On Sunday I drove to the top of Mt. Diablo, near Walnut Creek. I’ve seen the mountain looming in the background on nearly all my visits to the area and looked it up on the internet to see what it was. It took over an hour to get to the state park, but then another 30-45 minutes to drive a narrow, twisting road to the summit. The summit road had lots of cool views and I took some pictures. There were plenty of cyclists suffering up the hill (and flying down it). I saw a few people running, too, which surprised me.

At the top, I could see everything. To the east was the Central Valley with the Sierra Nevada on the horizon. To the north, I could see Suisun Bay and the Sacramento River. In the distance, Mt. Lassen was barely visible, the southernmost volcano in the Cascades. The entire Bay Area was visible to the west, but much of it was covered in fog. The skyline of San Francisco just barely stuck out of the fog, along with the Golden Gate.

That was a pretty cool trip. I spent a fair amount of time walking around the summit and taking pictures. It was like being on an airplane with the views.

On Saturday I did a loop around the Palo Alto Baylands for my long run. I had been there before, but turned around instead of doing a loop. This time I went farther and came back along 101 instead of retracing my steps. One of the best things about this area is that there are so many good places to run, just right out the door. Then, of course, there are all the parks in the Santa Cruz mountains. If you took all the parks I’ve been to in Eastern Virginia and combined them into one, they still wouldn’t be as cool as one of the open space preserves in and around the Santa Cruz.

I’ve also watched a few movies lately. I saw Zodiac, which I was surprised I hadn’t heard of before. I was really impressed by it, but the ending was a bit anti-climactic. It was also kind of weird because it took place in the SF Bay Area. It seems most movies I see are set in a place I have little connection to, so the setting made it a little more meaningful.

I also saw The Prestige. This was really good. I had wanted to see this for a while and finally got my chance. The ending was excellent and almost completely unexpected. Spoiler: I had an idea of what would happen, but the reveal of the true “good” and “bad” magician really blew me away.

The whole food thing is working out well, but is starting to encroach on my free time. Planning what I am going to make and especially going to the grocery store is wearing on me. Each week it becomes a pain to figure out what I can make that is relatively easy, since I don’t feel like doing much after work. The weekends don’t matter as much, so I can afford to spend more time. However, going to the store takes awhile and sometimes I wind up going to several places since not every store has all the stuff I want. Of course, I usually forget something and then have to go back again to get it.

This weekend I did a stir fry with shrimp and rice, which turned out great. I made another peanut butter pie, this time with cream cheese and a chocolate crust. It’s kept in the freezer and with the cream cheese tastes like a cheesecake/ice cream combo. It’s also really dense despite using low fat ingredients. At this point I’m pretty confident I’ll just get a minimal meal plan and eat most of my dinners in the caf. All the overhead of going to the store and planning things out would be a real pain while at school. It might work out better if I had a roommate that I could switch off cooking with. That way I also wouldn’t make something that would last for three days.

I’m pretty much getting done what everyone at work has given me to do. My visualization tool has been integrated into the Composer IDE and now I’m just adding more features. The work isn’t terribly challenging, but it’s much better than the previous summers.

Dan called to tell me he should be in Echo Lake on Saturday afternoon on his way up the Pacific Crest Trail. It’s a four hour drive from here, so I thought about going to see him, but it’s hard to tell if he would be there by then. Yesterday was the last time he could call before the weekend. I don’t want to go all the way out there only to miss him. There are some friends in Davis that I will probably go see instead.

My mom was planning on driving back with me and was just talking about going back the same way I drove out. I don’t know if I want to do that. It might be interesting to go the southern route since it’s something new. I’ll get to go to three new states: New Mexico, Oklahoma, and Arkansas. It’s pretty much Interstate 40 from California to Tennessee. It would probably be hot and consist of a lot more boring plains and deserts, so I’m kind of unsure on the issue. I’m also not too keen of another endless drive through Nebraska. There’s still a few more weeks to decide, but not too many.