Our plane got in latish Friday evening, so Saturday was the first real day in Seattle.

The plan for the day was to hang out with , , and anyone else who was around for the morning, and maybe go to REI later for maps and stuff. Followed by and ‘s wedding reception.

The morning plan never really got more definite than that. In fact, a significant portion of the morning was probably spent trying to decide what the plan was. I got a tour of Zach’s house. It is quite large and definitely looks like an older house that has been modified inumerable times. And I got greeted by Zach’s two large dogs. We went down to the locks on the Lake Washington Ship canal. We saw some smolt (young salmon) flushing out toward the ocean, one bigger fish, and a heron eating the smolt. was able to join us for that. Then there was lunch, which involved much walking around in circles to locate an open restaurant. decided he was sufficiently not-sick to join us for that.

We did go to REI. I got maps for the candidate hiking spots on the Olympic Peninsula. And Zach got some crazy running shoe things that really are more like rubber calluses for the feet than shoes. Once back at Adam and Rehana’s place, Zach and I read over the guide books, maps, and online trail reports and picked a place to go hike.

Then there was the wedding reception. The schedule said it would go from 5pm to 2am or so, which was a little daunting having just come from the eastern time zone. But it ended up being great. The reception was quite low key — more like a regular party than a lot of the formal wedding receptions I have been to. It was at their house. There were no assigned seats, people just kind of congregated on the couch or the porch or the pingpong table. It was nice because the friends actually got to meet and interact with the family. George’s sister was particularly fun, and sounded alarmingly much like George. Too bad she’s down in Maryland so I probably won’t see her again. I actually didn’t know too many people there. A lot of them were from before my time at CMU. and did a good job of introducing me to folks. Speaking of which, I got to see Neal whom I hadn’t seen in ages. Someday I need to make another trip to Austin to see folks down there. At some point, Tyson fell asleep on the couch, which was amazing because people were drunkenly singing and playing the piano right next to him. And finally the party devolved into a lone game of rook. I was doing quite well until Josh knocked my little glass of beer over and refilled it with a big glass of beer. After some fraction of that glass, I resigned and just watched.

Finally, at around 3am, we made it back to Adam and Rehana’s place where we were staying. When I plan my wedding, I think I want something quite similar.