It's an Exciting World

Tina’s Gigasecond

Tina hosted a Gigasecond party at her place. She recently turned 1 Billion seconds old, which is a celebration point that I’ve been talking about to a lot of our friends. She had a lot of people over to her place… a lot. I was a bit uncomfortable with the number of people so I somewhat hid in a corner and talked to the people I already knew. It was good to see some people that I hadn’t in several months.

Tina baked scones for the occasion and they were delicious. Steph decided to also do some baking, and made some delicious clotted cream and biscuits. She was able to use the rosemary from our front yard for a really tasty rosemary butter.

January 22, 2018 0

Book Club: Starship Troopers

The discussion for Starship troopers was a good one. Heinlein is a great author, and this is one of his more unique works. The book is a platform for him to talk about his philosophical and political beliefs, which are pretty interesting. We didn’t agree with most of them, but they got us talking about all sorts of interesting topics.

January 22, 2018 0

More Feast for Odin

Tina, Amit, Adam, and I played a round of Feast for Odin at Adam’s place. It was fun, and I took a different strategy than I normally do. It didn’t pay off in the end. Tina did emigration and pillaging and ran away with the game. Amit did well on pillaging and got a solid second. Adam and I were pretty far behind with third and fourth.

Afterwards we went to Tap’t, so Tina could get some princess cake. I got a fantastic ginger mead.

January 9, 2018 0

New Years Eve Festivities

Stephanie and I joined George, Adam, Lindsay, Kevin, Debby, and Andrew at Q-Pot for dinner. Stephanie had a personal hot pot, as that was the only veggie option, and the rest of us did Korean BBQ. We ate sooo much meat.

We then headed back to Lost Colony and hung out for a bit. We had drinks, snacks, and deserts. Then we played a game of Scattergories and a round of Codenames. The kittens were amazing.

January 1, 2018 0

Long Games at George’s

Stephanie, Adam, George, Tina, and I played some long games at George’s place.

We started out by making a fantastic brunch of bacon, eggs, bagels, mochi waffles, sausages, and oranges. George did most of the cooking and the food was delicious.

The game we chose to play was Gloomhaven, and we played three rounds of it. We lost the first round, as everyone decided to take the difficulty up a notch. The next two games I participated in, subbing in for George then Adam. I had a good time playing, and the game can go very slowly if people take their time with turns and think through. It is a slight flaw with the design, that there can be a lot to analyze. We didn’t do great at refraining from that analysis. The rules even recognize this, and say it should be avoided by talking about actions in vague terms.

After playing Lindsay and Kevin came over, and we sang some karaoke. We also ordered in some pizza and Lindsay brought salads. After karaoke we played two rounds of codenames pictures, and that went pretty quick and decently well.

December 31, 2017 0

Skyline to the Sea

Stephanie, Adam, Tina, and I did part of the Skyline to the Sea trail. We didn’t do the part we meant to but we did about the same length we had planned. When we reached the trail from Big Basin, and then made a mistake. We saw a sign that said ‘Skyline to the Sea’ and just went off in that direction. We didn’t notice the sign went both ways along the trail. This meant instead of heading to the ocean, we were heading up the mountain. We made it up to the intersection of 9 and 236, but were unable to get an Uber or Lyft to come get us. We managed to get a ride into Saratoga, and hung out for a bit at Cinnabar, a wine bar.

Later that day we got dinner with George and Adam. The place was Adega and the food was pretty good. My favorite dish was the duck fried rice, and I think the sangria sampler was even better than that. It was a good day.

December 30, 2017 0

Stephanie, Adam, and I went on the Napa wine train that goes from Napa City to St. Helena. We got there a little early and decided to walk around the city for a bit after checking in for the train. We found a coffee shop and a charcuterie, that we stopped by again later.

We then went to the train and got on. The train was only half full at 15 of 30 spots taken. We got a nice breakfast on the way to the first winery, Domaine Chandon. They were a typical winery, and we got a nice tasting of some sparkling wine. It was a place we could go hang out during a work remote day, as they had a massive patio. On the way to the second winery we got a soup and salad. The second winery, Hall, was our favorite of the three. They were clearly about creating a good place to be, and it is a place we might go to hang out. The only issue being that it requires a membership to be in their hanging out area. They had art all around, with the most icon piece being a giant silver bunny in the front called ‘Bunny Fufu.’ Hall also had the best wine of the trip, by general unanimous agreement, 2015 hall terra secca cabernet sauvignon. We had a nice dinner on the way to the third and final winery, Inglenook. They had a lot of interesting old things: books, clothes, mechanical objects. They had also built a cave into to house their wines as they aged. We took the train back to Napa and had a nice desert. The wine and food was generally great. A few of the dishes and a few of the wines were fantastic.

We then went back to the charcuterie, and Adam got some food for Saturday. We went to Grace’s Table for dinner as it was recommended by Michelin. Adam drove us back and we went right to bed.

Paint Nite – Jelly Fish

Stephanie took me to a Paint Nite as her Christmas gift to me. It was at the Backyard coffee close by where we live. We got there, and the walk was pretty chilly, so we both got big hot chocolates. It was tasty, and I noticed Redwood Coast Cider was on tap. We got started and I found some reference photos for putting some kelp in the background and for the jelly. I chose the ones I’m most familiar with, the sea nettles that I see in Monterey Bay.

December 25, 2017 0

Adam’s Welcome back Latkes

Adam put on a latke party at his place, and it was quite nice. The only not so great part was getting in, as his phone didn’t really work with the intercom call system. We managed to get everyone into the place and I had a few really good conversations. We got in the hot tub for part of it and Yutong brought a cute Polaroid imitation camera. There was plenty of good food and drink, not to mention tons of tasty latkes.