It's very bright outside today, after a grey cloudy morning. Now the sun is shining and all the clouds are hanging low on the horizon -- if I look straight out the window it's just grey, but looking up from that is tree-tops and brilliant blue. It makes me want to be outside, which is unusual.

I had a weekend! It was fun, if not altogether relaxing. Saturday we (Jim, my mom, me) drove from Mountain View to Jenner, which is in Sonoma county along Highway 1. The drive was fun but wearing -- lots of steep winding cliff roads with beautiful views I couldn't look at due to being behind the wheel. I enjoyed the adventure aspect of it; what will be around the next curve? When we get to the top what will we be able to see? The sort of thing which is intensely neat at the time, but in retrospect mostly seems exhausting.

We did stop at a lovely outlook on the way and admire the view of San Francisco, which was all stripes of white and green and silver from that distance. Plus we saw part of the Blue Angels airshow from above, which was pretty neat.

Once in Jenner we located our B&B. We got the house, which was a long narrow thing with a kitchen at one end, a large living room (with wood-burning stove) that had a queen-sized bed against one wall, and then another separate bedroom for Jim and I. The back of the house was all sliding glass windows opening onto a deck, and the view was incredible. Jenner is where the Russian River meets the ocean, so out our windows was huge amounts of water, with various ducks and gulls and pelicans flying around making a cheerful racket. We unpacked, and sat around watching the sun set until our stomachs demanded food.

Dinner was in a nearby (six miles?) small town (population 750) called Monte Rio; we drove around until we found an open place which served food and then went inside. This was the Village Inn, another B&B on the Russian River. They had amazing food, including the best baked garlic I've ever had, and a really delightful pepper-crusted steak.

After dinner we drove back to the B&B, and curled up variously in the living room reading. Jim and my mom built a fire in the wood stove, and we kept playing with it most of the night, gleefully disregarding the users manual which told us to close the stove's door once we got the fire started. Pyromaniacs, every one.

Sunday was more driving, up the terrifyingly steep coast until we got tired, and then back down again. We stopped a few times along the way to take pictures, and once for a lengthy exploration of Fort Ross, which was a Russian colony in the early 1800s. The fort itself is entirely open to the public, so we spent a long while wandering through the wooden buildings (including many nifty storerooms with the original tools and such in them) and admiring the first Russian Orthodox chapel in the US, and climbing into the watchtower-ish things at the corners of the fort to peer out the windows. The view was incredible; the fort was sensibly situated in the hills above the only useful local harbour, so behind you was tall hillsides and trees, while in front of you the land swooped down to a beautiful beach.

Once back at the B&B there was more flopping around on the deck, watching three Calliope hummingbirds chase each other around and admiring the sunset. Some napping occured, but by 7:30 we were dressed and at dinner in the B&B restaurant. And oh, it was another glorious meal. Wonderful wild mushroom soup and a lovely salad with seared duck liver that was so rich I had to eat it in tiny bites to start, and for the main course I had glazed baby pheasant stuffed with water chesnuts and juniper berries. Heavenly. Dessert was trifle, with two-inch think layers of sweet cream and sponge cake soaked in sherry.

Sigh. Just writing about it makes me hungry again.

Monday we headed home, detouring only slightly to drive through Armstrong Redwoods State Reserve. This was an absolutely beautiful park full of very big trees. We drove slowly, with the windows open, and I took deep breaths of the greeny wood-scented air. Lovely. If I'd been less tired (and more dressed for the chill weather) I'd have gone hiking.

Now it's Tuesday, and I'm working frantically to close as many bugs as possible in my module before release tomorrow. I expect to be here forever. At least I'm in good company; everyone else is here too, and we're being bought Thai food. Working for a startup has definite advantages.