Hello hello hello. Here I am, back again, for another great blog entry. :-)

First off, I now realize something. Look two blogs down. See how I say that my whole entry just dissappeared and that I thus had to do it over? Look one more entry down. There it is! The missing entry! I suppose it hadn't gone missing after all, though I maintain that it was not there immediately afterwards. Anyway, now you can compare the two, seeing little details that I forget or other ones that I remembered to include in the second version. :-)

Anyway, on Sunday, June 20, we left for -- Dallas. Yup, that's right, to go to Anchorage, Alaska we for some reason ended up in Dallas. While we were there, we saw a little Dell store and - BAM! - bought a laptop. Hehe... that was sudden!

Next stop, Anchorage. Alaska was lots of fun. We saw a giant glacier, several bears, some moose, and lots of mountains! One thing we didn't see was nighttime. In summertime Alaska, it never really gets dark. I took a picture at 10:30 or so PM, showing it was still broad daylight!

Our itinerary stated that we'd be in Alaska for about 5 days, then in San Francisco for 5 days. Unsurprisingly, that remained true. The trip from AK to SF was uneventful, and we arrived in time to see two things that were absent in Anchorage: our older brother Johnny, and darkness. (All the other things unique to San Fran would have to wait until morning.)

In San Francisco, our hotel was right accross the street from the Sony Metreon, a kind of Sony-only mall that we first discovered on our trip to SF three years ago. Unfortunately, 3 years ago it had a store called "Microsoft SF" with fun PDAs, software, games and more. Currently, it doesn't. Apparently, Sony took offense at Microsoft releasing the Xbox (which competes directly with Sony's PlayStation 2) and kicked them out. Very sad indeed...

At the Metreon, we played with projected marbles, ate ice cream, and saw at least a few dozen fancy Sony TVs showing the trailer for Spider-Man 2 -- which, might I add, is a Sony movie. (It also wasn't out yet during our visit. It is now, though, and I hear it's great.) In addition, there were tons of Spidey posters and giant Spidey wall displays. There were even more ads for it once you stepped outside, on busses, billboards, and so on. Despite its supposed greatness (I haven't seen it yet, so I can't be sure!), I think that's a bit much.

In SF, we also went to the beach (and made two giant sea forts -- the second only after the first was obliterated by a giant wave), saw plenty of restaurants, and saw my older brother's apartment. (In there, the day before yesterday, we played a board game called "Settlers of Catan." If you've ever played the computer game Civilation III, it's a lot like that. I love them both!)

The day before yesterday -- our last full day in SF -- we saw the best thing of all: Skywalker Ranch! We saw the giant sound/screening room, their artificial lake, and original props from Lucasfilm movies! I took at least 100 pictures of that place -- I hope to post some photos from the trip on my site soon, and those will be included.

Of course, I've been talking about putting stuff on my site "soon" a lot, and not much has actually gotten up there. We have plenty of free time ahead, though, so I assure you: there WILL be more updates SOON. :-D

Speaking of the web site, I spent some time discussing that with John while in San Fran. Fear not, version 4.0 is still on the way, and looking better than ever!

Random Rosie Comment of the Day:
We just got her back from her stay at the kennel today! YAYAYAYAYAYAY!!!

Well, that's all, folks. Check back next time for another edition of...
TOPH'S AWESOME BLOG!!!!!!