Still hun­gry, but I think I’m gonna wait until I get home home for some good food. Still sore, too, but there’s noth­ing I can really do about that. As I’m wait­ing for my sis­ter to land, here’s my next post!

Fri­day… the “unof­fi­cial” day, as it were. I woke up at 7. Went to the liv­ing room and watched TV for a while. Most of the news was still about the Lon­don bomb­ing. The death count was at fifty-​nine, and they had caught a bio-​weapons expert believe to be involved. Oh, and Aaron L’s dad told me about We’re Not Afraid​.com, which is an amaz­ing website.

Then Thu H woke up and we played some games together. Mostly her pick­ing Fusion Frenzy mini-​games to play. She really abused my eardrums, too! Aaron L came down in a bit, and then we woke up Peggy. Had break­fast, and we were off. First we picked up Aaron L’s friend Amelia, and then we went down to Monterey.

The aquar­ium was great, and I think going with Peggy made it a lot more fun. The sea otters were really active. The giant tuna tank made my mouth water for sashimi. The octo­pus wasn’t there, but Peggy flashed the empty tank any­ways. (There’s a sign that kindly asks patrons not to flash the octo­pus. I guess nip­ples and ten­ta­cles don’t mix?) The touch tanks were cool, but I got my shirt sleeve wet pet­ting the rays with my short stubby arms. Quote goes to Amelia, who I may never see again, and will prob­a­bly never see this post.

It’s because he pretty much set the pace and des­ti­na­tion the whole time as we wan­dered around the aquarium.

After the aquar­ium, went back to Santa Cruz and had lunch at the Pixie Café. My meat­loaf sand­wich was alright, if a bit on the cool side (I only com­plain because they specif­i­cally asked if I wanted it hot) and a smidge heavy on the mus­tard. The place is great, though… I could see myself chill­ing there a lot if I lived in the area.

Back to Aaron L’s house to kill some time. That mostly con­sisted of play­ing more video games. Mostly Project Gotham Rac­ing 2. Then we loaded up the boards and went back out to the beach. Katie and Michael built the fire for the most part… I helped a lit­tle, stick­ing in a bit of starter here and there along the base. Got the fire roar­ing, and at its great­est, I’d say the firepit was maybe a foot and a half off the ground, the tim­ber came up to maybe six feet, and the flames reached eight and a half feet. It was spec­tac­u­lar. We hit the high point within ten min­utes, and the fire burned itself down pretty fast. Over­all, though, it lasted a lit­tle over an hour, and we had to use three five-​gallon buck­ets of water to make sure the embers were com­pletely gone.

In the mean­time, Ian, Will F, and Izzy came, as did a bunch of Aaron L’s high school friends. There was much marsh­mal­low roast­ing, and I was burned at the stake and then forced to jump the fire three times. The third time with a bar­ri­cade. Will F also got a pack of hot dogs and a potato, and made him­self a “stew.” It wasn’t as bad as it sounds. Oh, and there were fire­works a lit­tle down the beach. Not just sissy sparklers, but some stuff that shot up in the sky and exploded, as real fire­works should.

After the fire, we all went down­town and ate at a taque­ria, and dropped by Marriane’s for some ice cream on the way home. My root beer float was a bit… odd. It tasted kinda like straw­berry banana. I’m not sure why, but I’m gonna go ahead and hope that my server just didn’t rinse the scoop as well as she could have before prepar­ing my order, and that there is noth­ing wrong with either the Olde Tyme Vanilla ice cream or the root beer.

Back at Aaron L’s place, Ian, Michael, and Aaron L were pretty focused on try­ing to mod Ian’s PS2, but it was a chal­lenge too great for any of them. I tried to teach Thu H, Izzy, and Peggy how to play Last Card, but they said it was too con­fus­ing. There was some more video-​gaming, and a cou­ple of inter­est­ing con­ver­sa­tions, includ­ing one steered mostly by Thu H about bi-​sexuality.

Finally went to sleep after being kicked in the balls by Peggy while she was still per­fectly con­scious. I for­got what I had done to upset her. It hap­pens so often.