Staycation

Welcome, surviving reader, to the next exciting instalment of the blog. This week, we took a break from work, making use of the American holiday, plus the generosity of Uncle Sundar and an additional day's leave, to take a 5 day staycation. We had a packed programme of home-based entertainment, but also got out and about on Shanks' pony as much as we could.

Indeed, we spent a good portion of one day walking the 4 or 5 miles down to the Baylands Nature Preserve (yes, the 'P' is intentional here), where you can normally see all kinds of wading birds and waterfowl. This time, not so much; however, there are swallows nesting in eaves of one of the buildings here, as they do every year, and we were able to get a good look at them:

We also partook of a couple of virtual theatre experiences; the National Theatre are putting a play up on YouTube every week, and the Globe has a long list of plays you can watch for a small fee, so we enjoyed the most culturally enlightening content ever to grace our US TV set (the next closest challenger is probably "Say Yes To The Dress Atlanta", so you can see just how fierce the competition is; I'm getting pretty close to cracking and setting up a VPN so we can watch UK TV).

Our second walk was a podcast-guided campus tour of Stanford, and whilst we've been round bits of the University before, this took us to places we had not previously seen. That included the former site of the Engineering building, which ironically was eaten away by termites and had to be dismantled! The walk started, of course, by the amazing memorial church on the Campus, and it was great to have the chance to admire the mosaics without the usual crowds:

The walk also took us through the rather splendid Papua New Guinea sculpture garden, which is more or less what it says on the tin:

The public holiday here in May is Memorial Day, the equivalent of Remembrance Day in the UK. However it's also the traditional start of Summer, and the day when everyone needs to have a barbecue. When in Rome...

I think we managed to do barbecuing properly: we actually read the instructions and did roughly what they said, the food was cooked through, and 5 days later I still don't have symptoms of salmonella, so I have to assume I'm OK. Helen even made the legendary s'mores: roasted marshmallows wedged between pieces of chocolate and biscuit. They're better than they sound, despite the general low standard of both chocolates and biscuits here. Obviously you make up for the lack of quality with quantity...

I really enjoyed our packed staycation and went back to work refreshed. The 4th of July isn't far off, and that's another 4 days off work... will we be able to travel and do more than a staycation by then? I'm guessing not, but as per the mosaics, we live in hope!