rally, rally, rally

apparently i can still rally with the best of them - shrug off that hangover and get to work - not as quickly as i used to, but who am i to complain.

the last few days with the kids has been a lot of fun - usually i just have them for 3 hours today - this week it's 9 hours a day - how to fill 9 hours. . .

yesterday we headed out to marin and went to the cheese factory, which is outside of novato - it's a nice little spot - out in the middle of nowhere with a pond and geese and such. it's actually the site of my first childhood memory - getting bit in the ass by a goose - ah memories. the kids wanted nothing to do with the cheese of course, but i picked some up, including their house speciality, schloss, which i remember eating as a kid - it was stinky stuff, and my dad and me were the only ones in the house who would touch it.

we headed out from the cheese factory through pt. reyes station and olema to stintson beach. one of the great things about heading out to the cheese factory is the option of heading back into the city on highway one - it's incredible - not many people realize that most of marin is open coastal space - it's really amazing. we drove through stintson and headed up the mountain, and pulled off a bit of the way up to hike down to this cool little beach with tidepools and rocks to climb on. there is actually a rather large outcropping with a flat face that has already been outfitted by someone for climbing - if anyone is interested, let me know. . . we finally headed back to the city to rest our weary bones.

today has been the complete opposite of yesterdays nature fest. we started out by checking out "bugs!" - an awesome 3-d imax show - it was pretty amazing. then, since we were in the area, we headed over to zeum, which is this cool interactive museum - my favorite part of the visit was getting to make my own clay figures and then animate them - i of course had a pretty poor excuse of man for my clay figure, while the everyone else seemed to master artist - still a blast though. then, as if that wasn't enough, we hit the library - got a few books(i picked up 'the basque history of the world', which i hear is fantastic), ate a bit of lunch, and have now returned to the home base where everyone is doing their own thing - me included. really not a bad day after all. . .