Tag Archives: friends

Fourth Festivities

Selfie-Stick
Selfie-Stick! with the one and only, Laura B!

Fourth Festivities:
Friends, Forest, Fires, Flying Feats
Fun Forfends Flat Funk

Alas, adventuring makes for good blogs, but for poor blogging habits!

For the Fourth of July weekend, a big group of friends and friends-to-be came together at a group campsite in the Mendocino National Forest.

There was a forest…Mendocino National Forest

and fires, though thankfully not together.

In the photo above, we are attempting to start a bow fire, which is not a fire started with a bow and flaming arrow, as I had thought. That would be far too dangerous as California is a tinderbox.  No, it was a more advanced version of rubbing sticks together. We did get them quite hot, but alas, no flames. Next time.

There was a lake in the forest.

Lake

I greatly enjoyed swimming with my pool noodle; my $4 floaty both solved my inability to float unsupported and my dislike of weedy lake bottoms (because now I floated well above the vegetation). On the far shore of the lake there was a rope swing, which is where the “flying feats” occurred.

Overall, it was a great weekend with friends, and I was sad to part ways.

Friends!

Then, as if my car heard my wish and decided to take matters into its own hands(tires) by delaying our departure, my tire picked up this epic rock*:

Flat!

But like the haiku said: “fun forfends flat funk” or, in other words, “flat won’t foil this fun!”

Forest Service Flat Fix

With the help of the friendly Forest Service employees, we had the spare on in no time. We like to think they saw the American flag on my radio antenna and knew immediately they were needed.

Oh, and an In-N-Out burger on the way home is also a flat-funk-fixer-upper! Yum, yum, yum!

Yum!

*I kept the rock after it was removed from my tire, and it is far less epic than this picture implies. Seeing it here, you would imagine no less than a prehistoric spear tip, but it is quite dull. On the plus side, I have new tires, and I am ready for more adventures!

Snail Mail

Snail Mail

Mailbox to Mailbox
Inching across the US
A long distance hug

One letter and one postcard have made it an exceptional week for snail mail here, and this makes me very happy.  There is something wonderful about a handwritten note traversing the US to share news and smiles. I encourage everyone to try it.

Special thank you to Brittany B. and Cady E. for making this post possible!

Trivia!

IMG_5231.JPG

On Tuesday nights, our team “Optimistic About Fourth Place,” plays trivia at Shameless O’Leery’s, a local watering hole. Some weeks, we do really well; like last week, we won second place! And that was actually the second time we won second place (see! it wasn’t just a fluke), which comes with a $20 bar gift card and some bragging rights at the office. Other weeks, we don’t do so hot; like this week, we finished somewhere in the neighborhood of fifth. Win or not, we have a grand time, and I am so glad to have friends who like to do this kind of thing on a week night.

For fun, here’s some recent trivia questions for you! If you know all the answers, then you should definitely come play on our team!

  1. Is Bob Dole dead or alive?
  2. What do you call a group of raccoons?
  3. Locate the following horse leg parts: pastern, gaskin, and cannon (this was a visual round question)
  4. Who stole the record number of bases – 1406 – during his baseball career?
  5. What is the fewest number of moves you would need to make to win a game of battleship?
  6. What is the name of the Greek goddess of wisdom?
  7. What is the sum of the first three prime numbers?
  8. What is the name of the world’s third largest ocean?
  9. What do these three things have in common: Jelly Bean, KitKat, and Ice Cream Sandwich?
  10. Name the four US presidents who were assassinated while in office.

If you want the answers, you can ask my friend Google.