Father’s Day Rafting

June 16, 2025 5:44 pm

I had been trying to come up with something to do for my birthday and was looking into going rafting, but the only place I found that operates on week days was up past Sacramento so it would have been ~2 hours of driving each way and that didn’t sound like much fun.

There was another company–which I liked the looks of better anyways–that operates on the Stanislaus River. Only ~1.25 hours away, but they didn’t start their season until Father’s Day weekend. The weather was looking about as good as could be hoped for in June so we headed out to Knight’s Ferry for Father’s Day.

We grabbed sandwiches along the way to eat while we floated (the intention was for a calm, quiet, relaxing float down the river–which mostly worked out). The route starts with a short class-II rapid over which the company takes pictures. Unfortunately, we really hadn’t figured out what we were doing by that point so our performance was less than impressive.

We eventually got ourselves sorted out and got better about avoiding the rocks and trees (trees both in the water and hanging over from shore). And we found a calm section to eat our lunch.

There did end up being more strenuous exercise involved than I had originally envisioned. Turns out if you don’t keep working at it your raft mostly wants to get kicked into shore and get stuck on something. And if the river widens out and the water calms down then you end up not going anywhere unless you’re paddling. But we all survived and I was surprisingly less sore the next couple days than I feared. I guess my Ring Fit exercise is generally keeping my muscles in shape.

The trip was about 7 miles and we spent something like 3.5-4 hours on the water with a brief stop along the way to rest.

Kyle’s Birthday 2025

June 10, 2025 5:23 pm

I had been trying to come up with something to do for my birthday, but not finding anything exciting when Jess discovered there was a circus in town–Venardos Circus! There weren’t performing on my actual birthday, so we went to see it the day before. It was just down the street from us–couldn’t have been any more convenient. We drove over and ate lunch and then got in when they opened the doors so we could get pretty much perfect seats.

It was a small circus, which I think I liked better than a big production. No matter where you sat you were no more than ~30 feet from the stage so you got to see everything really up close. You could see the performers’ muscles shaking and watch the expressions on their faces showing how difficult the acts were. It felt more personal and a big production with hundreds of seats where everything is perfectly polished. I think the group perfectly embodied the concept of the traveling circus spectacle.

They had a juggler, a modern concept of a clown, acrobats, trampolines, lots of energy, and lots of fun. I highly recommend it and would be happy to go again if they come through town in the future.

The next day, I took the day off of work to enjoy my birthday. Had a lazy start to the day and did some reading. For lunch I wanted to sit somewhere quiet, so we took some sandwiches out to Brushy Peak Regional Preserve and sat at a shaded picnic table. Watched some rabbits or hares hopping around the landscape. It was nice.

There’s a rabbit in the shade under this picnic table:

After lunch we played the first scenario in Tales from the Red Dragon Inn. A game which I got for my birthday last year. I have too many campaign games waiting to be played. No buying more campaign games until I’ve played the ones I have. We were victorious (it’s intended to be a casual, light-hearted dungeon crawl, so winning should be pretty easy).

After getting the game cleaned up it was time for a surprise from the girls–my very own treasure hunt! I started by visiting the Library of Secret and receiving a clue from the librarian. And from there I was sent all about the house until I had assembled the components of a computer and typed in the password I obtained along the way.

Completing the treasure hunt naturally unlocked my presents as the prize, which I opened next.

And from there it was dinner time. We went to BJ’s and it was decidedly disappointing. But there was a delicious cake waiting when we got back to make up for it.

After eating cake we went up the hill at Cayetano Park and watched the sun set. There was a cloud bank over the western hills, so it was a bit anti-climactic.

Demolitionist

June 3, 2025 8:50 pm

On Saturday I finally got around to painting the 4th miniature from “Gloomhaven: Jaws of the Lion.” Only 4 years and 2 months after I painted the first one!

This one is the Demolitionist. Smallest of the four with lots of detail. I spent a little over 3 hours on it. I’m extremely pleased with the painting, but then fumbled the finish by spraying on too much top coat. Now the surface has a goopy appearance and much of the fine detail was lost. So that’s annoying. I even managed to write “BYE” on the left gauntlet! I used the end of the eye on a needle to do that as I need something that, when it touched, wouldn’t bend and smear the paint. Even so it took a few tries.

And the whole gang! In order of when I painted them: Voidwarden, April 2021; Hatchet, November 2022; Red Guard, January 2025; Demolitionist, June 2025.

I guess now I can finally play the game.