I sent my phone in for repairs earlier this month, and it was quite the experience getting by without it. If I couldn’t text/call from my computer I’d’ve been in a much tougher spot. But it was nice to disconnect from everything when my laptop closed.

I delayed sending my phone in as long as I could so I could take pics at the fair, but the unfortunate consequence is that I couldn’t take any at the Lindsey Stirling / Evanescence concert. Thankfully Mary’s phone filled in.

First some preambles. Earlier last this month Mary and I went to a married friend’s place to have dinner and play Joker’s Wild, a.k.a. Jokers and Marbles a.k.a. Pegs and Jokers. He built his own board and I’ve been itching to play for over a year. They trounced us the first round but we came back and took home the win in the second.

On a Saturday Mary and I went on a double-date with my old roommate Michael Shomler and his new girlfriend (and now fiancée…). We went to Subway and swapped “origin” stories, then went to Value Village to buy something silly for the other couple.

Then we busted out some paper and fuzz balls to play Poor Man’s Joker’s Wild under the gazebo.

So that was fun.

I interrupt this regularly organized post with some random goings-on.

…And back to the titular events.

We went to the fair!

So that was a ton of fun. The other big thing was the Lindsey Stirling / Evanescence concert! We figured we’d get there just before it started, at 7pm. By 6:45 we were about a mile away from the venue. We parked around 8:30pm. It. was. insane. Those country roads were not designed to handle the influx in vehicles, and I feel very sorry for anyone who was just trying to drive through that mess.

But the concert was great! As I said earlier, at this point my phone was in for repairs so I fell back to using Mary’s phone.

All up I think we spent like seven hours in the car that evening. Phew.

Other random happenings included a triple-date where we played Settlers of Catan and had bagel-bites

Randomly went to Mary’s ten-year high school reunion at a brewery.

Acted as ushers for the President Nelson visit.

Had a Latin night this last Friday. I made up for not dancing by helping to heat up some food and do dishes afterwards.

The next day I went on a day trip with Mary to the Columbia River Temple, about 3.5 hours’ drive east. Made it to the 2pm session, then did a bit of sight seeing before having dinner at Mary’s friend’s place, after which we played a round each of Resistance and Dominion. Got back around 12:30am.

Yesterday I had dinner at Mary’s folks’ place, as they were pretty exhausted looking after their grandkids while the parents were off to Hawaii for a friend’s wedding.

And that catches me up to now where I’m still at work. We’ve hit a few snags that’ll make my life annoying for the next while. No chance of running out of things to do around here, though, that’s for sure.

Cannot wait for Thanksgiving! I’d love to hike Donut Falls and then have lunch/dinner at Silver Fork like we did that one time. But whatever goes down it’ll be awesome. See ya then!

It was a whirlwind of fun times having the fam in town!

It was finally time for most of the fam to part ways. Mattie stayed over for a bit more adventuring around Seattle. I took a brief break to go up the Space Needle with Mary & co. – thanks for the city passes!

Chillin’ and cookin’.

I decided to avail myself of Mattie’s green thumb and go shopping for some backyard color. Mattie had some serious professional envy when visiting the local nursery.

Sent Mattie off on Wednesday morning with a Google breakfast. Since then I’ve just been living off the residual left-over food, puttering around a strangely quiet living room, looking forward to seeing y’all in November. Love ya!

Counting down the hours till y’all turn this place into a party pad!

Two Thursdays ago we had a low-key game night for a returning missionary. Among other things, we played “What’s In Your Milk”. The rules are simple: when you’re it, you pick a phrase, and that must be your answer to any question anyone in the group might ask, with the goal of keeping a straight face as long as possible.

This next little story spans several days, but I’ll present it all up front. There was a tree branch growing against the fence line that separates my yard from my neighbor’s. It was putting a strain on it, so I figured I’d saw the branch off to prevent the fence from snapping.

Weelll, I didn’t fully appreciate the weight that branch was supporting. 3/4 through the cut, the whole thing tipped over and ended up snapping the top of the fence slat right off, the very thing I was aiming to prevent.

The branch fell into my neighbor’s yard and did a number on some bushes of his. I apologized profusely and went over there to chop up the branch into manageable chunks to hurl them back over to my side.

A trip to Home Depot yielded fence slats of the perfect size. The screws were of a weird variety but luckily I have a collection of exotic screw attachments.

The end of the saga came with the branch remnants awaiting their new home in a wood chipper or mulcher or what have you.

And that is the end of that tale. Back to the regular program. On Friday I attended a friend’s 30th birthday party, and came across a blast from the past.

On Saturday I went furniture shopping and picked out a couch and loveseat from Costco. Haven’t opened them up yet, still waiting on the fam to get in town. Will probably end up returning them for a sectional.

On Sunday I attended a good friend’s farewell party. She’s attending grad school in Virginia. Only the latest in a line of friends shooting off for the wide open world this summer.

Monday FHE was a pool party at a friend’s place. A friend’s very very nice place. Went straight from work so Mary and I just played some card games.

Nothing of note on Tuesday. Wednesday was the debut of West Wing Wednesdays. Started off with Celestial Navigation and then went back to the pilot episode. Haven’t managed to get much traction yet on it, but I’m hopeful.

After work on Thursday Mary and I went on a double date with a couple of mutual friends to the Seattle Art Museum.

This last Saturday I headed on out to catch the Blue Angels air show. Left a bit late and saw them fly in to their aerial theater from the freeway. Rolled my windows and sky roof down to get a better view and to hear them roar around. It was incredible fun. Parked and got to enjoy another half an hour or so of acrobatics.

That evening we went to a friend’s wedding. One of their relations looked an awful lot like Harry Potter…

It was still daylight so Mary and I went off to see a random lake, then strolled by a river, catching a bit of an outdoor movie.

Sunday was a potluck dinner followed by another Harry Potter game night.

On Monday Mary and I went out to see Christopher Robin. It was really fun! There were some funny outbursts from kids in our theater, they had a blast.

Tuesday and Wednesday I had dinner at Mary’s place; her family’s in town and so things are preeetty hectic at their place. We were always perfectly behaved children, weren’t we?

Yesterday evening was round two of West Wing Wednesdays, but unfortunately I didn’t do as good a job of getting the word out, so only one person came. I’ll give it a rest for a week then try again, on a different day perhaps.

Tonight there was a party at a park to give our bishop a send-off. He’s getting released next week. For some people I know, he’s the only bishop they’ve ever had, so it’ll be quite the adjustment.

Anyways, that’s all for now. Next week is gonna be so much fun!