Visit from Rich and MK

December 17th through December 20th, Frank's roommate Rich from graduate student days, with his wife, MK visited us from their home in New Jersey. We have zoomed them a couple times during the pandemic but otherwise, except for Christmas cards, we have not connected with these folks in over 30 years. The weekend was a huge blast. We talked, we laughed, we caught up. We went bowling with Alex Sunday afternoon and took some photos at the alley. 

Unfortunately our usual bowling alley was too busy for us due to a tournament, so we went to our alternate bowling alley. It was great that our alternate alley was closer, but a bummer that the alley's policy was to only allow kids or special needs adults to use bumpers to preclude gutter balls. Frank Rich, MK, and I had to fumble along without the crutch of gutter guards. Consequently our scores were far from stellar; no one broke 100. I include the scoreboard here not to embarrass anyone but rather to prove we were there! Thank goodness our names are partially obscured.

 

After we were through, we asked an attendant to snap a picture of all of us.  We were permitted to drop our masks for the photo, otherwise the alley is pretty strict with their mask policy, for which we are grateful. From left to right: Frank, Rich, MK, Alex, me.

We rode out one night to view Christmas lights in the surrounding neighborhoods.  One local attraction in Livermore is Deacon Dave's display. We rode by twice but did not brave the cold and the long lines to park and get out of the car to walk through. It is impressive enough from afar. Instead we rode about to view the decorations in a variety of other homes in other neighborhoods.

On our last day we took some photos in the living room just before their noon time departure on Monday. MK snap photos of Frank and me and I snapped photos of Rich and MK.

Then someone got the bright idea of setting the timer so we could capture all four of us. After tweaking, positioning, and balancing a Seussian type tower of decorative  pillows with a wedge type tablet support cushion on the back of the couch, I set the time for 10 sec and rushed over to get in the photo. I tripped over the unused Christmas throws and pillows and fell flat on my a**. But I did scramble up in time to get in the frame. For future shots, I did get up first, and then push the start button. Thank goodness for cropping and angle adjustment editing! Left to right: Frank, MK, Rich, me.

 

There is one last anecdotal item. Rich and MK are coffee addicts. I had cautioned them before they came that I no longer had a coffee maker but that there was a Starbucks a few blocks down the street from us. Thinking this was insufficient for their habit, Rich and MK brought their own bag of coffee and ordered an inexpensive coffee maker from Walmart to be delivered to our house the day before their arrival. Only it wasn't in time for their arrival. Once Rich and MK arrived from SFO, Frank and Rich drove out to our local Walmart to buy a coffee maker so they could have fresh brew in the morning when they awoke. MK got up to brew the coffee only to discover she had not brought a bag of ground coffee but a bag of coffee beans. Back she went to Walmart to buy ground coffee. Safeway would have been much closer she realized as she passed it, but Walmart was already programmed into the GPS of their rental car. After this episode MK thought perhaps she and Rich should consider modifying their coffee habits. They took the purchased coffee maker with them on the next leg of their trip down to Monterey to visit Rich's brother. One hour after they left our home, guess what appeared from Walmart at our front door? We returned it and got their account credited. We did not keep it as a souvenir of their visit.