This Side of Lost

There's been no comment on this blog for nearly four months. I'm not surprised, really, given how poor I have been about updating. And the things I write about aren't exactly riveting either. And this one isn't gonna change that. Maybe I'll post more frequently with more thoughtful and less newsy posts. Maybe I won't. Who knows?

In the almost two months since we've been back from the trip, plenty of things have happened. Here's the highlights:

• Spending time with friends. We've had some opportunities to get out of our little bubble in Northridge. Susanna, a colleague from work and her husband Andy are friendly people who see lots of movies and like to play party games. So we spent the Fourth of July at their place and they also came to our place for Samantha's birthday earlier this month. We've also been to a birthday party for Kat, a cool girl from Angeles Chorale. We also went on a double date (so high school!) with her and her boyfriend Brandon to dinner and a cozy concert. Some socialization makes this place feel a little less isolated.
• Harry Potter craziness. We saw the Order of the Phoenix movie, which I thought was good, but not as good as the last two. Fun to watch, but the pacing wasn't great. And the final book. Squeee! I loved it and thought it was a very fitting finish to the series. Kudos to Rowling -- these are her first books, after all.
• Visitor(s). Well, okay, only one this time. But Roy is cool enough to count for several. He took time out of his busy schedule as a networking guru at a conference to hang out with us, teaching us the Denny's song, visiting the Getty again and going for some excellent British food and trivia.
• Baseball. The Twins aren't doing too hot, but that didn't stop us from heading to Anaheim to catch the last game of their series with the Angels a few Sundays ago. We were accompanied by our friends Andy and Eric. We had a good time (even though they lost).
• Books. I did a bit of reading on the trip and afterwards that was heretofore undocumented: Fantasyland (about one man's maniacal decision to enter the country's top fantasy baseball league with no experience -- totally awesome), the Belgariad, a five book series by David Eddings (one of Samantha's favorites, standard fantasy/sci-fi fare, but very character driven -- good fun) and currently Sex, Drugs and DNA: Science's Taboos Confronted -- review forthcoming.