Busy, as usual

Been pretty busy, as usual. Reversing my chronological order, the past few days:

A and G came into town on their furlough drive (they live in Uganda), and we celebrated her birthday.  We kind of celebrated the Doof's, too, since she wasn't around on her own bday.  The party favors included silly string and soap bubbles:

Their stay was extended a bit, and it turned into a trip to NYC for L and me, where we tooled around central park a bit.  I did some reading there and also felt tired.  A common theme lately—it's just been so busy.  We had dinner with A, G, and R at Sangria.  G got to show off his Spanish skills (he was an MK in Costa Rica); it took the wait staff a few moments to figure out he was speaking their native tongue.  We followed dinner up with a trip to Pinkberry, which is only slightly below Red Mango on L's favorite list.  (I guess you could call them cherry and grape.)

Sunday was a bit of time with B&A—first at Assi and then their new apartment.  Their place is really cute, and they have a 1950s era juicer:

We juiced a carrot for my sake.  The juice was sweet, and I suspect not really all that good for you—at least compared to eating the whole carrot that got juiced to make it.  It sounds (and works) like a centrifuge.  Very impressive.  And it's super well balanced, which is great.

Yesterday I picked up a camera and lenses for a steal:  a Nikon F2 Photomic (working meter and all!), 400mm f/5.6 ED-IF AI-S, 20mm f/3.5 UD (non-AI), 28mm f/3.5 AI, and 85mm f/1.8 AI'd (I think it's an 85 f/1.8H or K, but I'm not sure).  They produced some fun test shots:

That last shot is the bebimbop L made from our trip to Assi.  It was good (not surprisingly).


And then the week previous was more time with A&G, as well as a trip to see S^2 and their kittens, along with some family and friends at their house on the Susquehanna.  Irene didn't do too much damage to them, but Lee had the water up to their house.  Fortunately no damage, but a scary and annoying time for them, I'm sure.

This weekend is a competition in Wilkes-Barre; the weather hasn't caused a cancellation, which is nice—but it's a Saturday-Sunday tournament, so I'm going to miss one of my most anticipated sermons ever at church.  Bah humbug.