Yes, it has occurred to me that the whole year's worth of pursuing gaming was actually my running away from something else ( Read more... )

Four of the guys who were regulars, either as substitutes or as main players, have said that they won't go forward with the team. Merek, the one with the most experience in competitive, who had gotten into ESEA open teams that were quite good, said explicitly that he wasn't going to play with the team if I wasn't playing anymore ( Read more... )

It's been a crazy summer, so far. We've been insanely busy, but the last couple of weeks have been even crazier, with 100+ degree weather, a few wild fires that multiplied in one day's thunderstorms into dozens of wildfires. The air's constantly smoky, but we're not directly threatened by anything, thank goodness. Still, it's rather disheartening ( Read more... )

Last Friday, John and I took the day to go up to the Buddhist Shambala Mountain Retreat. One of our neighbors and several people in our church are Buddhist, and our neighbor goes up there regularly for retreats. It was the same neighbor who told us about the granite countertops. John was curious as to what it would be like, and I was willing to go ( Read more... )

I've been having a mildly unusual time of getting taken care of by a lot of people. A good number of them are from our church, and the biggest flood of that was on Sunday, where everyone offered us a hug, condolences, and a few moments of thoughtful conversations. It was amazing how much support we got on that day ( Read more... )

We've gotten quite a bit of snow in the past few days. Another six inches last night of the powdery stuff. There's pictures on the TV of folks shoulder deep in powder as they ski down the slopes ( Read more... )

John had an early evening meeting at the church, so Jet and I had an evening together ( Read more... )

I did something unexpected today, and actually enjoyed it more than I thought I would. There's an African american Methodist Episcopalian Church, the first African American formed church in Seattle, near 14th and Madison. There were two very sharply dressed African men in the parking lot directing where to park and asking everyone that arrived if ( Read more... )

I had to get up at 7 to get out the door by 8 in order to make the 10:40 flight home with plenty of margin. Margin is good. I like margin now, after the eating of margin on the way out to Pleasanton. There are a lot worse things than having a leisurely meal and a good break at the airport ( Read more... )

One evening it rained really, really hard here. It was late enough in the evening that we'd already opened the house to cool it off after a 95° F day, and the office window was wide open. There's a desk right under that window and every paper on that side of the desk was pretty much a complete loss. I was very sad to see an entire pad of rice ( Read more... )