Thursday morning Tara and I took the car to the golden gate park for a tempo run. We were both kind of tired and maybe tired of running so the conversation was tough. We just focused on running and ended up running the whole thing very fast, faster than our goal pace. Afterwards since we only had the car for a few more hours we took it somewhat out of the way to B Patisserie to get pastries. They were amazing. Our favorite in the city for sure. Ham and cheese croissant. Banana chocolate croissant. Kouign Amann was the favorite, both the butter and sugar and the raspberry peach. We filled out plates with breakfast. We love living by bakeries.

Thursday was Stanford day. I had a call for work and then we headed out. It was GREAT. We searched for somewhere to eat and Tara found the Arbuckle food court. Turned out to be the food court for the Graduate school of business and it was pretty good!  I had a salmon salad. Tara a sandwich and salad from the deli bar and salad bar.  Kids had pizza. Right outside there was a really cool art installment called “A Monument to Change as it Changes.”  Josh LOVED it and wanted to stay and watch it forever.  Each of the different colored tiles would change color and every few minutes the whole thing would look totally different.

Then up Hoover tower.  We saw the view from Hoover tower but still didn’t feel connected to the campus.

Then we went on an amazing tour. I was skeptical about a walking Tour with a free guide but it was spot on. She was from Guam. She was studying Feminism and Gender and Sexuality. And she was pre law.  She made Stanford sound so supportive of it’s students. They have so many amazing opportunities research, study abroad, and entrepreneurship.  is also 65k a YEAR. And only 4% get in! Crazy. But supposedly 85% get financial aid and 75% graduate without debt which seems pretty hard to believe but I guess it is possible. It was a great tour covering everything from athletics (they are awesome, sending 30 people to the olympics this year) to the history  of the university (Stanford Leeland Jr died when he was 13, parents founded a college on a farm in his honor). We saw the engineering quad. The Hewlett and Packard buildings. The gates computer science center (CS is now the top degree for both men and women which is really impressive). We saw memorial church or MEM CHU (they like to abbreviate everything). The main quad. We learned that Stanford has the first Google server in the basement of the Engineering building.  They also have the first Star Wars Manuscript and John Steibeck’s Pulitzer Prize.  John Elway is a Stanford grad.

We finished by the bookstore and a big fountain (Lydia fountain?). Apparently in Stanford everyone likes to play in the fountains so rather than say no they just chlorinated the fountains. So we dipped our toes in. Then hit the bookstore and then it was time to head home.

It was a LONG tedious drive home at rush hour. Lemon chello’s at this point driving us almost CRAZY. Came home and made the kids dinner and then Tara and I went on a date. We didn’t really want to but I’m glad we did. We talked. Laughed. Ate mediocre food.