Westley kicked off the new year finally undergoing his urology procedure that had to be repeatedly rescheduled over the past two years. His first encounter with general anesthesia went smoothly, and I took advantage of his recovery to complete the RG gundam kit that we started over the holidays. I also spent time upgrading our home network gear and hunting for Pixel 8 cases and wireless chargers from Temu, having frantically replaced my dead phone days before our Mexico trip. My old lab mate JB was visiting from Korea earlier this month, so we shared spicy hot pot that lasted us through mid-week. We were glad to have cleared the fridge by the time we were ready to embark on our lab retreat in SF last weekend. We drove down Saturday morning with my niece to queue up for Golden Gate Bakery egg tarts and Hon’s Wun-Tun House dumplings before meeting with lab folks at the Exploratorium. The psychedelic glow cinema mesmerized us, while social experiments like Team Snake taught us to work together. We were most excited for the cow eye dissection, even though they forgot about the retina (!). After gathering kalbi, bulgogi, kimchi, seaweed, and banchan from a nearby H-mart, we settled into our oceanside Airbnb. A few last-minute cancellations and initial lack of heat kept the house feeling empty and cold, but we quickly warmed up with our DIY kimbap dinner, indoor hoops, and a heated game of Pandemic. We started Sunday with high-quality dim sum at Koi Palace, then headed back to the Embarcadero to board our ferry to Alcatraz. Here, we learned about the island’s history as a fort then prison, the local flora and fauna, and life of inmates and guards. The engrossing audio tour detailed the different cell blocks, escape attempts, and kitchen violence with the “pop slap” sound of knife stabs. We stopped for hearty clam chowder at the Fog Harbor Fish House at Pier 39 and pineapple buns from Pineapple King on the way back to the house for an instant ramen cookoff and game of Wingspan. We awoke Monday morning to more kimbap to clear out the leftovers before checkout. The charging station had technical issues that kept me from joining my family shopping in Japantown, but gave me enough juice to make it back with our niece with time to spare for video games and a make-up piano lesson. With Melody out of town and an atmospheric river trapping us home this weekend, we spent a lazy weekend editing travel photos, cooking stews and soups, playing Zelda, and making another gundam. With lots of upcoming travel next month, it was nice getting some father-son time at home.