Date 9:The estate date
I'm getting behind on these posts. :)
Last weekend, I suggested to Littlestar that we might go to SF to see Cliff House or to the Bay Park area to wander around for a while. She pointed out that she can't really afford whole days now that she's back in school, and counter offered with an estate sale. She'd heard from m that she might find art books there, and she wanted to take a look.
So, with (as it happens, incorrect) address in hand, we drove to Atherton. I haven't spent much time driving around Atherton, but the "leave now" feel of the estates is impressive. I suppose it's apropos that we went to an estate sale at a place with genuine estates (mixing the two meanings of the word). As we drove (and figured out our address was a little off), we compared notes. Littlestar liked the houses, but they felt a little on the big and isolated side for me. As much as I don't really interact with my neighbors, I think I like the idea. :) Of course, if I lived there, I wouldn't be obligated to have the giant fences some of these homes had.
We found the correct estate sale site without much hassle. Inside, I wandered for a while, looking for art books and anything else of interest. The place had an impressive amount of space and clothing, but nothing that called out to me. Littlestar found a cute little vintage bag, then hit the art books hard. We ended up hauling off two big, very heavy boxes of books, covering topics from painting through photography.
After the estate sale, we wanted to go for lunch, then to the library. Being near Menlo Park, we went for Bistro Vida, a really nice little place on Santa Cruz.
Afterward, as we walked back up Santa Cruz, the Menlo Park Goodwill caught Littlestar's eye. I kind of wandered around and tried to offer helpful responses to the "what about this?" questions from Littlestar as she tried on different jackets. Whee. :)
After that, we hit the Mountain View library, then called it a day.