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Tuesday 27 November 2001
	EWR to SFO.
Monday 26 November 2001
	New Jersey is a great place to be (from).
Sunday 25 November 2001
	Rose's cousins get togther in Princeton.
Saturday 24 November 2001
	Manhattan. Krachi. Roasted cashews. The Twin Towers.
Friday 23 November 2001
	Northlandz trains; 20th high school reunion.
Thursday 22 November 2001
	Breakfast, pastries & cappucino, Duke Island park waterfall, dinner.
Wednesday 21 November 2001
	Breakfast, pastries & cappucinoo, Filipo's.
Tuesday 20 November 2001
	Daytime flight SFO to EWR.
Wednesday 7 November 2001
	Free Day at the San Francisco Zoo; we were on Lil' Puffer shortly after it opened. A day in the mid-seventies, no clouds, slight breeze. Perfect. Spent a lot of time feeding the goats and swans at the Petting Zoo. The meerkat exhibit requires one to have another person coöperate in getting the water fountain to work, something Isaac liked doing. When I tried to move us along to the petting zoo Isaac said "I don't want to feed the animals, just the people." Isaac came down with a humdinger of a cold, and it was quite a chore to get him to sleep this evening. Runny nose, stuffed head, but no fever. Lila has been untouched (so far) by this maelstrom of germs. Chatted with Alan, owner of the Bimmer, and it seems that it's now ours. It'll go off for the big Inspection II next week, stopping off at a detailer to get it pretty and shiny thereafter.
Tuesday 6 November 2001
	Isaac really loves tooling around San Francisco in the borrowed BMW. After a twisty, turning spin up to Twin Peaks Isaac announced that "it's fun going too fast in the new car." After borrowing my keys and playing with the controls of the black-on-black bomber he pondered the facts of owership: "It's Alan's car now, but I want it to be our family car all the time."
Monday 5 November 2001
	After twelve and a half years of uninspired but reliable service, my 1989 VW Fox Sport (seen here on the desert sands during Burning Man 1997) has passed the point of no return. I was trying to get it smogged when the shop discovered serious additional deficiencies: the rear brakes (20 per cent), radiator (leaking), constant velocity boot cracked, muffler hangers broken, etc. It'll cost four times more to do these repairs than the car is worth. Chatting with Sondra, a neighbor, after bringing birthday chocolates, I begged off with a car search as a reason. She replied "Oh, we're going to get rid of one of our cars. Here are the keys; pick the one you want. You can have it for the weekend." And so it came to pass that our family spent the weekend motoring in a 1995 BMW 318is E36 Coupe. Wow, this car is a joy to drive! From the tick-tock of the turn signals (which I remember hearing on my grandfather's Mercedes when we lived in Germany) to the leather steering wheel cover to stiff frame and tight construction to the road-hugging wheels. Ay!
Saturday 3 November 2001
	Today is the thirtieth birthday of the UNIX Time-Sharing System V1. The Open Group's UNIX history describes the features of Version 1 as having an "assembler for a PDP-11/20, file system, fork(), roff and ed". An anniversary only a geek could love :-)
Friday 2 November 2001
	We wake up and decide to chuck our playgroup plans and instead attend the first west coast showing of the animated Pixar film Monsters, Inc. We invite Tobias and family, with whom we'd seen the animated Shreck a few months ago. Against all odds, we all make it to the theater by 11:00, buying tickets from the automat (an Eastern European term which really seems to work well here) instead of waiting in a dauntingly long line which snakes back and forth right in front of a bank of automated ticket machines. Isaac and Tobias enjoy the movie, although their attention wanders after about an hour. Lila didn't like the volume of the THX sound system, and Rose wound up missing the film. (The Metreon very cheerfully refunded the ticket price.) I found the vault of doors section very impressive, well worth the $6 entry fee.
Thursday 1 November 2001
	Fall is my favorite time of the year. First there's the chill in the air, followed by the turning of the leaves, and the switch back to Standard Time. All the festive decorations and lights for Halloween, Thanksgiving, Chanukah, Kwanzaa, Christmas, and the New Year. The good cheer and funny hats. Ahh, autumn. How I missed you.