I DO know the way to San Jose

Yesterday was an exciting day. I met with a classmate from BU at a great little Italian restaurant in San Jose. He brought his gorgeous wife and their three year old son who was nearly kidnapped by me, especially after he waved goodbye to me from his car seat as they drove away. But honestly, I can only run so fast in these flip-flops. It was fun getting to hear a current BU student's take on the program. Thanks for lunch, Paul!

Lucky for me, the Winchester House of Mystery was right next to the restaurant.I walked over and paid a million bucks to see this crazy house that Sarah Winchester, recipient of the Winchester Firearms gazillions ($20M in addition to $1000 a day), designed and had built (The photo only shows a portion of the enormous house). Apparently, she was haunted by the ghosts of those killed by Winchester weapons and was told by a medium (in Boston) that she needed to move out here and build a house on which the building never stopped. She renovated and built onto her home for 36 years. The work went on 24/7. The building grew to 7 stories. Then the earthquake of 1906 struck and destroyed parts of the house. It caused the fireplace in the room that Sarah used as her bedroom to collapse and trap her inside. She was convinced that the earthquake happened because the spirits were furious that she had completed parts of the house and so she boarded up the 30 front rooms so that the house would never be complete. You can still see the damage caused by the quake in those rooms.

It was important to her to confuse the spirits (so goes the reigning theory) which explains cupboards that are only an inch deep, doors that head nowhere, and the stairs that lead directly into the ceiling.

She was also fixated on the number 13 (thirteen holes in the drains, thirteen panes of glass, thirteen windows) and on spiderwebs. This window was in the bathroom that contained a shower which was unbelievably high tech for those days. When Sarah Winchester died, she left the insides of the mansion to her niece, but the house was left to no one. So while it cost several million to build, it was sold for about $100,000+ to a farmer who wanted the land.

They say it's haunted, but I would never be able to find my way through the house in a way to be able to find out for sure.

After I left the mansion, I headed into San Francisco to watch a Giants game. I was about a block from the stadium at 4:45 (the game started at 4:05) when I noticed a ton of people in orange shirts coming towards me. What the...? 4:05 start time was in EST. GRRR. No baseball for me. But the Giants won. And I went to see The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants, and it was great.