Friday night I pondered staying behind in San Francisco and joining a few of my coworkers for dinner, staying long enough so that when I finally left I'd avoid most of the traffic. But I was tired and although the thought of dinner was appealing, I just wanted to get home. My poor brain has already been too befuddled this week, what with the 'we're checking out so we must be going home' false start it got on Wednesday.

Richard and I ended up ordering pizza and watching Princess Monanoke Friday night, since it was one of the newest movies that arrived from Netflix this week. It's a very odd movie. I felt though most of it that I was missing something vitally important. I think it's supposed to be based on an old Japanese legend. Perhaps there were background stories that would have filled in the gaps. Despite my misgivings about the plot, the animation was at least interesting. And besides I think after a week away from home I would have been willing to sit through something even more dull and insipid just for the sheer joy of being home with my husband and the cats.

The cats have pretty much swarmed me most of the weekend. The second I sat down anywhere, something fuzzy was on my lap and at least one more was on the floor by my feet, crying pitifully for attention. Our suitcases were populated with cat the moment they were opened, and they followed us through the house every time we'd move from room to room, as if they were afraid we'd disappear again.

I got new black shoes for work. We swung by the library so I could pick up my latest book on hold. We ate cornmeal waffles with pecan butter for breakfast and Chinese food for dinner. We spent a few hours pondering the merits of the Palm m515 versus the Palm Tungsten – a task which involved traveling through two different counties and to three different stores to compare prices and accessories. We watched a marvelous rendition of How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying, put on by the Davis Musical Theater Company, which scored bonus points for being completely lacking in any long and painful interpretive dances. I pondered sending joyous fan email to the producer, begging them to use this choreographer more often (hence avoiding more long and painful interpretive dances in our future). I picked up a tenor recorder from my dad and a fingering chart to try to jog my foggy memory on how the heck to play this thing I haven't touched in probably at least 20 years.

We did our laundry and plowed through a week's worth of mail, and put all that clean laundry right back into our suitcases in preparation for leaving again. I ran around and watered plants and paid bills and unearthed the breakfast nook table from the pile of mail that had accumulated the previous week. And then we both loaded up our cars and printed out directions, and here I am, back in San Francisco, ready to wash, rinse, and repeat the same thing yet another time.