Mountain View, California

Dear Friends:

This week, I took a very short trip to the San Francisco Bay Area.  Specifically, I went for two reasons.  First, to have a series of meetings with Google at their headquarters.  Second - and most important - to see my daughter and her husband.  More on that in a minute...

A visit to Google's main campus is always interesting.  The vibe here is much more like a college campus, than a high-tech heavyweight company.  Right in the middle of the main cluster of buildings was this scene:

This picture was taken at about 2pm, so well after lunch...and folks were out playing.  I couldn't even imagine this happening at my company ; )  Later that afternoon, I met with some of the Google Android team.  Just outside their building is a garden of giant statues.  Each one of these represent the code name of a version of their operating system.  Each version is named after a dessert of some type.  You can see Froyo, Gingerbread, Honeycomb, Ice Cream Sandwich, Jelly Bean, and Kit Kat:

The next version is "L", so there's lots of speculation on the announced code name.  I would vote for Lollipop or Lemon Meringue Pie ; )

Inside the buildings, there are some creative touches.  One main building had a slide that started on the 2nd floor and delivered riders to the 1st floor lounge:

In addition, the lobby had living plants that extend up the 20-foot walls.  It was beautiful:

The meetings went well and the Texas people that I was with enjoyed making fun of all the "spoiled" California Googlers ; )

Later that evening I met up with my daughter and her husband.  It was my little girl's birthday, so I was able to take them out for dinner.  We tried a Moroccan restaurant...and it was spectacular.  No belly dancers at this place (that's a whole other blog post for another day), just fantastic food.  We started with a dish called bastilla - basically an awesome combination of sweet and savory:

It's a baked phyllo-dough pie filled with chicken and roasted vegetables,  and then sprinkled
with almonds, cinnamon, and powdered sugar.  Yeah, you read that right.  That combination of ingredients should never work...but they do.

I tried a dish called M’rouzia - boneless beef marinated in awesome spices, with onions, raisins, and honey, garnished with almonds.  Another sweet/savory combination:

Had to borrow a picture, as mine was too dark...

We celebrated her birthday by having her open presents.  Then we took some pictures.  Poor girl, having to suffer with a crazy father:

We took a "normal" picture, just to be safe...

Overall a great trip - I love visiting with my kids and the impending birth of my second grandson is such a blessing in my life.  I'm one lucky guy, that's for sure...