Steph and I went to Brian’s place for a long games day. We met there with Adam, Chris, Nick, Tina, and Jeff. Adam, Chris, Brian, and Nick decided to play a longer game called High Frontier. I decided to play Glory to Rome and the others joined me. I was able to control the ending of the first game, which was needed since Steph made an amazing engine, that nobody could go against. I was barely able to end it before she could use it. I ended up winning that game. We played again, and Tina got out ahead and stayed there. I wasn’t able to finish any buildings so I stagnated at the start. I was able to get a good bit into my vault so I did get second, but Tina won by a good margin. We then played Fire of London, and Steph won that game by a good bit. Then we played Get Lucky! and after a few rounds of that we headed out. The end of Get Lucky! was a little too unpredictable for me.
I met my parents in Phoenix, where we both flew in around 9am. I was getting up much before them due to the time change so I was a little groggy when we got together. We decided to meet up at the car rental building and we quickly got the car and headed to Sedona. While there we went to see some petroglyphs, one large one in the form of a calendar. We also went to a nice restaurant to get a good view of the sunset over the red rock formations of Sedona. It was very pretty and the food was delicious.
We got to the canyon rim and spent the night. On the way it was snowing, and when we got there it was pretty chilly. We spent the night in a hotel on the rim, then grabbed breakfast before heading down. There was a good layer of frost on the ground and some ice along the rim.
We got all geared up and started the hike by going through some really steep switchbacks. We got to the first rest house and took a little weight off my dad so he could enjoy it more. When we got to the second rest house, jeff took some more of the weight. Jeff and Kim then told me to catch up and hurried off. They really hurried, since I wasn’t able to catch them before hitting the bottom. We were passing people like crazy, and I injured my knee on the final switchbacks before the river. Luckily we were right near the bottom, and the injury only mattered a lot when trying to go down.
I really enjoyed doing some of these zoom series, where I take a picture of people, usually Jeff and Kim, at several zoom levels. In the zoomed out versions the people are only several tens of pixels high. I think this really gives scale to the canyon that is impossible to understand unless you go, and even then it is hard to really comprehend the size of it.
I was able to get some zoom series of my parents as well, and even the bright blue shirt disappears in the zoomed out picture.
I like this series for the beauty of the zoomed out picture, and the extra zoom level I did on the zoomed in version.
This zoom series is of the bridge across the river. The bridge gives another landmark for scale that is nice.
The first night of camping was decent. There were lots of people around at Bright Angel campground and Phantom Ranch. There was also a cute little fox running around looking at which camp sites would have food that was easy to steal. We locked all of ours up really tight, so he wasn’t able to get any of ours. Kim and I shared a tent, with Jeff taking one by himself. This worked out since he needed a little extra room. I had a great setup of a beanie, an eye mask, and ear plugs. This deadened me to the world, especially my dad’s snoring. I was told that I snored a little myself both nights.
We got up early the next day and had a nice breakfast at the phantom ranch dining hall. The food was great, but the breakfast was at 5:30am. That was a little tough to get up for, but we also went to sleep very early.
We hiked out the next day and crossed over the second bridge. I got a good shot looking back at my parents and sister as they crossed. This part of the hike went along the river for a while before continuing up the south face of the canyon.
This bit along the river gave some of the best views, but it was really hard on my knee.
We got to Indian Gardens, and camped there for the second night. Kim, mom, and I went out on the point and overlooked the river. It was a nice view, but not worth the hike on my bad knee.
The next day I was really tired, and didn’t take many pictures. Jeff went ahead to get the car and check us in. I was next with my bad knee. Kim followed closely after me, as she was carrying extra weight. Mom and dad were about an hour after that. We all made it out, and Jeff was by far the one in the best shape at the top. I think I could have kept up if not for the knee. I was in a lot of pain for several days afterwards, but it has started healing.
We drove back to Phoenix the next day, stopping off in Flagstaff and Tempe for food. I ended up grabbing a hotel room for the night since my flight was the next morning. The others had a midnight flight and went to the airport after dropping me off. I got back to SJC and quickly jumped in the SuperShuttle back to my place.
It was a great time, but I doubt I’ll be doing something that ambitious again with the whole family.
I had a few people over to Beachhead that had been over for games night before to hang out with Michael. Steph and I cooked some potato gnocchi and we had some tasty sorbet to go along with it for desert. Liana and Ryan brought over some cheese that Liana has reacted to, and the last of it was lingering with her. Peter and Ophe brought over some really tasty rice and cauliflower. Nima also joined and we got to chat about all sorts of things. We didn’t play a game, but we did have a great time with each other. I should invite those guys to do more.
We had Jeremy over on Monday night to have some veggie meatball and mushroom tikka masala, as well as help out in making more sorbet. Even though it was one of the craziest bastardizations of food I’ve ever had the tikka masala was delicious. It really confirms my thoughts that orange sauces are delicious. We were also able to make 3 types of sorbet; blueberry, raspberry, and mixed fruit. Steph and I had some a few days after and it was delicious.
Steph and I biked to Caltrain and then took that to the city, we were able to do it without incident and got to Nick’s about noon. While they watched the last season of Sherlock I got to grinding the pork. After that other people started showing up and we got to balling up the meat to make the meatballs. We had a pretty good time with it, and at the end we got to eat a ton of meatballs (actually about 10 lbs). Steph made some cheese and nut balls, that were a little dense, but worked great when we cooked them in a tikka masala.
We met people at House of Dumpling in San Mateo for dinner on Saturday. Then we went over to Lindsay’s place and watched a movie called Pom Poko. The premise of the movie was that tanuki (raccoon dogs) had their habitat destroyed and were able to change shape into anything they wanted. They were able to use their scrotums to make many different objects. The movie was very depressing. We watched it with Jeremy, Lindsay, Debbie, Kevin, Andrew, Steph, and I. We had cake for Jeremy’s birthday as well and it was tasty.
This was an amazing book, just like Wired, but there were a few stretches taken to keep the story coherent. I really liked the role the computer guy played in this book, and how he owned the rest of the world with all of them freaking out. The twist at the end was a little odd, but not something you couldn’t see coming.
This was a delightful book of schemes, good fake science, and ethical dilemmas. The most interesting part was the ethical considerations around the release of the intelligence enhancing drug, the time factor of it, and the life prolonging drug. I do wonder what would happen if these drugs were to actually come out, and also what would happen if they weren’t made publicly available should people know about them.
I played Xia again, and it wasn’t as fun as last time. The game went wayyy to slow, and the explanation took a long time as well. I got ahead and had to slow down a bit. I also noticed that getting ahead made you start accelerating, so there was a runaway effect. We all called the game early, but I think I could have won it if we played it all the way out. I was able to get a big gun and kill everyone with it.
It's an Exciting World 