Paul invited us to a dinner at Zanottos where Ridge Winery was doing a tasting of their wines. The wines were very good. We also got a six course dinner prepared by Zanottos, and that was tasty as well. I had a good time and the discussions were pretty interesting.
Our garden is coming along nicely. Some strawberries, lemons, garlic, and onions are ready for harvest. I can see the start of more lemons and strawberries. We also have some peppers and tomatoes starting. The orange tree in the front yard looks like it might be trying to fruit, but I won’t be able to tell for sure for another week.
Tina signed us up for an escape room at the Palace of Fine Arts in SF. I hadn’t been there before so I headed down early and worked from the garden there. It was a really nice day, and the gardens were gorgeous.
Everyone else showed up around 3:30pm and we went into the escape room. We ended up doing pretty well; escaping with 7 minutes remaining. I really enjoyed the puzzles, and some were pretty difficult. We missed a few obvious hints, but that happens.
Adam found a kayaking class in Redwood City, and I decided to join him for it. He had a new folding kayak, much like the one Steph had used for kayak camping several years ago. It was working out well for him until we got to the self righting exercises. Since it didn’t have bulkheads it would sink easily and become unrecoverable. He decided to look into the self recovery options later with the manufacturer, but we were able to pull off the assisted recovery without too much of a problem. It was harder than I had expected in my kayak, despite it being a normal kayak. I had a good time, and the people /instructors were pretty great.
Tina organized a hike on Thursday to El Corte De Madera. She was nice enough to drive, and it turned out to be a perfect day for the hike. The others were a little cold, but I was pretty comfortable. We were joined by Jeremy and Candice and two others I didn’t know well. The hike was about 5 miles and afterwards we went to Alice’s Cafe for lunch.
Last Tuesday we played some Gloomhaven at George’s. Steph was in China so I took over her character. Adam started up a new character that is interesting. I don’t think the style of play on Adam’s new character suits him, but I’m sure he can adapt to it. We did a side quest that was a good bit of fun, lots of demons and golems. George had a key trick that saved us when he walled off a group of enemies.
Random kitty picture:
Wednesday we met up for tacos at Speedy’s. Irene was playing it risky again, and had tacos despite her GI issues. We played some Castles, with Irene getting two massive purple room scores. I was able to get a lot of the overall goals putting me in a solid second. I watched the others play towerfall after that.
Steph took the day off on Thursday and we hung around the house as well as getting a few new plants for the garden. That evening we joined the others (Lindsay, Debby, Andrew, Kevin) for our flight to LA for the weekend.
We got in a little later than scheduled and checked into a pretty nice Airbnb while Andrew and Debby went to Jen’s place.
The next morning we all met up at Grand Central Market. Steph and I got some delicious avocado toast, that also had a nice cheese and some cherry tomatoes. Steph got a grilled cheese sandwich that was pretty tasty as well. We grabbed our coffees and headed over to The Broad museum. We were pretty far back in line, but among the first to get callback times for the special exhibit, an infinity room with lights. It was pretty spectacular.
After The Broad we went to Pizzeria Mozza. This was a place we had seen on Youtube and Netflix shows and really wanted to try. It was pretty good, and I think Debby’s breakfast pizza was the best. After a short rest at the Airbnb we went to Korea Town. On the way everyone else got mani pedis, while I talked to my parents. We also stopped by a mall and did a little karaoke while we waited. We had reservations at a Korean BBQ place, and all ate way too much. Our clothes also smelled strongly of the meat smoke and had to be quarantined.
The next day we had breakfast again at Grand Central Market, then headed to the next Airbnb in Santa Monica. We got in a little early so we got some Impossible Burgers at Umami burger. We ate them in the Airbnb while Debby and Andrew came over. The burgers weren’t bad, but also not good. I was pretty tired so I took a one hour nap while the others headed to the beach.
They didn’t spend long there, and we met up on 3rd to do some light shopping before heading to dinner. We went to an okonomiyaki place and it was delicious.
After dinner we wandered around and got some tasty bread pudding.
Sunday we split up after brunch, some going to the beach again, some going to a VR Star Wars experience.
Steph had to head to the airport for her flight to china, so she didn’t get to participate. Also we met up with Grant there. Grant got recognized by one of the people who worked there, and was thanked for his work on Star Wars.
Jen showed me her bunnies, as we stopped by her place to grab Debby and Andrew’s things.
We had a Tina, Adam, and Brian over for Mage Knight on Sunday. I got to play the crystal dragon character, and did well with it. We did a hybrid scenario with 4 cities plus Volkaire’s camp. It turned out just fine, and we won with little effort. I got two training cards, so burnt 11 total cards in upgrades.
This was an odd book. The true account of a research experiment of three schizophrenic patients who believed themselves to be Christ/God. They were put together for daily discussion sessions over the period of a little over 2 years. This was one of the shortest discussions we’ve had on a book, and the person who wanted to read it originally didn’t show up to the meeting.
There were some major ethical issues with the research. The biggest one in my opinion was when the researchers wrote letters to one of the men pretending to be his wife. The man had never married and clearly had major problems around women. The then manipulated him into doing things by having his wife ask him to do it. They also had him wait around for the wife’s visits and had the wife write she was disappointed he didn’t show when he did show up and the wife didn’t show up. It was a horrible situation.
There were plenty of other odd things they did, but nothing quite as bad as that. It was a strange book, with a strange format. I wouldn’t recommend it, but I would say reading the wikipedia on it is worthwhile.
