It's an Exciting World

Stephanie and I went back to the north bay this weekend.  This time we went to Point Reyes and Calistoga.  We had a pretty good time with both.

The drive to Point Reyes wasn’t that bad.  We got there at about 11am, and started the backpacking in at 11:30 abouts.  We were there with Caryn, Nima, Liana, Ryan, and some other of Liana’s friends and family.  They were all a lot of fun.  It was for Liana’s birthday celebration.  We backpacked about 5 miles into the Glen Camp, which was nestled in a quiet valley.  The day we hiked in we decided to head down to the beach.

Only Wilson and Jess got in the water all the way.  A few others of us got our feet wet, but 50 degree water isn’t at all comfortable.  The wind was pretty strong, so even out of the water most people were getting pretty cold.  We didn’t want to stay too late as we had a 2-3 mile hike back to Glen Camp.

We got back and played some Bang! that Nima had brought.  It was a good time, but I did really badly.  Either way it was a good time.

The next morning 8 of us packed out, leaving Nima, Caryn, Liana, and Ryan.  I really enjoyed everyone that went, and I’d certainly do it again.

From there Stephanie and I went to Calistoga, with a stop by Heydrun Meadery on the way.  We had a nice dinner in a spot that Stephanie picked out, then stopped by a local brewpub on the way back to the hotel.  The hotel was adorable, with an outdoor fireplace.

We roasted smores over the fire and cuddled for a bit.  I went inside to listen to my book while Steph stayed out by the fire and read.

We stopped by a Spa the next day for some hot spring waters and a massage, which was nice.

I came to Vegas to meet up with two groups of people.  Former coworkers, and our games group.

I got in Thursday night a little after midnight, and just grabbed a hotel near the airport.  The next morning I spent working out of a Starbucks, and then went to meet up with Brian, his wife Albe, Darren, and his wife Grace.  We went to an escape room, and crushed it!  Albe and Brian are escape room designers, so they meta gamed it a lot.  I was helpful with the pattern recognition as I usually am, but didn’t do much past that.  I did cheat on the final puzzle, but we fixed that really quickly.

We then went to meet up with the rest of the Rocket crew at a sports bar so they could watch the last of the basketball game.  I met the new Rocket folks, but the new artist left pretty quickly.  I had a great time talking to Kate the new engineer.

We went to the Hofbrauhaus, and got drinks and food.  It was a good time, but I had a little too much.  They do the liters of beer there, and I had two, plus a shot and a spanking.

Many of the Rocket people went out to gamble and party afterwards, but Myk and I went back to the house and went to sleep.

The next morning I showed them what I had been working on, and they thought it was going in a good direction.

I went to hang out with the other friend group, but they were playing poker.  I ended up reading a good bit of Stephan’s book while waiting for them to finish, so the time was decently well spent.

Adam, Debby, and I grabbed a drink.  I got a call from Steph, so I went to meet her at the MGM, so we could check in and drop our bags off.  We joined back up with Adam and Chebby.  The others came down, and Andrew finished poker, so we got dinner at Five 50 pizza.  It was pretty tasty.  Andrew and Chebby called it a night, but the rest of us went to the Cosmopolitan to see about a speak easy.  They turned Kevin away for flip flops, but he didn’t miss out on much.  That had to be the loudest speak easy, and not from music.  The acoustics of the place were horrific, and the chatter noise made it hard to hear the person next to you.  After that we went back for the evening.

The next day we met up with Adam, Andrew, and Debby at the Wicked Spoon for brunch.  Most of the dishes were good, but some were lackluster.  I really enjoyed the crab and avocado, and the beat and arugula.  Unfortunately those were the last dishes I found, so I only had one of each.  We then went to the Venetian for a spa day.  The spa was impossible to find, but with some help from a nice security guy we found it.  Steph and I got a couples massage, and decided to hang out in the spa until we needed to leave for the airport.

We randomly ran into Lindsay and Kevin, and had a chat with them before their flight took off.  All in all it was a pretty great trip.

Steph and I took a few days in Cuba after the Mexico trip since we were so close.  It turned out pretty well, and I’m really glad we got to see it before a lot of the new construction completed.  The city was an interesting mix of semi-new and old things.  There was also a huge mix of well kept vs. not, and little of the kept state had to do with age.

The place where we stayed was very nice, Casa Densil.  The owner Ezio, was nice and helpful.  The rooms he had were full of what I would consider antiques, but they were the kinds of thing that people there were used to using everyday since they hadn’t been getting many imports.  The cars were somewhat as we expected, with the 50’s taxis.  There were also a number of newer cars going around from the 80’s and 90’s.  Most of those cars were European or Asian, none from the US of course.  The food was pretty good.  We went to a Swedish Cuban Fusion place for the first two nights called Casa Miglis.  The second night we tried to get into the top restaurants, but they were fully booked.  The second rated restaurant was in an interesting building.  It was an old shopping mall that had the bottom two floors completely empty.  It was clear by the nice marble everywhere that it at one point had been upscale.  The restaurant was on the third floor, but there was no signage for it.  The only thing that gave it away was a guy standing out front that said we were in the right place when we looked confused.  I don’t think he worked there, just hanging out.  Many of the streets had people and families just hanging out on the sidewalks.  There wasn’t really internet or TV so that is the primary pass time, sitting around and talking.  The communities seemed pretty strong.  We noticed one night there squares where buildings had been torn down and park benches installed on the concrete slabs.  They were full of people on tables, which we found odd since there wasn’t internet.  We didn’t ask but I’m pretty sure they were setting up local networks for file sharing.

The flight back was rough.  The flight from Cuba to Cancun was delayed by 3 hours, and then the flight from Cancun to SFO was delayed by 15 hours.  Not the longest I’ve had to wait for a flight, but still rough.  The kitties were so happy to have us home.

I’m leaving all the work stuff out as usual, but there was plenty of fun that didn’t involve work.  Some of us hit up the hot tub before going out for the evening.  After getting out a lot of us were just hanging out and drinking near one of the craps tables that the others were playing at.  It was a lot of fun, especially with the faux bachelor party bets that Cory and I were making.  I bought a tiara that said “Birthday Girl” on it and whoever lost a given bet had to wear it.  The bets ranged from who would do something first, to hi/lo, to even/odd, to challenges.  I think we ended up with Cory having a slight lead, despite him ending the night with the tiara.

Stephanie got there Friday evening and we relaxed in the room for a bit before joining the others at dinner.  It was a nice event, and brunch the next day was also pretty good.  We went to see one of the most amazing shows I’ve ever been to, O.  The whole thing was in a giant tank of water, and they used it to full effect.

We flew back on Sunday and didn’t do anything for the rest of the day.