I organized some people to play Terraforming Mars online. I first played with Adam, then later that day with Yutong and Paul on a team. That weekend we were able to get a group of Yutong, Tina, Amit and myself. I got last and Yutong had a strong win. If the game had gone longer I would have caught up very quickly. I had help from the kitties.
Hasham and I went to Atlanta for the Dreamhack Conference and I stayed a few extra days to spend some time with family. On Monday we had dinner at Mom and Dads with Jeff, Katie, Kim, Grace, and Fred in attendance. I enjoyed talking with everyone. Tuesday, Dad and I went to the club then Mom, Dad, and I did an escape room together. It wasn’t all that well designed, but it was still fun.
Sunday morning, after playing Tennis with Ricardo where we were both very bad, I met Adam at Tapt. We played a few rounds of Wingspan, and traded off winning by a ton. We then headed up to his apartment where he prepared a great dinner for us. He made some amazing steak, and we had a good time.
Lindsay was kind enough to have me over to MC the newlywed game. The game went smoothly and we had a good time. At the end Lindsay and Kevin tied Andrew and Debby. Lindsay and Kevin won it with the tie breaker. I look forward to next year’s.
George hosted a great brunch of congee / porridge. Yutong made two of the three types and they were all delicious. I tried them all, and all the varied toppings. I especially liked the ma po tofu, but that was no surprise. We grabbed some of the voluminous leftovers and had tasty congee for several days afterwards.
We then headed to Rong’s and met her and Riley for tea and scones. The conversation was great and we had a nice walk by the bay. Steph made some delicious tea sandwiches as well.
Steph and I went to a paint nite event with Michelle and Michael. We were doing a couples painting with each person painting half of an owl. Steph and I went way off script and used a reference image. I like how ours turned out. Michelle and Michael also did really well, and did an amazing job of getting the symmetry almost perfect.
I hung out with Adam most of Sunday and we played Mage Knight and Caverna one on one. I won the Mage Knight by a bit and he destroyed me in Caverna. The show was visually stunning, but the content was bland. We needed to look at the captions to know who was supposed to be who, and the only interesting character was Judas. I still enjoyed the experience and would go to see a musical with that crowd again.
George invited me to join him on a Lick Observatory event through Google. I hadn’t been there before and was excited when we got there to learn that they are working on two of the most interesting problems in astronomy; exoplanets and supernovas. The exoplanet work they are doing is amazing, as they are focusing on the spectral shift method. They survey large amounts of the sky looking at stars and galaxies for long time series. We got to look through two of the telescopes. One looked at a binary star while another looked at a globular cluster. I appreciate George taking me on such an interesting adventure.
George hosted a karaoke party at his place and we had dinner at Obed before heading over. Adam, Tina, Amit, and I ended up playing Terraforming Mars. I sang a few songs as well: Enter Sandman and Dust in the Wind. The game went a little long and I won by a small margin.
It's an Exciting World 