t 'n t luoma

We headed up to Los Gatos, back up the winding Route 17. Tracey drove this time, and enjoyed it much more than being a passenger. By the way, our rental car has XM Radio, and it is just like cable/satellite television for your radio — which is to say that the signal is a lot clearer, but there still isn’t anything good on.

We arrived in Los Gatos probably over-hungry for lunch. We had planned to eat in Santa Cruz but didn’t see anything that really appealed to us at the time and didn’t know our way around enough to keep looking, plus Ethan was asleep.

Los Gatos is a nice little town with a lot of fun little shops and studios. I commented to Tracey that it reminded me a little bit of what Princeton would be like if it was bigger and a little funkier.

Finding a place to eat was a bit of a challenge. There were several places, but none of them really jumped out at us. We first went into an Italian place, but it was very small and hardly anyone was there, which I took as a bad sign. Actually it was probably just a sign that it was after 1 p.m. and most people had already eaten. We saw several other places but couldn’t really settle on one, so I popped into one of the other businesses and asked the girl behind the counter what she recommended. She gave us the name of a place around the corner, but when we looked at their menu, nothing really appealed to us, and it looked a bit more formal than we wanted. (By the way, their ought to be a law requiring restaurtants to post their menu on the outside, or somewhere where you can see what they offer and their prices. Most all of the places in Los Gatos did this, and it made it a lot easier.)

Tracey popped into “Pizza My Heart” and grabbed a slice of pepperoni for us to eat whilst we decided where we wanted to go (an excellent idea, as it was immediate and took the edge off... also, good pizza!) We decided on “Jasmine Chinese Cuisine” which sounded a lot more formal than it was. It’s been ages since I had non-buffet Chinese, so it meant ordering off the menu. I ordered the General Tso’s Chicken, and was not disappointed. It was goodly spicy without being overly so, although I did catch 1 or 2 hot peppers that sent me directly to the water glass.

We stopped by the pet store and bought some vegetarian doggie treats for Ginger, Chakli, and Jack, and popped into The Sharper Image just because we had never been in one before. They had a Wurlitzer Jukebox that holds 100 CDs for $8,000. (Apparently these people have never heard of an iPod?!?!) As I’ve said before, some people have more dollars than sense.

Back to the house without event. Didn’t even get lost, which was surprising. Yvette and Vivek live on a street which you pretty much have to drive into on faith, because it’s over the side of the road and you really can’t see where you are going, but so far so good.

Kush and Ethan have been playing together. Ethan is starting to figure out the whole "sharing" thing. He and Kush were playing with a toy together, putting balls down a track together. Jack and Chakli were playing together. Kush brought Ethan a pretzel and you could almost see the light go on in Ethan’s brain, “Hey! Sharing means I might get stuff.” Ok, it’s not altruistic, but it’s a start, and he’s only 22 months old.

They have adapted very well to one another, although it’s an adjustment. Here are several pictures to make up for the fact that I neglected to take any the first few days:

Two boys and a toy that uses two balls at once? What could be better!?

If we could harness the energy of young boys at play (*), California would never run out of electricity again. (* = in a a non-The Matrix kind of way, of course). To the left is Tracey with Gage (5 months). Ethan only tried to sit on him once (“Hey, that’s MY mom’s lap you’re sitting on!”)... ah, the perils of being an only child.

Kush brought the pretzels, Ethan brought the appetite! Kush made several return trips, and Ethan was a very happy receiver of Kush’s hospitality.

Almost feels like home to see two beagles chasing each other around the house. Fortunately neither Chakli (left) nor Jack (right) has as shrill of an AROOOOO! as Sadie does.