Keeping In Touch

So, I’m fine. Really. I’ve just been trying to pull things together for a blog entry (wif pictures!) showing what’s new* and I haven’t yet because of uncoordination**.

I didn’t really think of how a longish blog hiatus after a mopey post might look to people when that’s the only peephole they have into my life. To everyone who was so kindly concerned, I’m happy. Everything’s fine, the weather’s rainy (which is really great because there’s been a drought), the camellias and daffodils are blooming, a friend gave me a shopping bag full of Meyer lemons, and otters are coming to Monterey Bay Aquarium. What’s not to love?

Two new things we did recently: attended a professional indoor lacrosse game and helped test-drive a treasure hunt invented by a friend of ours for his company what does corporate team-building exercises.

The lacrosse game was great; I think it’s actually more exciting to watch than hockey, because of the level of allowed violence. You hit each other with sticks! Cross-checking? Perfectly fine! Tripping? Go for it! The game is very fast moving, too. I’d never seen indoor lacrosse (only the outdoor, at university level) and it’s sort of the same difference as between indoor and outdoor soccer. Indoor has smaller teams moving faster, uses ricochets and has a shot clock. Our team lost, but only by one point and after being five points down for most of the first half. So, a good time.***

The treasure hunt was also fun. The hunt was for information and clues, spread out over about a four block radius in downtown Palo Alto. Teams got points for speed in solving their clues (and the teams had different clues), but all the clues were needed to unlock a case with the final prize. It’s a real challenge to balance competition with co-operation, and also to make it interesting (i.e. provide a backstory and a connecting reason for all the tasks) without pushing into freak-the-mundanes-LARP territory. Our friend did a good job.**** One clever idea was to require Polaroid snaps of the team at various points in the puzzle (not the end) so that even if you guessed where the end point was, you still had to go to all the places. And you got bonus points for creativity with the pictures.

So, hugs and puppies all around. All we need now is for friends to visit, to tide us over until the Big Wedding!

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* Hair! Glasses! Boots!

** In a time-management sense, not a falling-over-and-hurting-myself sense. I haven’t done that in ever! A long time! Weeks! OK, today.

*** And we were sitting in front of a group of guys who wanted to contribute by distracting the other team’s goalie… they were pretty funny.

**** I think the recent popularity of “The DaVinci Code” helped a lot… gave people an instant frame of reference.