Cookout at Justin’s

I had planned on doing some grocery shopping with Justin, but ended up getting home too late (I think he and Dave went out food gathering on their own). I had high plans for a nap myself, but it turns out I had just enough time to IM with Chelsea for a bit, hop in the shower, and head right back to Ukranian Village.

I got treated to a great salad, along with grilled salmon, mushrooms and asparagus. Great stuff all around, and ended up hanging out with Dave, Justin, his neighbors Howard and Greg, as well as Kari and Doug (who I don’t think I’ve seen since Michael’s birthday party).

Some fun conversations tonight. We hit a wide range of topics including Indian Tech Support centers, motorcycle safety, and our various brushes with hazing rituals. Doug ended up talking about a particularly crazy 24-hour-plus scavenger hunt he had go on, as part of his fraternity pledge. He and a bunch of friends ended up renting a U-Haul, ran across about three states, bought a crack pipe, and got their pictures taken with Nancy Kerrigan, among other antics. Great stories there.

Doug and Kari are getting married in about a year, and they talked about how they were kicking around an “island” theme for the whole thing. Of course, Dave, Justin and I began to rave about how the two of them needed to go to Hala Kahiki and do some serious research.

Justin also showed us a few pictures he had taken from his trip out west, last month. Whenever there’s some official unveiling, I’ll see if he’ll let me link to those pics from here. From what I saw – some great public graffiti and sculptures, as well as some really cool portraits of the folks he visited.

We all ended up calling it a night around 9:30 or so. Everyone seemed to be a little slow from all the food, and it felt like a good ending to a nice, relaxing Sunday meal outside.

As I’m writing this, it’s about 12:21 AM – almost exactly twelve hours since Rob picked up me to help him with his move. I’ve been pretty much in constant motion since then. Today was a really full, rich day – tons of friends, a lot of activity, and some good conversations.

For someone who’s as much of a homebody as me… it’s been a busy couple of days.

I can only hope the rest of the summer is like this.