It's an Exciting World

Steph and I joined Jeremy, Lindsay, Kevin, Adam, George, Andrew, and Debby at the Ren Fair near Casa De Fruita.  It was a pretty good time with lots of weapon throwing and food.  Kevin and I did really well in the javelin toss, with most of the others not being able to make it stick consistently.  On the axe throw I was brazenly overconfident, thinking I could get 8/20 but only got 2.  I’d be up for going back and renting a nice costume for the occasion.  Adam got a pretty epic beard braid and ribbon.  George rocked at the throwing stars.

Steph and I went to Kim’s wedding, and it was lovely.  I got to see relatives that I hadn’t seen in a long time.  Most people look like they are doing well, but age is really showing for most of them.  It was amazing to see my mom all done up, and Kim looked really good in her dress.  I ate too much because the food was delicious, and I drank too much because they didn’t have anything caffeinated, just alcoholic.  We got there 6:30 Saturday and left 7:30 Sunday.  I enjoyed it and am really thankful for Jeff putting us up and driving us, as well as for Steph being willing to go, despite it being a terrible style of travel for her.

Steph and I met up with Andrew, Debby, Lindsay, and Kevin in Big Basin for a great weekend of camping.  The first night we played some mtg, and had smores around the fire.  The next day we started with a short hike to the park center, and did the loop around the biggest trees.  We had a lunch at the trading post.  After that Andrew and Kevin went back to the camp site, and the rest of us went on a longer hike.  We planned to go to Berry Falls, and then take the mountain trail back.  We ended up hiking too far past the falls and missing the trail back, this led to a hike about 4 miles further than was planned.  Lindsay and Debby were having trouble with the hike, but we made it back just about 30 minutes after we had planned.  We had a nice relaxing night with more smores, and headed out the next day.  Steph’s car had a flat so we had to replace it with the spare and then drive out through the crazy narrow windy road.

Stephanie and I had a great time at the next survival class, Traps and Snares.  Kaijen joined us and it turned out to just be the three of us in the class.  This is our second class with the company and it was great.  We might go back and do class 1 again, and bring along some of our friends.  I’m really looking forward to the stone tools workshop, as that will be a skill that I could use while camping and it would be really fun.  Stephanie had a little trouble with the first traps, but she rocked out the more complicated ones, especially the snare.  I was able to get the traps set up, but mine weren’t very sensitive.  I can certainly understand what the teacher was saying about having to make a ton of these traps before you can be reliably able to catch things with them.

George, being the great foodie that he is, has a tradition of going to the once a month brunch at Lexington House in Los Gatos.  We were joined by Andrew and Debby for a great conversation.  The food was amazing, and I really enjoyed George sharing some of his favorite food places with Steph and myself.

Steph and I went to a couples massage class in Palo Alto, and we really enjoyed it.  We learned a lot of techniques and things to use that would make the massages we give better.  The one thing that we have problems with are everything that require the headrest.  It was surprising that a lot of the massages required the headrest setup, or something similar, to really work properly.  I would imagine most of the people coming through wouldn’t have a massage area with a headrest.  We haven’t used this as much as we should, but I’m going to try hard to change that.

Stephanie and I drove up to Sanoma Saturday morning for Leyan and Jamie’s wedding, and it was a pretty good time.  We started the trip with a hike along the Sanoma Overlook Trail. It was a nice trail and did have a really good view from the top.  It was very hot out so we stopped with just the upper loop and then headed to the air bnb, which was a nice house pretty close to Sonoma City Center.  We hung out in the city center for about 2 hours before trying to get a lyft or uber to the wedding.  There weren’t many around so we ended up cutting it pretty close on getting there.

The wedding itself was very nice, with lots of people given a chance to be involved or called out.  The reception was great, and Stephanie and I got to do some silly pictures, fun dancing, and I lost another bet to Kevin.

The next morning they had an amazing brunch for everyone.  The drive back was long and uneventful other than waze taking us on a jaunt through the city.