The last couple weeks have been a lot of fun. Two Fridays ago I played hooky at work and headed up with some friends to Butchart Gardens, consisting of acres of floral and garden arrangements up in Victoria, Canada, across a ferry.

Being away from home the whole day, I had to find someone to look after Scout. It just so happens that my neighbors have a dog and were more than willing to stop by. In fact, they even had Scout over to their house for most of the day, and loved having him. Those neighbors are gonna come in mighty handy this summer.

Of those who went to the Gardens on Friday, one was just turning three and had a birthday party the next day, at Lake Sammamish. I brought Scout and a paddleboard, and we had a great time in the water. Lots of little kids clambering over the board, and Scout did an admirable job staying on board. He was quite tuckered out by the end though.

The next day, Sunday, I took Scout to a park in Kirkland near Lake Washington, which included trails leading down to the water’s edge.

On Monday I got some fantastic news at work. A project I’ve been working on for the past five finally bore fruit, and NIST – a branch of the government that sets rules around cryptography – changed their rules based on a presentation I gave back in March. Took longer than I would have liked, but it’s still awesome news.

That evening I went out to see the movie Sound of Freedom, a really powerful film about child sex trafficking. Hard to watch at times. Afterwards, while credits were rolling, one of the audience members got up and said, “I’m shaking right now because I never do this, but through the last half hour of this movie, I just felt so strongly that we need to say a prayer together. Would you all join me?” And we did, and it was a really cool experience.

On Tuesday I fed the missionaries dinner, and experimented with a salmon recipe. Didn’t turn out half bad.

Afterwards I walked Scout to Juanita Beach, where I spotted a bald eagle stalking some fish. Eventually he dove in gracefully and plucked one out of the lake. Very cool to see.

On Wednesday I brought Scout to work, to see what that would be like. I can’t bring him to my floor, since my coworker is very allergic. So I worked mostly from the roof, found a shady spot to hunker down in. Complications arose during lunch though. I tied Scout up in an outdoor eating area where I’ve seen other dogs, and darted in to grab food. I figured he’d be fine with other people around. But no, shortly after I left I heard him yapping. I darted out with my food to stop the ruckus, but hadn’t had time to grab a fork. After calming him down I dashed back in and before the door had stopped closing behind me he’d started back up again. Grabbed the fork and rushed back. Sigh.

After lunch I walked him around the area between buildings, then headed back for a meeting. I spotted a couple of security guys wandering around from afar, thought not much of it. A few seconds after entering the building, those security guys caught up with me and let me know that there had been a report of a disturbance, that my dog had been left unattended and caused a ruckus. They rotely let me know that leaving dogs unattended for any length of time was against the rules, and asked for my employee ID so they could have a record that we’d had this conversation. So that’s how a permanent record got added to my file that Scout is a potential menace to the workplace.

So, I won’t be bringing him back to the office any time soon.

Some weeks ago, a couple friends reached out saying they’d entered in a “48-hour film festival” and asked if I’d help them out. Participants would receive the genre, as well as a few required elements (character name, line of dialogue, prop), and then have 48 hours to shoot and edit a 4-7 minute film. That 48-hour period was a week or so prior, and on Thursday of last week was the premiere. The project had rented out a local cinema and had creators and friends/family attend to show their film on the big screen. There were far too many submissions to get it all done in one sitting, so the project had been showing a few of these films each night of the week, 15 or so at a time.

Genre: fish out of water

Required character: Dino Moore, event planner

Required dialogue: “Calm down, there’s enough for everyone.”

Required prop: a mop

Our submission:

Ours was near the end of the lineup, and some of the other films were pretty impressive. I wasn’t expecting a strong reaction to ours, but the crowd loved it.

After all 15 films had been shown, we were given a QR code that pointed to a voting page, where all attendees could select their three favorite entries. The winner would be designated Audience Choice winner for that session. The winner of each session would be shown at some future awards ceremony, where the Seattle-wide Audience Choice winner would be selected. The winner of that goes on to compete at the national level.

Anyways, our film ended up winning Audience Choice! Very cool.

On Friday I took the day off of work again, to head down and take part in a parachute packing class. I think I’m gonna get back into skydiving, and it’s been a couple years since I’ve really gone regularly. Gotta brush up. By the time I’d wrapped up there, six hours had passed, and I’d packed a parachute three times. Felt pretty confident in the process by the end, but it is certainly physically taxing.

The next day, Saturday, I attended a friend’s garden-party-themed birthday, had fun there, and then afterwards attended an outdoor concert featuring a celtic bluegrass fusion band. Had a marvelous time.

Today I went to church and then took Scout out to a park near the temple. Found a statue and had fun with it.

The Adventures of Scout continue next time!

It’s been said, more than once, that my driving characteristics trend toward the aggressive side. I suppose I could drive in a calmer manner. But when my friend told me about a day-long driver skills course where attendees would learn how to perform advanced high-speed maneuvers safely, I thought, now that sounds like the more enjoyable option.

So a couple weeks back I got up at o-dark-thirty to make it to the race course by 7:30am, an hour and a half away. Found a charge station on the way, as I wasn’t sure how much range would be eaten up over the course of the day.

The course was arranged into five events, with five groups rotating through. At all times there was just a driver and an instructor in the car. They checked to make sure we’d removed all loose items from the car, to prevent them from knocking around.

Slalom

This event had cones arranged in a straight line, and drivers would veer back and forth between them, at the highest speed they could manage without hitting cones. Volunteers were on stand-by along the track to set up cones that had been hit.

Skid pad

In this event, a section of asphalt was splashed with a large amount of water. Drivers spent a minute driving in a circle, feeling the point where too much gas would lead to skidding. After going around once, they had us turn off traction control, to make the car much more liable to drift. I found a “track mode” option that also directed way more torque to the rear wheels. Made for some very fun doughnuts 🙂 Though I’d need a bit more practice to actually get the hang of drifting. The video below is by one of the volunteers, who actually knew what they were doing.

Accident avoidance

This event involved accelerating to high speed and then mashing on the brake, to get a feel for the limits of ABS. The driver then rounds a corner and again accelerates to high speed, driving straight towards a volunteer down the track. At seemingly the last second, the volunteer darts to the left or right, and the driver needs to swerve in the opposite direction to avoid them, and come to a stop. Balancing the swerve with the braking was the tricky bit to get right.

Figure eight

In this event, we drove along a figure-eight track. Skills taught here included balancing acceleration and braking, as well as looking around a turn. Don’t brake enough through a turn and you lose control, but brake too much and you lose speed you have to recover after straightening out.

Autocross

Our group was lucky enough to save the best for last. This event put together skills from slalom, skid pad, and figure-eight. Cones were arranged to form a large circuit, with various obstacle elements. Got to go around about five times. I made some friends when I grabbed some slick shots from some other cars and shared them out.

After all five events, they debriefed us while volunteers set up a much larger autocross course. Those who wanted to stick around go around as often as they liked, until the volunteers needed to head out. After the first circuit they even let us go around without an instructor. I ended up doing that another five times before shooting off.

I needn’t have been worried about range, had plenty to get back home across the ferry. All in all, 10/10 would drive again.

Other happenings: I attended a play by someone in the ward, a take on Wizard of Oz. The play was fine, and the friend performed very well, but I unfortunately succumbed to the Stake Conference Effect. I think my neighbors were annoyed by me jolting awake multiple times throughout the performance. Oh well.

Went on a hike with a friend, Lime Kiln Trail, which turned out to be really chill, almost no elevation change because it followed a hundred-year-old rail line. We found the reason it got its name, an old kiln used to cook lime out of limestone.

My team at work has been running a pickleball tournament, and this week I got knocked out of the third round. It’s double-elimination so I may have a second crack at it. My opponent played a lot of tennis and the skills transferred. Also I was wearing jeans and hiking shoes, and it was absurdly hot out side. Notwithstanding all that I did manage to force a tie-break round where he won 11-9. So I feel good about it.

I played pickleball again later that week with a friend who got affected by layoffs and has recently finished a six-month job hunt, landing a great position in Austin Texas. Will be missed. Last night we had a going-away party for her.

Can’t wait for Colorado!

On Monday morning I landed back in Seattle after spending a week-and-a-bit galavanting around Europe with the folks. Saw some awesome sights – feel free to check out the full album here; below I’ve pasted an abridged selection (click to expand).

Upon my return I caught a Lyft directly to the office, as there were a couple meetings I wanted to attend in-person. I did not realize, upon returning home that evening, that it would be another five days before I’d feel the sun on my face again.

Tuesday was just decompression, and I managed to make do with what food remained on-hand – bagels in the fridge, chicken I’d frozen before the trip, that sort of thing. Not uncommon to spend a day indoors – I’d gotten The Office Itch on the plane ride over and was now working through season 6. But on Wednesday morning, at the tail end of exercise, I bent over to put a kettlebell down and tweaked my back in a way I hadn’t done since 2021. I told my trainer we were done for the day, and most likely the week.

For the next several days I was thankful that I’d invested in a new bed with a power-recline base, as that was where I spent most of my time. Scrounged for a few cans of pineapple chunks and worked through the rest of the frozen dinners I had stashed.

While this was all going down I remained stuck on European time, waking up at 2-3am and not falling asleep till 8-9pm. The one benefit was that I managed to catch a few live games from the World Chess Championship match, being played in Kazakhstan. Riveting (mostly sarcasm, though there were a couple of intense moments that were fun to watch commentated).

I managed, somehow, to spend nearly every waking moment watching a screen. So it was a cathartic experience when I’d had enough on Saturday morning and stumbled outside to the most gorgeous day imaginable. In the shade the air was skin temperature, slight breeze, not a cloud in the sky. Just sat on my back patio for like half an hour taking it all in. Stood out front facing the sun, gently sandblasting the cruft from behind my eyes.

My back is more-or-less recovered now, and I took the opportunity to head out and replenish my foodstuffs. I plan on being pretty paranoid during workouts for the next while, but I’m pretty sure I can go in to work. There’s a team pickleball tournament that I’ll have to wait a bit on, though – my next opponent is apparently very good. Elsewhere in the bracket is a fellow BYU graduate that’s big on the game, and it will be quite cool if we manage to each make it to the finals.

Health-wise I now just need to figure out how to get my wrist to heal after a sprain I got skiing six weeks ago. Flexing the wrist backwards is what hurts, so that’s put the kibosh on push-ups and makes me carefully consider how to get out of chairs. Really hoping this doesn’t turn out like the ankle injury I got skydiving in 2021, which will likely never fully heal.

Speaking of which. I went skiing for the first time since 2017! I skied exactly twice since moving to Washington, before suffering the herniated disc in six-ish years ago. After doing personal training for the past year I was feeling pretty confident, and got some friends together to hit the slopes in March. Turns out that these people ski, like double-black-diamond stuff. Looking back, I suspect they were a bit trepidatious about me saying how excited I was to get back to the sport after so long away. Would I just be a drag, stick to green-square slopes, etcetera. But they and I were pleasantly surprised that it was like riding a bike. Even managed to do a few black-diamond runs, and one double-black that I accidentally ended up on, though I did need some coaching on slowly navigating my way down. I did have one pretty epic fall though, on a real steep hill where I tumbled and both my skis came undone. I flipped around on my stomach to catch them, else they would’ve slid past me and down the hill. I figured I’d eventually just come to a stop, but no, my speed was great enough – and the snow slippery enough – that I wasn’t getting any traction. Must’ve fallen for a good 20 seconds before I spread my arms and legs and eventually slowed.

It was my last run of the day where I opted for a more daring-looking route that I fell on my wrist and sprained it. Didn’t stop me from heading back to a different resort the next week for some night skiing. Funny story about that. The week prior, on my earlier ski trip, I’d stuffed my gloves into my coat before hopping on the bus from the parking lot to the hill. After disembarking and heading up, I noticed my gloves were gone. Shoot. I backtracked and found one of my gloves on the stairs leading up from the bus stop. No sign of the other one. Might not have even left the bus. I resorted to using an old beanie I’d found in my snow pants pocket as a makeshift glove for my left hand, which I managed somehow not to lose across my falls.

So on the subsequent week’s ski trip, I was trudging up the hill from the parking lot when I came across a glove. A left-handed glove. Just sitting there on the side of the walkway, with nary a passerby claiming it. I passed it by, figuring I’d just go buy a matching set of gloves on-site. Turns out though that they were all out. I found myself needing to return to my car anyways, so I resolved that if it was still there on my way back, I’d just take it as a sign that it was meant to be. Sure enough, that’s how I ended up with a mis-matching set of gloves.

A couple weeks after that I found myself at James and Karen’s place for post-General-Conference dinner. I brought some steak I’d prepared for a dinner party the evening prior but which had seen markedly fewer attendees than I had expected. Went quite well with the paninis.

Making absolutely no attempt to keep things chronological, I had Mom come up for a few days in early March. We had some awesome food, saw some very interesting Oscar-nominated short films, and caught a performance of Cirque du Soleil.

Final anecdote, I made my way to Vancouver for a spell. Was there for a work conference but, as Monday was a holiday, I ended up having a few Seattle friends that happened to be in the area, so we met up and had some fun.

And I think that just about covers it. Till next time.