When we got back to the house Dad was ready to take the iPad case in for exchange, so we stopped by the Apple store and I got the light blue front cover. We then headed to the Commissary to pick up the BBQ for that evening. We got all the good stuff, and a lot of BBQ. As always the Commissary is super tasty. When we got back to the house Dad and I started drinking some wine and played some cards. He beat me badly, and I just wasn’t getting the cards I needed. I made a few mistakes in the early games, but the later ones I was getting really bad luck. Kim joined us for dinner and brought over a really tasty dessert, apricot tart. This morning I’m feeling sick from all the tasty, rich food last night, and all the meat.
After getting home from the bike ride we called Kim and the three of us went to the farmer’s market at the Agricenter. Mom was looking for a broom, but was unable to find one. The food looked really good, and I got a really sweet smelling cantaloupe. We then stopped by Kim/Ray’s house, and it was really large and nice looking. I wish I could have a house like that in the bay area. She introduced me to her cat Thumper, who was born without a tail.
She then attempted to do a cat beard with Thumper (She’s doing it wrong!). Just kidding, she was giving him all sorts of love.
Once Dad called we headed right back to the house, and met up with Dad.
After a breakfast of scrambled eggs with goat cheese and bacon, Mom and I went on a bike ride from the house to patriot lake. It was a perfect day for a ride and we went at a relaxed pace. I really enjoyed the ride with her and we got to talk about some interesting things.
This book was very interesting, and had a lot of great general advice for starting up small companies. The end of the book was a really strange alternate reality, multiuniverse, what-if scenario of if space was more salient. The story was kinda long for the points it was trying to make, but I agree with a lot of the message. It was saying that we were sacrificing functionality for entertainment with consideration of the space race. Nasa was spending tons of money putting people in orbit, when it could be spending fractions of that money to build massive satellite networks. The book also talked about the KISS maxim that I try to prescribe to, Keep it Simple and Salient. Most of the time it is read as Keep it Simple Stupid, but I like the Salient version better.
After spending time with Nana, I hit the road for Memphis. The trip took about 4 hours as expected, and 22 was a fast smooth ride. I drove to the Airport to drop off the Nissan Hatchback at Alamo by the airport and Mom came to pick me up. We went back to the house and had some dinner that Dad had gotten from the Club. It was a nice salad and some really tasty soup.
They gave me an iPad for my birthday, which was really nice of them. I of course downloaded the latest Zynga games along with the Supercell games.
Dad showed me the latest guitars he’s been working on, and they both look and sound really good.
Mom brought up the 23 and me info and we talked over it for a while, I showed he how to go more in depth for the ancestry and how to look at it in chromosome view.
Mom also had some really tasty cookies she had baked using almond flour. They had a really great tast and texture, and I think I’d like to give baking some almond flour cookies a try.
I had a great night’s sleep last night and woke up around 9:30 at Jeff’s, got ready, and headed to Birmingham. I forgot to get the 23 and Me kits from Jeff, but I’ll just remind people to get them and use them at their convenience. The drive to Birmingham was uneventful and nice.
When I got there I went to Nana’s house and gave her the trivet/bowl. She and Coleman thought it was really neat, and I think they will get some use out of it. We went down 280 a ways to Joe’s Crab Shack for lunch and we all got the Surf N’ Turf burger. It was pretty good, but I couldn’t get close to finishing it. She gave me a big update on the family, which was nice to hear, and all of the stuff that she had been up to. She gave me a tiny Disney Rubik’s Cube to give to Mom. I showed her my diving video from Cathedrals off Carmel and gave her the link to this blog.
Jeff had 6 decks that he’d put together that we played with this evening. One of them was his insane elf deck, but we didn’t use that since it didn’t mesh with the rest of the decks. I think the best of the others was his artifact deck, which came out really strong and caught a lot of momentum. The other decks were pretty slow to get going. He also didn’t capitalize on them enough. I can’t really blame him since he was really tired and nice just to be hanging out with me for the evening. He has lost a lot of weight and seems to be decently happy.
I finally got to Jeffs and wasn’t able to get in, but the garage was comphy and got a quick 30 min nap. Jeff cooked some really nice pasta with Shirataki noodles. These were some pretty good noodles. Olive is adorable and I got to play with her while Jeff cooked.
We played a round of Portal 2 racing, which was pretty interesting and well done. There were parts of it that you could really mess with the other racer by overwriting their portals.
After that we played Bocci Ball, Ping Pong, Archery, and Frisbee Golf. Jeff won most of it, but it was a good time.
I got to have a really nice lunch with Russel at Thai Spice. He also showed me around his office, which looks really nice. He has been there for 6 years now and is doing great. He is the technical sales guy, which means when the salesmen actually need someone who knows something he is the one who comes in to give estimates and design. We talked for at least 3 hours and it was really nice to catch up.
It's an Exciting World 