Beaches birthdays birds

When we left our illustrious heroes, they were just gearing up for birthday festivities. Friday after school, we drove Rachel and seven friends, along with Lydia and Eric, to West Seattle. Hence the need for a second car. We dropped the party off at Alki Beach and then went bowling.

Colin stayed at home for a short time, and then our friend Matt came to transport him to a sleepover birthday party. Nicole picked him up again Saturday morning at ten.

After bowling, we went to get pizza. We ended up at a restaurant that only makes one pizza size: twenty-eight inches. Their pizzas are very nearly twice the size of the twenty-inchers we get at Ian's, which we already thought were huge. We just ordered a slice apiece. Except me, I got two. Which was too much.

Rachel's friends returned with us to Queen Anne right around sunset. They had added a friend in the meantime. Most of them stayed through the night, but a handful went home on Friday.

Saturday morning, Eric had a bird-watching experience with first-grade teachers at Juanita Bay Park north of Kirkland. These experiences are a fund-raiser from the annual PTA auction. I drove him and a friend there, and stayed to walk around the park. They saw lots of birds, plus turtles and other wildlife. I saw a few birds and some big fish swimming among the water lilies.

Saturday afternoon, Nicole and I went to buy some more native plants, and then she took Colin to another birthday party, this one just for the afternoon and evening, from 2:30 until 8:00. Afterwards we watched the Storm game from Los Angeles.

Then Sunday morning, Colin had his teacher experience, an extreme low tide at Golden Gardens. We picked up his friend on the way. I had to cut my participation in the family call short. Nicole and I stopped at the hardware store on the way back to get some missing pieces for installation of a new garden hose reel in the back.

I finished that up while Nicole and Rachel got ready to go to Brittany's baby shower. They were there the whole afternoon, returning just in time for dinner. Rachel told me about one activity—a race where Nicole fed her pudding while both were blindfolded. The rest of us played ping pong, frisbee, and kickball while we waited for Colin to return. I read for a bit on the front porch, then took a short nap.

I'm still working on Inherent Vice. Most of Thomas Pynchon's novels involve some mysterious quest, but, uncharacteristically, this is literal detective fiction. The main character is a private investigator in 1970s Los Angeles. The mystery is a series of disappearances, and the paranoia-inducing interconnectedness of them all. That part feels standard Pynchon. It is less dense, and lacks the usual technological component, though. That may be part of why I find it somewhat less compelling than most of his others.