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Today was extremely busy for me. I woke up at 6 (4 Utah time) to get a quick workout and then I had an internal meeting and made it to the partner conference by 8. It was 8 hours of meetings and networking until it was time for shooting which was our team activity. Tim and Ed had never shot before. It is very rare for me to do, and 3 others were seasoned shooters. We all had a really good time. It was definitely an experience!

We also went to Death and Taxes which was a delicious restaurant. We had a great time chatting. I love my team!

I barely connected with Lily today so I’m about to call her now so apologies for not providing updates on her end!

Today I woke up early, took the luggage rack of the Highlander, unpacked my suitcase, then repacked my suitcase and then headed to the airport for my trip to Raleigh for our partner conference and QBR.

On the plane I almost finished reading “The Five Dysfunctions of a Team” which was awesome and all about how to create trust on a team and focus people on results (getting buy in by fostering debate and getting people’s opinions before setting a course), and then not only holding people accountable, but fostering a culture where people hold each other accountable. It gave me so many ideas about leadership.

When my plane landed, I saw that Lily had sent a text message about an earthquake. It totally freaked her out and Basil went nuts and barked up a storm. Lily heard a loud noise and the house shook hard. Then it happened 2-3 more times but with decreased intensity. Lily was so scared and called the city, but they didn’t know what it was. Lily knew she wasn’t making it up because on our Ring-doorbell feed, other people reported feeling it too. I also found it reported later on this website. Lily was so rattled. Her anxiety was already very high and the earthquake sent her over the edge. She called me scared and rattled. Still, she pulled it together and had a very productive day, did music practice with the kids, and got the kids to bed at a good time. The weather was also crazy. It was cold and windy so Lily took a warm bath to warm up. It was just a hard day for her, and I felt sorry for her, but we did have a nice long chat before we both went to bed, which was really nice.

On my end, I got dinner at a Thai place with colleagues (Max Bastian, David Lee, Derek Tuimauga) and also worked back at the hotel. I went to bed early so I could wake up at 6 (4 Utah time).

Also, it appears this is something Lydia made in school that Lily took pictures of today and our fruit trees are blooming which makes me super excited.

Today we were out the door around 6 for our long drive from Tacoma to Orem. Lily wanted to do the first leg, and then give me the second leg of the trip. I have to say, Lily got the hardest part, and navigated it perfectly. And what was the hardest part? Within an hour of leaving, we hit a snow storm going through the mountains on I-90. At one point we saw a sign that said, “all vehicles chain”. We were already most the way up the mountain and we didn’t have chains and the snow was sticking to the ground. We didn’t feel we had much of a choice, so Lily just drove very very slowly, and very very cautiously, and we made it over the summit and down the other side without incident. I was so relieved! I can’t believe I was thinking we could have drove to Seattle in the winter! It’s a good thing Lily talked us out of it!

Once we were out of the snow storm, we stopped in Yakima for breakfast. Yakima had a sign saying it was the Palm Springs of Washington which cracked us up as we drove around it just because we didn’t know what about the town would make it comparable to Palm Springs. I told Lily that being like Palm Springs was an important communal illusion for the community to live under to give their lives meaning and purpose. This was a joke that was referencing the mind-blowing audio book we were listening to by Earnest Becker called, “The Fear of Death.” Lily chose it. She is my conduit to so much knowledge. The book blew my mind (especially since Becker wrote it while dying of cancer and it won the Pulitzer prize) and took the perspective that everyone is clinging to illusions (I prefer the word constructs) such as religion, social structures, routines, hobbies, beliefs etc, which are all fictional, but that are nevertheless necessary for functioning well. The person who spends too much time thinking about life’s absurdity and chaos, who is not propped up by illusions, might be closer to the truth than others, but is also unable to function well. So the neurotics in our society are those unable to properly adopt illusion (which is happening at an increasing rate due to the decline of religious fervor) or process the reality of absurdity through artistic expression, and healthy people are those able to buy into illusion, especially those reinforced by the community and/or able to process the reality of absurdity through artistic expression. As illusions are a necessary part of functional living, the question then becomes which illusions to adopt, and Becker submits that illusions should be judged on how much freedom, dignity and hope they afford. I prefer the word constructs to illusions because I think a real debate could be made on what is real (I’m not certain meaningless chaos is the only one sure reality), and why constructs, even if we create them, become real etc, but the underlying insight in his book is incredibly thought provoking. I’m unnerved by the idea that literally everything in my life that gives me stability is an illusion. But I’m comforted to know that even if that is true, a key to happiness is leaning into healthy illusions and/or engaging with the possibility of entropy, but processing it through artistic expression to help you cope with it and put your human meaning-making touch on it. Anyway, I LOVE sociology which is why I chose it as my minor in college and the book really got my wheels spinning. I also do personally believe in God (based on specific occurrences in my life I take as evidence that I feel can be explained in no other way), but even if their is a God, I believe They are so mysterious that They can only be understood in metaphor and illusion, so most of Becker’s theories would still hold, with the exception that with a loving God in place, hope would be there without us needing to create it. But either way we can create hope through illusion and artistic expression (to process the reality of absurdity when we do dive into it), and thus live happy lives.

In Yakima, we ate breakfast. While waiting for the food, I interviewed the kids about their reaction to the snow storm as well as their favorite part of the trip.

Lily drove 9 hours and then I took the wheel and got us home. We got in around 11:00. On the drive home, Lydia spent almost an hour entertaining her siblings. It was such a delight to listen to. Here is a sound recording:

In the morning I drove to Seattle to spend time with my Friend, Lesi, his wife Zoe, his two kids Ethan and Chloe and his mother. Amazingly, traffic was perfect. Lesi cooked me a great breakfast sandwich and we talked about work, life, family, kids etc. Lesi is still working hard and with abnormal hours due to working with a Chinese company (that’s in a different time zone). Chloe taught me all about mallard duck from a school project she created (including a 3-dimensional duck she crafted). Ethan was equally adorable. It was also really nice to chat with Zoe and Lesi’s mom.

After a super pleasant visit, I went back to Clark and Swathi’s where I found Sruthi, Swathi’s sister and her new (to us) dog Cocoa. Cocoa is a pit bull mixed with something big (great dane?) and is a gorgeous dog that everybody loved. It was great to spend time with Sruthi (she is one of the few people I know who reads more than Lily)

A little after I arrived home, I took the kids to the park with Sruthi. It was cold and soon at least one kid had to pee, so we went back home (just across the street) and had a playdough party! The kids made different food items and then I sold them the item from a store while I talked in a funny voice and cracked jokes. It was a really good time.

After the playdough party, I put the kids on a TV show.

Then I joined Lily who was visiting with our good friend Julie Grant. Wes, her husband, recently quit Amazon to fulfill his dream of building homes and now they are under contract to sell their home (which they put a lot of work into). Julie is full of positive energy and very fun to talk to.

After our visit, I played, “the floor is lava” with the kids and then we put them all to bed and Lily and I packed for the road trip the next day.

What a good trip we have had!

We woke up early and got out the door with Lydia, Mary, Soren and Clarissa. Joanna stayed home to watch Ammon and Meera to simplify things and so we didn’t need to take two cars. First we went to Deception Pass in Washington, drove over the iconic bridge and went to the West Beach (I think it was West Beach) Amphitheater where there was a beach the kids played at.

They all found rocks they loved.

After our brief stint at Deception Pass, we went to Tulip Town. Lily met up with her friend Amy there so they walked around together while I went around with the kids. Lily said she and Amy connect really well and she had a great time chatting about Fascism, Canada (as in move there if the US becomes fascist) and other topics.

I rode the trolley with the kids and then walked around the tulips with them. There was a sign saying most all of their tulip crop died because of flooding last year, which is really sad, but it was still really fun to walk around.

People had blue lips because of the blue popcorn they ate. I made the dad joke that their two lips are blue lips.

After walking around I ate with the kids. They happily talked for about an hour at this table. Then Soren impressed us by playing a boy much bigger than him in connect 4 (a giant game almost as tall as Soren) and beating him.

When we got back to the house, we heard that Ammon and Meera played so happily together all day. The also got to watch some movies since Friday is Meera’s TV day.

Here is more Foosball action!

We had such a great time today with Clark, Swathi and their kids Soren annd Meera. Clark and Swathi left in the early afternoon to catch a flight for their wedding. But before they left, we chatted with them, I worked out with Clark, and we ate and admired the bread and potato leak soup that Clark made. We also were grateful for Joanna who helps them around the house and helped take care of the kids as well (enabling me to nap in the afternoon).

The kids had so much fun at the Foosball table!

They also had so much fun playing, “the floor is lava!”

After a pasta dinner (already prepared for us, thank you!), we went to Bliss ice-cream. It was incredibly tasty.

Today we left by around 7:00 from Jere’s place in San Francisco. It was so nice of him to host us, and we so enjoyed staying with him! He’s still working for Dexterity doing exciting things with robots.

We were driving all the way to Tacoma which is a 12.5 hour drive. Lily was an absolute warrior. She drank two coffees and then drove for 10.5 hours!! She was on such a role and just didn’t want to stop. She didn’t even want to stop for lunch (which we didn’t), but I went with it because of the incredible time and effort she was making to get us to Portland. Lily said it really helped that we had an awesome book to listen to which was Where Did You Go Bernadette. It was an outstanding book, and very gripping. We finished the book before the night was over.

We did stop for food in Portland. We went to a Lebanese place which was disappointing (Nicholas), but we had great ice-cream afterwards and a trip to Powell’s books. I read to Ammon and Clarissa (and played an eye-spy Dark Crystal book with them) while Lily and the girls browsed for and bought books. Lily especially is in love with that store and cherished her time there. She loves how curated the book suggestions are and also felt happy that every shelf of staff picks had at least one book on it she had already read. She’s such a reader!

After Powell’s I took the wheel and drove to Tacoma where we put our kids to bed and hung out with Clark and Swathi until it was past midnight. It was so fun talking to them!

Today, we crossed the Golden Gate Bridge and headed North to Point Reyes National Seashore. On the way, we read about the Golden Gate Bridge and learned its construction was controversial and many groups were against it.

The drive to Point Reyes National Sea Shore was so pretty.

Once we arrived at the Point Reyes visitors center, we watched a very interesting movie about the area and then ate a togo lunch we purchased at a picnic table.

Then we did the most wonderful nature trail. What made it so great was there was a booklet that taught us things at different places along the trail. Lily read the information to us and it made the whole hike so interesting. It was one mile which was perfect given our time constraints.

These Bay Laurel trees bend and bend and bend to get to where the sunlight is.

We then drove to the lightouse, but we didn’t walk to it because we were very short on time. Our parking reservation was 4:30 – 5:00 and we were meeting Liem there. Still, the drive there was gorgeous and we walked to an overlook and had an incredible view of the ocean and surrounding landscape. We weren’t feeling too bad about not doing the longer walk to the lighthouse because Clarissa was asleep and it was so cold and windy! Also, the views we did see were amazing!

After seeing the view near the lighthouse, we drove to Muir Woods. Again, the drive was gorgeous (including this awesome tree-flanked road below), but it was also so winding. Mary got so car-sick, but fortunately she didn’t throw up.

It was so fun to meet Liem and Luan at Muir woods. It was great catching up on each other’s lives. We also were so happy with the weather and the fact that we had the park almost to ourselves because it was late in the day on a weekday. By the end, I think we were the only ones in the park.

We then went home and got some much needed rest after our big day!

In the morning we went to delicious cafe called Zazie. We ate every morsel and completely filled us up. Lily and I especially loved the gingerbread pancakes.

After breakfast, we walked through a small park and found ourselves in the Haight-Ashbury neighborhood. Lily read up on it and shared education with the family about the significance of the neighborhood. In short, it was the focal point and starting place of the international Hippie movement.

We LOVED the houses in the Haight-Ashbury neighborhood. They were Victorian row homes.

After spending time walking around Haight-Ashbury, we finished listening to Mr. Penumbra’s 24 hour bookstore (amazing book) and then I put on some Janice Joplin to commemorate Haight-Ashbury. I’m pretty sure I was the only one in the car into her music. I discovered her around 6th grade and loved her so much I bought an album that I listened to growing up. I still love her music and get excited when it comes on. That raspy rock-n-roll voice is so great!

We then went to the Museum of Modern Art in San Francisco. The first noteworthy thing was their monochromatic bathrooms.

After all going to the bathroom, we started our tour outside.

We loved the colorful tunnel.

We really enjoyed learning about German modern artists like Sigmar Polke, Anselm Kiefer and Gerhard Richter.

Here is art from Elizabeth Murray and Morris Louis, two great American modern artists.

I really enjoyed Ellsworth Kelly. He was one of my favorite artists in the museum.

After the art museum we went to the Presidio where Mary and Ammon played while Lily sat in the car with napping Clarissa. Lydia played a little and hung out by me a little.

We them met up with Jon and Shirley again at their house. It was so fun to see them again and the kids had so much fun playing with each other. We traversed both fun topics and deep topics like racism, security and neighborhood dynamics. All in all it was both fun and very meaningful to spend time with them!

I snapped this as clean-up started to give a sense for how much fun the kids had while the grown-ups talked.

Today had a lot of pictures, so brace yourself. In the morning, we watched The Princess Diaries because it features San Francisco. It was a hit for kids and grown-ups alike.

Then we went to a delicious breakfast Jere picked out at a place called, “The Grove”. On the way, Jere and I had fun launching Ammon and Clarissa.

Breakfast was superb, and the great weather made eating outside really pleasant.

I had a leaf bug in my salad!

Then we went to Alcatraz. Jere was excited to go too because he has never been. He almost went on a date their, but when his date tried to buy tickets she accidentally didn’t press the button to purchase them, so he hasn’t gone yet.

Alcatraz was amazing. Everyone except Clarissa had a audio-tour with a handheld device. We learned about famous prisoners, sad stories (one prison went to Alcatraz for stealing $16 when he was broke and hungry, and also there were segregation and racism issues), crazy stories (the time prisoners caused a ruckus over declining spaghetti quality, and people who had escaped their cells), living situations of the prisoners (cell was about 5’X9′, there was a field for sports, prisoners often had hobbies) and more.

We saw a lot of seagulls on the island. Here are a few shots.

Right after the prison was decommissioned around 1964 (due to deterioration from the harsh elements on the island and the great costs associated with keeping everything in good repair), Native Americans occupied the island to assert the rights of Native Americans. They painted the message above on the water tower. The occupation eventually ended and the writing on the water tower was removed, but the National Parks Service recently had family from the originally occupying tribes write the message a new so people can remember the occupation of the Native Americans on Alcatraz.

So now for my favorite part of the entire trip to Alcatraz, and I apologize I went overboard on the photos. I LOVED the brick and rock walls at Alcatraz. The colors and textures were all so fascinating. I went to a Modern Art museum the day after and commented to Lily that as amazing as the museum was, no modern art there was as impressive to me as the amazing art I saw in the walls at Alcatraz. See below for what I’m talking about.

Lily was our tour guide outside and used her map/guide to help us all learn.

View from Alcatraz

After Alcatraz, we got to experience the hills of San Francisco first hand as we walked almost a mile to lunch. Clarissa fell asleep I ended up carrying her up a super steep hill.

We ate at Tony’s and it was incredibly good. That restaurant has won awards for pizza even in Italy. Clarissa slept through the whole thing and has no idea we even stopped for lunch.

After a late lunch, we drove down Lombard street, a crazy steep street that zig-zags all the way down (and has a Bill Cosby bit about it), and then drove to another delicious restaurant to have dinner with our friends Jon and Shirley (and their two kids). We were pretty full from our late lunch, but still the food was super enjoyable and it was so fun to catch up with our friends. We love them so much. I talked with Jon about our jobs among other things and Shirley and Lily also caught up. Also, the kids (especially Ammon) had a lot of fun playing with their adorable girls.