The San Jose airport is actually very close to downtown--from a quick glance at google maps it looked like it couldn't be more than 3 miles--and I didn't have a lot of luggage, so I figured it might be fun to try walking it Friday morning.
Not surprisingly, I got a little lost at the end in the pedestrian-hostile spaghetti surrounding the airport, but other than that it worked OK--it took about an hour and fifteen minutes, and I probably could have do it in under an hour another time.
The flights home were crowded, and I was uncomfortable and bored. I did a little work, and read a few chapters of "If on a Winter's Night a Traveler".
Back in early December I ordered a new thinkpad, which was originally supposed to arrive in a couple weeks. Then they delayed it until the beginning of February and then, when I checked at Connectathon, to the end of February. At that point I was finally totally fed up, and planned to cancel it and order something different as soon as I got back. And that was exactly the point when I got the email message saying it had shipped. So it arrived at my office last week, and I had the cab driver stop by work on the way back from the airport so I could pick up the new laptop and drop off some other stuff.
Today I spent the morning wrestling with the linux install, and the afternoon at a Chinese New Year's party hosted by a coworker of Sara's, with lots of dumplings (which we got to help fold up) and other good food.
It's very cold and snowy here in Ann Arbor, and so I'm taking great advantage of all my winter clothing: long underwear, turtleneck, sweater, down mittens,....