Not really of course, great party game. But I’ve played it three nights in a row now and it’s getting a bit tiresome; may even play it tomorrow as well.

I spent the Monday holiday with some coworkers at Mox Boardinghouse, a shop/restaurant/play area for board games. You show up and they have shelves full of board games, free to play. There’s an attached restaurant, and plenty of seating area. You like the game, you can buy the game. Pretty slick business model.

That evening we had tacos for FHE, made by a member who works at one of Google’s cafes. The rest of the week was pretty uneventful, work-wise.

Thursday was Disney karaoke night at the chapel. Friday was Bollywood night, probably the last event I’ll put on at my place. We watched Bajirao Mastani, a historical epic. When I saw this little number last year I resolved to watch the source film, and it was delightful. (This is also a good one (and a good remix), though it lacks the first clip’s sheer ridiculousness.) Though, I’m a sucker for tragedy, so not all were as enthused, but it was good regardless.

Played Jackbox afterwards, then called it a night.

Saturday morning I helped out cleaning the chapel, then made it to the temple in Bellevue for initiatories, invited by my old roommate who’s training as an ordinance worker. We arrived for a noon session, but the rest of the temple was so busy they weren’t able to get workers to help move us through until 2pm. As things to it wasn’t the worst way to while a couple hours away.

From there I grabbed some Panda Express, my traditional fare after a temple session. Got picked up by a friend to carpool across to Seattle for a mutual friend’s rugby game. It was cold and wet, but fun to watch.

From there we grabbed a bite to eat, then some of us went to a game night where, once again we played Jackbox (among others).

Today was ward conference. Afterwards my old roommate invited the ward to his current residence for Church Movie Night, something he hinted at turning into a tradition. He selected Saturday’s Warrior, an old BYU production with some ridiculous song-n-dance numbers. But after watching it through a second time, I see the charm. Before the film started, we passed the time by playing Jackbox.

Tomorrow night for FHE they’re having game night. Maybe I’ll bring Jackbox. (Spoiler alert: no I won’t.)

This is a titch late, but I thought I’d give a dump of the photos and memories taken over the break.

First up, the yearly meal out with the fam, followed by a tour through Temple Square.

At some point we got a tour of Steve’s spiffy office. Mattie makes a great technician!

…and a table decorator!

Luminaries all ‘luminated up.

Gettin’ ready to head up and see what Santa left.

Scout was spoiled rotten this season, mostly by me.

Case in point.

One of our evenings was spent with some AnderCousins. The block-building gene is alive and well.

 

At dinner with Grandma, Scout pulled an ingenious heist, possibly his best yet. Finding the mess he made downstairs, we all pitched in to help clean it up, leaving no one to keep him off the dinner table upstairs. Sneaky boy.

A subset of the siblings headed up into the foothills to look out over the valley and see the fireworks go off at midnight on New Year’s Eve.

My final day home included tubing!

And a delicious meal afterwards.

Speaking of meals, this is the results of melting this really cool gift Steve, Hayden, and Mattie gave me – a hunk of bismuth. Ended up kind of melting the tin pan, now it’s all fused together. Oops 🙂

Work’s been pretty chill since I got back. There’ve been a few get-togethers; a couple game nights, a birth day party, and a trip to see Jumanji, which was highlarious.

Here we see the most fantastic candy shop ever. They’ve got it all, from walls of sour to walls of gummy, from classy to crazy, from nostalgic to nasty ($60 for a gallon of candy? Ew.)

I found myself needing to transport a large carpet from Costco to my place, and I wasn’t able to secure a truck to help out, so I had to enlist the help of my trusty set of jumper cables. I actually don’t think I’ve ever used them for real jumping, merely to keep parts of my car closed as I transport inconveniently large items. (My first time was way back in my second week out here.)

So, I made do.

Last night was a friend’s birthday party, held at a mall in Redmond which I’ve never been to. It was surprisingly reminiscent of City Creek mall, with the circular walkways and water fountain.

Went to a Thai place, neato woodwork.

…and neato chairs in front of some random place on the way back.

A subset came back to my place for some games. We were trying out the Daydream VR set, and got a laugh out of how it looks when it’s worn without the phone in place.

Tonight was a viewing of the thing by Elder Uchtdorf at my bishop’s place. Hijinx ensued afterwards.

So, that is pretty much that for the past while.

This past week has been a thrill-a-minute, and I am so ready for it to be done.

I last wrote while I was still on my work trip last week. Wednesday night I worked late at the office, since I was using a loaner laptop and wanted to return it to where I picked it up from. Eventually got back to the hotel at 12am. Did the math and figured I’d need to start getting up ’round 4am to make my 6:50am flight, which I’d pushed back from 10am in order to make it to our team’s end-of-year celebration lunch on Thursday.

So I wake up and the very first thing I notice is that I’m not dead-tired. The second thing I notice is sunlight peeking through the window. Jolted me right up. Found my phone, somehow ended up underneath me, though I have zero recollection of silencing the alarm. It was now 7am, my flight was probably pulling out onto the jetway right then and there.

After shouting and ranting to myself in the shower I peeled out and raced to the airport. The ticketing agent was great about putting me on the next flight – the very flight I’d originally booked, but paid a hefty fee to shift forward. Things more or less worked out, I raced straight from SeaTac airport to the restaurant, where my team was just finishing up dessert. They all took it in good humor.

The next couple days saw the fruition of the work I’d been sent to California to do, but not without some more late nights at the office. Compounding this was the ward Christmas dinner on Saturday night; by the time Sunday morning rolled around I was feeling quite under the weather. Ended up taking a sick day, only emerging from my apartment to go on a home teaching call.

But here’s some pics from the Christmas party:

Monday night I was weirdly done with work early enough that I could actually go and participate in FHE, which was ice skating in Bellevue. I admit that I’d been kind of spoiled with the Olympic-class facilities in Provo, but it was kind of fun getting out there.

Tuesday night was a rollercoaster. Things were really coming together at work on Monday, but Tuesday evening I encountered what had the potential to be a showstopper of an issue, which’d put a total halt on the good things we were hoping to do over the next month. I’d discovered the issue far too late to do anything about it before leaving on vacation.

Yesterday evening was the Ensign Symphony and Choir performance. I headed out for it at 6:30pm, and it was just great. Had a couple friends in it, and they all sounded marvelous.

Headed back to Kirkland, and decided to spend some time at the office drilling into the issue. Like I said, nothing I could do about it, but I had to know. By 1:00am I was fairly confident what the issue was, and determined that it wasn’t anything to do with the software under test, merely bad assumptions on my part about the tools I was using. By 1:30am I’d gotten complete confirmation that nothing was amiss with regards to the issue I’d thought I’d found. Phew.

This morning I decided to take it easy and chill in bed with Netflix for a while, before heading into work for a 1:30pm status meeting. Did some more testing that day, just to make sure everything was ship-shape with our software. At ~4:45pm someone on my team suggested board games, and I just so happened to have Betrayal at House on the Hill in my car in the garage. A few people on my team, someone I mentor on a different team, and my manager all joined in, and we had a blast. My manager ended up being the traitor, but I took over since he’d never played the game before. He really got into it though, which was awesome. Game lasted till 6:30pm, which we declared a tentative draw.

Drove from there to a friend’s house for dinner group, a weekly thing. After the meal I put on Stalking Santa. Only a few people stuck around for it, but I made at least one convert, which is much better than last time I showed it to a group.

And now here I sit at home, composing this on my new replacement laptop! Work came through and got me a refurbished non-touchbar model, complete with USB-A, HDMI, SD card, Thunderbolt, and MagSafe ports. Here’s hoping that by the time I’m next up for a refresh, Apple will have reverted away from their shallow keyboard, and the USB-C scene will be a bit more sane.