Ah, the Weekend

Just as I was starting to feel a little off-balance, we've had an absolutely fantastic, uplifting weekend. Taking a few extra steps here and there to meet new people, and others are doing the same. It feels really good.

We were at the coffee shop Friday morning checking email, when Linda (the owner) introduced us to Louis, a regular customer who is also a California transplant. He and his partner came from San Francisco and Palm Springs before moving here two years ago. Five minutes later another customer jumped into the conversation and we all spent the next half hour chatting away and getting to know each other a little. It felt so encouraging! We came back that night for some live music - a great little jazz trio with a couple of guys doing a fantastic job on piano and stand-up bass.

Saturday we hooked up with a group of about a dozen guys from VGSA, a local activities group, for breakfast and an afternoon of geocaching. If you haven't heard of it, it's a modern twist on the treasure hunt, using a hand-held GPS system. We hiked around Colchester Lake for a few hours on a beautiful, sunny day, cracked the code that led us to the last cache location, and found it buried under a log in the woods near town. The cache usually includes a log book, where you can write a bit about who you are and when you found it, and then the custom is that you can take and leave a small trinket or two. In this case, the cache was a small tupperware box filled with a log book and things left by past hikers. We take anything home with us (we have enough junk already), but we left a wine glass marker from Acacia Winery -- just a little bit of California.

We enjoyed the guys we met on Saturday. It was a really comfortable group: both outgoing and fairly easy-going. It made it easy for us to be ourselves and enjoy the day. Later today I'm hoping to take delivery of the MINI after our 5-week separation, then perhaps a visit to the movie theatre to see the new Harry Potter film. We're hoping that Mark and Gary, the guys we met here back in March, will be able to join us. It would be good to see them again.