I went to a couple of gatherings over the weekend, the first alone and the second with the whole family. On Saturday, I went to Al's birthday party at his (relatively) new place on Mission St. in San Francisco. It reminded me of parties I used to go to half a lifetime ago, with people gathering on dimly lit wooden balconies and in narrow hallways. The apartment, several floors up from the street, atop a lengthy blue staircase, was decorated in grand seventies style with black light posters and lots of plants. Pretty cool, actually. There was also excellent fondue and chocolate dip.

On Sunday, we loaded the kids in the van and went to Santa Cruz for the after party of the baptism of Andrew, who is small and smiley and not sure what all the fuss is about. There were lots of kids running riot everywhere, and more excellent food. Our own kids had lots of fun in the jumphouse, even Lexy, who went in against our advice. We arrived home tired. This morning I awoke sore from all of the extra running around. It must have been the badminton. Oh, and the fact that Willow really laughs when I hop like a frog.

I finally started my second part-time job today, after a morning of training (with more to come tomorrow morning). This involved going to a school in Palo Alto, discovering that my class had nearly twice as many kids as expected, gathering them from various rooms around campus, and teaching them how to make and throw paper airplanes. In the process of doing this I discovered that my official lab coat is good for knocking airplanes down from the ceiling and from where they had become wedged in inaccessible air vents. Due to the unexpectedly lengthy process of adding all of the new sign-ups to the roster and then gathering them up, and the even more unexpected fact that many of the kids couldn't fold basic paper airplanes, I ran out of time and had to rush through the more interesting stuff. For a first day on the job, it could have gone better. Of course, it could have gone worse too. I guess I'm not used to having to wrap things up after only an hour.

Still no new news on the job search. Right now I have a headache which I'm trying to relieve with candlelight and Current 93. Very peaceful in a haunting sort of way, as usual. We need more peaceful moments around here.