Pleasant Hill Pickett's - Day One

Marilyn waiting to board in Newark

We are off on a one week trip to Northern California.  Our first four days will be spent with Sean, Julie and Sam in Pleasant Hill and the last three days with our friends Bill and Barb Crowley in Petaluma.  We left the rain and storms behind in Rochester to arrive in sunny California to a pleasant 68 degrees in San Francisco and a summery 80 degrees 30 some miles inland in Pleasant Hill.  On Friday, our first full day, the temperature reached 98, but as the saying goes, "It was a dry heat."  Saturday should be the same with a nice cooling off by Sunday.

The day we arrived was Sam's last day of school.  Julie had taken the day to be with him as he went through his promotion to fourth grade.  As I have come to expect, she had numerous lovely snacks ready for our nibbling and Grandma and Sam got right to them.   Since we had gotten up at 3:45 to make our 6:00 flight, we were both exhausted.  I kept falling asleep in the most comfortable rocker and foot stool ever--Ikea acquisition--and we hit the hay a little after 8:00.  I slept so soundly that I only got up once during the night and when I did, I initially had no idea where I was.  Lovely sleep after a long day.

On Friday Julie went into work.  She is in a particularly challenging time with many tight--perhaps impossible--deadlines in an implementation project.  The rest of us just lollygagged around during the morning.  Sam and I enjoyed a couple of bocci ball games while Marilyn enjoyed the seemingly always sunny backyard and patio.  After lunch and a quick nap--for the adults, not Sam--we decided to go bowling at a nearby bowling alley.  

The results were a little different than we had expected.  We got in on a Thursday afternoon $2.75 a game special and were given an alley between a very good bowler--last game was 266--and a group of beer drinking, screaming women who apparently had the afternoon off from their jobs in a nearby warehouse or something similar.  More than that, we didn't anticipate that Grandma Marilyn would turn out to be a turkey...well she bowled a turkey:  three strikes in the tenth frame.  Who knew?  The rest of us had had enough bowling but she kept whining about another game...and putting a little loose change on the outcome.

We returned home to spend some time with Sam's new cats who joined the household the first of the year.  Miko is very personable and enjoys interacting with people.  Monkey on the other hand is more like a cat.

After a yummy dinner of takeout from Los Panchos, we welcomed Julie home from working late.  After Sam went to bed, Sean got me caught up on two more episodes of "The Walking Dead," my new guilty pleasure.  Julie plans on going into work Saturday so she can be with us for Sam's Cub Scout promotion ceremony Sunday afternoon at a local air field where a B-17 is on display.

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