After we went on the Niles Canyon Railway train two days I took off from work to spend some time with the kids while our au pair was out of town, and recover a bit from everything going on. On Monday I had the morning solo with Adam, since he had a day off from school and Aaron was at preschool. Our first activity together was putting up some Halloween lights and decorations outside. Then we went inside to make a custom t-shirt, which Adam had been asking to do for months. His subject? A BART train that we designed from a photo! On Tuesday I had Aaron for the morning while Adam was in school, and we tried out a new breakfast restaurant in town, The Breakfast Club. Everything about it was exceptional and we both ate too much.

On Saturday we had more trains! We went up to the Western Railway Museum for their Pumpkin Patch Festival about 90 minutes northeast of us. Gaby came along with us for this one, and we stopped to pick up burgers about 20 minutes from the museum, and so we enjoyed a burger picnic upon arrival, which worked out really nicely.

When we finished lunch, the boys played in the signal garden! They have a series of old railway signal crossing signs that they have hooked up to buttons that can be triggered with a press. We saw it the last time we visited the museum, but didn’t get the opportunity then to visit.

From there, it was onto the Key System tram that whisked us off to the Pumpkin Patch.

The pumpkin patch activities were supported largely by the local Rotary Club and they put on a really enjoyable time. There was a HUGE hay fort, which the boys were happy to explore on their own at first, but swiftly took my hand and made me run through with them.

There was a bouncy house! And a zipline for kids!

They also had a little hay ride that took us past a bunch of scarecrows made by local groups. On the way out we visited the pumpkins for sale, but we went with some of the smaller gourds so it was easier to bring them back on the tram, and ultimately home, with us.

It was a wonderful experience. As the afternoon wound down we got on one the last trams leaving the pumpkin patch before making the long drive home, during which both boys fell asleep.

On Sunday we finally found a way to celebrate Sukkot. The synagogue in San Francisco that we used to attend had a Sukkah in Colma that they’d set up, so we made the drive across the bay to celebrate with them. Unfortunately, the rabbi couldn’t make it and there were only a handful of people there, but we had some nice discussions and at least the boys got to see the sukkah and hear the group recite some prayers. We went from there to the city where we had lunch at Fogo de Chao, yum.

The late afternoon was spent just hanging around at home before making mini pizzas for dinner together, and then I was off to the airport! In my first work trip in months, I was off to Las Vegas for IBM TechXchange.

I brought a bunch of snacks for the boys, which Aaron spent much of the ride down enjoying as we sat in our seats and enjoyed the views. At the end of the line, we were able to head to the back (now front!) of the train to see them move the steam engine to the other end of the cars and reconnect.

There was also a scheduled Amtrak passenger train that traveled by while we were stopped, which everyone enjoyed.

On the journey back, we spent a bit more time away from our seats, with Aaron and I venturing back to the front of the train to take in the breeze and see the engine operating up close. Then MJ and Adam took a turn.

Once back at the depot we got pictures of the engine! And then went over to the gift shop to get a couple post cards and magnet. They have a small museum there too that had some photos and text displays. The only downside is that we had just recovered from a stomach bug the week before and caused me to be a bit more queasy than I would have liked, but I’m grateful that we didn’t have to miss the excursion entirely, as it was our last chance in 2024 to ride on it.

The day began with checking out a couple buses, and then getting in line for the Blackpool “boat” tram. The boys and I went on this one ourselves as MJ had to run off for an errand nearby. Aaron also had his Studio Ghibli Catbus with us all day, while I had my MUNI Catbus t-shirt, so we made quite the pair throughout the day.

It’s number 233, and painted with green livery (as opposed to the red) and came to San Francisco in 2013. I’m glad we managed to get on this one, as it’s the one that the boys have a poster of hanging in their room and have never been on before. In preparation for the day, I listened to the Ahoy! episode of MUNI’s “Taken with Transportation” podcast to get a refresher on these trams, and it made the adventure that much more fun as we sailed past Ferry Building on our journey down the Embarcadero.

At Fisherman’s Wharf we got off and got some great pictures while the operators took a break. To get back to Ferry Building we took one of the regular service F-Line vintage streetcars to mix things up a bit. Plus, it got us back faster, which was important because the boys were hungry. We met back up with MJ and had lunch at a nearby hamburger joint.

From there it was time to visit some vintage buses! I think the boys like buses more than trains, so this was probably their favorite part. We started off with a ride on the MUNI AM General 4154 from 1975. It took a loop through SOMA, making its only stop at the Caltrain Depot, which was a very specific stop for the day because Caltrain was also having a celebration: for full electrification of their San Francisco to San Jose route. As you’d expect, there was overlap in folks enjoying festivities for both transit agencies. Once that loop was done, we visited the booths in the plaza for a little bit to geek out with fellow transit fans.

Our final ride of the day was upon Adam’s request, the 2230 Mack Diesel Coach from 1956, with the very distinctive Pepsi bottle cap decoration on front. All the buses take the same loop, so the scenery was the same, but we all enjoyed it just the same.

Our final stop was the museum and gift shop, where Adam bought a boat tram post card with some coins from his wallet (and a little help from my Member discount). In all, a very satisfying day! And I was so happy to share it with the whole family.

We got a family membership because with six of us it was actually cheaper than buying train ride tickets for all of us, and we definitely wanted to do that too. The museum has a small indoor section near the admissions and gift shop area that we didn’t take a very close look at since the boys were eager to get outside to see all the trains. The first barn you get to has a bunch of old street cars and trams in it, some of which you can climb into, which was a lot of fun.

We then took a quick ride in the San Francisco Municipal Railway 178 car, now affectionately known as the “Iron Monster“.

Once we concluded that journey, we got to go on the much longer, 5-mile trip, on their Key System 187 interurban train. The cool thing about this one (aside from it being a “slinky train”) is that these cars were used from from 1939 to 1958 to go across the Bay Bridge and in East Bay streets. The Bay Bridge routes are handled by buses now, but I do kinda of long for those rail days and it was a delight to finally ride in one of them. It was also funny to ride past cow pastures and wind farms in an interurban train, quite a different life than it had during service times! And probably surprising to anyone driving down the road when one is making a crossing over active roads.

As we were leaving, someone else on at the museum saw Adam’s BART shirt and noted that one of the control panels that was unceremoniously sitting near the entrance was from the BART system, so we enjoyed looking at all those knobs and switches.

I wish we could have stayed longer, but I was conscious of not keeping everyone out too late and we needed to get lunch. Next time I think we’ll bring a picnic lunch which will give us more time to check out the extra barn tours (one of which has that BART train in it!) and also visit their switch garden where you can play with some of the railway switches, which I know the boys will LOVE (me too).

We went on a lot of adventures. Possibly too many. The first day they were here we spent a lot of time on public transit making our way around San Francisco. We took BART up in the late morning and then immediately took a historic street car over to Fisherman’s Wharf where we finally got to ride the SkyStar Wheel (Ferris wheel). From there they did a little tourist shopping before we headed up to Ghirardelli Square.

Someone remind me never to go to Ghirardelli Square for ice cream on a summer weekend again. It was never a calm experience, but now it’s pure chaos. It’s loud, you hover over a table to find seating, and it’s quite the opposite of relaxing. We did eventually find a table to enjoy our ice cream, but I think Aaron was a little tired at this point so I had to sit with him for a while to calm down after he had a huge tantrum over not getting to finish the brownie on the sundae (it was offered to him multiple times!). Honestly, next time I might just take visiting friends and family to the Factory Store in San Leandro, it has a lovely little ice cream cafe that is enjoyable to eat in.

Once Aaron had calmed down and everyone used the restrooms the next thing on our agenda was riding on a cable car. We hopped on a bus and made our way down Van Ness to pick up the California Street cable car at the end. Unfortunately that’s when we learned that the cable cars had shut down for the day due to the Vice President visiting for a campaign fundraiser that happened to be taking place at a hotel located on the cable car lines. Thanks, Secret Service. Taking a peek at the time, we made a diversion to a nearby Grubstake Diner that MJ had heard good things about. It didn’t disappoint! The bus ride to Civic Center there did disappoint though. It’s not the best part of town, the bus was late, and I think that particular adventure was a lot for my sheltered Maine relatives, hah! Still, it got us safely to BART and all three of the kids fell asleep on the train ride home.

Sunday I wanted to be a bit more chill since everyone was tired, so we had a quiet morning at home together, and then decided to head up to Joaquin Miller Park in Oakland to finally visit the Chabot Space & Science Center. It was amazing!

The gems of the center are definitely the telescopes, and we’ll be back for some of their telescope events in the near future. It was fun checking out the exhibits, and there was a lot of interactive and play stuff there too, which will be nice to take more time with when we go there with just the boys.

They also have a planetarium that does shows all day, and I love planetariums. It’s also a gentle introduction to a theater environment for our rambunctious kiddos, and just like our planetarium experiment in Philadelphia back in July, this one went pretty well.

On Monday I worked from the San Francisco office and then Gaby was kind enough to shepherd everyone from Castro Valley into San Francisco on BART before concluding her day with the boys and heading home. This was when we fixed our missed cable car opportunity! We waited at the Powell Street turnaround for a while, and then caught a cable car back down to Fisherman’s Wharf. We had a nice walk and discovered the San Francisco Maritime National Historical Park Visitor Center that has a surprisingly extensive exhibit about the history of the area, and everyone really seemed to enjoy it. From there my sister picked up some more tourist goodies and then we got on a street car to head home. Mission accomplished!

On Tuesday afternoon once Adam finished school I packed up my work laptop and we made our way over to the Oakland Zoo. I settled in near the bison paddock for a couple hours to finish work while Gaby and Annette took the boys around the zoo. I met up with them around closing to go on some rides in the area just outside the zoo.

We let everyone have a chill, local Wednesday and Thursday while I worked from my home office, and then took Friday off for some final adventures! In the course of the week, I discovered that going swimming was on their California list, but the beaches are far and not really swim-friendly, so I asked a local friend what she recommended and that’s how we ended up spending the afternoon at the Don Castro Swim Lagoon. It was perfect! I can’t believe we hadn’t been before! Admission for the six of us was a total of $15 and they have life guards and a very clean facility. It’s still beach-like, but it’s all man-made and effectively a big pool, which you notice when you swim out to the deeper parts since you can touch the concrete bottom of the “pool” out there. We had snacks at the beach and wrapped up around 4PM to clean up and eventually meet MJ for dinner. MJ was picking up the family car in Dublin, so we all hopped on BART and then caught a bus to meet him at Lazy Dog right on time to eat.

Our final adventure was on Saturday, to a railway museum that I’ll write about soon. They headed out on an overnight flight back to Maine on Saturday night. It was nice having them visit and seeing the boys bond over adventures, video games, and even chill TV time. I also enjoyed having some quiet time with my sister to catch up on family stuff and how she’s doing in general. We live such different lives so far apart, it can be tricky to stay connected, but these visits every year or so certainly help.

I mentioned that the boys had been earning badges from the local library through a free program to inspire kids to do challenges and activities. They each earned four badges, and it was a lot of fun for all of us. I’m not sure I’ve mentioned before how much I enjoy the library programs from the Bucks County library system, but their branches are incredibly kid-friendly and the play areas are more extensive than what I see in most of the San Francisco bay area. My sister in law Irina suggested it’s because there are more outdoor activities year-around in California, so there’s less of a need for a library on rainy or frigid days, and she may be right. The culture here in California generally seems to be more catered to adults and mature kids than young ones.

The Bensalem library definitely ramped up things for the summer, and Aaron particularly enjoyed a presentation from the Center for Aquatic Sciences where he got to pet a horseshoe crab.

In the evenings we also got really into some Lego builds. Aaron even helped out a little, but would mostly work on his creative Duplo creations while Adam and I focused on building a train, a firehouse, and a fire helicopter. I think we’re going to end up with a little Lego City there.

Seeing family is also obviously a big part of why we were there over the summer, so it was nice to head downtown one evening to have dinner with MJ’s cousin Lauren and her husband. I had met her husband once before, but only MJ could attend their wedding due to a bunch of unexpected circumstances last year. So it was our first time seeing them as a married couple. We met at Emmy Squared Pizza where I got the “Angel” pizza consisting of Truffleist mushroom cream, ricotta, mushrooms, and it was spectacular! I’m still dreaming of this pizza. And it was also great as leftovers. I think our only complaint would be that something went a little wrong with our order and we waited almost an hour for the adult food to come out, which made the boys a bit antsy as the evening wound down and they had finished their meal. It was nice to have the extra time to catch up though, and Adam got his wish of getting to see the sun set on the Philadelphia skyline so we could enjoy the beautiful nighttime lights of the city. He’s definitely my kid, I love those nighttime city skylines too.

In other family news, our regular visits with Irina and little Sam were a highlight of our trip. Sam and Aaron are roughly the same age, so it was nice for Aaron to have a summer buddy. One evening we were able to go over to their house to have pizza and catch up, and Aaron was absolutely enamored with her dog Maya, and both the boys enjoyed spending time with Olive the cat.

Animal-wise, our neighbors were rabbit-sitting, so one evening we went over there to catch up and get the latest neighborhood gossip while the boys got to play with the rabbit. Predictably, all of this has lead to a string of requests to get a pet. I really would love to, but we have a lot on our plate right now, and our extended visits to Philly definitely make having a pet tricky. We’ll see, I haven’t been pet-free in decades, and while the loss of Caligula still stings, the pull of getting another cat is getting stronger.

During our visit I also was able to sneak out one afternoon to meet with Kris, a former colleague from my Tyco days. We’ve loosely kept in touch via Facebook, but we hadn’t seen each other in over a decade. Some of my posts throughout the summer clued her in to the fact that we weren’t too far away from each other. It was a great to reconnect, and we’ve penciled in doing something more involved with the boys next time we’re in town.

The final Friday before we left we made our way back to the Churchville Nature Center for a moth-themed presentation and camp fire. It ran quite late, and I think the boys were on the young side to appreciate a lot of the introductory lecture, but they got to walk around outside at night, see some bugs, hear a screech owl, and finally roast a couple marshmallows over a camp fire. I did a lot of camping as a kid, but it’s hasn’t been something we’ve done yet, so it occurred to me that the boys hadn’t really experienced a camp fire before. What an oversight! There’s a campground not too far from here, maybe next summer we’ll spend more time in California and do a weekend adventure in a tent.

Our last day in town we did some final clothes shopping (tax-free in Pennsylvania!) and then turned picking up the rental car that we’d be taking to the airport the next day into one final adventure with a train ride to the rental car center at the airport. The plan had been for MJ and Adam to go down alone while Aaron and I went on our own adventures around town, but apparently there’s nothing more fun than taking a train, so we all went.

Some of my low-key stress around packing and preparing to leave bubbled up during our train ride, but I did my best to be present and enjoy the journey with everyone. I mostly succeeded until Avis was over an hour late with our rental and we had to sit at the rental car center trying to keep the boys entertained. I should have brought more snacks. Then the stress carried into Sunday as we closed up the house and began our journey home. I hope this gets easier as the kids get older, but I also need to keep working on strategies to manage this family travel stress, I hate that the conclusion of our visit is so tainted by such an elevated stress level when there were so many great moments throughout the summer.

Our first stop was finally visiting the Please Touch Museum. It’s a Philly classic in terms of children’s museums. We also discovered when making the plan to head down that it’s now located in Fairmount Park, having moved in 2008 from the location on 21st Street near the Franklin Institute, where I remember it being. The building it’s housed in now is Memorial Hall, the last major building left from the 1876 Centennial Exposition. The move seems to be a good one for museum goers, since there’s tons of free parking, and it was also great for us because it was right near Girard Ave and we also wanted to see the vintage trolleys that had recently returned to service.

Aaron had an absolute blast at the museum. At three years old, basically everything was perfect for him, and I’m sure he could have spent days there if we let him. Adam was a bit more reserved, but once he became comfortable he was able to enjoy some of the exhibits.

As expected, the transit-related exhibits were the most popular for both of them.

Aaron also enjoyed the play kitchen where he could “cook” things retrieved from the little grocery store in the area next to the cooking area. And after lunch Aaron got to enjoy a water area that I basically had to pry him away from once we were ready to move on.

The carousel at the museum was also a delight, Aaron and I rode on it a few times so he could switch animals.

We wrapped up at the museum in the late afternoon, and then drove a bit closer to Girard Ave so we could conclude our day by taking a ride on the Rt 15 trolley. Just like San Francisco, Philadelphia runs a vintage streetcar line, but this one had been shut down since 2020 and underwent a series of refurbishments and repairs. They just returned in June of this year! I’ve visited it before, years ago, but the boys never had the opportunity to ride on it and we wanted to remedy that.

Aaron adorably brought his trolley plushie along for the ride.

I think they enjoyed it, but they also had their eyes on buses and kept asking to take one of them too. So we took the trolley to the Broad Street stop, and took a look at the transit app to see our bus options. We lucked out, and a bus was subbing on the same line and would take us right back to where we parked! So we took Rt 15 back, this time on a bus.

The bus ride concluded our visit to the city, and both boys fell asleep in the car as we drove back home, so we clearly tired them out. A quick stop for dinner on the way home wrapped the day. It’ll probably be our last time down to Philadelphia proper this visit, so I’m glad we were able to experience a full, fun day.

“What do you want to do in San Francisco?”
“Just ride around in buses and trains and cable cars.”

That’s my boy. He also wanted to go back to the Cable Car Museum and to the new Transbay Terminal park where they have a fountain that activates along a path whenever a bus passes beneath it. With all these things in mind we mapped out a plan.

First up, we decided not to take the stroller. It was the first time taking both boys into San Francisco without it, so we were a little nervous, but we managed to keep walking to a minimum and relied on public transit. We took BART into the city and got off at Embarcadero Station where we picked up the California Street cable car. Aaron and I rode on the outside of the car while MJ and Adam rode inside for the first half of our ride. Once some people got off, MJ and Adam joined us on the outside and then we hopped off at the stop just down the street from the Cable Car Museum.

From there, we walked over to the new Rose Pak MUNI Metro station in Chinatown, during which we got to wave to several cable cars coming by!

We took the Metro from Chinatown back downtown where we then walked over to Jeffery’s Toys, which was sadly going out of business. We picked up a couple trinkets and then got lunch at a nearby California Pizza Kitchen that we sometimes went to when MJ and I lived nearby.

Right after lunch we stopped at the Ghirardelli ice cream shop at the corner of Market and New Montgomery for a couple sundaes.

After lunch we hopped on a PCC street car for a couple stops down Market and then made our way to the Transbay Terminal where we spent some time playing and watching the bus fountain until it was time to take our last exciting type of transit: a bus! It would take longer, but the boys really wanted to take a bus, and MJ found an AC Transit Transbay bus that we could take across the bay, through Alameda, and concluding at an Oakland BART station, which we’d then take back home. The plan was a hit for all of us. It was a nice and comfortable bus which was enjoyable to take, and Aaron fell asleep on me during the journey, so clearly he was comfortable!

That Sunday was quite rainy, and our only journey was to a thrift store to pick up a small filing cabinet to try and contain some of Adam’s school papers which had been increasingly taking over our house. During Aaron’s nap, Adam and I made a trio of custom shirts for Valentine’s Day!

Later in the afternoon, we made some banana bread and then some popcorn to enjoy with our stuck-indoors, movie-driven afternoon.

Speaking of movie-driven, I went to see a movie! I realized recently that something that would help a lot with life balance and mental health would be taking some time for myself. It may seem obvious, but our life is just so busy and we’ve been very reserved about hiring babysitters, only really doing it when absolutely necessary. Part of this is just a holdover from the pandemic, we haven’t adjusted our habits or repopulated our babysitter pool. But taking some time for me to go out, meet with friends, or just go to the record store on my own is so important. So last week I walked over to The Chabot theater, our local, historical, single screen theater and saw Argylle. It was so much fun! I also made some time to stop by my local record shop, and then over to the library where I picked up a couple books.

Last weekend celebrations began for the Lunar New Year. Adam had some celebrations at school to observe it and he was pretty excited, so I searched for some local events and found a lion dance event and crafts right nearby at our local library! So the boys and I first made our regular stop at the local farmers market, and then continued on our journey to the library where we met up with our au pair and her friend, and made it just in time for the dance to begin.

When that concluded, we made our way over to the children’s section of the library where they had celebratory crafts. Predictably, Aaron loved the crafts and Adam wanted to explore the rest of the library and check out a couple books. Around 11:30 MJ picked us up so we could go to lunch.

Before the sun rose on Sunday MJ was off to the airport for a business trip. That morning the boys and I went to the local Japanese Gardens. The boys love the gardens, they’re beautiful, have rocks to climb, and they can see fish and turtles in the water features. From there, we were off to lunch at our favorite local restaurant. Unfortunately, Aaron turned out to be terribly annoyed that we did the gardens instead of a playground, so we rectified that later in the afternoon by going to another park, this time with a playground.

Once all park needs were satisfied for the day, it was time to go home for the Super Bowl! We don’t really watch football and I can barely follow along, but Super Bowl Sunday is basically a holiday in the United States, and it turns out I really enjoy celebrating things with the boys. So we turned on the game, had snacks, chicken tenders, and little bagel bites. And we made and decorated sugar cookies. I guess making cookies isn’t a traditional Super Bowl thing, but the boys weren’t really going to watch the game and we needed something fun and different that we could do with the TV on aside from the regular playroom activities.

Then the game went into overtime right when I was supposed to start getting the boys ready for bed – oops! As a result, I was actively putting Aaron to bed as 5 minutes were left on the clock, and returned just in time to see Kansas City triumph over San Francisco. Adam was adorably disappointed because he knew San Francisco is “his” team, but he got over it within about 30 seconds and the subsequent bedtime routine went smoothly.

The week ahead promised to be very sugar-filled with a little birthday celebration for a friend and Valentine’s Day! We also have a week off from school coming up.

For his party, both of our former au pairs joined us as well, and we had a nice little gathering, except that poor little Aaron had a cold. He’s usually very social, and quite the trooper when he’s not feeling well, but I think the mix of being so congested, plus people over, and a lot of excitement got to him. He was inconsolable for most of the evening and spent it snuggled close to me.

I managed to get him calmed down for a few minutes to have a few bites of cake.

We also had a break in crying to open presents, during which he got gifts from his current and former au pairs. They all managed to get him presents he absolutely adores, but I guess I shouldn’t be surprised at how well they know him, given how much time they spent with him!

The weekend after Aaron’s birthday, and last weekend we were in California for the year, we went on a couple train-related adventures.

Saturday morning was spent at The Great Train Show at the Alameda County Fairgrounds in Pleasanton. It was a mix of vendors selling various new and used model trains, accessories, and train-related things, and some working model trains that various clubs throughout the area brought for attendees to admire. My only goal for the show was to get some scented smoke fluid for our little Union Pacific O-scale train. That was satisfied within minutes of walking into the show, as a vendor near the front had some trains that he was allowing kids to control (thank you!) and I returned the favor by skipping the shopping around and just buying the one I wanted from that booth. There are a lot of scents, but I have the root beer one for the Pennsylvania Railroad train that we keep at the townhouse in Philly and everyone seems to like it, so I didn’t see the need to mess with perfection.

We picked up a bunch of BRIO tracks for the boys, and they each got a couple small train-related toys. Since we have two O-scale train sets (one in California and one in Philly) I picked up a Ben Franklin themed Lionel box car that I plan on bringing to Philly, and Aaron picked out a flat car with a bulldozer strapped to it, both were a steal at $10 each. Aaron’s choice ended up being quite amusing, since it goes well with Adam’s choice: a trio of log cars. He saw a few log cars at various vendor booths, but they were all the wrong scale. We got incredibly lucky when we stopped at a booth with a lot of O-scale cars and happened to ask if they had something similar and that’s when he pulled out the 3-car set! When we got home we hooked the three log cars and the bulldozer to the Union Pacific train and suddenly we’re ready to do some logging in the woods!

I also picked up a little Maine-themed box car, along with a Jewish-themed Mogen David Wine car, which I joked would REALLY make our train a Hanukkah train.

Adam had a ton of fun. MJ whisked him off to visit the model train layouts and with camera in hand, he was able to take a whole bunch of pictures of little trains and scenes.

Aaron struggled a bit because he’s a three year old surrounded by “toys” that he wasn’t allowed to touch. Oops! He was also at the tail end of that cold he had during his birthday party, so I think he wasn’t feeling 100%. I spent much of the show making sure he didn’t touch anything and calming him down when is frustration turned into crying and screaming. I guess I should have anticipated this, but he’s gone through a real maturity spurt these past few months so we were fooled into thinking that will transfer seamlessly into all environments and situations.

On Sunday, I had to go to San Francisco to pick up a pen I had repaired, which we turned into a whole family outing. We took BART into the city, and on the way to our station we got to see a BART car being hauled on a trailer! It may not sound like much, but we’re train geeks and the boys thought the sight of a train car on a truck at the side of a highway entrance ramp was an absolute delight. It was.

Once we got to the city I went to retrieve my pen and MJ took the boys in the stroller around Union Square. When I was finally done, we made our way down to the MUNI Metro and took the new subway line one stop south. That put us close to our old neighborhood where we enjoyed a lovely brunch at Fogo de Chao, which became a much more compelling option lately since we discovered that kids 6 and under eat free.

From there, we hopped back on BART and made our way to Rockridge station where hundreds of fans of BART gathered for Sweaterfest! 4,000 holiday sweaters were produced for sale this year, and they sold out within an hour each time they were offered on the online shop. During the first I managed to snag one for MJ, and after turning on alerts on Twitter I managed to get one for myself in the second offering. Phew! But the festival was to gather fans together for a sweater group photo, raffles, prizes, and merchandise sales which included the last chance to get a sweater if you couldn’t order online. We showed up just in time to get in the group photo, which was later shared across social media (Twitter, Facebook, Instagram).

I’m glad we went for the experience, but it was PACKED, and a little overwhelming. The hour+ line for the merchandise looped around the whole outdoor space the event was held at, and it wasn’t easy to participate in much of what they had. Still, the boys got their pictures with a BART snowman who was wearing a holiday sweater, we picked up our transit passports and stickers. It’s great to see this level of enthusiasm from so many people, and I take that as a good sign for public transit in the bay area.

At work I’ve been busy completing a few projects before the end of the year, and I saw the release of the Linux on the mainframe YouTube video that we recorded in Raleigh back in October! But leadership gave us the opportunity to take a day off last week to do some volunteer work in our community. I took this opportunity to make plans to meet with the Partimus board and get some much-needed work done, including some financial tasks, website updates, and other administrative things.

Truth is, Partimus took quite a hit with the pandemic, along with the death of a key technical contributor last year and major life changes for 2/3 of the board members. Once I’m able to commit more energy to it, I’d like to do more work to reinvigorate the organization, but I’m incredibly grateful that I could spend what otherwise would have been work time getting the public face of the project in a better, more accurate, state. Plus, it gave me an excuse to finally go to the Oakland Public Library where I made plans to meet with a board member, and I got my library card!

As the week wound down we were packing for a flight on December 16th. We decided to conclude our year visiting family and friends from our townhouse in Philly, where I’m writing this. I’ll be taking a few days off between Christmas and New Years to do some outings, and in general have build some extra flexibility into my schedule. It should be a nice visit, as long as we don’t get sick!

At that point I had already exposed everyone, and we were all suddenly stuck at home for two weeks. I decided to go on Paxlovid due to my asthma, but it was still a brutal infection for me this time around, and for over a week I found myself having to take naps every afternoon. The medication caused the dreaded “Paxlovid mouth” for me, which leaves a nasty taste in your mouth that I could only really combat with fruit snacks and sweet candies, not optimal, but it actually made it hard to sleep some nights otherwise. Thankfully, the kids were fine. Aaron never even developed symptoms or a positive test. I joked that since he was born in 2020 he was issued full immunity (pandemic baby!).

Being sick is never fun, but perhaps the most frustrating thing out of it this time was how bored the kids were. Every day it was the list of places they were begging us to take them to, from Target to a train ride to a restaurant. We do get out a lot with them, so the swift reversion to isolation life was hard on them, plus Adam being out of school.

They still played outside and after the first week we went to some unpopulated playgrounds a couple of times. One day we made apple cake!

Another day we did do-it-yourself pizzas, where I enjoyed some turkey pepperoni and the tomato sauce we made over Labor day.

We had a little lamination machine delivered and made some clever bookmarks, along with bunches of other crafts.

And we observed Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur, both of which our isolation totally clobbered and made the choice for us of whether we wanted to go out and attend services in-person. Ultimately I think we would have done them remotely anyway due to various factors, but it would have been nice to have the choice. We did decide to switch to virtual services away from our synagogue in San Francisco and instead dialed into the more local congregation. We haven’t joined the more local one yet, but it does seem like that’s the one we’ll ultimately be joining in the not to distant future, so it was nice to start getting familiar with their space and culture, even if it was over video.

By the end of the month most of us were testing negative and I got to enjoy a family-only birthday celebration and then got BBQ from a place down the street for a lovely birthday lunch!

On the first weekend of October we were feeling well enough for an adventure! Boo at the Zoo had begun at Oakland Zoo and we discovered that kids love hay mazes. It was actually a nice mix of something both the boys could have a lot of fun with, which can be tricky given their very different interests and temperaments.

The following weekend we took the train up to San Francisco for some transit adventures. We had sadly missed MUNI Heritage Weekend due to our COVID infection, but I was delighted to learn that the historic Blackpool 228 “boat tram” was out running that weekend for Fleet Week.

We didn’t intend to go up during the height of Fleet Week weekend, it’s just how our schedules landed, but it did mean the city was hopping and it was fun to see a few fighter jets and a massive battleship anchored at a pier. Our route took us up to Union Square, down past Jeffery’s Toys, then down to the Market Street Railway Museum and Ferry Building, and finally to lunch on the Embarcadero at Delancey Street Restaurant.

It was a delightfully transit-full day with rides on BART and MUNI Metro, but we skipped everything but viewing the historic fleet this time around due to how incredibly packed they were. Next time!