When I got in to work this morning, my co-workers had decorated my desk with old CDs.

Boxes of rejected beans called Belly Flops. $9 a bag.

Outside the Jelly Belly factory

I’ve been in the San Francisco/Oakland Bay area since Thursday evening. This is the first trip I’ve taken of this length in about 8 years when our family went on an Alaskan cruise. I was the summer before my senior year in high school then.

I’ve really had a good time down here. For November, the weather is very warm, in the high 70s to low 80s and sunny. I’m looking forward to going home, but not to the dreary, gray overcast Seattle skies. On my list of things I’d change about Seattle, weather is 1 and traffic is 2. Thinking about that, I’ve just been convicted that the first thing I would change should be the number of people who love Jesus. I think I’ll pray about that tonight.

Enoch was gracious enough to let me use his buddy pass for free airfare on Alaska air, and we flew down on Thursday night. We stayed at our friends Nate and Annie’s apartment the last 3 nights and we’re staying at his grandfather’s house tonight and Monday night. It’s not a long trip, but it’s been relaxing and fun and what I needed.

On Friday, Nate, Enoch and I went north to wine country in Healdsburg. We got a late start and only went to 2 wineries. I can’t tell the difference between red wines, which is what we tasted except for 1 really good white wine. After that we went to a brewery called Lagunitas. We missed the 1 free tour they do per day, but they let us in anyway and we had about 6 free cups of beer to try. I really liked their Censored Copper Ale and the Brown Shugga Ale. Enoch and Nate split a 12 pack of 22oz. bottles of Hopped Stoopid, their IPA above the double.

Saturday, the 4 of us went to San Francisco. We took BART in to Powell street then walked around the shopping district, through China Town, up (yes up) Lombard Street, then down to the waterfront and Fisherman’s Wharf. That’s probably around 5 miles of walking. We went back to the apartment for dinner, drinks and 2 games of Settlers that Enoch won.

I’ll post later about the second part of the trip.

We need this in Seattle big-time. One stop shopping!

I’ve made a few attempts at keeping up a blog that all resulted in either a lack of motivation to keep writing or things to keep writing about. This tumblr page may turn out the same way, but we’ll see.