Bonus Blog: Keys!

It's Labor (sp.) Day weekend here, which means an additional day off work, and perhaps more excitingly, we got the keys for our long-term rental house yesterday. The house is in a quiet street in downtown Palo Alto, and it's beautiful; so much so that Helen seemed to wince as we walked around, saying things like, "It'll be shoes off at the door here!", and "I think we will be going to Ikea a lot to buy rugs and throws to protect the floor and walls!".

The pic doesn't do it justice, but yes, it does have a verandah with a sofa on it.

On Saturday we went to the Millbrae Art and Wine festival. I didn't see a lot of wine, and the art was mostly what I'd call tat; it was really like the stalls you'd find at a county show in the UK, with the exception that they don't go so much on the home-made produce over here - you don't get a load of nice pie stalls, for instance, although we did pick up some speciality toffee and had a good chat with some people that had a coffee plantation. We got into the local spirit with some delicious brisket-loaded fries for lunch.

Today I'm hoping to persuade Helen to let me buy some lovely, hipster-style bedside lamps that I found yesterday. They're really nice, and they have USB power outlets so they're actually useful too! What's more, the shop has 20% off for Labor Day... to me this is a compelling case. Others disagree.