the winchester mystery house.....

[thoreau]

David has been suggesting that we head to the Winchester Mystery House in San Jose for a while now - and we finally went today. Built in 1884, a wealthy widow named Sarah L. Winchester (of Winchester Rifle fame) began a construction project of such magnitude that it was to occupy the lives of carpenters and craftsmen until her death thirty-eight years later. I laughed with David that it's the bargain Hearst Castle. Our guide was a young college student who had clearly recently memorized the scripts - and delivered the jokes in the script in the same deadpan monotone. It became pretty funny... he'd just stop for a brief break where I'm sure the script said "pause for laughter" - and kept right on rolling. LOL! It was a lovely tour and actually a very nice house. Widow Winchester was extremely superstitious - believing that the earthquake in 1908 was the spirits of people killed with Winchester Rifles.. so the sections of the house that it damaged were locked away and never revisited till after her death. Every single fixture in the house comes in 13 identical pieces - and every coat area has 13 hooks. It was a lot of fun.

Now we're back at the house waiting to hear from the spa that Miss Kate is ready to come home. I'm looking up recipes for dinner and David is excitedly reading the copy of 'Nature' magazine that came in today's mail.