Tuesday I got to show the visiting family of a good friend in the ward around Google. I’m getting fairly good at hitting all the good stuff.

After work when I reached my car and was about to drive off, I noticed a small finch perched on the hood. I figured he’d fly off after I started moving, but after driving in a semicircle he stayed put.

Eventually I realized his leg must be stuck in the rubber sealing around the edge of the windshield. A folded piece of paper was tool enough to get him dislodged.

The next day I went on a walk with a friend through a wooded area I’ve been to before, but only once. Ran across an owl I called Scratcher. Scratcher, unfortunately, didn’t seem long for this world, as he was very lethargic and his feathers were quite ruffled.

On our way out we got to witness a scuffle between like five owls and a nest of robins. If you’ve ever seen “Legend of the Guardians: The Owls of Ga’Hoole”, it felt just like that. Man owls sure are graceful.

Thursday was game #1 of our office soccer league matches. Over a hundred players signed up, so we have eight teams currently in the running. We beat out our opponent 4-3.

On Friday I attended two going-away parties. One was for a co-worker, who was transferring across the lake to our Seattle office to work on a different team. The get-together was in a bar just a couple minutes’ walk from the office. I of course ordered a carbonated drink. The employee in question was an enthusiastic bird watcher, and loved the pics from above.

That evening was the going-away party for a friend’s cousin, who’d been in town for the last couple months.

Sunday night I had planned to go out and try and see the surprisingly visible aurora borealis, but the park we decided to hang out at suffered from excessive light pollution, and we were too tired anyways to stay up till 2am when it’d be most visible, so we didn’t get any good pics.

Monday was game #2 of our office soccer league. Five minutes in I pulled the muscle on the front of my left thigh. Five minutes after that, the same muscle in my left thigh was also pulled. I was left hobbling around the field, unable to kick the ball at all without quite a bit of pain. Ended up in the goalie box where I ineffectually did my darndest to block shots. We got destroyed like 7-0.

What made it interesting was that I’d biked in to work that day, so no way was I getting on my bike for the journey back. Thankfully a good friend visiting from out of town was able to give me a lift back.

I honestly can’t recall what I got up to Monday during the day. Shopping maybe? At 4:30pm I got picked up by a friend, and we then proceeded to grab a couple more peeps for a trip out to eastern Washington, to Moses Lake. When I first heard of the place, how it was a popular area to go to and all that, I kind of envisioned some cross between Grand Lake and Silver Lake. But no, it’s a town out in the boonies, but it’s got its own charm. We arrived at around 7pm, unpacked at one of my friends’ mother’s place, then went off to play card games at a park. At 9pm we drove to meet the mom at one of the three good restaurants in town, which had half-price appetizers after 9. Good food, good company. I dozed through a movie back at the house, then dozed properly on an air mattress.

The next day we took off with our beach gear to chill on the lake. Found a roped off area for swimming, had some fun, got some burns, the usual. Got some more use out of Gram’s Stream Machine.

BBQ at the house, chillaxing with some more games, then the drive back to Kirkland in time to catch a fireworks show. The show was alright, didn’t hold a candle to Grand Lake’s stuff.

Wednesday I went out on a mass blind date arranged/coordinated/schemed by a friend in the ward. It was to an outdoor movie, Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them. (My back is still complaining to me of what I put it through, sitting up through as much as I could with no chair or pillows. I’ll be better prepared next time.) The date turned out to be one of the friends I’d just spent the whole break with out in Moses Lake, so our pool of conversation material was somewhat depleted.

Thursday was temple sealing night, followed by the traditional outing to DQ. (It’s not my tradition, my tradition is Panda Express. But no one else is ever up for it, so I have to bide my time till whenever I go on my own.)

Friday was Blind Date Night pt 2. I originally wasn’t gonna go, but due to a last-minute switch-up I went out with another good friend. We painted clay figures; in a week or two we can pick them up after they’ve been glazed and kiln’d.

Saturday I read some more of A Thoughtful Faith. Dad has a copy and sent me photocopies of essays from it on my mission now and then. Always loved the Liahona/Iron Rod talk, so I figured I’d just pick up my own used copy of the book on Amazon. The essay I read yesterday was by Richard Bushman, on why he doesn’t feel the need to justify his belief through some intellectual exercise. Very interesting stuff. I’ve tried a couple times to summarize it now but I’d say just go read it in Dad’s copy, it isn’t that long.

That evening I went out on my third date of the week to a friend’s concert, basically UVMCO-lite. This was the third one I’d been to, and it was real nice, all America-themed and suchlike.

Today I went out with some friends to a beach for some more chillaxing.

I’ll leave you with the contraption I devised to get my gameplay from my Switch streamed over the Internet. They make $X00 kits that encode HDMI and do all sorts of nifty stuff, but they never considered the utility of a chair, a fan, and a napkin holder that one could slide a phone into, with Skype/Facebook Messenger/Hangouts/Duo/whathaveyou running.

We have yet to see how it holds up in real life. Stay tuned.

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!