Stephanie and I had a great hike up the PG&E trail at Rancho San Antonio. It was a gorgeous day, and we had plenty of sun screen on. There were a lot of lizards with blue tails that we hadn’t seen before, as well as a lot of wildflowers in bloom. The picture below is from a random bike ride, but you get the idea (lots of flowers). We did the hike a bit faster than expected, and at the very end we saw two deer.
For games night we had a nice game of Castles of Mad King Ludwig with the moats expansion. It was an interesting set of changes, that I didn’t really do much with. I chose the route of ignore the expansion and go for all the bonuses I could. It got me a close second, but Adam was able to use the new expansion to get a very solid first. Tina also used the expansion fully, but didn’t get things to work out well together. Ian was new to it, but he did relatively well.
Stephanie, Stephany, Steven, and I went to EscapeSF and did their Escape the Antique Room on Monday.
We went to dinner at 21st amendment beforehand, and I got some delicious cider and jerk chicken. We grabbed a Lyft over to the EscapeSF location and jumped right into the room. It was really amazing, and the location based puzzles were really fun. The only puzzle we couldn’t do was one that wasn’t clear on how to approach it from the start. We did manage to escape, but needed a clue to get past that point.
Stephanie and I stopped by a 24 hour fitness to clean up after the hike, then headed to Jeremy and Nancys’ wedding. It was a nice affair, and the location was picturesque. I knew enough people there that it worked out nicely. We played some croquet, and had some amazing food before heading back home to watch the latest Game of Thrones episode.
Steph and I went for a fantastic hike in point reyes. We didn’t actually take the stairs down to the beach, but we did get to the stairs there and had nice lunch of yuba strips on a fallen branch. The views were amazing and the idyllic scenes along the trail through bear valley were lovely. The small clearings and creeks were splendid to look at. We also happened to be there with a lot of blooming wild flowers, I stopped counting at 20 different types, and we passed many more on the hike than that.
Stephanie and I had lunch with her parents on Saturday, which was nice. We went to a small place called Lyfe Kitchen in downtown Palo Alto. This was a nice place with reasonable prices. The food was tasty and healthy. The Lees seemed like they were in decent health and happy.
Before lunch we stopped by the chocolate garage. It was nice to be back, and we finished off the prepaid amount I had put in. We have a lot of chocolate to make it through now, so we’ll have to find people to share them with.
After Lunch we stopped by home and milk pail, then went to San Carlos for some truffle oil at Olive Crush. We ended up also getting brined olives and garlic. They were tastier than any olives I’ve had before, and even Steph liked the olives. The brined garlic was amazing. We then stopped by the Redwood Coast Cidery, and had some amazing cider. Stephanie was nice enough to drive so I could have more than one. I started out with the Biker’s and then got a KLR. Both very tasty.
I went over to Andrew’s place on Friday night last week for some poker. I got beaten pretty soundly. The most frustrating losses were Debby notching me twice. It was an interesting setup, and I was ready to head out pretty early since I had been working extra time all week. The kitties came to hang out for most of the game, which was unexpected and nice.
This book was interesting, and I caught the main plot twist pretty early on. I was also amused by the backup systems they had, since they should have been much more rigorous, numerous, and plentiful. Computer backups now are pretty standard, and the size of the system the consciousness is stored on means that they could have lots of consciousness storage without too much issue. The story was well done, as were the characters. I liked that there were strong females, but didn’t like that the main character was the hook up, good-at-everything type.
This was a decent book, but didn’t have a satisfying end. I need more of this series to really understand if I like it or not. The basics of the magical system are interesting and worth reading the first book for. I’d recommend waiting for the next one to come out before starting this series.
It's an Exciting World 