I went downtown on Wednesday; first I worked for a bit (largely proofreading the proposal, and doing a stupid calculation that took me far too long, and may yet be wrong) at a coffee shop; then lunch with dr4b at Soup Daddy's, which had very good split-pea soup in a breadbowl. Afterwards, aquarium where I petted some urchins and starfish, gawked at a bunch of jellyfish orbiting me, and saw the sea otters and seals get fed.

Seals are frickin' HUGE.

After dinner, climbing with the usual suspects. The gym has ratings about equivalent to those in my old gym around the Bay: 5.9/5.10a is a outdoors sport climber's 5.7, and 5.11 is about where I top out. Suspecting this, I warmed up on a 5.9, then moved to a 5.10a, then jumped to a 5.11d. On a good day, I should have gotten the 5.11d, but I was sleep-deprived, hadn't had dinner, and haven't climbed much lately (climbing outdoors provides much less actual climbing time).

Cool thing: textured walls. *Drool*. The first climb I did, there was a significant section with no holds, only features -- so good.

Met blk's sister, of whose existance I learned only recently; apart from the lack of braids, they look pretty similar, down to various mannerisms.

The day after that was Thursday, aka last-day-before-proposal-due. And the proposal had to be at NASA HQ by 5pm on Friday, which required overnighting it, so really it was the due date. I worked on that pretty much all day, since the fedex depot in the strip is open until 8pm (I don't know who ran the package with the 15 hardcopies down to there, but supposedly it happened). In the evening, dr4b had her D&D; I ate the food, then hung out with the other gamers' wives, by which beyond the walk we took, I largely mean I half-slumbered, half paid attention to the conversation. Well, plus the mandatory meeting more people I hear about all the time but have never met.

Friday was rather more relaxing. Went downtown in the morning, read for a while at the aforementioned coffee shop, lunch with Deanna, visited the library (apparently I missed some parts, but I was anxious to sit down and read more), went to the Seattle Art Museum and saw jade ducks from the Qing dynasty, then tried to find my grandparents, whose flight landed early at 2:14 instead of 2:17. A couple hours later, after some concerned phone calls to my dad, the airline, the airport-hotel branch of the hotel they claimed to be staying at, and after just sitting at the hotel, reading, they finally arrived -- almost four hours late. Seems their first flight got delayed three and a half hours, and they just barely caught the next connection. So I spent only an hour with them, so I could get back and play rail games with Deanna and a couple more people I keep hearing about but have never met. Somehow, I won. Where "somehow" maps to "got lucky with contracts." In the entire mid- and late-game, I was always servicing all three contracts in some organized fashion. Everyone else at some point decided to dump their contracts; mine were always at least acceptable. Also, I didn't really make any very stupid mistakes that cost me lots of time, which I can chalk down to experience. I did overbuild, which cost me a couple of turns -- but I didn't overbuild as much as I often do.

This weekend will probably be sleep-recovery and more fun things; then Monday I'll probably spend more time with the grandparents.