alcoholic weekend

Haha! I have my room to myself again. At least until next Friday when my mom comes. Damn I'm going to have to do a lot of cleaning before that. My house is what Sarah calls "student ghetto fabulous" which is still pretty dirty in that gross, hasn't been cleaned thoroughly for years way.

Even though its nice to have the house back, it was a really good weekend. Really alcholic. Sarah and Adrienne who will be sarah's roomate in the fall were here from wednesday til last night. The first two days, they were hard core apartment shopping though we did get to see Pirates of Penzance. That show is awesome and not just because I have such great memories of it. The songs are all silly and catching and the whole play is ridiculous. "...With cat-like tread! ::BOOM!::...." Anyway that was great.

Saturday we went wine tasting, which is awesome around here. The places I've been before were much more conservative with their pours. But we (me, sarah, adrienne, and rose) went on two tours and did two free tastings and were thoroughly tipsy. Then we bought a bottle and had a picnic on the lawn. Then we went to Red Hook Brewery to sober up. Hehe. That tour consisted of "ok so i'm going to talk a little then we'll have a beer, then we'll look over here, and then have a beer, then i'll talk some more and then a beer, and after that we'll have dessert- more beer" We had to hang around a while before rose was ready to drive.

Sunday was much more relaxed. Went downtown, hung out, poked around pike's place market stealing free samples. I think I'm going to go shopping there when I make dinner for my mom on friday. Then I'll buy some of the fish that they throw around. After Sarah left, I went to hang out with dan and now i'm sitting and work, busy and tired. not too many weeks left.

Sarah's here! and she brought me bailey's! Hehe, she knows me pretty well. It was so fun to gossip about everyone. It's weird being in a new place where no one knows what you're talking about it when you call something a "tracy hook up" or refer to the grown up table. She's going to have a tough time apartment shopping though. Without a car, it'll be tough for her and adrienne to get everywhere they need to get with any kind of efficiency. This weekend though me and them and rose are going to go to vineyards and breweries. A kind of alcoholic day trip. It should be fun, especially since I'm not feeling particularly ambitious this weekend. Going to San Fransisco would have been fun but chilling will be good too.

PS

Cause I'm really bored.....

Apparently I'm not very good at swearing off guys. Not that I do it with any kind of conviction anyway, but sometimes I question my motives. What are the chances that I'd end up making out in a car the day after I got a disterbing letter? I'm going to have to watch myself.

Oh I realized that I never wrote about kareoke that I went to last week that proceeding the making out in a car. It was the realy dive bar ($3 for a pitcher of PBR) but it had really good kareoke. Like always someone up and 80% of the people with really decent voices. Most of them gay or transexual. Everything from Queen to Guys and Dolls. I haven't gone to many bars in Seattle but this one was really funky and chill.

bored

My work goes in such waves. Last week I was so busy and this week, I'm cleaning out my bag and reading everything I can find on line. I've asked the people I like if they need help and they said no.

At least the heat broke. It's back down in the 70s which is nice. Yesterday was really rough. I went to the beach right after work. I was kind of pissed though cause Ben invited me to a lake house and i said no cause i was expecting O Malley and Jocelyn to come back. They never did and they didn't call. They got a motel room out in Redmond or somewhere. When Mike finally called me back around midnight, he said his phone had died, but I didn't even know they were considering a motel that night. Whatever, at least I got to go the the beach and I chilled with Dan for a while, part of it on the roof which was fun.

I'm really looking forward to seeing Pirates of Penzance with Sarah on Thursday. That was my favorite production in high school. I remember always looking behind me the whole time I was supposed to be playing in the pit orchestra so I could see the show. Especially Uzo and Jim Alison and all the dancing. It was so fun. And Dave Mederos doing the major general. Poor Dave, it's so weird to think that he's gone. Anyway I have really strong memories of the show so I'm curious to see if its actually a good musical.

sooo hot

Holy shit, the one day of the year that the AC is not on super-high in my office, its more than 100 out. In fact, the AC is broken so its over 90 in the office itself. My boss took us out for ice cream this morning which was pretty sweet, but I still have hours to go, and there's no AC in my house either. I'll probably go straight to a beach after work. Karen should be calling me soon, I hope, I hope.

This next two weeks I'm just going to have a ton of visitors. O Malley and his gf Jocelyn are here now until Wedneday when they leave and Sarah comes and then the week after, my mom and mara are coming though not together. It's going to be busy.

Me and Mike and Jocelyn went camping this weekend, up to mt. rainier which was beautiful. All in all, it was not a well designed trip. First, Other-Intern-Ben and his gf were supposed to come and then they bailed, so the three of us left Saturday morning, but of course the park was crazy busy so we didn't get a site on mt rainier and it's kind of a lot of driving so we were all a little cranky. But we found a really nice site in a national forest not too far off so it all worked out. We spent the evening hanging out at the campsite, playing with fire, finding a stream to stick our feet in, and watching a fight next door.

The next day we drove for a couple of hours through around mt ranier to get to sunrise where we wanted to hike. That hike really made everything worth it, all the driving, all the messing around trying to find campsites. We started our hike around 7000 feet up surrounded by alpine meadows with a great view of the mountain and we did around a 5 mile loop. It was gorgeous. I can't even discribe. There were parts where there was snow on the trail even though it was 80 out and we were walking right along the edge of the mountain. I really want to go back and spend some real time there.

Camping with Mike and Jocelyn was a little weird I guess because for the first part at least, me and jocelyn each kind of wanted the other one not to be there. But by the end, we kind of made friend. We have a lot in common. Like a lot. I think she started off disposed not to like me cause i think mrs. o malley was telling her bad things. Mrs. O malley REALLY hates me. But while I did feel like a little bit of a third wheel, and its hard for me not to flirt with o malley cause i've been doing it for 8 years, by the end, I think we were all pretty comfortable. I was at least. She seems like she's good for mike. They went to so many cool places together on this road trip and soon they'll be biking through germany. I am jealous of that.

uganda!

Brett just got her peace corps assignment and she's seriously and for real going to Uganda. I am so visiting the both of them over there. Probably January. But goddamn that means that if I had decided to graduate with my class and done the peace corps like i was seriously considering, I could be going to Uganda too. And I'm not. That makes me really doubt my own choices pretty considerably. But I'm so excited for Brett. I can't stop giggling about the couincidence. Just makes me sad to think that that could be me.

Two things that are bothering me, one big and one little.

The little one is the fact that my computer is almost impossible to use right now because the mouse keeps moving off the screen and not responding to direction. So then I can't click on anything or do anything until it decides to reappear for a couple seconds. I have no idea how to fix this.

The big thing is the situation in the middle east, which as usual I don't understand, but it scares the shit out of me. I always thought that the US would be the cause of the next major war, but Iraq hasn't esculated too far (i.e. far enough to hurt people who are sitting comfortably in the US). What's going on now though, between the missiles in Korea and the war in/near Isreal, seems like it could get even more out of hand very quickly. Some times I never want to read a newspaper again.

And there goes my mouse, moving accross the screen with a mind of its own.

marathon

So yesterday, after I got back to the office from playing frisbee, this guy on my team sent me an e mail asking me if i wanted to go kayaking with him the next day. I've got no plans for this weekend, so I say yeah, of course. Well, then he wants to pick me up at 10 AM, which is fine with me. Normally I have to get up at 6:30 for work and it's always nicer on the water earlier.

So we go kayaking, then we head to the space needle cause neither of us have been there but we don't go up cause its ridiculously expensive (brunch at the resteraunt is a minimum of $45 each) so we grab lunch in Pioneer Square. Then he takes me to the Seattle Public Library which sounds lame but its an awesome building, like crazy construction and lots of windows- really impressive. I, of course, noticed that the amount of glass would make cooling it difficult and checked out the air vents in the floor. Stupid mech e job. After that, we walked along the water front for a while and saw some guys jump off a pier, looking like total red necks. Then its wicked nice out, so we go to the beach on one of the lakes, actually not too far from my house, and go swimming and dive off a float and look at mt. ranier and then we go back to my house to chill. He stuck around until around dinner time and then took off.

So correct me if I'm wrong, but that's like a weeks worth of dates right there, all in one day. That's what happens when you start too early. How do you know when its over? I mean, I had a lot of fun cause all of those activities are totally up my alley and he's a pretty cool guy. Like I had no problem hanging out with him for that long, but I don't even usually go on dates. I just hang out with people and then either stuff happens or not. So I felt a little out of my element. I wasn't even sure that it was a date, but I think it felt like it. And he paid for kayaking. That makes it a date, right? Either way, it was a lot more fun then the nothing that I had planned for my saturday.

Next weekend, O Malley's going to be here and then the weekend after that Sarah, and then the weekend after that, my mom. It should be a lot of fun. I just have to figure out what I'm going to do with all of them. I'll go to Victoria with my mom and hopefully camping or to mt ranier or both with O'malley and jocelyn. Sarah I'm not sure about yet. God this summer is going fast.

Today i screwed someone over, played frisbee, and got asked on a date (maybe). The screwing someone over wasn't my fault though and was linked with the frisbee. I decided to go to the microsoft campus during lunch to play pick up, which is kind of far from my office. I ran it by my boss...

him: you have to get this stuff done by the end of the day.
me: when is the end of the day
him: when you leave
me: ok i'll stay late

What i didn't realize is taht he had to stay until I was done. I felt bad. But he should have told me. And one of the frisbee guy asked me to go kayaking tommorrow. I've been doing a lot of that. Should be fun.

stages

I said something the yesterday about how "in the next stage of my life, I want to do more camping" and Rose and Kylan laughed at me. Not because I want to do more camping, but because I think of my life in stages. Now I'm in my NY stage, I went through a high school stage, and a out of my own, year off stage. But its not just location either. This past year, I was very much all about relationships, guys, sex. It was really important to me, and I felt really bold about trying things. I guess now I'm getting into a more tentative stage. I'm not sure I do want to try anything, I'm not sure I do want to be with anyone right now. Or at least, I'm not sure being with the wrong person, or a temporary person is what I want. It's hard to know if this a good thing or a bad thing. We'll see how long this stage lasts.

orcas!

Yesterday was freakin' amazing. Such a long day but so worth it. Me and Rose convinced Kylan to come with us to the San Juans so I didn't even have to drive and it was so cool. We saaw whales!

We got all our plans set Friday, made our reservations with a kayak tour company, made ourselves monster sandwiches and bought tons of trail mix and snacks. Then Saturday morning, we left the house at 6:45 to drive up to the ferry at Anacortes. Even the ferry ride was beautiful- dark water and green mountain islands with maybe one or two houses on them and the Olympic Mountains in the background. When I was younger, I really liked the book Island of the Blue Dolphins. After that ferry ride, I could finally picture the island it takes place on.

We got into Friday Harbor at 10 and kind of wandered around until 11 when the tour company was going to pick us up. We had coffee at this crazy little shop that was only 3 feet wide all the way back and the crazy hippy lady who owned us was told us that she was going to name it Brokeback Coffee because it was "such a small space." It made so little sense that even Kylan just laughed politely and backed out of the store. It was good coffee though.

All the kayaks were two person ones which worried me a little bit because the last time I was in a two person kayak it was kind of a disaster. We kept hitting each other's paddles and generally being annoying. But these were really sweet kayaks, much bigger and more comfortable with rudders and spray skirts and space to put our bags. We spent the first part of the trip kind of tooling along the shore looking at bald eagles, falcons, seals, porpoises, and sea otters. Which was cool, but I was getting really impatient. I wanted to see whales!

But right before we went into lunch, one of the guides spotted a ton of boats kind of circling a spot in the water so we all started paddling closer. That's when we saw dorsal fins. Tons and tons of orca whales went by, right past us. Boats aren't allowed to get too close to the whales because it disterbs them and they need to concentrate on eating massive amounts of salmon. But we were close enough to hear the massive pffft sound as they came up and expelled all the water from their lungs, and we could clearly see the eyes of the one who stuck his head up above the water to look at us for a while. Some of them were just crusing along the surface and some of them would dive down for a really long time before they'd come back up. Sometimes we'd see the little finds of the young ones travelling with their moms. They move fast so we didn't try to stay with them but watching them pass was impressive enough.

When that pod finally passed we headed into lunch and man, did I make myself a good sandwich. I tried to go swimming but the water was too cold even for me. After lunch 10 or 15 stragglers passed us, most of these whales were cruising along the surface so we got a good look at them. It was almost impossible to take a clear picture though, so I'm just going to have to remember. At the end of the afternoon, a lot of the moterized boats had gone in for the day so it felt much more like just us and the whales.

After the tour people dropped us back off in Friday Harbor, we decided to see the new Pirates movie and take the 10 PM ferry back. I really liked the movie, but I was so tired. We didn't get home until 2:30 AM, but it was worth it. It was a long day, and an expensive day but I'm making money this summer and when else am I going to kayak with whales?

san juans

Me and Rose (barnard girl, lives across the hall) are going to go to the San Juans this weekend. Tommorrow actually. But only if I can re-learn how to drive a standard cause she can't drive her car and we need to get to the ferry. I've learned to drive one many times (let's see... Peirsak's truck, Uncle Rich's truck, sports car in Virginia, Mazda at home) but some how it never sticks and I always end up having to re-learn. But once I get that down, we're driving her Bug up to Anacortes and taking a ferry over and going to the beach and kayaking. It should be awesome.

I've also been a little be addicted to the STA travel site cause they have a last minute deals section. There's some pretty cool stuff on there and it's a good way to get some vicarious travel in, instead of just being jealous of karen and tracy and o malley.

books

Besides hanging out, watching trashy TV with my roomates, making cookies, supervising chicken coop work, actually working, running and playing ultimate, I've also spent a lot of time reading. The guy I'm subletting my room from has a lot of books, mostly philosophy so I've been going through some of those. So far this summer (3 weeks), I've read:

The Boondocks Anthology
A Civil Action- about Woburn, kind of an Erin Brokovich type story
When We Were Orphans (re-read)by someone Ishiguro
A Passion Dream Book (re-read) by Whitney Otto
Until You Come Back (the newish John Irving)
The Red Queen: Sex and Genetics
Epidemic- about teen sex and STDs, really scary
A Long Way Down- by Nick Hornby the guy who wrote High Fidelity
Snow- about turkish fundamentalists
The Selfish Gene
Old School- not related to the movie
Winnie the Pooh- currently reading

I think there was at least a couple more too. Next I'm going to try to steal House of Mirth from Rose, the Barnard '06 english major who moved into the other room who I managed to never take a class with and I don't know how that is possible. I need to hang out with her but she's kind of shy and she hasn't really been around much. I guess she's studying for either the MCATs or the GREs pretty hardcore. Tori, one of the other roomates was reading something by the guy who wrote Into Thin Air that looked pretty good. I might try to steal that. Or finally read the Aenid (I can't spell) which is the only book in the lit hum cirriculum that I haven't read. God I'm bored right now.

bored at work

For the first time since I got here, I don't have anything to do. I'm starting a new project later this afternoon but the guy I'll be working with didn't have anything for me yet. And the last guy I worked with is in a meeting. I'm glad I'm getting passed off though. I like Morgan; he invited me to play soccer with his team.

It's hard to be back at work after a 4 day weekend, much as I appreciated the vacation. Yesterday, I went with Ben and his girlfriend to his roommate's sister's boyfriend's father's lakehouse where there was a pretty big party going on. A family party though, tons of a little kids. The house was really sweet though, right on the lake with a cool dock and the water was really warm. Unfortunately, I realized last minute that all my bathing suits were in MA, but I went in anyway. Ben didn't know many people there either so it was only moderatly awkward for me. I went tubing which was cool but really rough. The guy driving was trying to throw me and Alison (Ben's gf) off the tube and he succeeded pretty good. We went flying and bounced.

The firework show on that lake are put on by a guy from Microsoft who has a barge put out in the lake in front of his house. It was a pretty impressive display and his house was right next to the place where we were so we got a perfect view. Obviously nothing compares to Boston, but they were pretty solid.

Monday and yesterday I also hung out a bunch with Alex and Kylan, mostly playing with the chickens while Kylan was building a fence. Got into one of those deep conversations with Alex late monday night. he reminds me a lot of Mangan, really smart and interested in crazy things and really likes discussing. Also kind of into the drugs. I usually have limited amounts of patience for those "what is the meaning of life" type conversations but this was a pretty good one. Kylan showed me a rock wall behind the UW stadium, totally public. They've got amazing facilities; it really highlights all that columbia lacks.

For some reason I was thinking a lot about my friends and family and how being so close to them makes it easy for me to come out here. Cause I don't need to make friends here, just people to hang out with. So I've been trying hard to call people more than I do, especially my little brothers. I'm jealous that they both get to go to wildwood and play together. I really want to have an ashcroft team. But its cool that E invited Mikey cause they haven't always been the best of friends. It's also cool cause it means that mikey will probably end up playing ultimate in the end so then the three of us will always have something to do together. Cause I like my brothers. I also read a bunch of stuff lately on the deterieration of relationships with both friends and family and its kind of scary stuff.

ultimate obsession

This weekend was Potlatch which was pretty cool, but I missed the columbia crowd a lot. The first game we played was against an oberlin alum team and I was playing with the older people and i was so jealous of oberlin. I really wanted to be there with goose and tao and gabi and mara and ben and sai and people i know. It would have been so much fun to be there with a really good group of friends. It was still cool but I missed people. My team is nice but they're all in their 40s and not my real friends. But i did run into dori looking for a team and she played with us. Which turned out to be fun cause she can run all day and it was nice to find someone i knew and knew how to play with.

It was a pretty alcoholic weekend overall. Teams give gifts to their opponants after each game. My team gave pinatas with candy but every other team gave alcohol so I had punch and jello shots and G&T and a car bomb, all while playing in 90+ degree heat. I held up pretty well considering. The party turned out to be more chill than i expected but fun all the same. It was outside at Red Hook brewery and people were just chilling and talking. Though I did play some flip cup and the beer did flow like water, but I kept it pretty sober. Danced some, hung out, then went home and hung out with kylan for a while until i was ready to go to bed.

Also as a random thought, ultimate can make guys sexier. Like playing in a band can make them hotter. I met this one guy last weekend and we chatted for a while but he had long hair and i didn't think he was that cute. But then we played his team last game on sunday and goddamn he looked hot. Last point of the game he layed out in the end zone for a score and i was like shit man, if i had seen you play before the party last weekend.... =) Squara would have liked him, long blond hair.

I have today off which is awesome. Paid too. I've been doing errands and sleeping and stuff. Which I haven't got a chance to do in a while. Tommorrow I'm going out to a lake house with people I don't know which could be fun but I'm sure there will be no fireworks anywhere near as good as boston's which are about as good as they get.