Sep. 16th, 2019 11:30 am
Double moon
I spent a lot of time with the moon this weekend. The Mid-Autumn Festival fell on Saturday, but the astronomical full moon was Friday, so I went to the shore both days.
Friday I'd intended to go alone, but I unexpectedly heard from Sad Cub and invited him to join me. He met me at the jetty at the southern end of Pratt Beach. I'd decided to run home and feed the cat first and took a wrong turn approaching the beach, which started a block farther north than I'd remembered, so I got there a little harried. There were quite a few people out moon-viewing as well, but it was pretty calm and quiet overall.
Before we parted at the shore, I broke into the box of mini mooncakes from Sheng Kee Bakery via Super H Mart. As usual, the flavours of each one were stamped on the cakes but my character-reading skills are so rusty I could only guess at half of them. I had to look up the name of the one we ate later to determine that it was jasmine and I was baffled by the one with "jujube" in its name until Patchooey came along and told me the first character represented "longan".
On the way back home, I stop by the Potbelly where a guy I know is the manager. He's a mission kid who grew up in Taichung, so I figured he'd like to share a mooncake with me. He did. When I asked him what was his favourite, he rhapsodised about a variety unique to there which incorporated crystalised honey.
I probably would've stayed in all the next day (and potentially watched the moonrise from my neighbour's porch) except that I'd already made plans to meet up with![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
bunj in North Chinatown. We went on a brief fruitless hunt for "snow skin moon cakes" and then ended up getting bánh mì from Bale, which we took to the breakwater south of Foster Beach.
Unfortunately there was a concert going on at Montrose Beach and the EDM carried perfectly across the calm water. But the weather was perfect and we found a nice sheltered spot near the navigational marker at the eastern end of the beach where the trees blotted out most of the light from the city. Unlike the night before, we saw the moon almost immediately and it was spectacularly orange.
He and I sat there and talked for over three hours. I never did get around to asking him much about his recent trip. Instead, after a little catching up, we slid into a discussion of gaming and then there was no stopping us. He talked about his current game and gave recommendations for systems and scenarios we might want to try if I manage to get our gaming group running again.
He also tipped me to the fact that I'd been mentioned (albeit not by name) in a couple ofprinceofcairo's podcasts, in particular for all the work I did researching Breton folklore. Those were the heady days when I literally taught myself to read French so I could milk Sébillot for legends and lore, much of which ended up in the Ars Magica Armorica game which PoC was running and it made me nostalgic all the next day.
Friday I'd intended to go alone, but I unexpectedly heard from Sad Cub and invited him to join me. He met me at the jetty at the southern end of Pratt Beach. I'd decided to run home and feed the cat first and took a wrong turn approaching the beach, which started a block farther north than I'd remembered, so I got there a little harried. There were quite a few people out moon-viewing as well, but it was pretty calm and quiet overall.
Before we parted at the shore, I broke into the box of mini mooncakes from Sheng Kee Bakery via Super H Mart. As usual, the flavours of each one were stamped on the cakes but my character-reading skills are so rusty I could only guess at half of them. I had to look up the name of the one we ate later to determine that it was jasmine and I was baffled by the one with "jujube" in its name until Patchooey came along and told me the first character represented "longan".
On the way back home, I stop by the Potbelly where a guy I know is the manager. He's a mission kid who grew up in Taichung, so I figured he'd like to share a mooncake with me. He did. When I asked him what was his favourite, he rhapsodised about a variety unique to there which incorporated crystalised honey.
I probably would've stayed in all the next day (and potentially watched the moonrise from my neighbour's porch) except that I'd already made plans to meet up with
bunj in North Chinatown. We went on a brief fruitless hunt for "snow skin moon cakes" and then ended up getting bánh mì from Bale, which we took to the breakwater south of Foster Beach.Unfortunately there was a concert going on at Montrose Beach and the EDM carried perfectly across the calm water. But the weather was perfect and we found a nice sheltered spot near the navigational marker at the eastern end of the beach where the trees blotted out most of the light from the city. Unlike the night before, we saw the moon almost immediately and it was spectacularly orange.
He and I sat there and talked for over three hours. I never did get around to asking him much about his recent trip. Instead, after a little catching up, we slid into a discussion of gaming and then there was no stopping us. He talked about his current game and gave recommendations for systems and scenarios we might want to try if I manage to get our gaming group running again.
He also tipped me to the fact that I'd been mentioned (albeit not by name) in a couple of
princeofcairo's podcasts, in particular for all the work I did researching Breton folklore. Those were the heady days when I literally taught myself to read French so I could milk Sébillot for legends and lore, much of which ended up in the Ars Magica Armorica game which PoC was running and it made me nostalgic all the next day.