On Wednesday after work I headed out to a group blind date, movie night in the park. Only after hanging around a while and wondering why no one had messaged the group with meet-up instructions, did I deduce that I’d gotten the week wrong. Whoops. Snapped this nice pic of a dead tree though.

While I was just hanging around admiring the scenery I got a call from a friend in need of a lift from her work place, she’d missed the last bus out of there. Since I was at that park, it was only a 12 minute drive out, much shorter than it’d be if I were still at my apartment. So there’s that.

The big thing of the week is something I feel kinda weird writing about, just because of how over-the-top it seemed. The Cloud Security team, consisting of about 50+ people, spent Thursday and Friday at the Suncadia resort, this area with hundreds of acres about 2 hours east of us, with golf courses, ranches, houses, swimming pools, lakes, rivers, etcetera. It just gave off this vibe of oozing with money.

They loaded us all on a bus on Thursday morning, and we arrived around lunch time. After that they arranged for us to participate in a group scavenger hunt, and our team did.. okay at it. Things like riddle solving, ferrying a golf ball down a huge flight of stairs using nothing but segments of pipe, hopping on a canoe to try and locate an arrow hidden along some segment of the shore, an egg drop, etcetera. Thankfully our team never made it to the impromptu rap segment.

After that it was just chillax time, we did some lawn games, some people went on a run. That evening there was an hour long reception, followed by dinner, followed by s’mores, followed by card games late into the evening. Got some people hooked on Resistance, which we played till 2:30am.

The next morning after breakfast there were different individual activities; I opted for archery, which was pretty fun. Next was lunch, then just chilling till 2, then a bus ride which dropped us back at work at 4pm.

Once we got back I stuck around and did some work, which was a good thing since I discovered a bug that came close to delaying our team by a good chunk of time. I’ll give more details on the phone some time.

Saturday I went on a date to see Despicable Me 3, a movie that really did not need to be made. Ate lunch at this chain called Mod Pizza, amazing stuff, y’all will have to try some when you’re up here.

That afternoon I met up with some friends at a beach to have a BBQ. I got introduced to the amazing amazing world of, drumroll please, lime on watermelon. It’s incredible, changed my life. Lime on peach is also good.

We left from there to play card games at a friend’s house, and ended up leaving around 2am. Good times.

Today was pretty good at church, took a walk in the woods afterwards since the weather’s so nice.

And that’s all for me, have a great break!

Saturday morning I played some Ultimate Frisbee. Ended up injuring my foot a bit, as I played barefoot and a sliding move shaved off a thin layer of skin from the top of my foot. At first it wasn’t anything major, but it did have trouble healing due to constantly taking socks on and off. It’s slowly healing up.

That evening I attended a ward member’s birthday / dance party.

Sunday evening I had Fatherless-Day Dinner with some other people in the ward without family nearby. Taught a friend how to bake Spicy Raisin Bars, turned out great.

Monday evening was Life-Size Angry Birds, which was basically dodge ball but each team was defending a bunch of cardboard boxes with balloons on top.

Tuesday evening was Institute, and one of the teachers brought in some plaster casts of Joseph and Hyrum’s death masks.

Wednesday evening I went up to Duthie Hill, a world-renowned mountain biking area, with a ward member friend. After not doing any serious mountain biking for so long, it was great to get back in the saddle and not fall over my handlebars. Can’t say the same for another ward member who joined us; he got a major goosebump on the side of his face after he crashed badly. Ended up going to the hospital to get stitches; didn’t have a concussion, thankfully.

Afterwards, as it was Summer Solstice, I treated myself to a fancy shmancy pizza.

On Thursday I joined some coworkers on a service project, to do some forest preservation, removing invasive plants. Probably gonna get our ward to come out some other time and do the same, it’s good work.

Spotted the coolest car on a date that evening.

Friday night I attended the baptism of someone that I coulda sworn was already a member. Afterwards I went off with a friend over to a BBQ put on by Seattle’s YSA.

On the way back we stopped in at a place that’s basically like a slightly-lower-quality version of IHOP.

Saturday morning I helped a friend move house. That afternoon I went with a group to do river rafting. Unfortunately I don’t have many pics of the actual trip.

That night I went to a friend’s birthday party; she’s from Chicago, so they went all out with Chicago-style deep dish pizzas, wall hangings, the works.

Sunday was Mix n Mingle. This month’s theme was ‘Childhood Favorites’. So you can bet that nearly nothing there was healthy. Goldfish, Cinnamon Toast Crunch, mmm it was all great.

Today was FHE at a beach. We played some volleyball games – games with a volleyball that we couldn’t play ’cause the courts were occupied.

And that basically does it for a very busy week-and-a-bit.

..is now my moniker after my admirable performance in the Log Split at last Monday’s Hillbilly Olympics.

On Tuesday I saw Wonder Woman. Mucho grande good. Though I was a bit put out that they had the main villain be so in-your-face, no subtlety at all once he was revealed.

Thursday we went to the temple to do baptisms; I was able to serve as a recorder for the first time, which was neat. Afterwards we admired the sunlight on the trees and enjoyed some Dairy Queen.

Friday night I went to a friend’s place out in Kent, an hour or so south of here, to watch “Hello, Dolly!”, a musical from the 60s. Fantabulous, 10/10. The crowd really made it though, movies are much more fun with a whole crowd laughing along.

On Saturday I drove a new member to the airport so she could visit her friend’s shotgun wedding in Las Vegas. On the way back I swung through Seattle to stop by another Googler’s apartment so I could pick up a pair of garden chairs for the balcony. Paid $10 for both of them; later on I found similar chairs on sale at CVS for like $38 a piece.

On the way up north from there I passed by a park that was too green to pass up. Pulled over and wandered around a bit. There was a kayak race going on in the lake.

That evening I drove off to Duvall to a friend-of-a-friend’s going-away party. I mentioned a week or two ago that I’d visited an area that was basically Grand Lake temperate-edition, and this was essentially a temperate edition of the Cabin.

I was especially pleased because I was able to bust out the Stream Machine I’d inherited from Gram, for the first time ever since getting it. It’s been biding its time in my trunk all these years.

On Sunday I had dinner at a friend’s house. I brought a fruit salad that Grandma would not be proud of, but it was sufficiently fruity for my purposes.

That evening I met up with some friends at a cathedral to just chill out on the floor and listen to the monks sing Gregorian Chant.

On Monday we had vegetable-style pinewood derby. Everyone was free to bring their own, but most used the provided potatoes. Named my racer ‘Taters, Precious!’ Lost to ‘Jewel’ in the first round. Appropriate I think.

After the event someone approached me who looked kind of familiar. He recognized my BYU ACM shirt, and it turns out we graduated from undergrad in CS around the same time, three years ago. He’d been working for Microsoft since then, and recently started attending our ward. Gonna have him over for lunch some time.

Throughout this last week I’ve been spending waaay too much time at work; impending deadlines and all that. Though I’ve had some fun at work – took a break part-way through Thursday to record my first podcast episode in a while, on the new Voltron trailer. (Due out in August!)

In the department of “Ow my <…> hurts… I guess forever,” I was getting up from the bench I was sitting at at work on Thursday night, and my right knee had somehow seized up, such that it had a severely reduced range of motion under which there wasn’t any pain. Limped back to my car, thought I’d sleep it off, but here I am Friday night and it hasn’t gotten much better. Makes pulling shoes off quite an issue, and it’ll really cramp my style if it’s not back to normal by next Tuesday when I play soccer. Already have tentative plans to play ultimate frisbee tomorrow morning, so we’ll see what happens.

Didn’t stop me from enjoying plain ol’ frisbee golf this evening, though.

Whelp, that’s it for me. Love y’all!