I do my best to take a short walk any day that we have great weather on the Microsoft campus. This time of year especially gives me a chance to enjoy all the flowers and to stroll along the wet-land path and remember Beau and the walks we had together back when I had just started working at Microsoft.

Today we had an event: Chinese President Hu coming to visit. Always a good chance to wander about and be a lookie-loo.

Well, the lookie-loo quotient had been exceeded by the time I reached the fun-spot across the street from building 36 and the police had yellow-taped my intended path. So my walk to the 16 cafeteria turned into a diversion.

I went around on the edge of the exercise field and came up behind some of the established protest areas. The main protest group, as far as I could decipher, was Falun Gong.

So I walked around, looking for the snipers manning the roofs. No luck. Walking down towards 40th one lady, not in a jogging outfit, broke-out in a run towards the circus. Not a good move. A security officer asked her to stop and walk around the taped off areas.

The Executive Briefing center was all made up - good thing it was such a pretty day. Big huge red banners with Chinese writing and nice red tapestry adorning the entryway.

So, it's about 6pm and all seems well. Let me look at the window and see if Redmond's scary armored vehicle is still there... yep. Here's hoping that I won't head home just when the motorcade revs up.