Michael Rawdon's webjournal
Day-to-day life and other ramblings
Cow-orker K came back to work today from vacation. I ended up having lunch with her team since my usual lunch partners didn’t show up until after I’d already sat down.
At one point I said to her, “So you’re back at the nerd farm.”
“Yes I am,” she replied.
“Well,” I mused, “I guess technically we’re all fully grown-up nerds, so it’s not really a ‘farm’.”
Of course, we may be grown up, but that doesn’t mean we’re mature!
Busy weekend!
Friday Subrata and I got together to play Friday Night Magic. Meanwhile our partners Debbi and Susan got together to do Friday night scrapbooking at a store they discovered. We each had a good time, and although Subrata and I went to Game Kastle, which started its game about an hour later than where we’ve been going to play before, we didn’t finish a lot later than they did, so it all worked out well.
Friday was the release day for the new Magic expansion, Shadowmoor, which is the complementary set to the previous block, Lorwyn. Rather than having interactions among creatures in a tribe (elves, goblins, etc.), this block involves colors which work closely together. That gives it a different dynamic in draft, since the “hybrid” color mana costs mean you can play more cards that come your way than in other blocks.
I had a pretty good draft putting together a green-red deck which had a few good tricks but basically came down to putting big creatures in play before my opponents could deal with them. I won my first match handily, lost my second match by a very thin margin, and got crushed in my third. So not too bad a showing. My third opponent isn’t impressed with the set, feeling that it’s a set which plays slowly at first, but then a single card can win the game for either player if they get lucky. To some extent this is always true in Magic, but it does seem like the power curve leaps rather suddenly at a certain point. On the other hand, I enjoy creature-based decks, so the slow progress early in a game suits me okay. I’ll have to play more to see what I think about it. It does feel like the set is very light on creature removal, though, which might make red-black the color combo of choice.
Saturday was a day of running around doing errands, followed by going to an engagement party for our friends Josh and Lisa. Some friends of theirs put together a very nice party at their house, and many friends of each showed up. Josh has been one of the more avid boardgamers at Subrata’s weekly session since he started coming a couple of years ago, so there were several people Debbi and I knew there. It was a fun time, at least until my cold meds started wearing off around 8 and I started wearing down.
(I can’t wait to shake this cold. I’m slowly getting better, and not really wiped out by it by the end of every day, but it’s sill a drag, sniffling and coughing.)
And last but by no means least, today it’s Debbi’s birthday!
I’d been teasing her all week about the presents I’d bought for her, all the while hoping that I’d actually get them in time, since I’m becoming the world’s worst procrastinator when it comes to buying presents. However, I’d come up with a couple of neat gift ideas, and hoped to pull it off.
Fortunately, I was able to make time to go by Lisa’s Tea Treasures on Thursday morning and picked up a nice English-style tea pot for her, since she’d talked about getting one so she could make larger pots of tea. (Lisa’s Tea came at Susan’s recommendation, for which I thank her since otherwise I had little idea of where to go!) And my order for Corner Gas seasons one and two on DVD arrived from Amazon Canada on Friday afternoon, somewhat to my surprise since they’d just shipped earlier in the week. Corner Gas is Debbi’s favorite show these days, and we watch it most nights on TV. A lot of its humor is based on wordplay, which means I enjoy it a lot more than most sitcoms.
Anyway, somehow I’d managed to not give her any hints about it all about them and she was completely surprised! And loved them all! Yay!
In the afternoon we had a small group of people over for grillables and cake to celebrate, keeping it small to not drive ourselves nuts with preparation. (I still drove myself nuts by insisting on mopping the tile floors this morning, but that’s my problem.) We had a fun time, and our friends Lisa and Michel brought their infant daughter over, which especially amused the cats, since Newton had no idea what to make of this not-a-lot-larger-than-he-is human sitting in the carrier on the floor. Isabella also was fascinated when I brought out the radio-controlled helicopter later on.
It all went smoothly, and after people left we had a quiet dinner, and of course some cake and tea and watched tonight’s Corner Gas.
Happy birthday, Deb! I’m glad you had a good one.
Today’s my seven-year anniversary with Debbi! Where does the time go?
As always we reenacted our first date by going to dinner at the same place.
Well, minus some smooching in the parking lot, since I’m still weighed down by my cold. Better than yesterday – I went to work today – but we’re trying to avoid my passing it on to Deb.
But we had a good time anyway. And hopefully I’ll be over my cold for Debbi’s upcoming birthday!
Happy anniversary, Deb!
I’m home today, nursing a cold.
As my colds always seem to, this one heralded itself with a scratchy throat mid-afternoon yesterday. And as I always seem to, I shrugged it off as some random throaty soreness, perhaps a delayed reaction to casino smoke, or perhaps drinking too much coffee and not enough water.
But by the evening I was getting congested, and by 9:30 I was feeling decidedly tired. So I went to bed at 10 with Debbi after taking some Nyquil.
This morning my throat was still sore and I was still congested, so I called in sick. No sense in getting all my co-workers sick, too. This feels like it will be a relatively mild one, so I hope to be back at work tomorrow. (A far cry from bygone days when I’d sit through a whole fantasy baseball draft while sorely beset by a cold. Ugh, I can’t believe I did that.) More to the point I’ll hopefully be healthy for my and Debbi’s anniversary dinner tomorrow night.
Anyway, I’ll be ensconced on the couch for most of the day, I expect. Which isn’t a bad thing since I have The Iron Dragon’s Daughter to finish, and then Alastair Reynolds’ new one to read.
I seem to get sick every spring, usually when the weather changes. This one faked me out by arriving a few weeks late, though.
On YouTube, a plea for us all to get along as well as these three do.
Meanwhile, watch out for those kittens with the white stripes down their backs.
We wanted to do something more than just going to dinner for our upcoming anniversary, so yesterday we took a day trip to Cache Creek indian casino, which is about 2 hours away, outside Sacramento.
We headed out a little before 10 am and got there just before noon. It was a sunny, warm day, a nice day for a drive. We were fortunate to have good radio reception almost all the way there, so we were able to listen to all but the last few minutes of Wait! Wait! Don’t Tell Me!, which was a particularly good episode, too, with Drew Carey on the panel, and Moby as the guest, both of whom were hilarious.
Anyway, Cache Creek has lots and lots of parking, and is in pretty much the middle of nowhere. After getting off the freeway onto Route 16, we drove through some truly small towns: Madison seemed to be little more than a general store a few roads; Esparto is bigger, and you drive right through their downtown, past their school and post office (note to self: they have a shaved ice stand along the way); and Capay seems even smaller than Madison, but features red-brick shoulders down their main street. But mostly it’s just farmland and grape vines. Pretty, but very, very rural.
We easily found parking in the garage and went inside. I took a couple of pictures of the lobby before a security guard came over and told us that we couldn’t take photos pointing the camera towards the casino. A little strange, but oh well. Their lobby is pretty impressive, though:
The casino is much the same as a Las Vegas casino, maybe about average by that standard (bigger than Bally’s, not as big as the MGM). It’s a big room of slot machines and tables games with restaurants around the edge, a nightclub/concert venue on one side, and a large poker room. To my surprise, they even had some penny slots. They also had video poker machines with better payouts than we usually find in Vegas.
We both played some video poker during the afternoon. I had a surprisingly run of luck, getting four-of-a-kind twice. Debbi was not so lucky, which is too bad since she plays a lot more video poker than I do. She could use a run of luck.
The main disappointment for me is that I had heard that they have no limit Hold Em here with 1/2 blinds, but when I asked they said they only had 2/4 blinds. Since I haven’t played NLHE except with my friends at our home games, I wanted to start at the lowest blind structure when playing in a casino. Oh well. Also, one of the room managers told Debbi she couldn’t stand behind me and watch me play one time when she came in, which is different from every other room I’ve played in. I’m not sure what the motivation was there, but whatever.
Anyway, I played 3/6 limit hold ’em instead of no limit. Which even though I ended up down a little was a lot of fun. I made full houses three times and won a number of other hands, going on quite a roll in the middle of the session. Unfortunately the winning stretch was bracketed by a period of making the second-best hand a bunch (a good way to lose a bunch of money), and a card-dead period. I would have finished up a little except that twice a woman managed to make her flush on the turn or river to beat my flopped two pair. But, that’s the way it goes.
We didn’t try any of their sit-down restaurants, instead doing the grill and the deli. The grill was pretty good, the deli was pretty mediocre. The dessert place served great milkshakes, though.
The drive home was uneventful (setting aside the amazing number of bugs which hit my windshield), and we got home almost exactly 12 hours after leaving in the morning.
There’s not quite enough to keep us occupied there for a whole weekend, so I’m glad we didn’t get a room to stay for the weekend, but it should be fun as a day trip a couple times a year. I think leaving just a little earlier would make the trip a little smoother, but this trip went well, and we had fun!
That’s another busy weekend in the books.
Saturday I suggested that we go play minigolf. We ended up making it a little date afternoon, having lunch at City Pub, then golf at Malibu. Then we drove up a little farther to Redwood Shores where we tried out the Milkshake Werks which was quite yummy, and recommended for anyone who’s not getting enough ice cream in their diet. I actually found this place because we recently got a card at work with which we can get discounts at many area restaurants and services, and they were listed at the card’s web site. I probably would never have found it otherwise! Good deal.
Sunday was the final tournament of this year’s ultimate frisbee season. It was cool, sunny, and quite windy, which made for some very long points and erratic throws. I didn’t play my best, but I had a good time anyway. Our team won a game by 4, lost a game by 4, and lost a game by 1, so we were pretty much the average team. I was wiped out by the end, but then I always am if I play the whole tournament. Debbi came with to watch me play, and we stayed for the post-game barbecue. At home we collapsed on the couch for a while; I ended up getting a little sunburned during the game, which probably wiped me out even more than just running around.
In the evening I managed to get up long enough to put together a bookcase we bought Saturday at Ikea to replace some plastic cubes we’d been using to store some stuff in the corner. It fit perfectly and gives us a little more space to store things. We’re definitely getting a little cramped in my house, and are thinking a little about looking for a new house, although not really doing anything about it yet. (The main deterrent for me is not getting a new house, but preparing the old house to be sold. I predict it’s going to be a pain in the ass.) Anyway, we keep doing little reorganizations and getting rid of stuff and it’s worked out so far. But it’s a temporary solution.
We both ended up coughing a bit in the evening, and today Debbi reports that she feels like she’s coming down with a cold, which is no fun. Hopefully it will blow over quickly.
I remembered to do some stretching last night, so I wasn’t as stiff this morning as I usually am. I could still use a walk to limber up the muscles, though.
For my next trick, I’ll start biking in to work again!
Went to dinner tonight with my friend Trish. Trish is another one of the “olden days” journallers, having started her journal, Rant and Rave, back around the same time I started Gazing Into The Abyss. We became friends when I moved to the area, and I introduced her to her “evil twin” Lucy, and they became fast friends. Trish moved away a few years ago to be with her boyfriend, then moved back here last year, and this is the first time I’ve seen her.
We went to Cascal, a local tapas restaurant I haven’t yet tried! Very yummy! Expensive, though!
Trish was her usual cheerful-yet-smartassed self. I think she’s happy to have a job in the tech sector and not to have the godawful long commute she had the last time she lived here. Plus she has two cats, which makes her happy. She’s more in touch with many of the “old time” journallers than I am, so I got the scoop on some people I haven’t heard from or about in years. And mostly we just caught up on what we’ve each been doing for the last few years.
We should do this again sometime.
A couple of pictures I took this morning:
Jefferson barely fits in that cat bed. Blackjack likes it too. I think they both enjoy trying to fit in tight spaces.
During my ongoing project to clean out the front room and closet, I came across this wipe-off calendar from 1999:
Back when I was working at Epic in Madison I had an Apple Newton as my PDA, mainly to keep my want list (books, comics, etc.). But it was large and unwieldy for use as a calendar, so eventually I bought this 3-month dry-erase calendar and pinned it to my wall at work to keep track of my appointments.
Once I got offered my job at Apple, I used it to keep track of all the things I needed to do before I moved out: I had to finish up my projects at Epic, meet with people to transfer my responsibilities, pack up my stuff, get the cats prepped for their trip, and then fly out. And as you can see the month of February is planned out on the calendar (and then I wrote about it in more detail over here and here). What a crazy month. It’s still hard to believe it went so smoothly.
Well, at least I remember it went pretty smoothly.