January 2016

If there was a theme to the first month of 2016, it’s work hard, play hard.

It all started off with a quick New Year’s weekend trip to Spokane, Washington to celebrate a friend’s birthday. I wasn’t too happy that it was going to be a high of 17 degrees (Fahrenheit!) when I was there, but I had the best time – among other things I went sledding, walked on a frozen lake, played board games, and went to an awesome party. But what I enjoyed the most was catching up with my friend and meeting his family and friends.

Work has been crazy and I generally spend weeknights working, but I try to make up for it on the weekends. On my first Friday in town, I organized an impromptu game night with friends and coworkers. It was super fun, and people didn’t end up leaving until 2 am. I love organizing and hosting these events because I enjoy bringing people together and seeing them have a good time.

The following week at work was again rough, partly because I took Friday off to go to Salt Lake City. I went specifically to go watch Stanford Men’s Volleyball play BYU, and it was totally worth it.

I don’t know if I can ever describe in words how much I enjoy playing and watching volleyball. I went to both the Friday and Saturday night matches, and it was a full house of 5,000 people each night. Luckily I had friends who waited 3 hours in line to save us literally the best seats in the house (both nights!), so I was incredibly grateful for that. I got to sit within an arm’s length of the players when they came back to serve, which, to me, was the equivalent of sitting courtside at a Warriors game.

I got back from Salt Lake City on Sunday, and went to 2 game nights: one that I was invited to, and one that I hosted last-minute. Monday was a holiday so people didn’t leave until after 2 am. I slept pretty late, but had to get up early to get a much-needed massage (tough life, I know).

Then: work again. I slept 4-6 hours each night, and didn’t do much better the following weekend. That was my own doing though…on Friday I went to a home Stanford volleyball match, and hung out in downtown Palo Alto afterwards.

I did some work over the weekend but not enough. Oh well, who needs sleep anyway, right?

I wanted to play volleyball on Sunday but couldn’t get enough people together, but I did manage to watch half of the Patriots-Broncos game at the normal sports bar we play volleyball at. It was an exciting game and there were a lot of Patriots fans there, but thankfully the Broncos prevailed in the end (Patriots have won enough times). 

This weekend I went to Santa Cruz for a retreat with my small group from church, which will make it my third weekend away in January. Unfortunately I didn’t get to sleep as much as I wanted to, but it was still a good time of connecting and being with community.

After we checked out of our retreat house today (Sunday), I went to visit a friend that had moved to Santa Cruz late last year. It had rained the night before, but by the afternoon it was clear and the sun was out. After hanging out at his house for a bit we went on a nice afternoon hike in the redwoods nearby. The ground was a bit wet, but overall it was beautiful – there was a river running through the forest, moss growing on trees, as well as sunlight peaking over the covering. We were pretty hungry after the hike, so we stopped by Aptos Street BBQ for an early dinner afterwards.

If you read down this far, kudos. In fact, I’ll buy you a drink.

Going forward I will be posting monthly…it’s a little sad that it’s been 6 months since my last post, so I’ll be rectifying that in 2016.

Happy new year everyone!