Friday afternoon I took a long bike ride to go fix the wall when I removed the mirrors. I found out that paint matching is a tough process, since you can’t bring the wall to the store very easily, and bringing samples to the wall doesn’t work very well. There are just too many samples to bring them all reasonably. I got lucky in that I was fixing a wall that I had ripped a few pieces out of, so I just took the wall pieces for matching. It was hard to find a really good match even with the wall piece there, but I got one that was really close. I went back and painted over the spots that I had already spackled over. Then I biked back to my place. The whole trip to nearly 3 hours and I had biked at least 25 miles on the trip at a good pace. I think I am finished with the things I need to do at 906, unless I want to go back for the Olives next week. It seems like it would be nice, but it would be a good chunk of time that I just don’t have right now.
Yesterday Steph and I got up super early to head to Northern California to dive for abalone on the Sonoma Coast. We went up to a place called Salt Point State Park. Along the way we ran into the same traffic that I hit coming back from the Beer and BBQ festival. They had now closed the northbound lanes on 880, down to just 1 open lane. This made us at least 40 minutes slower. When we got the park we were a little late, but they were still getting set up. We talked to some of the people there and met an interesting bunch of people. After a safety briefing we got in the water around 11am. We went out in groups of 5; 2 buddy pairs and 1 instructor. Steph and I took about 15 dives each and ended up getting 3 abalone each for it. We quickly figured out how to find them, and how to get them off the rocks. I started cramping due to the long bike ride I took on Friday. I got one that was about 9 inches, and will need to have some people over to share it. There is a ton of meat to the 9 inch abalone.
When we got back in we tagged the abalone, and then got to learn how to prepare them for eating. It is a tough process to cut them up when they are so slimy, but it was fun for being a challenge. We had a nice picnic bbq there, and made some breaded and fried abalone steaks.
We then drove back, stopping by Stumptown Brewery on the way. I just got a couple diet cokes, and Steph got one of the beers. It was a relaxing time, and prepped me for the drive back. We went to her parents house for dinner of soup and cheesy bread. I showed them how to prepare the abalone on one, and Russell took over the other. He was so happy to be getting some abalone it was cute.
We then went home to clean our gear and go to sleep, it was a full day.
I’d be up for doing it again, but not sure when I’ll be able to find the time. I certainly don’t want to drive up to Northern California to do it. It is such a long drive, and hard to do when tired after diving.
I think I figured out the optimal strategy in this game, finally. It seems that if you push hard for resource tech early, then push hard on the resource wheel, then get some crystal skulls, you can take over the points. I wasn’t able to pull it off this past game, due to time considerations for the others involved. I need to be a lot more awake and ready to do the math for the building costs, especially with the resource strategy.
I put a little bit of effort into personalizing my side tables, They turned out decently well.
One is a work in progress and will continue to get more and more on it. It is my sticker table. I expect to get a lot of stickers when going to PAX and I’ll put all of those on this table.
The other is the bottle caps table. I’ve been gathering these for a while. It is not finished either. Only the outer edge of the table is glued down. It is rainbow in color, and I can replace the duplicates as I drink more different beer.
Today while working, Archer came and slept in my lap. Lana joined for a bit to get pets, but didn’t stick around nearly as long. Archer was there for an hour and a half, while Lana stopped by for 15 minutes or so. They are such good kitties!
I also put Lana on the leash today. She was going around the stairs, so not quite outside yet. She did really well and didn’t struggle against the leash too much after the first realization that it was on her and a bit of extra weight. She likes going under things, so I’m going to have to be wary of her for a bit. She even did well when I held her back from going further, and just came back to hang out around me. Archer is still slightly too small for the harness and can wriggle out of it easily. After I got back from turning in coins at the coinstar he had managed to get halfway out of the harness.
Last night Steph, Adam, Andrew, Lindsey and I played some open face chinese poker. This was fun, and we had to alternate who wasn’t in. There were a few hands where I had a really amazing hand that would fault by just the tiniest bit. It happened a good number of times, so I should probably be a bit more reserved, or at least have better backups in place.
I ended up 13 down, and steph was 21 up.
Tuesday evening I played a really great round of squash with Nima and Caryn. When they are both there I can tend to beat them both, but when I got to Nima 1 on 1 he plays differently. He knows how to use my playing style against me, and didn’t do that when we were playing the 3 way squash. Caryn is really doing well for not playing as much as either of us. She has 2 more big things to start on before she is amazing; moving after hitting, and reading the other player. She is very good at placing the ball, and possibly better than either Nima or myself at it.
Tuesday morning, the beautiful Steph and I walked to Izzy’s from my place for some breakfast. Izzy’s is a fantastic bagel shop, that I think is so amazing for their delicious varieties of cream cheese. We each got a bagel and split the sun-dried tomato cream cheese. I would love to do more breakfasts like this one in the future.
I had a great time listening to this. It was in a very different direction than Your Deceptive Mind. This was about using the biases and heuristics, along with controlling the conversation. This had a lot more to do with situations where there isn’t Truth but only truth. What I mean by that is this deals with situations where there is uncertainty. It is a really interesting listen.
It's an Exciting World 