This Year's First Visit to Washington

The last post had us just arriving at my in-laws place in Washington. I've done a terrible job of updating my blog lately, so the events of two weeks ago are somewhat of a blur at this point. Fortunately I have pictures.

Here's a winning shot of the Space Needle in Seattle which I took while riding the monorail:


That same day we'd gone to the Seattle Science Fiction Museum. There were all sorts of fascinating items on display including original props, costume items, and studio models from all sorts of iconic TV shows and movies. Unfortunately, the only one I was able to take a picture of was this reproduction of Gort:


After the museum and the monorail, we went to Gameworks in Pacific Place and I kicked my wife's ass at skeeball:


I was able to redeem my 9,372 tickets in exchange for some $13.00 worth of toys at the end of the evening. Awesome.

Meanwhile, my father-in-law was kind enough to clear off some space on his garage workbench so I could make progress on a couple of my smaller projects:


In the middle of the visit we took a long weekend and went with my in-laws out to their cabin at the lake. It's a nice place:

While there I snapped this winning photo of my wife:
I also beat her at every board game we brought along.

Then I posed heroically to celebrate my victory:


Repeatedly:


While we were out there, I also got to help my father-in-law take out his Hobie Cat for the first time since he bought it:
It turns out I'm not very good with a catamaran, but at least it was a chance to get underway under sail for the first time since September of 2008.

After we returned to civilization, Ana and I got cleaned up and headed over to a party with a bunch of her old friends for the 4th of July. It was a great group of people who mostly happened to be huge geeks. How huge? The party was called "Bada Big Boom." Bonus points if you can name the reference alluded to there.

I entertained myself with the small wealth of bottle rockets they had while the rest of the guys were lighting off mortar shells and other nearly military grade explosives:

Meanwhile, my charming wife was helping her old friends cram down as many Jell-O shots as they could handle:


So it was a pretty cool visit with the in-laws and I got a lot done. There was more stuff that happened, but a lot more has happened since then.

From there it was on to Petaluma, but that's the next entry...