2013 Jun 30 | Psomas paper yacht race, videogame party, Optometry's Meeting, poker



Four of the consistently-bestselling authors of the 1980s and 90s. Stephen King dominated early on, John Grisham destroyed him in the mid-early 90s, Tom Clancy was pretty consistently second behind whichever of those two was #1, and Danielle Steele hung around at #3-#6, never beating out those three for #1 or #2. And yet she is the 4th bestselling author of all time (behind William Shakespeare, Agatha Christie, and Barbara Cartland), while Stephen King is way down in 19th and the other two are even worse, mainly because she was so proliferative (120 books to King's 70). This chart only shows the top-charting book of each author, and she often had multiple books that charted in the #3-#10 range. And yet Stephen King is estimated to be worth a bit more, $400M vs $350M, maybe due to movies? Grisham is $200M and Clancy is $300M, probably due to his video games.



Wednesday night was an outdoors showing of Despicable Me at Palms Recreation Center.



They were selling concessions.



People brought blankets or chairs to sit on and many brought food and drinks.



Thursday was the Psomas paper yacht race. We made a pirate boat.



A little guy with a sword we put on top.



A silent auction.



I kind of wanted this one, but other people kept bidding on it, so I let them have it.



My office was a corporate sponsor for the event.



Some freebies.



Snacks they were selling.



Cute boat cookies.



Alcohol as well.



A DJ.



The fans set up to blow the boats.



Last-minute modifications.



Another pirate boat.



Off they go!



There were multiple heats.



Pulling his soaked boat out.



Another round.



This aircraft carrier was really neat.



More racing.



And another set.



These two got stuck together and stayed that way the entire way across.



A cute duckie.



If a boat didn't make it, this guy pulled it out with a net.



Another group.



Aw, they sunk right at the beginning.



My heat. I dressed up like a pirate, too.



There it goes!



From my view.



Another heat.



And another.



Sinking again.



A fun boat.



Another group.



Uh oh, his boat, which is the fastest in the group, is headed straight for a wire.



About to hit.



And it's stuck.



A cute one.



Another heat.



One of the official timekeepers.



Final race; the girl on the right is dressed up like a pirate, too.



We were in third the entire time until the last race when someone snuck into second. Aw. Our heat was really close, too; we were only 1 second behind the winner. Not bad for a couple of random people competing against enginners.



Ogii got to blow the start horn for the last race.



Off they go.



A fellow pirate.



I won the costume contest.



The fastest boats. The winner, on the left, put a lot of ballast in the back of her boat.



Boats in the trash.



These angel wings to stand in front of and take pictures with are popping up more.



Say hey.



Another videogame party.



In the living room.



Super Smash Bros is becoming quite popular.



In the bedroom as well.



New players.



You Don't Know Jack.



Everyone loves Bomberman.



It's the only 5-player game.



I ran down to San Diego for the day for Optometry's Meeting. There was a big accident on the highway.



Neat trees on the hill.



Clouds/fog out of the middle of nowhere.



Fitting licese plate for southern California.



The bridge in San Diego.



Looking towards the city.



The other way.



Downtown with a street car.



Cool building.



Overhead map of the city.



The exhibit hall.



A new glaucoma medication.



Freshly-baked cookies.



A little too expensive for me.



Practicing on an eyeball. It looks real, but I'm not sure what animal.



Very neat frames.



Some more.



Small frames so if you break your current frames, you can cut down the lenses to fit in these. Great idea.



Dressed up as astronauts.



Trying the new Dailies Total 1.



Lots of optical supplies.



Fun phone cover.



More unique frames.



Slow traffic here.



Blurry view, but another accident in the side mirror.



Poker at Aelred's with a rainbow theme to celebrate the Supreme Court's ruling on gay marriage.



Rainbow-colored cups and napkins.



Our table. I had rainbow hair extensions.



A hand that won me a lot of money.



I was the chip leader at this point.



But I made one bad call then had two bad beats (I made the right call but they got lucky), and all it took was those three hands to knock me out. At least I still got 5th place.



Poker at my place.



That's a crazy board.



He had the 6 to make four of a kind.



A lot of us are pretty OCD about how we stack our chips.



2-7 vs AA, I wonder who will win?



It's so good you hate seeing the other person with it.



And the same thing.



Ogii with a lot of chips.



Another crazy board.



Neither made their straight, but Ogii has a bigger nothing.



Gals playing cash.



The top three, from left to right.



I set up this email account with GoDaddy, haven't put the address anywhere, and it's already full of spam.



Firewords are illegal; what an ironic way to not celebrate freedom.



I needed some actual photos developed, but none of the pharmacies would do it quickly; they all said they'd take two weeks because they had to ship them out. I guess digital has really taken over. So I went to this private photography studio instead.



At the bottom of my browser I have a weather forecast. I've never seen the hot thermometer before in LA.