Anya returns from Choate for a two week Spring Break.
A surprise birthday gathering for Jan’s brother Chris, who’s turning 50. His girlfriend Julie has secretly organized a surprise party the night before Chris’ birthday, and Jan, his sister, and their mom have all come to San Francisco.
Julie has told Chris that she’ll be busy teaching in the evening (which is plausible), but that someone will pick him up for dinner. Julie leaves a key for Jan, Skye, and Lyn to sneak into Chris’ apartment building. Jan knocks on Chris’ door at the appointed time, while Skye and Lyn wait it the stairwell.
Chris is pleasantly surprised to see that Jan’s the one taking him out to dinner. Jan comes in to sit down for a minute before they head out — but there’s another knock on the door. Chris looks puzzled, then opens it to see Lyn. She comes in, sits down, and then a few minutes later, there’s a third knock at the door. “How many people are out there?” Chris says, and opens the door to see Skye.
The three of us take Chris in a cab to a spot in Bernal Heights. He assumes we’re just taking him to dinner, but when we walk in the door of the designated spot, a small crowd of friends jumps out to say “Surprise!” Chris remarks that everyone he likes in San Francisco is there.
We spend a nice evening chatting with everyone before retiring to our little rental townhouse not far from Chris’ place.
Chris takes Jan and Skye on guided a Segway scooter tour through Golden Gate Park. Jan and Skye have never ridden Segways before, but it’s easy enough to learn, and fun to zoom around on them. It’s drizzling, but it’s still a fun day to explore the park. We ask our guide if we can see the less-visited western side of the park: we’d like to see the bison paddock, as well as one place known for a large raccoon family. The guide agrees, and we get to see all the animals we’d wanted to.
For Chris’ actual birthday dinner, Julie’s made a reservation at a nice, innovative restaurant called State Bird Provisions. We’re joined by three of Chris and Julie’s friends.
After dinner, Jan shares his birthday gift to Chris: a photo collage covering 50 years of their experiences together and their brotherly adventures. The collage includes small acrylic frames containing 50 wallet-sized photos, each labeled with some place Jan and Chris have been. Jan thought it would be fun to leave the collage incomplete, with a large number of black placeholders for photos from future adventures.
Angela and Anya are at a bagel shop and Anya asks to get a dozen bagels to bring home. At home, Anya leaves the bagels on the kitchen counter. Jan and Angela ask Anya to store them in the freezer before they go stale. They ask again the following day when they find the bagels are still on the counter. Anya finally says she’ll put the bagels in the freezer.
Later, we discover that Anya has put the bagels directly into the freezer: loose, unbagged — and unsliced.
Now over halfway through her junior year of high school, Anya is beginning to look at colleges. Angela takes Anya on a visit to the University of Washington here in Seattle, then Jan takes Anya up to Vancouver for a tour of the University of British Columbia.
Bree attends her friend Maxine’s birthday party: a scavenger hunt in Pike Place Market.
Angela and Anya leave to spend the second week of Anya’s break touring colleges on the East Coast. They head to D.C., and spend a weekend with Angela’s parents. Then they head up the coast, stopping at about 8 colleges along the way.
Jan continues his long Sunday morning training walks. This morning his takes the light rail down to SeaTac Airport — and walks back. The first part of the urban hike is along a surprisingly nice city trail on the banks of the Green River, which turns out to run just a little east of the airport. Jan’s lived in the area for nearly 30 years, and had heard of the river, but had no idea where it actually was.
Bree’s room is usually messy, and she’s prone to leaving things around the house, so it usually takes her a long time to find things. Today she offers this observation: “If someone gave me Harry Potter’s Invisibility Cloak, I’d probably lose it right away.”
Jan goes for a long morning hike on a loop through Tiger Mountain State Forest. There are very few views, but halfway through, there’s suddenly a view of Mt. Rainier.