Hello! How are you? I hope all is well? We are doing well here, busy as always and enjoying Sarah's latest tricks. She is amazing and really quite stubborn, (like her dad! - I changed this from 'mum', Faith). We are trying to get her to crawl but, every time we try and set her legs in the correct position to crawl she wrigglers to try and stand up. At the moment she manages to get her legs apart and straight and balances on her arms and is then stuck (a downward dog position apparently) see below! Blimey, more work needed in the Sazberry department. One evening after work in LV we took the Sazberry to one of the marinas around Lake Mead, it had been exceptionally hot that day (118 degrees F), we saw loads of fish as we walked up the piers and after only a few short minutes scuttled off to the café to get out of the heat. When we sat down in the cool of the café we looked at Sarah and she too had been quite hot and had the reddest little chubby cheeks!
After a long meeting on Monday we all flew back to SF, clever old Faithy had managed to get us an upgrade to first class and we luxuriated in the extra room on the way home. It was an amazing flight back as we were heading west into the setting sun. The sky looked like it was on fire as we flew over the snow capped Sierra Nevada towards a sky that went from brilliant orange on the horizon to through yellow to light blue and finally star encrusted dark blue at the edge of my view. God is very good at sunsets! Despite my many attempts I just could not get a good photograph of the sunset so I have attached a photo of the Sierra Nevada we took on the flight to LV. Another amazing view we had was on our descent into SFO, as usual for this time of year, the Bay and surrounding low lands were filling up with fog but peeking out from this fog was the neon glow of the city lights in Oakland. It was an eerie sight watching emergency services vehicles lights flashing along undefined city streets from under the fog.
Thursday night was quite exciting as there was a fire alarm in the building. I stuck my head out the apartment door and immediately smelled smoke so we knew we should really evacuate as we were being advised by the voice emanating from our ceiling speaker. We have a emergency earthquake pack (as advised by Zygi) so we grabbed this and the Sazberry's change bag and made our way to the stairs. We joined the throng of people making their way round and round and down and down the 27 flights of stairs. We got to the bottom and all spilled out on the street to be greeted by 3 fire engines and a few passer bys taking photos and video. We milled around for about 10 minutes before we were told it was all clear and it had in fact been a kitchen fire; someone had done a King Alfred and burnt the cakes!
After getting back from LV the Sazberry developed a temperature and by Friday evening this had developed into a full blow cold, not as bad as 'man-flu', but still a very snotty, coughy cold. As such we decide that the weekend would be spent close to the apartment trying to make the Sazberry as comfortable as possible. This being said I had a delightful Saturday afternoon eating the last of my birthday pork pies and reading from the latest issue of the Proceedings of the Yorkshire Geological Society. After church on Sunday afternoon I took the Sazberry to the local park (Yerba Buena) as they were having a free opera concert (they have free concerts every Sunday afternoon and we have in the past heard a colliery style brass band!). It was really good, the performances were brilliant and the sound system allowed us to hear in perfect clarity. I met Nick O'Riordan and his wife there and we all enjoyed extracts from various operas. There were all sorts there from real opera buffs, to school kids doing homework in the sun to geologists taking babies for some fresh air! How very San Franciscan.
I have been asked to go back to Las Vegas next weekend to give Ali a few days off, I am really looking forward to going back and seeing Ali and the pegmatite Ali has found in the borehole. OK, take care, tom, Faith & Sarah.