Not much to report for the last week, until Friday. It was the annual summer picnic for Washington Googlers, held in the University of Washington stadium/athletic area. Turns out it’s highly geared towards families with small children, but there was good food anyways.

After that I carpooled with some friends down to Puyallup, a small town over an hour’s drive away, for the WAYSAC Conference (Washington Young Single Adults Conference Conference). This’d be a three day shindig, with competitions, seminars, dinners, dances, and culminating in a huge sacrament meeting – by my math there must’ve been at least 32 trays of bread and water each.

On Saturday I was needed to help coordinate lunch – about a hundred pizzas needed to be distributed to a number of tables in very short order, to appease the masses. Pulled it off with aplomb.

Afterwards I decided to sit in on one of the presentations: Cybersecurity. As it’s kinda up my alley, I thought I’d see what the presenter would talk about. Let’s just say it inspired me to push for a presentation of my own in one of my ward’s FHEs coming up.

We also did service, spreading fresh bark around the church’s surroundings. I decided to skip out on the dance and head to a friend’s house for games / movie night. (I’d attended the dance the night previously, so that fulfills my dance quota for some time.)

Last night I had some fun in a forest with a friend, a chunk of dry ice, and a two-liter bottle.

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.