Tracy Day!

Tracy and I worked together at Epic; I was a developer and she was a tester on the same team. She started about 8 or 9 months after I did, and indeed she left Epic about half a year after I did. I guess four and a half years is about the right career span at Epic for people who don't plan to spend most or all of their career there. (It's supposedly longer than the average span of time a person stays at a company in Silicon Valley, which is about three years. Which is itself slightly surprising since it usually take 4 years for stock options to fully vest!)

Tracy remarked on the irony that we both left Epic during the same year to work for companies that put us in cubicles rather than offices.

I picked her up at her hotel, and it occurred to me that I should take a day and 'do' downtown San Jose sometime, since it looks like there are a number of things to see. It seems like a pretty nice and busy downtown area. We came back to my apartment where she got to see my cats. (Tracy has two cats of her own, who have similar colors to my guys, but who are otherwise pretty different.) Newton was his usual rubby, snuggly self, while Jefferson went to hide in his new spot on top of the bookcase, where Tracy cornered him and petted him and generally seduced him. She also thought I have a pretty nice apartment, and I basically agree; I'd just like to move it up to Mountain View, extend the laundry room hours, and not pay any more in rent. Not that all of that is likely to happen!

(Incidentally, I've been playing with the kitties nearly every day this week, and needless to say, they love it! They get all worked up, and they usually wrestle and play with each other off-and-on for a couple of hours after I stop. It really seems to improve their mood, almost as much as when I can see the lights go on in their head when I don't leave for work early in the morning on a weekend, and they realize that I'm going to be around most of the day.)

I bought a Peninsula and Silicon Valley tour book not long ago, since it looked pretty useful. One thing it told me is that there's actually a Hobees not too far from my apartment, so we went off there in search of lunch. It turns out to be in a dying mall (more than half the shops are vacant), and indeed after driving around for a while we couldn't find it and assumed it had moved or closed. It hadn't, as we later discovered by looking at a mall directory. But, we had lunch at the sandwich chain Togo's, which is not bad itself.

We thought about doing the Winchester Mystery House, but decided that it was too nice a day to stay indoors for the hour-plus-long tour. So instead we drove to Apple where I gave Tracy the ten-cent tour, and also discovered that my scanner and USB PCI card had arrived. Woo-hoo!

We then went up to Mountain View to shop at BookBuyers, the excellent used bookstore there. Tracy ended up buying quite a few books, and so declined my suggestion that we hit the equally excellent Know Knew Books in Palo Alto. Too bad, since I've been to BookBuyers more recently than Know Knew Books! But, I'm glad she found stuff she wanted.

Instead, we drove up to downtown Palo Alto and spent the evening walking along the street, stopping in a few stores to do some shopping. We had dinner at Taxi's (a burger joint) and then went to the Peninsula Creamery where Tracy had a sundae and I had one of their yummy malts. And now I am full.

We took a swing past Stanford University on the way back, and I dropped Tracy back at her hotel. She has to get up at an ungodly hour tomorrow to fly back. But, it was good to see her. One more thing about Madison that I miss, and I somehow doubt I'll ever convince her to move out here (although I think Bill has tried).

This morning, for the first time, I jogged my route starting from home. It's about 1.2 miles, and it took me 10:47, which works out to almost exactly a nine minute mile, which seems pretty good. I suspect the route is actually marginally less than that, but still, doing better than a ten minute mile seems good. I was really pushing myself at the end, though; I had to really force myself to do the next to last block, and then it seemed silly to stop and rest when I was so close to the end.

But, it's getting a little easier every week, and hopefully another couple of weeks and 1.2 miles will not seem so bad.

My next goal, I guess, is to make it around the 1.4-mile route from the fitness center without resting. I'm getting close... and eventually I hope to be doing 2- and 3-mile routes continuously. That will get me up over the 20-minute barrier, which is the 'magic number' for how much cardiovascular workout one should get, and then I bet I'll really start losing weight.

But not if I keep getting extra-thick mocha chip malts at the Peninsula Creamery.