Out of convenience, and to promote company, we invited the group to spend the night on Friday. This worked out for Eugene and Joanne, since they were going to see some houses in Corona in the morning. Craig had other plans, and Darren had to work on Saturday, so they both headed home.
Esther and I had been interested in trying out the lunch buffet at the little Indian restaurant we’ve been going to, and it sounded like a good idea to Eugene and Joanne. Results – good. Although they didn’t necessarily have our usual favorites, the choices for lunch were quite good. Unfortunately, we had a bit too much to eat and had to recover for a while at the house.
Sufficiently rested up, we headed down to the annual beach party/bonfire. What we didn’t know was that Gin was a bit late to the beach and couldn’t secure a fire pit. He asked around and found an extra pit next to an extremely large group of people. In the spirit of the last post, the summary in highlight fashion:
Highlights
- The beach!
- Bonfire
- Roasted Marshmallows
- Hanging out with the friends
Lowlights
- Chemical burgers
- Chemical bonfire
- The Large NA (Read: NARCOTICS ANONYMOUS) meeting next to us
- Inner Fire pit (since the wind blows inland, we were a bit smoked out)
Basically Gin managed to secure us a pit from a bunch of NA members, who, by the looks of it were having a recovery meeting. But man was the beach packed. Basically every single pit from the pier all the way as far as I could see was taken. Anyway, somehow people managed to forget that when you’re using match light charcoal, you’re supposed to let all those chemicals burn off…. hmm yeah my burger tasted extra “smoky” for some reason.
Jennifer managed to get us free firewood from someone at her work. Unfortunately, it was treated pine, AKA construction 2×4s. Not sure what the safety precautions on burning chemically treated wood is, but I’m pretty sure it can’t be too good for you. Not that it stopped most of us from roasting marshmallows anyway.
Since the beach closes so early (at 10pm), and people weren’t hungry, we headed out to Guppy Tea House to enjoy some shaved ice and general Asian drinks. Funny, though that when we did get there, almost everyone ended up ordering food! I am proud to say that with 10 people in tow, we FINALLY managed to finish the large shaved ice at Guppy! (It’s listed as serving 4 people!)
On Sunday, we all slept in. I was telling Darren about this movie I had just bought that had Tony Jaa all over the boxart, even though he was only in the movie for about 5 minutes in a bit part. To heal the wounds from that debacle, and since we had ordered pizza, I put in The Protector (Tom Yum Goong) to watch a little, but whoops we ended up watching the whole movie. Afterward, we spent the rest of the afternoon on Elefunk, a cute little puzzle game that I had downloaded from the Playstation Store.
We headed down to the Spectrum for dinner, and just to get out of the house. Going up the toll road in the xB with a load of people is…quite the adventure. It definitely brought back the bad memories of trying to get up the hill on the road to Vegas – not fun. Needless to say, we made it. The food at Maki Maki was good as usual, albeit pricier than I remembered.
Another weekend gone…
