Woke up early Saturday in preparation for the long-awaited replacement of our bay windows. Switching out the original, single-paned, decades-old glass with insulated double-paned windows. Last night I slept without earplugs—the cars sound far away, but now the refrigerator sounds closer. Is there any such thing as a quiet fridge? Can a noisy one be fixed?

Seeing as though I was up early, I got my haircut, got a retirement distribution form notarized that I’ve been meaning to do for well over a year. Showered, shaved, and then Stephanie and I took the BART over to Berkeley (for the first time, under the bay!) for lunch and a hike with Casey. This is one of the fun parts about living in the city. Walk about 15 minutes through interesting city streets to the BART stop. Hop on a train (which just happens to have pulled in to the station as we got there) emerge on the other side of the bay a few minutes later. Of course it helped that Casey had a car and could pick us up and take us to lunch, but still, it felt pretty radical traversing that distance without a car (for $3.10).

Casey took us out to an organic/sustainable Mexican restaurant called Picante. I had manchamanteles, cause it was the longest word on the menu, and because it was described as “tablecloth strainer” chicken (wt?), but mostly because it came in mole sauce. Food was extra tasty. A woman was making homemade corn tortillas. The food got to our table before we’d even sat down! I left very full.

Hiked for a few hours through Tilden Park. Caught up on Casey’s law school life (and post-school plans), filled her in on our city experience (the last time we’d all hung out was back in August, pre-SF). Took pictures.

On the way back from Tilden, we caught the most amazing sunset. Casey pulled over and I took 60 photos.