Back in the Bay

We're back in Berkeley tonight after nearly 10 days in Atlanta. It was nice to return to crisp air, cool breezes and fog-fringed hillsides (the temperature was in the 50s when we arrived at SFO around noon today).

I will say, Atlanta wasn't as hot and muggy as I expected. And I think it was good for the kids to experience a different kind of climate — especially because it included thunder and lightning (a rarity here in the Bay Area), not to mention fireflies. I've also found that humidity triggers a sense memory for me of my time in college (the last time I lived on the East Coast), which can be pleasant — at least fleetingly.

We visited the Georgia Aquarium, the world's largest (my only disappointment: the daily wolf eel feeding doesn't involve wolves behind fed to eels). And we saw the Atlanta Zoo.

Would you believe, once again the tigers were a no-show? This time they were outside their enclosure altogether. (The zookeepers didn't explain where exactly.)

Tiger, tiger, out of sight.

While Elliot and Alice were well-behaved on the red-eye flight to Atlanta (they slept the whole time), the flight back was a different story. Alice cried intermittently, and Elliot flipped his tray table up and down, tried to pull the flotation device out of his chair, and crawled into the space beneath the seat in front of him and refused to come out.

Crazy train.

When we took BART home, he really lost his mind. He jumped around the train, licked the window and seat (I could not convey to him how disgusting that was) and knocked over someone's luggage.

There was apparently a suicide yesterday afternoon at our BART stop in Berkeley (Ashby), so we had to get off at Macarthur and take a cab. The problem was initially described to us as a medical emergency, and when we explained this to Elliot, he said that someone probably had a "booboo" (suffice to say, we didn't reveal to him what really happened).

Nothing compounds the awkwardness of a silent cab ride like your 2-year-old son asking why the taxi driver isn't saying anything: "Why that man not talking, Daddy?" Elliot repeated this about four times.

When we arrived home, I was horrified to discover that our house had been ransacked. Then Kelly reminded me that this was how we left it.

The worst part was discovering a baby bottle of milk in the sink that was covered in green fur. (I'm pretty sure I should pelt this with high-powered lasers before I let Alice drink from it again.)

Still, it's home. And we're happy to be here.