Bento

First attempt at walking the cat: not a huge success

A ride up to Mont St. Martin

Legs felt ok, and it was warm (11 or 12 degrees)

I warmed up on the bike path next to the river, which was quite pleasant. There were throngs of people out enjoying the weather: kids on tricycles, grandmas and grandpas out on bikes with grandchildren, and even a peloton of little kids in full race kit.

Ice and Galvie

As I was walking in to work I noticed some ice that had formed from runoff. It had a really interesting pattern:


It reminded me of Galvanized steel (image from Wiki), which is steel with a Zinc Carbonate

I'm guessing that the processes in which they are formed are pretty similar i.e. nucleation at various points and then growth until adjacent crystals obstruct further growth.

Carnival

It's Carnival time again. Zoe wanted to be a "Unicorn Princess" so I bought some felt, a needle and thread and sewed her a Unicorn horn. Alex has a fantastic Spiderman costume, but I felt guilty not making him anything so I sewed him an awesome hat (with elastic strap). In the process I stabbed myself several times with the needle of course. The next day Zoe refused to wear the unicorn horn. Kids.

Snow

Lot's of snow and cold temps recently. Nothing much new and we have been so busy at work that we have not managed to do much on the weekends. We did manage to finally throw a house warming party (it snowed during the party!) though. Last week was our lab ski day and I took some video via my new GoPro:

More climbing gym

The new game is to tie up the kids and have them untie the knots.

How not to carry a cat

Cat+Paint

Tonight I was relaxing in the bath when Bento jumped onto the side of the tub. This always makes me nervous because he has fallen in before, and the last thing you want is a terrified cat desperately scrabbling it's way out of the tub with claws fully deployed. I was therefore watching his every move very closely, and I noticed that there were some green spots on the side of the tub. This confused me because even after a session of rollers and a full day of work, I didn't think I would be so tired as to not notice a big green spot on an otherwise perfectly white tub. It turned out that Bento had managed to dip one paw in a paint dish on the kid's table and had proceeded to leave little green paw prints throughout the apartment.

Climbing gym

and a very funny tag for a bouldering circuit

Lego

Zoe has started playing with Legos a lot. MUCH better than Barbies!

Snowman

Made a snowman with the Chateau kids+Zoe+alex
Later, I peered out the window and silvered one of the kids (neither of the below kids, who are wonderful and well behaved) casually stabbing the snowman in the torso with a stick. The next time I looked out of the window the snowman's head was gone.

A new family member

I present … Bento!

Back from the USA

And greated with yet more Bouygues Telecom incompetence! No internet @home again. I'll update once it comes back.

SFO

Another nice long flight home. At least we got to check out the very cool exhibit about mountain bikes (including a lot of stuff about Joe Breeze, who I rode with earlier this year!)

Packing

The hardest part was the bike. Also, we had to weigh everything since there were so many kid gifts

Sukiyaki

I miss sukiyaki a lot too. I'm not sure what I did to aggravate Zoe here, but she was clearly not happy with me. Note the learning chopsticks which the children appear to have already lost.

Dinner at Rivoli

Wonderful, as usual. Terrible pictures though!

Academy of Sciences

We went to the Academy of Sciences with the kids and nana today. It is a fabulous museum that the kids love, and we were happy to take them there but whoever runs it needs to get a grip -- it's just too much money. We were talking to a camp councillor in the East Bay, and she told us that even with the (meager) discount for camps, they could not afford to bring their kids there. Science education is a privilege of the rich, I guess.

From there, we had some amazing Pho in the Richmond district and we ACTUALLY FOUND PARKING ON CLEMENT STREET!

Arrgrghghgh

Broke the iPhone back