Siebel Scholars in San Francisco

I had forgotten, but it looks like I had this post halfway done before I abandoned the blog last year.  Since I already did the hard part, aka uploading the pictures, I'll share it just for kicks.

Loren had a conference in October [2012] for a scholarship he received his senior year.  It's called the Siebel Scholarship and is awarded to computer science and business majors at select schools.  Every year they have a conference.  The year you receive the scholarship, the Siebel Foundation also pays for you to attend the conference, so Loren went to Washington D.C. for the 2011 conference.  He wanted to go again the following year, so we headed off to San Francisco for a long weekend.  Shout out to my cousin Stephanie for watching Sophie!

Our designated conference hotel, the Claremont Resort.  Pretty fancy!

View of S.F. Bay from the hotel

It was certainly fun to go on a childless trip.  Unfortunately the bulk of the conference events were only for the Scholars, not their guests.  That meant I got in some quality time wandering around the town of Berkeley (as sketchy as you'd imagine) and the UC Berkeley campus (nice, but not as great as Stanford! ;)).

I was invited to the opening reception, where Condoleezza Rice was the featured speaker

The other event I was able to attend was a cruise around the Bay on Saturday night

Our cruisin' ship, the San Francisco Belle

The Bay Bridge

A couple more shots of our lodgings

On Sunday we had a few hours before our flight, so we trudged wandered around San Francisco before heading to the airport.

The 2013 conference ended up being cancelled, so who knows, maybe we'll go back this year.  Depending on the location, of course!

Volunteering at Robie

Last Saturday my dad and I volunteered at the Race to Robie Creek half marathon starting line.  We ran the race, billed as the "toughest half marathon in the Northwest", last year, but opted to just volunteer this year.  We got a free shirt for helping out, which was a nice incentive.

This is just one side of the line of Port-a-Potties

Let me tell you, it was the easiest gig ever.  We showed up at 9:30 as instructed, then basically stood around for two hours, periodically checking to see if any of the garbage cans needed to be emptied.  Only one can actually made it to that point.  Luckily it was a nice, warm day so it wasn't too onerous to just hang around outside.

I had time to take a selfie showing off my shirt 

The best part of Robie was that it brought L and S to town to run!  And even better than that, I finally got to meet their sweet baby!!

This year's race theme was "Killer Queen."  The course basically runs to the top of a mountain, then down the other side, so it was the "hill" that was the killer.  My shining volunteer moment came when I held one end of a rope to keep the runners back, while a drag Marie Antoinette literally (i.e. on a surfboard) surfed through the crowd to the starting line.  S/he gave a rousing speech, I pulled the rope back and they were off.  It was a not too shabby way to get a free shirt and some Vitamin D.

Easter Prep

Hey there!  I'm still here, although in a different house in a different part of town.  Hopefully more on that later.  Moving on to current events, apparently Sophie thinks the Easter Bunny can be contacted, just like Santa Claus.  Earlier this week she asked me for the Easter Bunny's address and after a quick Google search left me empty-handed, I suggested she leave her note out and see if he would stop by and pick it up.  Luckily for her, the bunny did indeed stop by and I have it on good authority, has noted her Easter morning requests.  I'll translate her notes as best I can, but fair warning, she usually leaves out the vowels.

[Hello Kitty sticker] 

"Easter Bunny"

 "Dear Easter Bunny

I hope that you like my Pez

Love Sophie"

"Please put these eggs under my mom and dad pillows"

"Frozen doll... (unintelligible)

You, dear readers, will have to wait with bated breath to find out if all of Sophie's Easter wishes come true.  And to conclude, here are a few pictures of the girl herself:

 She didn't want me to document it, but here's proof we successfully partook in Free Cone Day at Ben and Jerry's.  Sophie is eating the cotton candy flavor, yuck

 Showing off her favorite stuffed animal thrift store finds