Jeremy had a surprise birthday party. We missed the dinner section since we were at Amy’s party, but the rockband back at Jeremy’s place was lots of fun. We played until a little past midnight. There was the famous dip, which I ate way too much of. It was a really fun time, and I was still terrible at all the instruments (especially the keytar).
Steph and I went to a party at Amy’s after I biked over to her work, and we dropped Nick’s fitbit off. It was a really nice party, and the food was amazing. Amy had made a pizza with olives that had rosemary coming out of them so that they looked like ticks or spiders. There were also chips sticking out of little balls of something that looked like bats. The chocolate covered strawberries had faces on them and all of it was delicious. There was a fantastic sweet potatoe soup, and a lot of tasty cider. I went as Dr. Horrible since I had the costume on hand. The group that Amy hangs out with is very chill and fun people. I’d think we’d get along well if we hung out more.
This book was very interesting. It naturally didn’t solve what the meaning of life was, but instead it laid down a number of views based on world traditions. Many of these views overlap in many ways, but there is a defining characteristic about each of them that makes it incompatible with some of the others. I can see my world view a little bit in almost all of the traditions. Some of them choose to focus on one thing and then follow that to it’s final conclusions, like the value of life in Jainism. Some focus on a very broad aspect of if we can even say that reality is real. All of them were nice to learn about, and the arguments for each position were good ones.
This time I played with the hardest board and only let myself take the pieces everyone else passed up. I wasn’t able to do 10 machines with that, but I did manage to get 7 in. I had so much piping that I was at $2 when the game ended, and only had 50 bonus points from the connections I had made. There were a good number of instances where it was hard to restrain from grabbing the really juicy machines. The new people (Ilia, Derrick, and Ilia’s friend) did surprising well. Tina did mediocre on that round.
This was a very interesting and fun game. Chris taught it and Tina ran the show, with Michael and Derrick joining in. I went for a heavy hitting strategy that turned out to do quite well. I pulled the paladin in the second round and managed to destroy him and most of the hard characters. I was lucky in that I had a lot finer control over what heroes I would be facing, so I avoided the thieves. Without thieves I was able to do mostly full damage, and pull the healers to destroy them. The wizards didn’t do too much against me, so I was able to get away unscathed from them, and the paladin fell the first round against my dragon and troll. I look forward to playing the game again. I ended up winning by a decent margin. I may have lost if I was going with the extra stuff Tina was playing with, but might have been able to take care of it.
On Wednesday I went to Ryan’s PhD defense and it was very interesting. He did some experiments on the mid water column in Monterrey Bay and used that plus some other measurements to create a generic, mid-water-column flow model. It had a lot of points that I didn’t understand that well, but it all seemed very interesting and cool. I was glad to get to show up an listen. It was also nice to see Liana again and hear about her decisions. Michael and I hung around until Ryan got out of the review and congratulated him on the successful defense. Michael and I stopped by Ikes for dinner and chatted about all sorts of things after that, but mainly Wheel of Time. I realized that there were a lot of details that I missed, and names I don’t remember. That is pretty normal for me, and Michael knows a lot of them because of his forums activities on the subject and not necessarily the first read through itself.
I’m probably not going to post every single time I have a workout with Michael, and in this post I’ll cover 2. Yesterday we went for a long bike ride to Steph’s work and back. She left her phone at my place, so I thought I’d deliver it as well as get some exercise. Michael and I took the long way around on the way there, and went through a lot of chopped granite while we were at it. My hands were hurting by the end of it from all the vibration. We chose the much nicer paved routes on the way back, as going through all that chopped granite again wasn’t something we were looking forward to. We got to take some trails I hadn’t been on before, like the ones around Palo Alto airport. There is a little raised ridge that goes along there, where you have to watch for planes as they take off and land.
This morning we went to Reach and had a good time of it. I was still hurting from Monday, so I didn’t perform as well as would be liked. I am glad I’m doing these exercised and will have to keep them up. It hurts so much, but feels really good at the same time.
Nima and I had some really close games today, I think all of them were within 3 points. He won all of them, and I got really tired after the first two games. We played a total of 4 and I was ready to pass out at the end of that. I had tons of fun but this combined with the morning workout is more physical activity that anything I’ve done in a long while. I’m feeling really good about it, but sooo tired and sore.
This morning was my second workout with Michael and it was hard. I am going to be really feeling it tomorrow. It took an hour and a half, and we didn’t take many long breaks. I was having a good time, and we got to talk about a good bit of interesting stuff. I really enjoy having someone that I can talk to at a higher level and they enjoy it. Not many people like to philosophize openly and at the level Michael does, and I find it very interesting and refreshing when his arguments and points are based on reality and not prejudice or bias. I plan to make these morning workouts a common thing, and I’m feeling good even though I am tired and sore.
It's an Exciting World 