Day 1: San Fran

We got into SF around noon time and hopped on the BART to our hotel - the Hilton in Union Square West. I'm wasn't all that familiar with SF neighborhoods, so didn't know where to stay, I went for recommendations on TripAdvisor. We're happy with the hotel - it's really nice, if extremely busy. The room is huge and very nice, though they wanted us to pay an extra $50 for an upgrade to a room with a view, which we declined (considering we got the room for only $70/night on Priceline, it would have almost doubled the rate), so we have a view of other buildings, but that's OK, we don't plan on being in the room much.

After resting up a little, we headed out to Japantown. We walked there from our hotel, which turned out to be a little bit of a hike, but that was OK, we like walking in towns new to us. Japantown itself was cute, but a little underwhelming -- we knew it wouldn't be nearly as massive as Chinatown, but I expected a bit more. We had a snack of sushi from one of those places where the sushi boats ride around in a little circle and you grab what you want -- with color-coded plates letting you know the cost of each dish. Mmmm, unagi.

From Japantown, we hopped on the bus toward Ghiradelli Square, strolled around a bit. We bought a 3-day transit pass and considered taking the trolley up Lombard Street, but were shocked at the line - it was over an hour! We decided to shelve the trolley ride until today (it was @ 6pm and starting to get cool on the waterfront) and walked down to Fisherman's Wharf. While I know it's touristy, we had a fun time here. We got a burger at In N' Out, just to be able to try it and then went to that candy-by-the-pound store where NoodleGuy had a blast. He's a huge taffy fan and they had more variety than I've ever seen! I had so much fun holding the basket for him while he darted back and forth picking flavors like Chocolate Chip and Mango Blast. He got probably 25 pieces (1/2 lb.) and predicted he'd have them finished by the end of the night -- which he didn't quite accomplish, but came close. It was appropriate since it was Halloween, it was sort of like he had trick or treated there ;).

Good thing that party in Castro for the Halloween no longer takes place-- by 9pm, we were totally pooped. We're trying not to adjust too much to Pacific Coast Time so that we don't have a tough adjustment back to EST. We decided to head back and hit the hay and get up early this morning. We were up since 6am (9am EST) and are now killing time before we can head to dim sum in Chinatown at 10. Besides doing Chinatown and the trolley today, we're going to explore Mission Hill and maybe do a bike ride across the Golden Gate. We'll see how much we actually accomplish, we usually have big plans and only wind up being able to squeeze in half ;).

With my new-found SF knowledge, I probably would opt to stay in a different area next time -- USW reminds me alot of midtown Manhattan (I grew up in Manhattan). In the middle of alot of action, very convenient to transportation, but not the coziest neighborhood in and of itself. It's totally fine, we like seeing the vibe up front, but there is a little bit of a watch-your-wallet factor, like you'll have in this type of area in any big city. Think Downtown Crossing, Boston gals. We went through so many neighborhoods that we loved yesterday, like North Beach and Cow Hollow yesterday, that we're rather stay around there next time.

In AF news, I'm still puzzled. my temps continue to confound (yes, I brought my BBT thermometer and am trying to time it to my usual EST temp-taking time). Yesterday was one of those days that I'd have a hard time classifying as spotting or light flow. It was enough to require a pantyliner (ick, I hate that word) but not much more. It might consider it CD1 if it continued today, but there was no sign of even spotting this morning. Sigh. I wonder if I might not even have a period this cycle since it seems to have been anovulatory and I never seemed to have much progesterone going on since my temps never got to my usual LP levels. For anyone of you who don't always ovulate -- do you sometimes skip periods? I guess that might just be considered a really long cycle? One of my only non-issues is that I have always had very predictable 26-27 cycles. Granted I'm only on CD24 but I'm just nervous about the timing for IVF. I'm also torn about if I don't get a full flow day by Wednesday if I should just go ahead with the SIS (sonogram) or cancel. I think I'll go ahead with it, the worst that will happen is that my doc will start and have to cancel because my lining's too thick, but at least I'll know what's going on in there then. By from my hormone levels on Thursday, I don't think there' much going on in there.

OK, enough IF talk, we're off to dim sum!