I think my new favorite time to go shopping at Costco is at 8:15pm on a Wednesday. Fantastically few shoppers around.
The time spent at home was just delightful. From Night Before Christmas exchanges to movies to burning holes in clothes to games to doing nothing at all.
And now I’m back. Got a few fun things on the docket to keep my mind off the fact that I’d rather be seeing the Utah mountains out the window right about now 🙂
It’s a complete non sequitur title, but there’s Arabian Nights, chaperoning for a choir, and a fun reunion, so there ya go.
The latest game night at my place featured Tales of the Arabian Nights, a fantastic storytelling game with thousands of scenarios and decision points to play through. I ended up fulfilling my father’s wish that I travel the world and study all I could, then ended up successfully defeating a mythic beast that threatened an underwater civilization of mer-people. Losing the game never felt so fun.
I was asked to help chaperone some kids as part of the youth section of the Ensign Symphony Choir. It was fun being back-stage for a change, instead of in the audience. And the kids were cool too.
After the show I wandered around the area on foot looking for something to eat and somewhere to read. Slim pickings at that hour. Found a bar, had neither good food nor good atmosphere for reading, ended up just heading back home and heating up some chicken patties.
Yesterday at work some people went out to a local bar to chillax ahead of the break; it was a welcome respite from the crazy amount of work I’ve been having to do over the last while.
I’d originally planned to fly back Saturday night, and got tickets all arranged. Then an old mission buddy who works for an airline asked me if I wanted a pair of “guest passes,” perks given to employees where friends of theirs can fly standby for essentially free (modulo taxes). Though the cancellation fee would be steep I’d still come out ahead if I could hop on a flight with the passes, so I kept my eye open as the weekend neared. One by one the flights filled up past capacity, so I regretfully notified home base that I wouldn’t be home till late Saturday, as originally planned.
But today was very nice. I packed in the morning, then hitched a ride with Mary down to the temple where we did initiatories with Annabel, who’d just arrived from Logan. Then we went off to a chocolate factory for some grub, before I got dropped off at the airport.
Aaand now it’s time to board! See ya soon!.
Life hack: spending too much time away from the office? Feel like your girlfriend is too much girl and not enough friend? Singledom is only one difficult conversation away!
Mary and I had an amicable parting of ways a couple weeks ago, the full details of which will be recorded elsewhere. Suffice it to say that this weekend away came at just the right time for me.
Hayden and I drove north to Logan, to see our respective people. Hayden dropped me at my friends’ apartment and then headed off for his own dinner plans.
These friends of mine were old roommates of Mary’s, so I was extremely grateful to still count them as my friends. We shot the breeze, then went shopping for dessert items before firing up Crazy Rich Asians. Took an intermission to head to a ward activity where there was free pizza, availed ourselves of said pizza, then absconded with our full stomachs and headed back to the apartment to finish the film. Hayden showed up at that time and joined us for the rest.
Hayden and I then made the long drive down to Provo where I dropped him off, then headed north to my own accommodations in Alpine.
The next day I joined Hayden and Mattie on campus. Had Cup Bop for lunch with Hayden in his fancy shmancy new engineering building, attended CS class with Mattie (way more fun than I’d thought it’d be), and caught up with a few folks in the Talmage building.
I had to find a room to take a conference call for work, and figured I could easily find a nook somewhere on campus. Unfortunately I didn’t realize it was finals prep week and every single study room was reserved. Tried all my old haunts, but no joy. Even tried sweet-talking the CS front office folks into lending me the conference room that I’d hoped wasn’t being used, but that didn’t work out. Ended up ensconcing myself in an old projector room that no one ever used.
The work meeting ran late so I wasn’t able to catch the train north with Hayden and Mattie. Traveled up solo, then met everyone else at Abravanel hall for the concert.
I didn’t manage to get any good pictures but my Logan friends came down for the concert. Had to head back up half-way through unfortunately due to scheduling issues. One of them stuck around, however, as she’d be spending the night in Alpine before heading to the airport with me in the morning.
On the drive home I replayed the steps it took me to get in the car and had the horrifying realization that my backpack with my work laptop did not feature in the sequence of events. I’d left it in the Abravanel Hall lobby. And my flight was early the next morning. We got ahold of the officer on duty there and he said not to worry, the bag was safe in his office and I could pick it up any time that evening. Well, sort of worry, since if I didn’t get it in time they’d have to send it to a secure warehouse for processing since it contained valuable electronics.
We did the math and figured it’d be best to swing by their office on the way to the airport the next morning.
Caught the flight, made it back, all was well in the world.
The next day we had a team offsite activity to burn through some fun budget before it went away in the new year. Japanese steakhouse followed by in-door archery, which was far more fun than I’d anticipated.
The next day was a presentation to a visiting VP. We’d spent an inordinate amount of time on that slide deck, and I’m quite proud of how it turned out, but I’m so happy not to have to deal with it anymore.
Just counting the days down till I’m once again back in Alpine! See ya soon!