I do go on and on about how jazzed we are to have our offices downtown now. We end up seeing a lot more of downtown San Jose, and there’s always more fun to be had.
The weekend before, we’d gone downtown to see the fireworks and thanks to our office building, were able to drive in half an hour before the fireworks show and enjoy our parking downtown. Afterwards, we had the comfort of being able to stash our stuff in our office and stroll to Pizza My Heart, enjoy a snack, and wait out the massive jam of people trying to leave. On our way out, Peter bought group discount tickets (and advance tickets for The Dark Knight) at the Camera 12 Cinemas, because now he and his staff can walk to see new comic book movies together.
And then for this week, Peter snagged discount tickets to the Thursday night show at the San Jose Rep, The Reduced Shakespeare Company’s All the Great Books (Abridged.) We left Kelly with a sitter, but took Neil, since his education is, after all, based on the great books. Walking over to the rep, we walked through the Pete Escovedo concert in the plaza. Neil had no idea who he was, and Peter just made it worse my telling him he’s Sheila E.‘s dad. If they’re not in Guitar Hero or on one of my alt-rock stations, Neil’s never heard of them. I told him Pete Escovedo is a legendary salsa musician.
But we had come to see a play, not a concert. Needless to say, All the Great Books (Abridged) was funny, erudite, and even better if you were familiar with the books. As far as I’m concerned, their synopsis of Ulysses was probably better than you’d get in a lit class–and took a lot less time. There was some improv, and at one point, the actors rolled with a tangent so long they had trouble getting back to the script. I was worried about how much Neil would enjoy the play, but he loved it. In fact, he asked to see the books on the “class syllabus” and I pulled all the classics we had from our shelves. As a result, when he left for scout camp yesterday, he’d read half way through The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.
The next day Friday, Neil, Kelly and I took light rail downtown for one of our regular “Day in San Jose” excursions. As it turned out, Peter never made it to his own office there, because he was too busy waiting in the interminable line for the new iPhone. I had a huge pile of books to return, so the kids and I went to the downtown library first, where I met up with my friend Michael. I dragged Michael along with us to the farmer’s market, where we each bought lunch, and I bought several pounds of seedless grapes to turn into raisins. Michael had to go back to work, but as it turns out, another friend showed up. Loretta had come by for the farmer’s market, too, so we hung out. Then I dressed Kelly in her bathing suit, and she splashed around in the fountains at Plaza de Cesar Chavez. Kelly wanted to see the Tech, so we fetched Neil (who’d just been reading in the office) and closed it down. Peter finally had an iPhone in hand (at the mall near our house) at 5 pm, so we took light rail home. He arrived home minutes after we did, and told us of the tale of horror, which involved several iPhones not being able to accept his cellphone plan, and an enviro-Nazi argument about how “green” the “green” iPhone cozies were. Really, if you care that much, just go live on a subsistence farm already, will you? That said, the iPhone is pretty cool. Neil doesn’t have a cell phone, but he was bonding with the iPhone so avidly, if he had one, he’d want the iPhone.
Tomorrow Kelly and I are going to see the San Francisco Symphony perform in the Circle of Palms. So San Jose’s giving us a pretty good summer close to home.