Sunday I really didn’t want to work – it’s Saturday in California at that time anyway, so there’s no one needing anything done immediately. I sat outside for a while with dad, reading the paper and whatever else, while I waited for Sket and/or Bobo to reply with my suggestion of going to the beach. It took a while, but finally Sket got back, and about an hour later I went down to Safety beach to join her at Jenna’s beachbox. There were a lot of people there, this time – Jenna’s mother and her friends, plus a few more of Sket’s friends whom I hadn’t met – Jess & Troy, I think it was.
Anyway, that was good… very lazy… had a few swims, sat on the beach, didn’t do much, which was of course the whole point. :)
I was still a bit hyped from paintball the previous day, despite having already been through the hour or more of story telling with everyone over dinner previously, so I forced a few anecdotes upon Sket, Sean, and whoever else was unfortunate enough to be in listening distance. :D
Sket & Sean have never been paintballing, so I think I might be able to convince Sean at least to join us next time we go, in a few weeks. Here’s hoping, anyway. We also talked of go-karting, which I might do in a week or two as well.
So yeah, much relaxation… we played frisbee a bit, and all had turns on the two surf-skis they have. It was a little easier for me this time around, as I lucked into the better of the two skis. Nonetheless, it was still a bit harder than I’d hoped, insofar as balance is concerned… although I didn’t fall off, or really come close, so I guess I did fine. The motivation not to fall off was particularly strong this time around because of all the little jellyfish in the water…. up to about 10cm in diameter, with clear outsides but largely dark insides. They don’t look too bad, and I didn’t really worry about them at first. When we were playing frisbee, however, Sean got stung twice by them, which surprised everyone – we didn’t think they’d sting us. After the first sting he took to scooping them up in the frisbee and throwing them away. This was fine for the first few, until he happened to scoop up one with huge tentacles – probably a metre long, maybe more. None of the others had anything like that. He got stung by the tentacles, and after that we were really not keen on the jellyfish. So we returned to the beach for a while. We went back in again later, but by then the jellyfish had mostly been swept on up the beach, so it was fine.
I left there about, I dunno, 6:30 or so, and went back to dad’s. I wanted to sit outside still and enjoy the day, so I found a likely looking book in the study – The Road to Mars, by Eric Idle. I finished it this morning… I was pretty impressed. It had some real good humour in it, but as a action sci-fi also a running plot. And while it threatened bad events against the main characters, it luckily didn’t follow through – I hate books which spend the first 200 pages building a character, just so they can bump them off and try to sell it as “hard hitting drama” or some B.S.
The two main antagonists of the story I’m pretty sure are modelled after Peter Cook & Dudley Moore… the parallels are numerous and striking, and I think intentionally so. Since I watched a dramatised documentary on the two only a few weeks ago, I found this topical and good to follow, so the book really worked for me.
So yeah, that’s about it for the weekend. Lots of fun all round, a good bit of stress relief and relaxation, and I’m almost ready to work again. Almost. :D
