We had a great dinner last night at Sorrel, a pop up restaurant in SF. Stephanie organized it and I really enjoyed the dinner. The food was really good, not as good or interesting as Coi, but still really good.
Steph and I had a lovely day in SF starting with an Escape the room in Japan town. When we got there a festival was going on, and it made me really happy that we didn’t need to find parking. The room was designed for 11 people, and we only had 7. We ended up doing pretty well given that number difference, but we made one critical mistake and that cost us the round. I had a great time doing it, and was really happy I got to work on the puzzles I did.
Then Steph and I broke off from the rest of the group and went to Beach Blanket Babylon, which I thought of as Non Sequitur, the Musical, with HATS! It was amusing, but I don’t think I’d go again.
We had some time to kill before dinner so naturally we went to eat. We stopped by the Stinking Rose for some garlic bread, garlic ice cream, garlini, and roasted garlic. The roasted garlic spread on the bread was amazing.
Coi was a fantastic experience, and we got some fantastic food. One of the really unique things they had was the tea pairings, which Steph got. I got the California wine pairing and was not disappointed. They had some neat art on the walls that were MRI’s of different foods in cross sections. I was able to guess 3 of the 4 plants, an steph was able to guess the animal.
The Moon is a Harsh Mistress has become one of my favorite books and I really liked being able to talk about it with a group of friends because of all the great philosophical points in it. Heinlein was really ahead of his time, and ahead of now, with all the topics he covers. Some of the tech is obviously dated, but it seems very plausible despite that, and given it was written in the 60’s it is absolutely phenomenal.
Steph and I joined Adam and George for dinner at the Indian Street Cafe, then went over to George’s place to play the game Dead of Winter.
George ended up being the traitor, but when called out he got the reconciling card. He did stab us at a really good moment, and only some quick checks confirmed that it was him who stabbed us.
I ended up getting a really good character that fed off of all the others abilities, and he also picked up a few blueprints so I was raking in the items, and at the same time building up a formidable group of characters. I had 5 characters for a few turns and it was really fun. I also had almost all the weapons, so I was killing tons of zombies, getting tons of items, and winning all sorts of ways. Despite two crisis coming up that required drugs I was able to keep my drug horde and Steph covered for me. Everyone ended up winning, even George.
Adam, Tina, George, and Steph have teamed up as a band of heroes against me, the evil overlord. So far we’ve been really close, with me losing by one goblin in the first quest. I then lost by 1/32 health in the second quest and 1/25 health in the third quest. I’m having a really good time. The hardest part is dealing with Tina getting a lucky drop on the very first quest and that leading to Steph having an insanely overpowered weapon for this early. I’m going to have to focus fire her a lot more.
Stephanie and I went to a few open houses on Saturday and that was interesting because they had the exact same layout (which we didn’t like) and were in the same neighborhood but one was 200K more than the other. It was interesting to see what the differences were. We then kept going North into the city and stopped by the SF MOMA for a few hours. I really liked the sculptures, especially those that were living or moving. I wasn’t a huge fan of the paintings as I couldn’t understand what they were supposed to be doing most of the time, and so much of modern art is about the history behind it.
Steph and I then got a Lyft to one of the best dinner’s we’ve had at Atelier Crenn. We loved the food, but the wine wasn’t our favorite. I was especially amazed by the presentation, and the taste was delightful.
Stephanie and I went to a Survival Class this past weekend, and were joined by Andrew and Debby. I was a little surprised that Andrew came, since the day star is not his thing, but he seemed to like it. He was able to get a fire going. I was able to carve and wood burn a spoon, that I actually used to eat some tom yom. It isn’t a very good spoon, but I might work on it a touch more.
That evening we went over to Debby and Andrew’s place and watched some naked and afraid. It was good and we felt like we knew some of the mistakes people on the show were making.
This was a good discussion, even though it was just three of us. Many of the people that would normally have come to book club were in Vegas at the time. We did decide on an amazing book for next time, Heinlein’s The Moon is a Harsh Mistress.
Two good friends of mine, Andrew and Debby, got married a few weekends ago. It was gorgeous in a rose garden and I was officiating. It was a very interesting experience to officiate a wedding, and very nerve wracking. It took a while to come up with something they liked, but we got to a point that they were really happy with it.
The reception was amazing, despite being at an overly packed Chinese banquet restaurant. I really liked that they had karaoke, and it was interesting to see what groups of people would sing songs together. The drinks were tasty and the food was ok. I got stuck at the ‘vegetarian’ table. It wouldn’t have been so bad if they actually served veggie dishes. The best dishes were the last two to come out, and both were shaped like fish. One was mango pudding, and the other was a stuffed pastry with mushroom on the inside. Kevin was at our table as well and kept going to grab some meat, but he was sitting in the location on the table that allowed for that. I lost a bet about how long Haru’s best man speech would be so i’ll be getting a henna tattoo of Kevin’s choosing soon (I had under on 2:40 with it actually being 3:18).
It's an Exciting World 