January 17th – MLK Weekend:  Phil heads west from the east coast and spends the weekend with us for the first time since our move.  Hopefully I’ll someday post the photos from our visit to Half Moon Bay, 12 miles from our condo.

January 23rd – Jenn heads south to Stanford and stays at our humble abode.  It was great having her in town.  I hadn’t seen her since right after Thanksgiving and then it was a real short visit.  This trip I got to see her for five days and even though I monopolized her whole trip, I still was sad to see her leave.  With all of the email, cell phones, blogs, and occasional snail mail, you’d think that staying in touch would be enough – but her visit (and my visits with others) really just proves how important human contact – actual face to face contact – is truly important. 

During Jenn’s visit, we ate at some of my favorite restaurants – including Sushi Sam’s for sushi.  The ambiance isn’t fancy, but the fish melts in your mouth as you eat it.  Yummy.  We also saw “In Good Company” with Topher Grace & Scarlett Johannson – all three of us liked it on the whole but I hated the last 10 minutes.  Do they not test this stuff with women??  I mean, come on …regardless, I have to say that Topher will definitely have a pretty long career past “That 70’s Show”. 

On Saturday, Drew/Jenn/myself met up with one of the world’s most connected men on the planet, our friend Bubba.  Now, I met Bubba long ago when he was an intern at Microsoft and dropped this recruiter on her butt during a boat cruise.  Left quite an impression.  Of course, he was tight with Jenn, and then it comes around that he is friends with a number of my all-time favorite hires (as a recruiter, I have to be honest, that there are some people you become much closer to over time then others).  I’m sure the feeling is mutual by some of the hires as well.  I’m not for everyone.

Anyone, we met up with Bubba and headed into downtown for some shopping.  Outside of Drew & Phil, who I have to say have the patience of shopping saints, Jenn is my all-time favorite shopping buddy – except for the fact that she looks absolutely gorgeous in everything she tries on – and for me, forever wishing to be one or two sizes smaller, it’s a bit intimidating.   We do have a great time together – Jenn has amazing style as anyone who knows her will tell you.  She predicted the whole brown/pink craze over a year before it really caught on – she can take fabrics, colors, and prints and put together a fabulous look without any effort – and it would be better than half the stuff you see in a runway fashion show.  Anyway, Jenn found this really great blazer that everyone will of course have 6 months from now and she’ll have worn it about 50 times before then but it will always look a little different.  I found a cashmere/rabbit hair sweater that I just had to have.  It’s the softest thing I’ve ever owned.  It’s pretty amazing and I just love it.  My face gets all lit up when I think about it.

The boys did some shopping on their own too (wise men to separate themselves every now and then for survival purposes).  Bubba met perhaps the most amazing salesman/personal shopper ever in Nordstrom downtown and bought himself a fancy suit for the zillion weddings he’s always invited to (pictures to be posted soon, I hope).  After we closed all the shops, we headed to my favorite SF restaurant, Betelnut (2 weekends in a row!) and enjoyed some libations and tasty treats.

Then on Sunday, Jenn & I were exhausted – a tiny bit hungover and Drew headed out to NYC for a meeting on Monday morning.  Except he never quite made it to NYC – he got as far as Dallas where he was stranded.  Needless to say, this was not one of American Airlines’ finest hours – he spent hours trying to get rebooked to Orlando (having to explain multiple times why he no longer needed to get to NYC since he was missing the only meeting he needed to be at if they couldn’t get him there), then he had to find a hotel on his own, and of course, he had no luggage.  NO LUGGAGE from Sunday, January 23rd until Saturday, January 29th – yes, it took a week for them to finally track down his suitcase and get it delivered to the house.  Thankfully I was joining him in Orlando so I was able to bring him some clothes – and they did give him $75 a day for two days (yeah, as if $150 was really going to buy dress clothes for meetings with customers).

This weekend (the 30th), Drew’s mom has flown in and has been taking care of Drew who evidently has been rather ill all weekend.  I’ve been in Boston at MIT since Thursday night and am flying home today (more about Boston in a separate post).