Well, Wednesday's drive apparently wasn't as relaxing and healing as one might have hoped. I ended up taking prednisone when we got to the hotel and got an early morning call from my doctor's office with Marge the Nurse telling me that I was under strict instructions to remain in my hotel room in bed and take it easy. I was way bummed about not being able to be with the kids and Mike, but I was also in absolutely no shape to go with them.

I mostly just watched TV and snoozed, but by Thursday, I felt a lot better. I took the family to Louie's, which is the red brick building just in front of the treeline in this picture. They make a pretty good breakfast and it's the best view in San Francisco. After we ate, we took the kids down because it was close to low tide and poked around for sea shells rather close to the Cliff house, but I started remembering while we were there that the best shells are down by the zoo. You'd have thunk that we'd go to the zoo, but the kids were having so much fun, when asked if they wanted to go to the exploratorium or the zoo or something, they both looked at us surprised and said no, and went back to playing in the sand.

We figured if they were having that much fun, then screw it, they could just play and we'd take them to the hotel later to feed them. When they started getting cold, as the fog started to obscure some of the sunshine, we took them back to the hotel and made sandwiches and hung out for a couple hours, until Mike's brother's girlfriend got off work and could meet us.

Overall, we had a great trip and lots of fun. The day we went to the beach was absolutely fabulous -- beautiful, sunny, and warm -- a true rarity for San Fran beaches. We never did go to the Exploratorium because the kids were having so much fun at the beach. We did a lot of walking around in China town -- the kids got to go to the Academy of Science with Mike and Kevin when I was sick in the hotel. We drove down Lombard Street billed as the "crookedest street in the world." Every night, was a culinary experience. We had Thai food, complete with a Buddhist garden. We had Italian food, complete with a family serving style. We had breakfast at Louis' at Ocean Beach, overlooking Sutro baths. We had Spanish food -- like from Spain -- in the middle of the Marina. Julie picked up special Chinese buns from China town and got us piroshki from a Russian bakery -- so yummy! Mike and I went to the Stinking Rose last night because Kevin and Julie wanted to watch the kids for us. I got their recipe for that fresh pesto -- to DIE for. Of course, that's just up the street from City Lights Books, so I got to browse there and bought a couple favorite authors' most recent publications.

The last night, I noticed my knee was bothering me. A couple days later, it's swollen like a balloon and I'm getting an MRI tomorrow morning. Wish me luck!