Autumn fog

DALY CITY, CALIF. — Here I am on the West Coast. The past few days have been lovely. First, some preliminary observations. Friday morning, I watched some of CBS’ The Early Show, which I never usually see. Though I previously thought Julie Chen’s stints as host on Big Brother were a step down from any semblance of her journalistic integrity, I had gotten so used to seeing her on BB3 this past summer, that now I can’t take her seriously in any context. She was reporting on the U.N. resolution on Iraq, and I kept waiting for her to use the words “houseguest” or “eviction.”

Inflight entertainment. I watched the first half of Scooby Doo en route from D.C. to Houston, before I gave up on it. I love the cartoon series, but this adaptation was not fun to watch. However, the second flight onwards to San Francisco was a treat, with The Importance of Being Earnest as the featured movie. Fabulous. Also, the WB must have some sort of deal now with the airlines, ’cause afterwards they showed an episode of Reba. Blah. For kicks, I watched it with the Spanish audio, and it was actually entertaining.

Friday. I helped my parents set up their (by extension, I will say “our”) new Dell computer, on which I am working at this very moment. It’s quite swank compared to our previous clunker of a machine. Whee. Mmm, CD burner.

Saturday. Fun-filled, action-packed day. I drove down to the Dana Street coffee house in Mountain View and met up with the barkada: Sandro, Adrienne, Rebecca, Jeff, and Subarna. From there we set out to Grant County Park in San Jose. It was quite a long and winding road up to the park high in the hills, but the views on the way are spectacular. Despite the so-so weather, we had a great picnic, highlighted by pumpkin cake for Adrienne’s birthday. (I’ll post pictures when I get back to D.C.) Afterwards, we drove back down to Palo Alto to rent a movie, and watched it at Stanford. Kissing Jessica Stein: this was my second time seeing it; it’s a cute movie. Check it out. And to cap off the evening, we had pizza at Amici’s in Mountain View. Ah, good friends and good food. Does it get any better?

Sunday. My dad’s birthday. We had a nice dinner at home. My aunt and her family joined us for lots of good Filipino food, mostly from Goldilocks on Callan Avenue. It’s been a long time since I’ve had Filipino food, and so much food at that. Yay.