With AAO taking place in SF this year, we decided to make it a short weekend road trip as a rehearsal for our Hawaii vacation next week. We headed out Saturday morning, stopping by McDonald’s for breakfast before meeting with my friend Jeff and his two daughters at the SF Zoo. Neither the rhino, anteater, or penguin flock seemed to excite Westley as much as the train ride, although he did get a kick out of making selfie videos at the playground. We lunched on yummy beef noodles, tofu salad, and lamb dumplings at the Old Mandarin Islamic before settling into our 2-bedroom Airbnb for nap time. After teaching my course, we met up at the Harvard reception where we dined on the roof garden patio while watching cable cars on the street. Westley’s first night sleeping alone on an adult bed turned adventurous, however, when he awoke at 3am crying for us having inadvertently locked himself inside. We couldn’t reach our hosts by phone and had just rung their doorbell upstairs when he finally managed to let himself out. I spent Sunday morning at the conference while Melody took him to the Farmer’s Market and Koret Playground. Afterwards, I returned to the apartment to share a Pineapple King bun and Yummy Dumplings for lunch, then headed to the Embarcadero in time to see the Blue Angels perform for Fleet Week on the way to the Exploratorium. Here, we opted for physics over biology exhibits for age-appropriateness, then reinforced electromagnetism with bullet-train sushi from Hikari Sushi in Japantown. On Monday, Melody took him on a trolley ride to the Aquarium at the Bay before we met with my residency friends for dim sum at Yank Sing, egg tarts from Golden Gate Bakery, and cream puffs from Beard Papa. Westley napped well on our drive home, but we still felt exhausted after our action-packed weekend. With Melody away for a conference the following weekend, we returned to SF with Westley and my parents for a free visit to Exploratorium thanks to Community Day. Having arrived early, we got a Cowgirl Creamery breakfast sandwich and Dandelion hot chocolate from the Ferry Building to wait in line. After the visit, we waited out the line at Marufuku with some Daiso shopping, rounding out our back-to-back weekend trips to City by the Bay.

With my folks back in town to help with childcare, we explored more of Sac’s foodie scene at Chef’s Counter at Origami. Tucked inside a fast-casual Asian restaurant, the 6-seat reservation-only 13-course tasting menu serves as a creative outlet for Paragary group alumni Scott Ostrander and Paul diPierro, and provided us a unique and personal dining experience complete with mozzarella balloons and torched figs. We followed next morning with a day trip to San Jose to watch airplanes take off near the Heritage Rose Garden, share soup dumplings with my aunt, and play at the Rotary PlayGarden. We also brought Westley back to the annual Sacramento Reptile Show, where he demonstrated less angst handling the little critters and was rewarded with Chocolates for Breakfast. After returning home, I worked on fixing our hot water dispenser and laundry room light fixture while taking cover from a brief but exciting hail storm that triggered our first ever tornado warning. At work, the looming prospect of having my lab relocated cast a shadow over our department’s block party luau to celebrate our 50th anniversary and new eye center groundbreaking. I also struggled to deal with the politics of journal submissions, all while scrambling to submit a BrightFocus grant and my first R01. By last week, things finally began to return to normal with fellowship interviews, grandpa’s barn, and Paul Hom. We took a breather over yuppy fried chicken from Bawk! and izakaya fare at Yakitori Yuchan as we began to prepare for our upcoming family travel.