First I wanted to round out the report on last week’s Saturday evening. I was slated to be a blind date for the younger sister of a friend in the ward, who hadn’t been on a date before. My job was to convince her that dating is fun and worth doing. Pressure was on.

Before heading out to the restaurant, I hopped on my bike to go buy some milk from the store, and swung by this lake by my apartment. Somehow I’d gone eight months without ever visiting this thing. It’s pretty secluded, and riding along its edge I probably managed to snag like a thousand of those little flies in my facial/arm hair – lots of standing water.

The city has plans to really do a number on the place, but they’re expensive plans and probably won’t be put into effect for at least another five years. (Here’s a rendering.)

So I arrived at the restaurant. Basically every date I’ve been to dinner on since I’ve arrived here has been at Red Robin. I guess it’s that blend of down-to-earth-and-not-too-expensive burgers and the fact that you get actual waiters and such that makes it so popular. Anyways, we had great conversation, things went smoothly, until it was time to go to the dance afterwards. I really don’t like dancing. Getting better at it, but if it was this girl’s first dance-date-thing, I wasn’t looking forward to having that responsibility. But, luckily enough, she was feeling sick and didn’t want to dance, so she left in her own car, and I stuck around to say hi to some folks before heading back myself. All in all, mission accomplished. Got a glowing report from her sister on the whole thing.

Monday I biked in to work super early so I could get started setting up my desk at my new location. I’m loving it. At first I was just a tad jealous of a coworker who got a nice window seat, with my desk facing an adjacent wall. But turns out we had quite a bit of leeway in how to align our desks, and I was able to rotate mine 90 degrees, giving me a nice alcove against the wall and a perfect view out the windows.

Not much to report until the weekend. Still haven’t driven my car in to work since we moved office spaces, the weather is just gahrgeous.

Yesterday I went on a scenic drive with some friends, up to Whibdey Island. Here’s our route. We stopped in at Snow Goose Produce for some ice cream, Fort Casey to look around (forgot my phone in the car, so don’t have too many pics), and then at Coupeville for lunch. Coupville was basically a more temperate version of Grand Lake. It was awesome.

That evening I hosted a Conspiracy night at my place. First time in a long while I’ve had people over, it was really awesome. Even got an ovation at the end for my narrating. Some of the girls from the ward had met someone random in a park earlier that day and invited her along. She’s a nondenominational Christian, but super open to discussing religion. Got friended by most of the people there, we’ll see where it goes.

Tomorrow I have to decide between two hikes and a music festival. Then we’ve also got a group together to go to another escape room. If I couldn’t’ve been back home for the long weekend, at least this’ll be fun.