"fishing. for lake trout." - anne

of green gables is still amazing.

i hate cancer

i found out last week that three of my friend's moms have cancer, and also, there's thomas.

reasons not to make out at a wedding

#1 Because you will fall asleep in the dress your mom painstakingly stitched, and then rush to get to the airport, throwing it over your head and into your suitcase. When you get to the next wedding the following weekend (which you will have packed for at 1 a.m. the night before you leave, throwing the dress you made out in from the laundry basket into the suitcase with a pair of tennis shoes and a t-shirt, figuring it worked well last weekend and you might as well use it to see what happens this time), you will get to your destination and have a great time the first day. The next day, about 30 minutes before the actual wedding, when all your hair is done and makeup is perfect and you go to put the dress on, you will realize that the dress is now missing a seam, and the perfectly asymmetrical hem that looked so lovely before is now hanging down to your left ankle on one side and is above your right knee on the other, giving a sort of gwen stefani-like dress rendition, except not as cool because you are not her. You might ask your travel companion what the fuck is wrong with your dress, and they will say, "It looks like there's a seam missing, g."

Also, the lovely empire waist has a rip in it, showing a good amount of skin, requiring a safety pin before going outside. Except you're at a hotel, so you have to go outside 17 minutes before the wedding starts to get a safety pin from the front desk, which will take them 6 minutes, giving you exactly 11 minutes to get to the ceremony. You get in the car and drive to the ceremony while clutching the dress together. In the parking lot at the church, you will safety pin the top of the dress to the bottom, baring your chest while other wedding guests are passing by, hoping they are not paying attention to what's going on in the car. Then, at the actual wedding and reception, you will go into the bathroom about five times to re-pin, because the material is ripping, and half the night you're worrying about your dress falling off of you. Which might be fun for the rest of the wedding guests, but not fun for you when you are at the top of a lovely mountain ski resort and cannot get to the hotel until 10 p.m., when the tram leaves with all the wedding guests.

Thankfully, the dress ends up staying pinned together until the after-party (where a bottle of sambuca, a blender of water, and The Good, the Bad and the Ugly factor in hugely) is over around 3 a.m. and you finally get back to the hotel and crawl into bed.

You wake up in the morning and decide the dress might need to be retired, even though it's served you well in both incarnations.

No more making out at weddings for Gretzky.

"When you've got nowhere to turn, turn on the gas." - Truman Capote

In the hurricane that is sometimes my life, there've been some good moments in the last 60 hours. Not really calm moments, but good ones.

Tuesday night the Round was on and the music was not so great, but the poet was a wordsmith and I had good company.

Yesterday I went on a walk with my new boss and passed some kids playing in the park who he knew. A first grader from Ethiopia told me proudly: "I can spell my name!" He proceeded to do so, sounding out the letters of both his first and last name, and counting letters on his fingers. Adorable. Also, one of my co-workers' mom made me what might have been the most lemony lemon bar in the world, and I was in heaven for a little bit of the afternoon.

Last night University Bridge was up on my way to play kickball. Not to let a ship pass by, just up in the air. I sat there for 20 minutes, getting angrier and angrier, thinking about how hard I wanted to kick the ball. Traffic is not my friend. I probably need to work on patience. And up at bat I kicked three immediate outs, pop flies. Fuckin' a. By the way, for those of you in kickball leagues who are women, don't bunt. Please. It's a disgrace to our gender. This is how we get killed on the field, women come up to bat and bunt. Every time. Maybe once, even twice, I could handle, but really, every time? Just kick. Then we went to Piccolo's and Ti ate a calzone the size of a 2 year old. Quite a feat. On a side note, Piccolo's is across the street from a place Ted Bundy used to frequent, which is kind of creepy.

And BeCs came back from soccer and we watched Once and got sad. I wanted a happy ending. Actually, it was a happy ending of sorts, but it was also sad. I hope this isn't how life really turns out.

BeCs said something about how it's crazy how you have these relationships where you love a person and share a whole part of your life with them, and then you don't have them anymore, you have a different relationship, but that other person is still there, still a part of you somewhere.

And in that vein, about the falling in love versus not falling in love or chemistry or pheromone attraction or whatever you want to call it (P.J. would probably use words like "biological drive to procreate"): If it doesn't happen or does happen, is it because somebody wasn't brave enough, or is it because circumstances do or don't allow for it, you know? I don't know if that makes sense, but it's a question I have right now.

This morning I was prepared to be sad because it's Cab's last day at work and she is moving all the way to Pittsburgh and I can't handle it. But then we had a welcome breakfast from Essential for a new employee, and I had an amazing meeting with an awesome director of such a cool program for kids, and got so excited about the possibilities for kids' learning.

Then I went to a work picnic under overcast skies, which turned to sun shortly after we got there. We had sandwiches from Saigon Deli and then needed to move around. Cab and I started kicking a soccer ball around, and a 4 year old named Jordan asked if he could play with us. He was an awesome kicker.




On the walk back to work, I took the tablecloth, which was really a hibiscus sarong Arthur got from Hawaii, and wore it back to the office. How many times can you go to work with a sarong?

Then I watched three co-workers debate whether or not we should interview someone who submitted a cover letter with the phrase "TWIMC" as the address - as in, To Whom It May Concern. I think this is a use of an innapropriate text, speaking of Cab. Final verdict: Absolutely not.

After work I took the best ten dollar wine ever, the Trout Trilogy 2004 Cabernet Sauvignon, over to Cab's. We walked to heaven in Fremont, otherwise known as Paseo, and ate every delicious bite of caribbean goodness after flirting with the waiter.

And then I managed successfully to not cry as I left. Now the only thing left to do today is figure out whether to wear the blue or red sundress to Meg's rehearsal dinner deal tomorrow and also if I can get away with one pair of high heels for this wedding weekend. I vote yes to this idea.


N.B. By the way, go Enumclaw! When I was in high school, Enumclaw was known for the highest teen pregnancy rate in King county, but it sounds like they've come a long way if they're battling Nestle.

"I'll be there for you..." - the Rembrandts

I've been thinking a lot about what I could say about the wedding I got be part of this weekend, and I didn't really know what to say about it. Then I read sarah hepola's July 6th blog, and she says it all so perfectly. I feel just like she does about these amazing people in my life, which is pretty lucky...It was an honor to celebrate with my friends, and an amazingly fantastic day. And I'm trying not to complain these days about not having found the right one and instead spend my time being thankful for all the amazing people I do have in my life, who are beyond phenomenal in so many ways, I can't list them here or it would take too long.

Like Yeats said, "Think where man's glory most begins and ends/ And say my glory was I had such friends." It's good to spend time in glory.