Dad's 60th Weekend

Originally Posted 7/1/24

Photo of man and his two sons in a restaurant in nice clothing, all smiling for the camera

It was my dad's 60th birthday this past week! My brother, me, and our girlfriends went down to visit him, and we had a great time! Went out to a nice italian restuarant, got some really great food. It's nice because I don't get to see that side of the family much because they're kind of far away (about 6 hours by car one way), so it's always great when we get a chance to see them! Usually when I visit my Dad's side of the family, I'll also visit my mom's as she's on the way down (roughly 4 hours by car one way). I grew up at my mom's house, and so I also usually try to visit friends, or visit my brothers (the one in the photo above still lives at home, as well as my half brother). So I wanted to share some of those photos as well. But first, a nice photo of my girlfriend and I from the birthday party!

photo of a man faceing towards the camera smiling while a woman hugs the man and also faces the camera smiling

Rivals of Aether

First up, I want to show you a photo of my brothers and I:

Photo of three adult brothers rangning from 20 to 28 years old on a couch looking serious.

As one of my friends said looking at that photo, "It looks like ya'll were just copy and pasted". It's nice seeing photos like that and seeing how similar we all look to each other. We were playing a game called Rivals of Aether, which is basically like Smash Bros but for the computer. Here's another photo of us looking more excited with the game:

Photo of three adult brothers ranging from 20 to 28 years old on a couch looking more jovial

Again, just really nice getting to spend time with them as I don't see them often. It's also always amazing to me how relatively equal we are at Rivals of Aether given my other brothers only play it when I'm around.

Diner

The morning after those photos were taken I believe (or maybe 2 days later? Time is weird) my youngest brother Orrin, my girlfriend Michelle, and myself met a friend (Dane) at a local diner. One thing I miss about home a lot, other than friends and family, is good food. The area I grew up in has so much good food it's wild. Here's a photo of Dane and Orrin:

Photo of two men sitting next to each other at a diner booth. One is built like a brick house, the other more lean

Wildfrost

At some point over the weekend, I also spent some time playing Wildfrost with my middle brother, Joseph. If you haven't played Wildfrost it's a pretty difficult card battling game. It's basically your group of cards against waves of enemies. Every time you play a card a turn goes by. Creatures have timers on them, and as a turn goes by they count down by 1. Once they reach 0, they attack or do their effect, and then the counters reset. Types of cards you have are generally allies, attacks, or cards that sort of function like spells. The game is pretty hard. I've only beaten it once, and even then I don't really think I did fully. When the game was in demo, it was common I wouldn't even get past the first set of enemies. It is a really great game and I highly recommend it.

Anyways though, my brother and I had such a stupid build going (but it was working). Basically we'd just create a bunch of cards in our hand, slowly draw our deck, and then give everything the ability to be played without it ending the turn. I was honestly amazed it worked so well. However, right at the final battle, we glitched the game. Basically we had a card that required 5 junk to use (a type of card in the game that does nothing) in our starting hand. We couldn't play it though, because we didn't start with 5 junk (oversight on our part). In the previous round the game simply told us we had a card we couldn't play and discarded it. However, in the final round, we had a card that created 4 junk. So the game got stuck saying we couldn't play the Junk until the thing that required 5 junk was played. The thing that required 5 junk though wouldn't work because we only had 4. There didn't seem to be a way around this, so we had to quit the run right at the end. Anyways, here's a photo of our hand towards the end of the game:

Photo of the game Wildfrost. There are a number of characters ont he screen, but the most notable thing is there are too many cards in hand to count. Each of them has a fox symbol over them to indicate it can be played without triggering end of turn

Cooper and Lucky

I currently live in a more city area, and so the dog we have Cooper doesn't really get the chance to run around much. One thing that's really great about visiting my mom's house is that they have 8 acres of land that we can really just let Cooper run around and do whatever he wants. It's so great being able to see him so happy and have room to really stretch his legs! My parents have a dog Lucky, who's getting up there in age but will try to keep up with Cooper. It's always kind of funny because Cooper doesn't really care about other people or dogs, meanwhile Lucky is trying to play with him. Here's a photo from this weekend:

A photo of a black lab named Cooper laying down on grass panting, looking happy, with another dog that is tannish named Lucky standing and looking at Cooper

Bash Bish Falls

a photo of a waterfall in the woods that looks a bit like a nose A bit of a wider shot of Bash Bish falls, which shows just how tall the surrounding walls are. The falls look a bit like a nose

Bash Bish Falls is a really cool hike. It's short, only taking us about an hour to go up and back, which included time just hanging out at the top. The hike goes between the border of New York and Massachusetts, and ends with a waterfall that looks a bit like a nose. My friends and I used to do this hike pretty often when I lived back home. This morning my brother Orrin and I decided to walk in, and found out a few things had changed:

a photo of the border sign announcing you're leaving New York for Massachusetts Steven and Orrin taking a selfie on the trail for Bash Bish Orrin looking at Bash Bish Falls while leaning against a fence, preventing him from getting closer A sign prohibiting swimming, Fires, picnicking, Alcohol, Littering, and loud music

They banned fun! I'm only about half joking, but the last time I was there you were able to walk down to the falls themselves and swim (though I don't think they really wanted people to). But it was really nice to be able to hike up the trail and finish it off with some swimming. But now they've gated it off. Not only that, we saw that picture of the sign on the way back, and it looks like they've prohibited a handful of other things too! My guess is it's for safety or something but... just sad to see I guess.