They paved paradise. And put up a parking lot. And a Famous Footwear.

Photo by Breann

Hey kids,

At first blush, this weekend's trip was about seeing momma's favorite band, Camper van Beethoven, pictured above. But it turned out to be so much more.

Jakob was spending the week at his grandparents' house, so I didn't feel too terrible leaving daddy at home alone with "the easy baby" (that's you, Wavy...) for a three-day mini-break. I took Friday off from work and headed over the mountains to see some friends, take in a show and generally just mess about.

On the way there, I took a quick detour through my old hometown of Lodi (of "stuck in Lodi again" fame) and took a few pictures and marveled at the jaw-dropping "progress" that has been made there in the 20 or so years since I lived there.



This is my family's former house on Church Street. It looks exactly the same.



This is my old high school. The photo on the right is what's left of the band room, where probably three-quarters of my time in high school was spent (not counting the days we cut class and went to Lodi Lake). I don't know if they're tearing it down, or shoring it up, but it certainly has seen better days.

I drove around a bit in what used to be the rural part of Stockton, where we lived for a few years before Lodi.

There used to be a little wooden shack of a fruit stand on the corner of I-5 and Eight Mile Road. It was surrounded by farmland as far as you could see. When I was in junior high, I would pick blackberries along the rocky levees of the San Joaquin River during late summer and the nice lady that ran the stand would give me five dollars for each flat I brought in, until early fall, when the berries were too fat and mushy to sell.

Needless to say, the fruit stand is gone. In its place is a Sleep Train Mattress Center, a Target, a Dress Barn, Borders and blah and blah and blah. Instead of fields in every direction, you can see miles and miles of upscale, gated communities full of people who commute a 100 miles everyday to and from the Bay Area.

Eh, gotta go to bed. I'll tell you more about the weekend getaway tomorrow.

We all gathered in the back yard tonight at 9:30-ish and watched the Space Shuttle and the International Space Station zoom by overhead. Very cool. Jake kept trying to blind us with the flashlight, and Wavy fell asleep and missed it, but still and all... kinda humbling. We wished them luck and waved until they disappeared into the Earth's shadow.

Welcome home, Jake! I missed you like crazy!