I got a fantastic delivery of cookies yesterday for backing Antoine’s Cookie Shop on Kickstarter. I got the Toffee Chip cookies and they were utterly amazing. I haven’t finished them yet, and when I do I’ll probably be going back for more. I love toffee and cookies and this is a fantastic, delicious combination. Antoine delivered them himself, and he seems like a really nice guy. I’m glad to have been able to support him and hopefully make one of his dreams come true.
This morning I set out for a long morning bike ride and it turned into a long early afternoon walk when I got a flat and had to walk the bike to the closest bike shop for a repair. The start of the ride was really nice and I went to shoreline lake. There I talked to my parents. They have had a very exciting week with my dad getting and signing an offer from Emory and then having their offer on a house they like accepted. It will be great to see them at Christmas in their new house. After that I went to downtown Mountain View via the Stevens Creak Trail. I was hoping to get some tea but the tea shop isn’t open Mondays. When I got back to my bike I noticed a flat tire. I’ve gotten into the habit of not carrying my repair tools with me, just the air pump. The flat I ended up getting wasn’t the slow leak that a pump will help with. After about a 45 min walk I got to the bike shop and got it fixed. Then decided to grab a late lunch at The Counter. After a quick stop by Milk Pail Market I rode back home. I am very tired and most of the day is now gone. I still enjoyed the ride.
This morning Steph and I had a great bike ride over the farmer’s market on California Avenue. It was a really sunny morning and I rushed out without putting any sunscreen on. Luckily I only got minor burns that don’t sting, but I can tell that a hot shower will make them unpleasant. I got a lamb curry naan wrap and it was delicious. I decided to try out the samosas at the place that does the naan wraps this time, and they weren’t nearly as good. I’ll probably go back to get the samosas at the smaller stand. Steph got a good supply of bolani, and I got some of the tofu. Steph also got some really high quality yogurt, that is absolutely delicious.
Last night Steph and I went to see the movie Gravity with Brian, Riley, Andy, and a few other people I wasn’t as familiar with. We showed up just in time and Brian had saved us spots.
This was a surprisingly good movie. I don’t think it is the kind of movie I would watch again, and I would have been fine waiting to see it until it came out on dvd, but it was still nice to go see in the theater. There was a lot of birth symbolism, and the issue with her daughter. I couldn’t quite see how it all worked together in the symbolism, but I could tell that it was there. I personally think the entire move was just a big birth metaphor.
Brian got a table at the Game Kastle Flea Market and he shared it with Steph, Nick, and Tina. I got Gauntlet of Fools for my place and then just went to McDonalds across the street to wait. I called mom, looked up some business stuff online, and updated the blog. One of my big food weaknesses is McDonalds fries, but there are worse things to e addicted to.
Garden fresh was just as tasty in Palo Alto as it was in Mountain View. It was also really nice to talk to Jeff and Patty as they have a lot of the skills that I really don’t want to have to work on; marketing and advertisement monetization. Even with Candice helping out some with the marketing I would really like to get help from Jeff and Patty on the marketing. Jeff had decided not to continue forward with joining the startup he had been planning to join as they were in a worse situation than he had been led to believe. He is applying to Google then working on his own stuff. I still really like his idea and he really likes my most recent idea. I hope we can work together on both.
After dinner we stopped by the ice cream sandwich place Cream. Steph got a waffle cone and I had some of it.
Adam, Nick, and I played another round of Tzolk’in last night. I wasn’t playing any particular strategy, so I just got a lot of people, and got them working. I was mostly efficient, and it worked out ok in the end. Had Nick not sniped the monument I was somewhat building up to I would have probably beaten Adam, but things went well anyway. I think next time I’ll be going full god pleasing.
Last night Adam, Nick, and I played through the game Caribbean, which is all about bidding on ships, ordering, and spacial management. I was able to barely win over Adam, but I was taking a lot more time to think through the possible things that the others were going to do, how I could thwart them, and how I could use their misses to my advantage. I did really well at this in a few places and that won me the game.
Steve made a very open RPG system, and we went over to his house to play through it. It was very fun to play an open RPG, as I hadn’t really played through one before. Every time I’ve played some kind of RPG it has been a campaign style, where you go through a story that the dungeon master has laid out. We weren’t quite sure how to handle things at the start, but it worked out fine. We also didn’t get very far in the gameplay, as the character setup took us about 3 hours. The main conflict had only just been introduced, and we hadn’t even decided how we were going to handle it. We’ll be finishing up the game some time soon, and I’m looking forward to it.
