Back home and back to work

We are home from our California vacation and I went back to work today -- to my new part-time research assistant job. It's the same job I had last summer, but this year I am trying to do it right, work the hours I'm paid for, that kind of thing. I know the problem last year was that I was trying to work at home and there are too many distractions here, such as twins. This summer I am planning to go to the office every day.

So, since today was Day 1, I went in. I don't have a space assigned to me, just a random desk that someone else uses too, and it's right in the middle of a large open room where anyone walking through can see what I'm doing. Therefore I did not spend any time reading political stories in the New York Times or looking up recipes to serve to the book group, or anything frivolous. I just worked. I arrived at 9:05 am, and about 11:15 I started watching the clock, but I stayed until 1:05 pm, as I was supposed to. I think I'll get a lot done this summer.

We had a lovely vacation, as always. It wasn't as hot this year, so we didn't swim EVERY day, but I think we only skipped two days. We ate dinner with Aunt Baba every night and spent quite a bit of every day with her too, except for Wednesday, when Aunt Nonny took us to the Monterey Bay Aquarium. I was reviewing my photos just now and realized that most of them are from the Aquarium. I hadn't been to it in over 30 years, and it was amazing. Aunt Nonny drove us there and had researched everything, knew where to park and where to go for ice cream afterwards. The photo shows the "open ocean feeding" and that's a sea turtle heading for its feeding station.

Friday we went to San Francisco on the train with Aunt Baba and visited the Exploratorium in its new home on Pier 15. I hadn't been to that museum in possibly 35+ years, plus it's very different in the new location. It was great too, but I felt that it was geared more towards children (except for its restaurant, seriously NOT kid-friendly) than the Aquarium, which appeals to everyone. The Exploratorium has perhaps 500? small exhibits -- I know it can't be that many, but it seemed like it -- and the kids ran from one to another as if possessed. Everything excited and fascinated them. I, meanwhile, was mildly interested, but mostly I just got very very tired. The photo shows a gigantic San Francisco sculpture made with toothpicks, which I did like.

I really felt my weight on this trip. I did OK at the Aquarium, but by the end I was very tired, and I apparently needed more than two days to recover before the next trip. I was worn out before we even reached the Exploratorium (we had a 15-minute walk from the Muni) and I had stabbing pains in my feet, and it hurt to stand up and I had trouble dragging myself around the exhibits. And then there was the walk back to the Muni, the slow ride to the train station, the walk to the train... As we were walking -- in the warm sunshine, so very weird for SF -- I pondered the advisability of telling Baba I was just going to sit down on a bench and rest for half an hour, and I would catch up with everyone at some unspecified later time. The problem with that idea was that I would have to get from the train station (once I finally reached Mountain View on my own) to Baba's house. Walk? Um, no. I know, I thought, I could get an Uber. But I don't know how to download an app: I would need the twins to do it for me, but they would be long gone. Anyway, I didn't sit down on a bench, and eventually we caught the Muni, and then the train, and I survived.

You might think that all that exercise would cause me to lose a pound or two, but instead when I got home I found that I had gained. My body has really changed -- my metabolism, is it? Up until a year or two ago, I often lost weight on trips to California. Eating three healthy light meals a day with few or no snacks plus taking lots of walks was good for me. But on this vacation, even though I was careful not to buy treats to eat at night and I had two very strenuous days of walking, and we played badminton and soccer with the twins, I gained 2.5 pounds. I feel even more enormous than I did before I left, though I think some of it is my swollen legs. But my stomach is swollen too. Everything hurts. It's nuts.

OK, enough complaining about being fat! The other highlight of the trip was the cousins get-together on Saturday night, right before we left. This was a more minimal get-together than last year, only two cousins and a cousin spouse, but it was still really really fun. I hope we continue to do something like this each year -- assuming the twins and I return next summer -- you never really know what's going to happen. I try to treasure these times, these visits, just in case that's all I get.