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Monday, August 04, 2003
Weekend Update
This past weekend I went to the CFC Summer Retreat. I had to miss the first night because I needed to be at work on Saturday morning to do some mice injections. Thus, Saturday was a supremely long day. Not quite 24 hours of consciousness, but almost.
After hanging out with some folks on Friday night (including some decent Vietnamese food in San Mateo and an attempt to walk the Golden Gate Bridge, but it was closed by 11pm), I went to sleep at about 2am. I woke up (late) at 5:30am (I was planning to get up at 4:45), rushed to get ready (I hadn't packed yet), and sped off to work. After doing my work-thing, I figured I wouldn't make it to the retreat in time for breakfast, so I decided to hit up McDonald's for a McGriddles breakfast sandwich. I normally order the steak, egg, and cheese bagel sandwich (make no mistake, the "steak" wouldn't qualify as a piece of sirloin, but it is a decent piece of beef with a shredded steak-like texture to it), but several people have been touting the McGriddles as something good (and you know how I'm into "good" stuff). I must admit, the McGriddles sandwich is pretty tasty, although the size leaves something to be desired (I could, but I didn't, eat it in TWO bites).
Driving up to the retreat was fairly smooth, although I dislike the fact that there is no direct, freeway route to get to the Golden Gate Bridge. The trip lasted two hours and allowed me to have fun negotiating the windy roads of Sebastopol and Occidental (both small towns near the retreat) since there was little traffic at that hour. I arrived just in time for the morning worship and message. The speaker was Pastor Ron Rothenburg, and he spoke on how to examine your life to help choose a career that supports your ministry.
After lunch, a group of us (Danny, Eileen, Silvia, Christine, Edena, Jeremy, KevinC) took a "hike" in the trails behind the campgrounds. I say "hike" because we decided to forego the trails and instead climb through the leafy/branchy/rocky hills that the trails normally go around. It involved quite a bit of climbing (which I enjoy) up rocks (which scrape), through spiderwebs (which stick) and thornbushes (which prick). I started the hike with an apple in my hand, but eventually had to ditch it in order to free up that hand for climbing. Danny and I came away with minor scrapes. My North Face polo shirt seemed to attract leaves, dirt, and little prickly things like no other. The second segment of our hike was nice and peaceful, like a stroll in a neighborhood of trees. Not surprisingly, we ended up going far enough to find ourselves in a neighboring campground, the highlight of which was a huge net made of thick rope. Picture a giant hammock strung about 15 feet off the ground and being able to support 40 people (or so they claim) and that's what we ended up playing on for a little while. At one point I was jumping and trying to make the other people lose their balance, and then suddenly my foot slipped through one of the holes and I found myself stuck there.
Later (still during freetime), we were playing pool in the Big Rock lodge. We played for a long time. Come to think of it, I played a lot of pool this weekend (we played again late at night and then again in the morning before lunch). Dan and I were usually pretty close with Danny and Jeremy, except one of us (mostly me) would scratch on the 8-ball or sink the 8-ball prematurely, making us lose. We also played a game called "RPE," a pretty infantile game in which each person guards one pocket and the goal is to prevent balls from going into your pocket while shooting as many as you can away into everybody else's. On the last day, we tried to do "trick" shots by setting up the balls at each of the 6 pockets and then trying to sink as many as you could with one shot. Danny was the first to get 3 in with one shot, then Dan, then myself. We never got more than 3 in at once..
My weekend not only began at work but it ended there as well. After dropping off MelissaC at her car in San Mateo, I came back to work to do another round of injections. Sadly, I had to stay longer because I found that several mice had been killed in a set of mice from another experiment. Essentially, there would be two mice in a cage, one of which was dead (killed by the other), and sometimes I could see that they had been gnawed at and eaten a little.. pretty gross.
I was so tired that I fell asleep right after dinner while I was still in the middle of doing laundry and with the light on. I slept so good and so long last night. I'm still looking forward to getting some more sleep tonight..=) I will post a couple of pics (I literally only have two..) from this weekend when I get home. Stay tuned!
4:49 PM Albert
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..a life in DUO