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.
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.
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.
Julian came over Sunday afternoon to hack some on the most recent project I’ve been working on. His assistance is immeasurably helpful. I am really looking forward to Tuesday hack days, when he’ll come over after work on his way home for an hour or two.
I biked over to the farmer’s market on California Ave this Sunday. HODO Soy wasn’t there again, and their spot was taken by a crepes stand. It makes me wonder if they will be coming back to the farmer’s market or if they called it quits. I decided to grab some bolani, got Steph some more of the yogurt she likes, and had a lamb curry wrap for brunch. The ride was very nice, even though it was a little cool out.
I went up to the city on Friday to work with Bill and Steven at Steven’s place. They are doing well and Preet stopped by for a visit as well. I’ll probably go down to visit them from time to time.
Steph and I went climbing again last night, and we got a good number of climbs in. We hit a 5.10d on one of the taller walls, and it was quite a challenge. The holds had been made very smooth from the hands of many people before us and a ton of oily chalk. There was one part in particular that Steph and I skipped, but I was able to come back to it later and get through it with some really precarious balancing. Steph was getting worried about some stuff at work, so we went back home to let her work through it.
Steph and I took a bike ride down to Shoreline Lake and went sailing for about 45 minutes. It was a gorgeous day and the wind was perfect for full sail. It was challenging with the smaller boats and having to move around in ways that I normally didn’t have to in the larger boats. The ride itself was really nice as well. There is a ton of construction going on between the Bayshore path and East Palo Alto, so we had to actually had to take the roads instead of the nice nature surrounded paths. There is a helicopter that has been airlifting something over to the construction site both yesterday and today, which is cool to see.
We went to one of Steph’s friend’s birthday parties, and it was nice. He had some delicious sausages and mustards. They were incredibly tasty. I had a decent time there, but didn’t really know anyone and only managed to make it into conversations awkwardly.
After that we went to Julian’s party where people were playing the a cool party version of Jenga, that seemed to have a lot of cool house rules. I only got one and it wasn’t very exciting. Steph was incredibly tired so we went home early.
