Yay, we aren’t going to San Francisco today! That means I can catch up on yesterday’s pictures of San Francisco…

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This may be the best ‘Christmas time in San Francisco’ photo I ever took.

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Yesterday, we took the Oakland Bay bridge to the city.

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You know, just to mix things up.

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I always stop to take a few photos of the little art gallery full of Dr. Seuss stuff.

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Oh yeah.

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It just cracks me up.

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Not all the cable cars were dressed up for Christmas. I think the drivers have to do it themselves.

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We caught up with the fancy one, and I got a picture of Dashawn on it… he is looking at my daughter, Mollie, his girlfriend, running to catch up. But I can’t show the pictures of both of them… so… But he is part of the reason we are going to the city so much. Because he has never been to the Bay Area before, and it is fun to show new people old things.

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Okay, I got stuff to do… that doesn’t involve San Francisco, for a change. More SF pics later. I want to catch up… because we will probably be going back tomorrow.

 

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Sunset over San Francisco…

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Just a few quick photos of the sunset the other night…

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I never get tired of watching the colors change.

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I love the way they play with the water of the bay.

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It was one of those nights when even the ugly parts of Oakland look beautiful.

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And San Francisco looks almost magical.

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I am saving a few of these to do some artsy stuff with when I get home… and we do need to move on to yesterday’s adventures in the city…

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But that is kind of pretty, isn’t it?

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Is that why they call it the Golden Gate???

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Okay, we are finally at the end of the day… the day before yesterday, I mean… if you are following along with the saga. A bunch of us went up the hill to the elementary school to do some stuff. On the way home, we were discussing how the Golden Gate got its name. Was it the golden sunsets? Or something about the gold rush? We could have Googled it, but sometimes, arguing is funner.

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There it is, the school where I learned all about how bad I was at being in school.

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We were trying to beat the falling darkness. After our adventures walking on the Golden Gate bridge, we had Christmas toys to play with!

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We did have a nice view  from up there.

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But what we needed was the huge blacktop…

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I did keep running over and taking pictures of the sunset as the colors changed… you know I love sunsets…

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But, as I said, we had toys. Here is my sweet new ride.

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My wife got all the boys… (remember, there are at least 14 people living at my mom’s house right now)…  little remote control cars. So we had some races. We were driving them around the house, but that got dangerous.

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Ooooh… that’s a pretty one.

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Why is my daughter’s fiance trying to control my mind?

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Oh man, he got an airplane. Oh, and Jason… that’s him with the plane… and Jessica, are gone now. They left yesterday, after more San Francisco adventures… that I will post about today… unless we are busy… going to San Francisco again… sigh…

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And, of course, I still have like ten more pictures of this sunset…

 

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Bye bye, Golden Gate…

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Wait, the title of the post is misleading. We aren’t leaving yet…

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Although Big Johnny, Eva, and Willie did leave today, ironically to go to San Diego to see John’s mom. Remember, he as a childhood friend of my wife’s. I just meant that these are the last pictures I took yesterday when we walked on the Golden Gate bridge.

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I know, it seems weird to show photos of Mollie’s boyfriend without her in them. I take lots of both of them. My wife just doesn’t like Mollie… or herself… to appear on the blog. I am falling behind now. We just got back from another day in San Francisco, and I haven’t finished yesterday’s photos. In fact, I am thinking of skipping tomorrow’s trip to Fisherman’s wharf and other places to catch up… not only on the blog, but on my sleep… and finishing the newest novel.

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But while I am… figuratively… in the middle of the bridge… if you look straight across the bay, you can see the Berkeley hills… under the red arrow… where I take all the cool sunset pictures and where we visited the science museum.

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And if I use the zoom lens, you can practically see my mom’s house.

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Tomorrow, I will have to do a couple of posts to finish up this day… which was yesterday… if you see what I mean… and I will be a day behind.

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A gratuitous picture of a winter rose I spotted near the bridge.

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Good picture of Big Johnny… he really is a very sweet man.

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So, bye for now, San Francisco… we will get to you tomorrow…  which was really today… but I won’t post about it until tomorrow… if you follow my drift… or should I go to Fisherman’s Wharf so you can see pictures of that, and get further behind?

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This is confusing for me… I am a Scottish Lord, not a Time Lord…

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No, seriously, I am a Scottish Lord… I did a post about it once.

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The bridge… now with less words and more me!!!

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Selfie time!

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Gratuitous artsy bridge shot!

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Stop photobombing my selfies!

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The city!

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Seriously… you are getting on my nerves…

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I’m just trying to find the bridge… (bonus score if you know what band wrote the song those lyrics are in)…

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I finally ditched my daughter’s boyfriend!

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Zoom shot of cormorants on a bridge footing… or is that an abutment?

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Big Johnny!

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If you are going to walk on the Golden Gate bridge, do it with style!!!

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Our godson, Willie, knows what I’m talkin’ about…

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It was a beautiful day for a stroll yesterday.

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Alcatraz!

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Did you know there is a civil war-era fort under the bridge? It was put there… well before the bridge was… to protect the bay from rebel raiders. It is called Fort Point.

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Getting closer!

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I told Dashawn to make a ‘I’ve never been to San Francisco before, and I am so excited’ face… good job…

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I do love that zoom lens.

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I do like to go for the artsy shots.

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It is a pretty nice bridge.

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I told myself to put on a ‘I grew up here, so I can just look cool’ face for this selfie… good job, me!

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It’s not yesterday anymore, is it?

No… it isn’t. It is just before five in the morning… and I am sitting at my mom’s house… the first of the horde to awaken… trying to do a post or two about yesterday’s adventures in the Bay Area… before we leave to have more adventures… and I fall even further behind.

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So, I mentioned in the last post from last night that we went to the city and walked on the Golden Gate bridge. I have a lot of pictures of that, so maybe the next couple of posts after this one will just be mostly pictures, and I will do the back story now.

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To get to the city, we took the Richmond bridge… with it’s lovely view of San Quentin, the super-max federal penitentiary. I know, we could have gone the other way, and crossed the Oakland bridge, but we like to mix it up.

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This also meant that we drove over the Golden Gate bridge… before coming back to walk on it.

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I saw a ship coming into the bay, and… well, sometimes I like to mess with my camera, and see what it will try to focus on… this time I made it choose between the bridge railings zipping by and a ship in the distance. That is kind of an artsy shot, don’t you think?

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We went to this guys house! Yes, that is Big Johnny. We call him that because I am six feet four inches tall and he makes me look normal-sized. Best man at our wedding… childhood friend of my wife originally from San Diego, like her, which explains why I live there now… and father of our godchild. Also, the guy whose 50th birthday party was the reason for my last visit to the Bay Area, and some pretty awesome drunken adventures, in case you missed those posts.

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Okay, that is Dashawn, playing our godson, Willie, like a guitar. Willie took to him right away, which makes me like Dashawn even more, (remember, I always say, don’t trust anybody if dogs, horses, babies and little kids don’t like them)… which is good, because he is dating Mollie, our 17-year-old. Don’t let the 49’ers jacket fool you. He has never been to the Bay Area before. He flew down to share in the Browne family Christmas madness, because, for Christmas, my wife and daughter got him tickets to a 49’ers game… and he is a huge fan. Don’t worry, they are going with him.

The thing is… (yay, another thing!!!)… we don’t always do all the touristy stuff every time we come here. I grew up here. We come here, to the Bay Area, I mean, at least a few times every year. But it is kind of awesome to do the touristy stuff with somebody who has never been here.

Oh, and while we were walking to get lunch later in the day, a homeless guy yelled: “Nice jacket” at him, and it made his day.

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After Willie showed us his new Christmas presents… I know, Wookie jammies and mask with a furry Ewok ear hat… very confusing…

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… and his sweet, new ride, an all-terrain tricycle…  Ha! I just noticed his shadow… it looks like a lizard on a bike!

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So anyway, I still have a bunch of pictures of the bridge, and an adventure to the elementary school that I went to when I was little, to do some cool stuff, and see an awesome sunset… but soon, a house full of… uh… I think there are 12… or 14 people here now, I can’t count them, they keep moving around… are going to start getting up, and we are going to the city again, (not all of us)… because my older daughter… yes, Jessica… and her fiance, Jason, are leaving today. I sort of hope we take a day off tomorrow to relax.. if you can call being in a house this full of people relaxing.

But if I don’t take a shower now, I will never get to.

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See that bridge… we totally walked on that today…

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What, you don’t believe me?

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Okay, technically, that was taken just before we walked out onto the bridge… How about this…

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You can’t fake that. The thing is… (hi, thing, how ya been?)… that we had adventures all around the Bay Area today, but I am now sleepy, and we are going back to the city tomorrow for more adventures… so I am going to be another day behind by tomorrow night. These three photos are just a small sample of today. That’s the best I can do right now. We are going to have a busy week, you and I.

 

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Christmas dinner… number two…

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I am not making this stuff up. Every year, at my mom’s house in the San Francisco Bay Area, we have two Christmas dinners… exactly the same. That guy in the corner, stretching his neck, is my brother, Henry. He, and his wife and three kids show up the day after Christmas, because of stuff with his wife’s family. You might remember him, we used to be in a band together.

Wait, let me backtrack, because this all took place yesterday. After our trip to the science museum with our godson and his mom, they stopped by my mom’s house…

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We had to give Willie our presents.

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The superhero walkie talkies were a big hit.

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And Willie totally took down my younger daughter’s boyfriend.

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There was more of our awesome Christmas bread, just like the day before…

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There was another huge roast beef… just like on Christmas day… with lots of baby potatoes.

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I know, it isn’t as bloody rare as it is supposed to be, but the one the day before was…

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Bear in mind that by the second Christmas dinner, there are usually 12 to 16 people at my mom’s house… and I mean sleeping here, not just to eat the dinner.

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And we have Yorkshire pudding… maybe not the big ones in a single pan you were thinking of if you are English… we do small, individual ones.

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And the whole table is rest, complete with the crackers… with little explosions and bad toys and jokes and paper crowns.

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Yup… we do all of this… twice… two whole days of cooking… because those of us that show up before Christmas want a Christmas, and the people who show up late do too. We even open presents on two separate days.

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And that is why I have these pictures of half a plum pudding being lit on fire for the second time. Nobody really eats that much plum pudding… it is just an excuse to eat hard sauce… which is just powdered sugar, butter and hard liquor.

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There, we made it through yesterday… now, we have a bunch of cool photos of today, and we did some cool stuff today, and I won’t get to most of it until tomorrow…

We have a lot to do.

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I finally took a good photo of a flaming plum pudding!!!

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It is not easy to do, because, if you use the flash, you can’t see the fire, but if you don’t, the shutter is open for a long time, and any movement makes the picture blurry. Technically speaking, that is only half of a plum pudding… because this is our second Christmas dinner… Hobbits have second breakfasts… Brownes have second Christmas dinner. And we had ours last night… but I have to get ready to go to San Francisco for more adventures, so… I will have to share that with you later.

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