved anything into their new house yet, so we had to improvise with rustic culinary skills.
I thought our next trip was going to be the hospital when Heather started having contractions…like more contractions than usual. But everything was fine after she waited a few out. Whew! This baby stuff is way complicated. Did you know you’re not supposed to call the doctor until you’re having a contraction every five minutes, each lasting an entire minute consistently for an hour? I didn’t, but now I do.
Our next trip ended being to Baskin Robins because the mommy-to-be had a craving for ice cream.
I got a kiddie cup of pumpkin (!) and apple pie ice cream. I’m usually a chocolate girl, but I couldn’t resist this flavor combination. So good.
After waiting for the satellite guy to hook up their new satellite dish, we headed to Heather and Jon’s current apartment, which is inside the city.
Jon and I tried a Zinfandel from the local area. Heather, of course, abstained.
Besides showing me around their apartment, I also go to look at baby clothes to my heart’s desire, including the “coming home from the hospital” ensemble. This hat is so appropriate for the baby of a dad in the tech industry. It’s an inside joke. Brad, you’ll be happy to know that I “got it” immediately.
For dinner, we caught a cab to Bistro St. Germaine, a French tapas restaurant.
The set-up really reminded me of a sushi restaurant Brad and I love in Seattle. Perhaps because of the wooden rod wall (?).
The restaurant was very dimly lit, which created a wonderful atmosphere but not-so-good photographs. I refuse to turn on a flash in a small restaurant so be prepared for some blurry photos.
The happy parents-to-be 🙂
Bread – 1 bite
The first green stuff I had all day. Perfect.
A very blurry bowl of onion soup
This was possible some of the best I’ve ever had, but I’m not usually a huge fan of onion soup so I don’t have a lot of experience.
Butternut squash ravioli with vegetables…delicious.
Filet with parsnips and mussels in garlic white wine sauce in the background
melt in your mouth Beef Bourguignon
Caramelized apple tart
I don’t remember the name of these French cookies but basically this dessert consisted of chocolate, ice cream, and very hard (kind of a stale consistency?) cookies
The food at Bistro St. Germain was so delicious (French food is one of my very favorite cuisines), but the dessert was easy to pass up.
However, the highlight of the night was catching up with Heather and Jon.
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See you back in Charlotte! 🙂