Back in San Francisco

Update on stuff. Last week I went up to Seattle for Vach's bachelor party. While there I figured I might as well work out of the Seattle office for a couple of days. And, it so happens, I managed to be in Seattle during the middle of a rather ridiculous heat wave. And, to make matters extra surreal, my friend from EA, Ollie, happened to be visiting Seattle at the same time, so I grabbed lunch with him one day.

Ok, let me chronicle the events:

• Wednesday: get into Seattle late. Get picked up by Vach and Kendra and go home. We watch a movie.
• Thursday: Go to work. Got coffee. Ate at Tat's. Went drinking with the Lindens after work, which was fun. Nya, Jonhenry and Roxie can hang. (I think we knew that already) Go home. Have man talk with Vach.
• Friday: Lunch with Ollie and bachelor party in the evening.
• Saturday: Recover from Bachelor party.
• Sunday: Lunch and walking about and flight home.

Working out of the Seattle office proved to be a lot more seamless than I was expecting. And, given that I have a number of friends in Seattle, I think I'll endeavor to make it back up that way in the not too distant future. I am continually amazed by how Linden manages to make distributed work environments work as well as they do.

Ok, now the real fun of the trip: Vach's bachelor party. We had been planning this for months and it all came together perfectly. The plan we had was to meet at Elysian Fields at 5:00 PM. Hang out there for a bit, go catch a Mariner's game, and then hop in our big honkin' stretch limo and go to the casino whereupon we would lose our money. Vach thought he was going to meet me and some of my work friends at the bar and we'd just hang out. Little did he know that 18 of his friends were lying in wait.

Vach did begin getting a bit suspicious, however, when he got 3 texts from 3 people telling him we were waiting at the bar. He believed that 3 people were waiting at 3 different tables. Which, knowing us, is entirely possible. Fortunately, he was only 1/2 a block away and didn't have time to put all the pieces together.

Anyway, hanging out at the bar was awesome. I hadn't seen a number of these people in years and it was awesome to be get us all together again to catch up. The ballgame was good, though relatively tame. Well. The Mariner's got creamed. 8-0, if I remember correctly. I'm not a big sports fan, but I do enjoy baseball games. Partly this is because baseball games are relatively easy to ignore, since the action tends to punctuate the relatively calm of the rest of the game. This gives you the opportunity to be social.

After the game we made our way out of the ballpark and marched our (some more than others) drunken selves to Krispy Kreme where, I guess, we were supposed to get into our limo. There was a limo. But it was not ours. This led to Josh (who organized the limo) making a number of frantic phone calls and threatening to call the Better Business Bureau. That was hilarious.

Anyway, we finally found our limo. It was a block away.

So, we jump in the car, have a couple of gin and tonics on the way and get to the casino. I'm not much of a gambler, but my friends are. Most of them jumped into the poker room. Some did quite well, and others, well, not so much. I decided to try and lose my money as slowly as possible so I put $20 into the penny slots and start pressing buttons.

Evidently it was my lucky night, however, and I pushed the button and, all of a sudden, I won $150. Time to cash out. Which I did. So, thank you Snoqualmie Casino, you pretty much paid for my trip to Seattle. Oh yes, and then we went home and Vach passed out on the patio. It was pretty much awesome.

Anyway, Bachelor Party pics are here, and you can check my photostream for other random pics of me walking around Seattle.