Plan 8: BANG XX "Get Lucky"

The Game is a puzzle hunt kind of thing.  People often describe it as a scavenger hunt, but we don't try and collect anything, we just try to find puzzles and solve them.  And that's just what we did for BANG XX, a "short game" -- just 4-5 hours.  XX-Rated (a team of wicked smart women from Stanford) threw the game; I played both of their other games: BANG 6 (a Valentine's Day themed short game with lots of chocolate-based clues) and Paparazzi (a 2-day game).

Planning the Plan

I signed up for the game well in advance, knowing that I'd have no trouble getting a team together in the last couple weeks before the game.  But due to my poor calendar maintenance (the game was the week before I thought it was), I ended up with 6 days to form a team!  Yipe!  I had pinged Alan and Arshad when I first signed up: Arshad could make it, but Alan couldn't.  When I reconfirmed, Arshad couldn't make it, but Alan could, and he brought his girlfriend Angela and another friend... well... it turned out that his other friend wasn't able to make it at the last moment... so we were a team of three.  But still, a good time was had by all.  Good puzzles, good company, and no rain!

Plan 7: Glass Blowing demo

My friend ErikO has been blowing glass for a year or so, and invited me to come up to Public Glass in SF for Hot Glass/Cold Beer, an event where your donation gets you a hand blown glass that they'll repeatedly fill with beer or wine and they have a glass blowing demo.  The artist in the photo is Paul DeSomma; he created an amazing female nude form in about an hour -- it was amazing to watch him poke and prod and cut and pull at this molten glob of glass until it finally began to take shape.

Glass blowing is full of double entendre terms: the glowing red kiln opening in the photo into which the artist inserts his piece periodically to keep it molten is called the glory hole.  When you sign up for some studio time, you're getting a blow slot.  Sometimes you'll have a friend be your pipe blower, to breathe some air through a tube to make a glass or other hollow object.  Actually, those terms are so ribald that you might even call them single entendre :-)

In another studio, they had a warm glass demo.  Warm glass is where smaller pieces are done, about the size of marbles.  The process involves a blowtorch instead of a glory hole.

Public Glass offers a one-day course where they'll run you through making three pieces of art.  They do a bunch of the work for/with you in order to accomplish it all in one day.  If this seems like your bag, they have several longer courses for various experience levels.  I'm interested in taking the one-day course and will spread the word and gather anyone who's interested in coming along with me.

Planning the Plan

I've had trouble keeping up with planning.  Not for lack of interest, though; rather that I'm spending more time hanging out with other people and their plans.  Not a bad thing, but I need to try extra hard to keep my plan alive!  I decided on Friday that I wanted to go to this glass demo on Saturday night, and I sent out an email that afternoon.  I got a few replies from people who said they were really interested but already had plans.  See?  With just a little more advance notice, it could have been a small group instead of just me and Erik.  Lesson: planning is different from planning in advance.

February is too short!

In February, there was the Academy of Sciences trip, a visit to Portland and Seattle, a few parties and a hot tubbing session... and *poof* February's gone with only one plan.  Can I fit three plans into March to make up for February's deficit?  That's my goal!

Plan 6: Acaedmy of Sciences

Cold, rainy, crowded, and expensive: this museum will be more fun in a year or two, but it's pretty much a rip-off now.

Bear with me while I rant about the negatives first so I can finish on a positive note.  Several friends mentioned that the Academy was likely to be crowded, so I moved the event from 2pm up to opening time at 11am.  I called the Academy a few days before and was assured that parking would be tough if I came later in the day, but would be fine if I came early -- plus there was always the $3 garage if I didn't feel like looking around for free street parking.  Planetarium tickets would be, I was assured, readily available if we got there when the museum opened.

Parking was a bear -- I had figured on 10 minutes for parking, and it was more like 30.  The "guaranteed spots in the garage" were all gone by 11am.  We had advance tickets and still had to wait in line for an hour to get in.  Two friends who showed up ticketless weren't able to purchase any.  When we finally did get in, the tickets to the planetarium (which were unavailable on the web) were all gone.  The wait to get in to the rain forest exhibit was 30 minutes, and none of us felt like waiting in it.  Disappointment turned to crankiness as we got hungry, so we grabbed a bite to eat in the cafe in the center of the museum which was, sadly, exposed to the weather.  So there we were about 1:30 or 2:00, sitting in a cold damp cafe eating overpriced food, feeling bitter about the fact that we weren't able to see the two exhibits we most wanted to see.  Georgia commented that the cold rainy cafe was the best thing we'd seen so far.  Heh.

But it wasn't all bad.  The new building is awesome.  We were pretty much alone when we went up to the living roof (see photo).  And we got to see a bunch of really neat sea life in the massive aquariums (over 40,000 specimens).  And we saw t-rex skeleton.  And a blue whale skeleton.  We saw the penguin feeding (over the tops of a million kids' heads).  We saw where the albino alligator would have been if he had been there.

Well, at least the company was great :-).

As for me?  My favorite exhibit was the egress (haw haw).

Plan 5: Climbing at PG Presidio

I climbed it because it was there.

There, in the Presidio at the end  of Crissy Field, is the location of the new Planet Granite.  I've been a PG member for a couple years, and wanted to see what all the hubbub was about this new club.  (Read, "I wanted to see the reason our rates went up last year.")  The gym is amazing!  A little background first, there are two kinds of climbing: top-roping, where you strap into a harness and are attached to a rope that'll catch you if you fall (see photo); and bouldering, where you never get more than ten feet or so off the ground (which is covered with cushy mats).  The top-roping routes were crafty -- Jeremy (in the orange shirt, belaying me) found two tough routes for us: one which required a traverse from the main wall onto a stalactite... while 40' in the air; and another which required a one-foot balancing act as you streeeetched out to reach the little chip/hold with your fingertips.  Very "technical," as they say.  The gym offered spectacular views of the bay, and we stayed until sunset when got to see the city bathed in a golden glow backed by pink clouds as the sun made its way west.

Planning the Plan

This plan sold itself.  I talked to a couple friends three weeks or so in advance and found dates they could make it, and I claimed that day.  I sent out an email about a week and a half before the date, and then a reminder a few days before.  A couple people responded to the email saying they were interested, but the ones that came were the ones I talked to personally.  As Curtis said, "word of mouth is the best advertising." Jeremy and I each brought a couple new(ish) climbers, and Steve brought three of his friends, and a couple folks showed up solo to climb (11 in all).  We were all so thrilled with the facility and the climbing that I might have to organize another outing there.

Plan 4: Spec concert with Jonathan Coulton

I heard about this Jonathan Coulton character last year: this is a man who writes funny funny songs.  Go to the website and check him out!  If you're a nerd, listen to Code Monkey.  If you like American history, listen to the The Presidents.  See what what I mean?  Hilarious!  I wanted to buy six tickets or so (on spec) and then gather a bunch of folks and make a dinner+concert evening out of it.  When I got the tickets back in December for the date I wanted, there were only three left.  Bah! I snagged them though!  No way did I want to miss the concert just because I couldn't get all the tickets I wanted.

Planning the Plan

I checked with a couple friends who I thought would like the show, and it turned out that they all had tickets already -- for the same date that I picked!  With a week or so to go, I ended up with a handful of friends saying "yeah, that sounds like fun... I'll let you know."  I was resigned to the fact that I was going to end up selling one or both of my extra tickets at the door, but things all came together at the last minute after all.  Sean, Crissy, and I had a yummy Indian dinner before the concert.  Rob, Sunshine, and Eric met us at the theater.  And we all met people in line that we knew.  Coulton does draw out the nerdy folks that I like :-).  On several levels (like not getting all the tickets I wanted, and not getting commitments to go from friends until the last minute) this plan didn't go as well as I wanted.  But on several other levels (I didn't stress about any of it, I ended up having a nice dinner with great friends, my tickets ended up going to yet more friends, and yet even more friends joined us at the concert) this plan was a smash!

An unplanned plan of lamb shanks

Lamb shanks with white beans, kale with proscuitto, and chocolate bread pudding.  Mmmm.

A few friends came over and we cooked up a group dinner. Is there anything better than a few friends with lamb?  (No fava bean comments.)

A couple of us spent most of our time in the kitchen, while the rest were socializing in the living room.  I tried something obvious that I hadn't tried before: background music.  Duh.  With every conversation, there are always those uncomfortable pregant pauses, and it turns out that having music on in the background helps smooth over those rough spots.

While dinner was cooking, we played set, and afterwards we played the word game quiddler -- and we all got beaten by a Brazilian guy for whom English is his second language.