judyonthenet

Man, what a long weekend. Like… a LONG weekend.

Friday and Saturday I spent most of the time playing Phoenix Wright 3. I finished the first 3 cases! Great game so far, but I’ll discuss that more when I finish the game. As I mentioned before, Kelvin spent most of the time working on websites for the new hosting service we got. I’m set up (please change bookmarks and feeds to point to judyonthenet.com or judyonthe.net), Studio Sokodei is set up… now Kelvin just needs to figure out what to do with his own page.

Sunday, Kelvin and I went down to Manresa State Beach, where Kelvin’s brother Keni and his family rented a house for the week. Both Keni and Susie (his wife) turned 40, so they held a big birthday bash at the house they rented. Driving down wasn’t too crazy. It was really congested at 85 and 17, but it turned in to mild congestion once we got on the hill. (I heard traffic got insanely bad an hour or two later, when accidents started piling up, so we were lucky.) We arrived just in time for lunch; Keni was grilling stuff as families and kidless couples were hanging about the giant house and its pool in the back.

Kelvin busted out the toys we had bought earlier from Rite Aid: an “Amazon Blow Gun” and a “Wild West Bow & Arrow Set”. (They were only $1.88 each after tax!) Once Kelvin started trying to pelt his sister with blow darts, it attracted the attention of the oldest kid running around at the time, a boy (around 10 years old?) named Henry. Henry was quite proficient at arrow shooting and dart blowing, so he probably used the toys the most. Once everybody was finishing up their lunches, people started hanging out in the pool. The Amazon Blow Gun (Kelvin’s idea) was a major hit with the kiddies; the bow & arrow (I wanted it cuz it looked cool) was hard to use, so mostly kids just played with the suction cups on the arrows. I didn’t feel like swimming (didn’t bring my bathing suit), so I just chilled and took pictures as people played in the pool. Kelvin was busy working with his sister to trying to shove his brother’s dog, Sonoma, into the pool and splashing his brother and various children.

Later in the afternoon, people migrated to the beach. Being anti-social and anti-sun, I opted to stay behind, as did Kelvin. Even though I didn’t drive, I was really tired, so we decided to nap. After an hour or two, we got up and sat around, kind of out of things to do. Kelvin made the suggestion that we try to solve a 1000-piece puzzle to kill time.

With both of us, we can finish it in 45 minutes!

Right. We ended up spending the entire night working on that damn thing. Henry helped in the beginning, but eventually got bored and was replaced by Henry’s dad (whose name I still do not know). We pretty much ignored the party for the rest of the evening, working on this stupid puzzle together like a buncha anti-social nerds. I was able to pull myself away momentarily and take a picture of the cake (it was some sort of banana cake with cream cheese frosting. I was meh on the cake; it tasted like a sweeter, denser banana bread), but blew off a lot of the present unwrappings.

Keni eventually convinced us to leave and go with half of the party people to the beach to participate in a bonfire. He convinced us by using Naomi, but she didn’t even end up going! We went down, helped carried stuff, and immediately snuck away to go back to the house. (As yummy as smores are and as nice as bonfires are, I wasn’t in the mood to smell like burnt wood all weekend.) I went back to work on the puzzle, while Kelvin decided to be a little more social and listen to people chatting. Eventually Keni & Co. were kicked off the beach a little after 11PM (lame) by some anal retentive ranger. More socializing and hanging out occurred late into the night, but most people eventually went to sleep. Kelvin, Kimi, some kid named Stan’s dad (don’t know his name either), and Keni played dice games as I worked on the puzzle. Keni eventually passed out on the couch, and Kelvin, Kimi, Stan’s dad, and eventually Tamara (friend of Susie) played Texas Hold-em late into the night as I… worked on the puzzle. (Man, I’m so boring. It was pretty freaking addicting tho.) Eventually, we all needed sleep.

And I need sleep now, so I guess I’ll have to talk about my Monday tomorrow.

New thing I learned today: The Ohlone lived along the Pacific coast between SF and Monterey Bay before the Europeans came over and f*cked things up, destroying their culture and killing them with foreign diseases.