We enjoyed the recent spring weather by firing up our grill and inviting neighbors like Jamie and Ying’s families over for wings and burgers on our patio. To avoid getting cooped up at home over Memorial Day weekend, we made a last-minute booking for an overnight stay in San Jose. We headed out early Sunday for breakfast pho and bun rieu at Pho Kim Long, then drove to the Winchester Mystery House to tour the Victorian mansion. The widow of the famed rifle maker was purportedly told to continue building the house to escape evil spirits, leaving many rooms unfinished or oddly laid-out, with doors to nowhere, low-rise staircases, spiderweb windows, and base-13 motifs that lend itself well to ghost stories. For lunch, we went to Udon Mugizo, followed by strawberry sandos from Clover Bakery, and matcha soft-serve and mango mochi from Mochi-Ya Ren. Entrance to the Tech Interactive Museum was delayed by an unsupervised ticket booth newbie, but we at least made it to the Cities of the Future IMAX film before checking out the Space Exploration, Body Motion, Social Robots, and BioDesign exhibits. A trail of costumed individuals led us to crowds taking photos outside FanimeCon on the way to the parking lot. We surprised Westley with our overnight stay aboard a school bus on a farm. Matt the owner gave us a tour of the rescue horses, chickens, ducks, turkey, llamas, dogs, goats, pigs, and cats that call the place home, and even let us feed the chickens before we fed ourselves hearty kalbi jim at Daeho for dinner. We juiced up our car at a charging station over Tong Sui’s coconut pudding before returning to the bus. We awoke Monday to stroll the wildflower fields with the goats and dogs, then enjoyed poolside bun cuon and cream buns. The Computer History Museum gave us the chance to geek out to vintage computers, mainframes, disk drives, and search engines, although Westley was more interested in the Retro Games exhibit. Given the 2-hour wait for dim sum in Milpitas, we opted instead for hand-pulled DH Noodles on the way to relive Melody’s childhood memories at California’s Great America. For only an afternoon, we went without a lightning pass, but was glad that Westley finally made the 48″ cutoff to enjoy Whitewater Falls, Barney Oldfield’s Redwood Rally, Rue le Dodge, Mass Effect: New Earth, both levels of the Double-Decker Carousel Columbia, and even the Demon roller coaster. We concluded our micro-getaway with Ramen Shu and treats from Sheng Kee to join our stash of leftovers for the following week.

We kicked off this month celebrating Star Wars day by watching A New Hope before I flew off to Seattle for ARVO. I mistakenly drove to the airport without my laptop, but Melody came to my rescue and delivered it to me before boarding. The conference was busy as usual, with 18 posters this year that had me scuttling around the convention center to snap photos with trainees, while my department sent our own photographer for my award for our website. I took a half-afternoon off to relax and visit Chihuly’s Garden & Glass and enjoy a dark chocolate mocha at Starbucks Reserve Roastery. My meals were otherwise diverse, excellent, and mostly work-related, with few ventures on my own to compare XLBs from Dough Zone vs. Ding Tai Fung, sushi from Sushi Kashiba vs. Shiro’s Sushi, and noodles from Biang Biang Noodles vs. MKT. I returned home to celebrate our wedding anniversary and Mother’s Day by camping in our backyard, watching the Empire Strikes Back, and visiting Foodieland at Cal Expo where we joined Emmeline to share grilled calamari, curry shrimp wrap, corndog, pho soup dumplings, pork bao buns, filipino shortbreak cookies, grilled oysters, sushi tacos, ube mochi, mango-passionfruit tea, buttered lobster roll, hand rolls, sugarcane juice, mochi skewers, freeze dried candy, and Hawaiian honey cones. With bellies full, we embarked together on Assassin’s Creed Mirage. This newest iteration of the franchise was a return to form, focusing on stealth over RPG elements, although playing on the PS5 took some getting used to. We completed the original Star Wars trilogy this evening watching Return of the Jedi in our backyard. With a new Chromecast 4K, mosquito repellent, and lots of blankets, we kicked back to enjoy our last few weeks of spring weather.