grace in small things #11

• I joined a new local meetup.com group and today we drove up to San Francisco for our first meetup. We were rewarded with meeting some cool new families, discovering an awesome playground, and getting to enjoy some rare SF summer sunshine (California in general may be sunny, but SF spends most of its summer months covered in cold fogginess).
• We drove to the city on the 101, but came back on 280...I'd forgotten how much more pleasant of a drive it is, with views of rolling hills and wilderness (vs concrete and billboards). It's been weird adjusting to driving on such crowded, busy streets again, it felt really nice today to drive on what reminded me so much of the sweet little country roads I loved in New Hampshire
• Bluetooth in my car. The 2 years in NH I drove a car whose CD player was broken, so all I could listen to was the radio, or I would sometimes play music off my phone on speaker (like, off the phone directly, not playing through anything in the car). Being able to get in my car now, and have it automatically connect and start playing my playlists, is AWESOME. 
• Perfectly ripe California avocados. 
• I've always wanted to buy myself the full set of Harry Potter books, but kept putting it off because buying them all at once is not cheap. Well, I've now inherited my brother's set, which makes the books that much more special. I like coming across his penciled-in notes and marks in the margins as I read them.