Michael and I had a fun day together, with a hike in Pacifica along the coast, then an evening where we went to Cupertino for Shakespeare in the Park of A Midsummer Night’s Dream. It was very well done, and the picnic with everyone was lovely. The show was much funnier than I was expecting and the acting was some of the best I’ve seen in any play. I brought some of the rosemary cider from Redwood Coast that was made with the rosemary from our yard.
Steph and I went over to Lost Colony for a cookout. There were a dozen or so other people there. The food was amazing, and Debby was nice enough to make mac ‘n’ cheese for Steph. The main draw of the cookout, the smoker, wasn’t ready and had to go for a few hours after everyone had left.
A few of us played a game of survivor that Debby had set up and Shareen was running. We did immunity challenges, the first of which was how well did you know Andrew, with Debby handily winning. I was the fist voted off, so I did a quickly confession to the camera to keep with the theme. The second challenge was memory, with George taking immunity. Adam S was the next to go, and that left only the asians. Shareen picked out a challenge of moving rice from a tupperware to a cup. Steph tried some alternate strategies that didn’t work out. George took immunity again and voted out Steph. The final two were Debby and George, and we had some invites to the others to take part in the final vote. Debby’s strategy fell apart when she kept the aggressive stance into the final round. Andrew voted for Debby, but the rest of the votes went to George. It was a good time had by all.
Debby made a compilation of the confessionals: pretty funny.
Adam planned a hike for us to go to Pinnacles National Park, and it was an interesting time. We headed to Tina’s in the morning to carpool the two hours there together. We got in a little early and I grabbed a few apricots from the tree that overhangs Tina’s driveway. They were delicious. We drove to the park which had a surprising amount of traffic heading south on 101. Once we got to the side roads there wasn’t any more traffic; although there was a little construction.
We got to the park and took a few minutes to get situated before starting on the hike. The first part was steeply uphill, and directly into the pinnacles for which the park is named. They were gorgeous formations with lots of bright red/orange and green/yellow lichens. We got up to the high pass and I was already running through several liters of water, despite it only being about two miles of hiking. We stopped by a reservoir on the way down so I could filter some just in case. Then we got into the first cave system. It was a short bit, but the caves were nice and cool compared to the 90’s and sun that we had up to that point in the hike. We scrambled around the caves, eventually finding the exit and continuing down to the eastern parking lots for a lunch at the picnic tables there.
Adam pulled out a salami and ate it, while the rest of us had nuts and trail mix. A few miles later Adam was regretting the salami, as it was strongly messing with his hydration and thus temperature regulation. The hike was mostly flat on the second half of the day, with a longer caves section that was prettier in my opinion just south of the western parking lots. We emerged a little worse for wear and tired. Tina was amazing enough to drive the entire way back home, and we all crashed pretty hard that evening.
Steph and I went to a plant nite together in Mountain View. The passes were one of the Christmas gifts she got me, but it has been hard to find a time that worked for us and had availability. We enjoyed the event and it gave us ideas for wedding planning.
Steph and I joined a bunch of people at George’s for karaoke on Friday. We had a pretty weak set of songs this time, as we didn’t know them that well. I enjoyed the conversations, and the singing. This time we didn’t pull out any board games, nor did anyone suggest it. I suppose that means the singing and conversations were more entertaining than usual.
Lindsay organized a camping trip to Big Basin. This year it was just the three of us for Friday night and then Steph joined us on Saturday. We didn’t do much hiking, but we did get a good bit of MTG in; 25 games in total. We had a lot of fun playing some spades as well. The highlight of the evening was the campfire and cooking. I combined both on Friday night with a steak cooked directly over the flame. It was pretty good, despite being dropped into the fire as I tried to pull it off the grill. We made smores both nights and they were tasty. We found a rogue flaming hot Cheeto, making us thing that Debby was there in spirit. The mosquitos were pretty bad, especially Friday evening. While playing magic I was bitten through my shirt at least 30 times. I had a few small constellations on my back in red dots.
Michael stayed with me for a few days before he got his summer housing at Stanford. The first night he got in we talked a bit, but book club was coming over so he hid away while that was going on. It wasn’t the best discussion because The Professor and the Madman didn’t have any deep topics that were particularly interesting. We had also talked a lot about the control of language when discussing 1984 the month prior.
Wednesday we had dinner at Tapt and then went to George’s for board games. We played Sol which is a good game, despite not being explained well. The game ended sooner than I expected, so I was way behind in points. Michael did a points first strategy that won him the game handily.
Thursday we did a ton of cooking, and Michael helped chop a lot of it. We cooked egg muffins, shakshuka, garlic ginger chicken, and sliced a lot of fruit.
Friday we worked in the morning and then headed out for the afternoon. We took a long walk along the bay and walked the kitties. After that we went to the cidery for a few hours. We went our own ways for dinner. I went to House of Genji with Lindsay and Kevin. It was really tasty and we had some great conversations.
Saturday Michael and I went to Panda Dumpling for lunch and then we walked the kitties again. Then he tried to move into his summer place, but it needed some deep cleaning, so he came back and stayed the night with me again.
I enjoyed having Michael and look forward to having him around this summer.
Tina organized a group to go to Shoreline lake for a nice picnic with some kayaking. Adam brought his kayak and was probably the person who spent the most time on the lake. I got some time in his kayak and then we both went out together and I used one from the boat rental. I had a good time and ate tons of great food.
While there Adam, Tim, and I played some Troyes. Afterwards we went back to Adam’s place and played more Troyes. I lost pretty soundly both times. I had a great engine in both games, but one use of one card for more than 10 points in both games caused a big swing that won it for the person doing it.
Irene organized an outing to Moffet field and we got to see the Wings of Glory exhibit, a WWII airplane collection. The planes were neat to see and they had been kept in working order. We went through the two bombers and got to see one of the smaller planes take off. We then went back to my place and played a good bit of Beat Saber. I was able to beat the last of Brian’s high scores, this one on expert. I made some Shakshuka and we had dinner before they headed out.
It's an Exciting World 