We all went to a summer school open house at my work on Saturday just to let the kids run around and tire themselves out. Oh yeah, I guess I'm getting paid for it too. Lexy brought a new friend along who turned out to be very polite and friendly, even going so far as to be nice to The Dickens, which is unusual for a second grade boy. The Dickens has a way of trying the patience of elementary school children.
Jen mostly hung out around the school with Willow, while the older kids went on a hike with one of my co-workers. I led a hike as well, bringing a mixture of parents, fifth/sixth graders, and teenaged volunteers up into the hills. We saw a variety of cuddly creatures. Avid wildlife viewers got to see a tarantula, a tick, and a scorpion, making the hike unintentionally arachnid-themed. Okay, that's a bit of a lie - only the tick was unintentional. Think of it as an added bonus.
At some point, Willow got smacked in the head by a basketball, and later managed to bloody her lip climbing one of the food carts parked outside the dining hall. Other than that, she had a blast and everybody loved her.
The good thing about this outing is that we managed to keep all five of the kids entertained, and I got paid for it. I wish we could arrange something like this every weekend.

That evening I drove up to Stanford to meet up with a couple of old friends, Wayne and Rich. I hadn't seen Wayne in about a decade, so it was pretty cool to catch up with him. He's been working at Stanford, helping convert their vast archives of secret microfilms into digital information. Or some such. He goes to Geneva every year where the curse of the Swiss works upon him, giving him achy teeth, broken bones, and gallstones. Rich works at a computer company, telling Luddites where the "on" switch is and explaining to them the wonders of electricity. He brought his son and his son's friend along too. We all hung out with Big Chief at the Stanford radio station and made asses of ourselves on the air. It was like being 18 again, when we all went to heavy metal shows wearing our smelly denim and leather jackets and probably acting a lot sillier than we thought we were. It was all quite fun though. Lots of memories there.

Sunday we went to the Tech museum, which was sort of like being blindfolded and chasing chickens around on the freeway. The kids all had very specific ideas about what they wanted to do there, and rushed this way and that like hyperactive Kangaroo Rats. Tiring
That night we had lots of ice cream and cookies and pie at Ashley and James' place. Very good.

Today brought spurts of rain and sporadic sunshine. A new week of campers began. Our lead teacher just had a baby girl, who was born on 5/5/05 at 5:50 PM. Maybe she's the new messiah or something. Messiah or not, the pictures I saw were pretty cute.