A Sprain and a Soiree

Well, this has been a weekend of light duty, "light reading," and lighting the candles.

Yesterday I sprained my ankle. At least I hope I only sprained it! Kevin and I were kicking a soccer ball back and forth. I went to jump for it and came down hard and rolled my ankle, and now I can barely put weight on it.

Since I couldn't really do anything active despite the beautiful weather, Kevin asked if I was in a reading mood. I've been reading (and loving!) chapters of a novel called Untouchable that he's writing, so I said sure.

He gave me the first installment of an essay series he's writing called Straylight. He said he wrote it right before his 30^th birthday and warned me that it was written at a much higher level than his fiction that I've read so far. It's basically his explanation on why he's a philosophical anarchist (which is quite different from a "bomb throwing" anarchist, as he outlines in the essay), and subsequent installments further flesh out the points he made in this one.

I really, really liked it. More than I expected to! I told him I think he should publish it because it might be what a lot of people need to hear right now. Even if they don't agree with every point and sentiment made, it might remind people to stop and think for themselves instead of letting the media spoonfeed them whatever the latest agenda is.

I especially liked that Kevin named the essay series and penned the first one around the concept of straylight, which comes from photonics (my field). Straylight is ordinarily a bad thing because it impedes the intended function of a system. (It's like if you were communicating via Morse code and someone else started emitting a bunch of beeps over the wire, and then you couldn't tell the noise from legitimate signal.)

But Kevin turned this concept on its head by asking, what if the system is evil and it's the presence of the straylight that limits how evil it can be? It's an interesting concept:

Anyway, the Scooby-Doo badguys always used to get brought down by a flashlight and a bit of courage. Is this really so different?

Ellie's Birthday

Today Kevin and I went to his cousin Ellie's birthday party.

I had already met some of his family at Kelly and Steve's gender reveal for their second daughter (the day before Kevin proposed to me!). That was his uncle Roy and aunt Sue, and their son Pete, and Pete's kids Liam and Ellie (the birthday girl).

But I met a lot more of them today: Pete's wife Alissa, his brother Dave and his wife Angie, their daughters Alexis, Kayla, and Natalie, and Pete and Dave's brother-in-law Matt (married to Kevin's cousin Laura who wasn't there), and Matt and Laura's kids Ava, Crawford, Maya, and Cole. And of course Kevin's parents and Kelly's family were there too.

I had to take it easy on my ankle but I had fun watching everyone play soccer and have a water balloon fight!