Belay on!

Saturday morning I met up with my friend Patti to walk The Dish near Stanford (that place I swore I'd never return to after The Tarantula Incident of 2011) and sip Peet's while we walked and talked. Definitely redeemed my last experience, and I may be willing to continue going there. No spiders this time, only these guys everywhere:
I'll take that trade any day!

ylehsa came down to visit for the weekend, and we kept her busy! Saturday night was Mardi Gras at the Ladd's, and Nolan and I's first Mardi Gras celebration! Unfortunately, there were no boobie tassles or other notable Mardi Gras traditions like that...but there were masks and beads and shrimp creole and other delectable things...like King Cake! More of that in a second. For now, I snapped a shot of Nolan refereeing a notable game of beer pong, in which Ash was crushing her opponents (most likely because her cups were filled with water, not booze). Isn't he cute!


I also got a picture of Eric and his plastic baby, which he found in his King Cake. Apparently, the baby is supposed to be Jesus in old Mardi Gras tradition (?) and it's baked inside this amazing circular cake that tastes like a cinnamon bagel with sprinkles on top. Whoever finds the baby in their piece, gets good luck for a year and has to bring next year's King Cake. Convenient, because Erin's cake was bomb, so I totally don't mind if they make next year's too.


It's been a little bit busy this week, but nothing major. Last night we met up with my dad in Burlingame for dinner at Straits (Ludacris!) and then frozen yogurt for dessert. I've had a gigantic cup of peanut-butter froyo loaded down with peanut butter chips, etc. three days running now. It's a terrible/wonderful thing.
We're also catsitting Harley again this week (Milo's girlfriend), so that's been a lot of fun. I tried to take pictures of them wreaking havoc together but the pictures are always blurry. See:


Tonight Nolan and I went rock-climbing and took our belay class to get belay certified. We have to go back another day to actually take the test (they want to make sure it sticks!), but we spent awhile after the class hoisting each other up the giant wall, and rappelling back down. I have to say I was pretty nervous about being able to hold Nolan's weight by myself while he was up the wall and practicing falling, but with the help of the anchor tied into the floor, I've gotten the hang of it. It's really fun to have an activity like that where not only do you get to do something fun with your partner, but also something challenging, where you have to both work hard and put a lot of trust in your partner. Needless to say, we bought me a multiple-use pass so that we can keep going back until I get my own Stanford ID.