Muchacho Polaco

Had a good group of guys over this morning for a new study group where we are reading through Christopher Watkins book Biblical Critical Theory.

We went camping last weekend down to the usual place in Elgin. The new travel trailer is an enormous upgrade over a pop-up camper. Sadly, we put so much time and effort into the pop-up camper and now have no use for it. Hopefully we can find a good home.

The trailer has a nice bathroom which makes most of the difference and that includes a comfortable shower. Large water tanks make shower time and kitchen sink time very nice. The unit has solar on the roof but it wasn’t charging during the day and I couldn’t figure out why not. Fortunately the back of the truck has a 400 watt plug that I can use as a generator so running out of electricity was not an issue.

I am hopeful we will get to use this a lot more in the near future.

Despite concerns, the Tacoma polls the trailer comfortably. I had an anti-sway bar installed and upgraded the trailer hitch. That along with brake control for the trailer tires installed in the cab of the truck.

Yesterday was Valentine’s and probably one of the best we’ve had now in decades. Yun put together a Swiss style meal (raclette) which was phenomenal. We had cuts of really good beef, vegetables, and a wide array of fancy cheeses.

Very exciting times. This is a nice upgrade from popup camping. Pulls real good with the truck.

We had roughly 30 to 40 people over last night for the Midtown Christmas party. We’ve never hosted before, and it was a lot of fun. It was quite a lot of work in preparation. Mostly because our backyard was not finished and we wanted that finished before the event.

The day after I return from ireland, Noah traveled down from Seattle to spend a few days with us. I haven’t seen him since Abraham’s wedding when he visited with us down in Mexico for a week.

It was great to spend time with him although he did spend most of his time with friends that he has here in town. Given how busy I’ve been that worked out really well.

Immediately following a nice Thanksgiving meal at Matt and Dana’s house, I left for some solo camping with Berlin for a few days down in elgin.

It was a refreshing break which is what I was hoping for. I slept 12 hours the first night and a few hours later took a three and a half hour nap. So glorious.

Since Yun is not a huge fan of camping, this has turned into a solo trip which I hope to do with much more regularity.

I went skeet shooting with Colin and Waleed last Sunday. It was a lot of fun but after about 60 shells my shoulder was black and blue. This would be a fun hobby going forward once I have some spare time in life..

We returned home from Ireland last Thursday and I’m still transitioning to our time zone. It didn’t help that we had a time change that doesn’t apply to Arizona. Noah arrived Friday afternoon to stay with us until Tuesday of next week.

Ireland was a great trip. It’s unfortunate that Charles had serious migraines that led to sickness for most of the trip. Even still, we had a lot of fun. For me the highlight was visiting the coast and exploring the beaches there. I would definitely go back to that.

The journey back was long and felt much longer than the journey out. We had more layovers coming home than we did going on so that obviously didn’t help I do get a lot of work done on the flights and that brings me a lot of peace as I transition back into total madness with my work schedule. I’d go back but probably not anytime too soon.

We stopped at some fairly random places, the above photo being one of them. It’s a long pedestrian tunnel that serves what purpose i’m not sure. But we walk through it and enjoy our walk. For the most part we had wonderful weather.

We toured three different breweries and the Tealing distillery. That was all so much fun. We had some spectacular whiskey on this trip and brought some home as well.

Matt did a phenomenal job driving this trip. We rented a 5 speed manual transmission that is on the wrong side of the car and where you drive on the wrong side of the road. I was so very grateful to have no part of that.

Charles, Matt, and I traveled to Dublin for a guys’ week. The journey was a long one as we had a re-route and had to go through LA first before heading on to JFK and then on to Dublin. The Chase lounge in JFK was phenomenal.

Our seats on the plane were awful. I immediately changed that for our return flight though.

I slept surprisingly well on the plane – those guys not so much, so they were mostly dead when we arrived on Friday (11/1/2024). We went for some pub eats and refreshments, and then returned for a nap (I made some book recordings for a bit before crashing). We later toured around familiar sites and sounds. The pubs and music are much fun.