schreetiepants

I can't tell you when the idea came about. I think it's been in our minds and our hearts forever. But then it was out in the open again, and we've been traveling together for months and in some cases years. Our secret plans were conceived of separately and then when they spilled out one day, they all looked so similar that there was no shock, no surprise. Just a better understanding of how and why we had bonded so tightly.
I now had enough people on my side. Enough people to tell me I'm not crazy, that to stay and be comfortable and uncomfortable in only slightly varying degrees, to never feel true and pure elation by just breathing in as much as you possibly can every single day, that is crazy.
The plan was very simple at first. Too simple, without enough detail to make it feasible. A pipe dream really, to run away and maybe never return home. The idea was out in the open for a bit and then the excitement died down again. It's irresponsible and immature to think you can just go away and go everywhere and that you'll find happiness out there.
But over time our weekend excursions have gotten longer and more daring, and every time we return home to our jobs and our things it takes longer and longer for me to slow my heartbeat and my thoughts.
I have found the right ones to make this trip with. I've never felt embarrassed or shy about my excitement in their company.
Last week we started putting our plan in motion. We're in the process of selling most of our things. We will be leaving Seattle August 3 and hope to see everything there is to see out there in the lower 48. We're studying up. We've got books and maps and lists and so much enthusiasm for this plan of ours.
I am here to testify that it is possible to fall in love every single day of your life. The world is heartrendingly beautiful and it is waiting.

I bought this:

!!!!

If you do not live in the outback, why the hell would you eat kangaroo?

I freakin' hate "novelty" meats.

This was one weird fucking night.
We went to Seattle to see Built to Spill. The opening bands were forgettable and the audience mostly talked over them. It was a 21+ show and we were seated in the bar area. While Built to Spill finished setting up, people milled about changing seats and moving to standing areas and the like. The table behind us that had previously been occupied by a quiet couple was now consumed by five rather drunk young frat boys and girls(?).
Before this unruly crowd could settle in they decided to take pictures. The picture taker was a very young 21 year old wearing flip flops, vagina-exposing booty shorts, and maybe a half rack of Bud Light. Determined to get the best angle possible, she decided she must lean backwards over the railing separating our table from theirs. In doing so she managed to squash Brooke's sweet show poster, while also squashing Brooke.
Now, I've never been a fighting man, but this just about did it. Some words were exchanged and the photographer got a lovely shot of Brooke flipping her the bird. Adrenaline pumping, we determine that seeing the show is more important than beating anyone about the face and head.
Again facing forward, it is impossible not to notice the two men seated in front of us who have gone from "Dude, I have to work tomorrow," to "Dude, I brought shots and four more beers!" They're drunk and enjoying the show and that's all okay. And then one of them gets what appears to be a tiny straw from his pocket. I don't know about you, but I don't do a lot of drugs. And with the smoking ban in effect, I wouldn't dare make them a habit I pulled in public now, you know? So we wait for the puff of smoke to hit us, so we can roll our eyes at the stoners, but then it does and we realize something's different. The smoke smells like oven cleaner, and since that's probably an ingredient in meth, that's what we'll have to assume they were smoking.
Okay, so show's about over and we head out. Brooke's driving for a bit and then we decide to stop and trade places. We pull off at exit 147 and turn into the park and ride. In the middle of the road there's a white Thunderbird parked with its lights off and what appears to be someone hunched over on the driver's side. We exchange "Oh shit, we're going to be mugged and killed," comments and quickly trade places and lock the doors. We drive past the car again and realize there is maybe definitely probably someone unconscious or sleeping or dead in the driver's seat. We're back on the freeway and by the time we get to Fife we realize we have to call 911. Neither of us have a phone on us, so we stop and call to tell them that maybe they should take a look at that car.
The more I think about this part, the creepier it seems. The car was nearly to a safe parking area, but had decided to stop and park in the middle of a two lane street. I'm going to guess that the driver was probably passed out drunk, I'm going to hope that even. It was cool tonight and the windows weren't steamed up, so I have got myself worrying that someone pulled off and had a heart attack or something. Either way, I guess it doesn't matter now. I'm just glad we didn't stop at the car and find a dead body.
The rest of the ride home was nearly uneventful. Even though I was on the lookout for small animals, one cannot swerve enough, no matter how far or unsafe the swerve might be, to avoid the unpredictable zig-zag of a frightened bunny.
The near fist fight, the meth, the dead body. The bunny was my least favorite part.

Going camping! Ahh yeah!

This is my first trip away from Bremerton for just doing fun stuff in what seems like a long time. I'm looking forward to it, even if it's rainy. Don't even care. A wet tent is way better than a hospital any day.

Who: You! You are invited!

What: Brooke Perrin's 27th Birthday!

When: Saturday, July 5th at 7:00PM.

Where: Silver City in Silverdale, followed by a delightful evening at the Tracyton.

Why: Because ya'll are friends, yo.

RSVP or not, but do stop by to say hi.

If you have any questions, lemme know.

Rachel
(360) 739-3015

This is how many dogs we have here right now:



It's fun, but it's the best when they are all sleeping.

I have been up and down I-5 from top to bottom. Sometimes even barely over the borders at each end. Once I flew west to Hawaii. But until now, the farthest east I've ever been is Carlsbad, New Mexico.
Without the Pacific on a nearby horizon, I am anchor-less.
The thought of traveling east to west makes me dizzy. It's the feeling of waking in an unfamiliar bed, facing the wrong direction in a room that is not my own.
I find myself loading my ipod heavily with northwest bands, as though nine days will erase near 30 years of conditioning. I have this urge to be terribly stereotypically from here. As though it could be avoided.
I am so excited but I know I am going to miss home.

I have until 7:00PM to start my midterm. This will be the first midterm I've taken since the last time I took a midterm and then immediately quit school. Haw.
I'm sure I'm making this harder than it will actually be, but I guess I won't know till I see it.
I gotta go find all my notes. It's a closed book test, but it's at home and online, so I'm cheating. If I cheat and fail, I suck for reals.

Edit: I owned that midterm in the face!

I finally have a couple of days off. Last night I went to school for the first time in a million years. It was only medium scary. I am the only person there with zero experience in the field and was pretty much completely baffled by all the acronyms and vocabulary. I have two weeks worth of homework to send in by Sunday. This might be tough stuff. So many numbers and regulations and such. But I have three years of classes and 6000 on the job hours to complete before I can sit for my tests, so I should have it all down by then. Later this quarter we get to go to a lab and grind our own lenses. Whoo! I think that sounds like fun, even though it's pretty much all computerized now.
As an added fun perk, I will probably get some plano lenses ordered up. After all, all the cool kids wear glasses.

Brooke and I had the day off together today so we went to Silverdale and poked around Target for a bit. After buying nothing in particular we got a message from Jake saying that he had some time off from work and wanted to hang out. So, we went to lunch and then decided to hit up the Humane Society one more time. The parking lot was completely full but I kinda knew that today was going to be the day, so I parked out in the street.
Keeping a short story short, we adopted this beautiful girl!

She's an eleven week old, three pound, purebred (yes, they're now recognized by the AKC) rat terrier. And she is so cute! She has to go in for her surgery and will be coming to our house on Friday.
We had a really lucky day. Her litter had been brought in that morning by their foster mama. Her two sisters had already been adopted by the time we got there, but the lady who had been caring for them was there and told us that the one that was left had always been her favorite. We got to talk to her about her upbringing and temperament, and get lots of information before deciding that she was just what we were looking for. She is the sweetest thing, and smart to boot! I can't wait till she comes home!
We have until Friday to come up with a suitable name. I'm tempted to suggest Anais, to be Henry's counterpart.. but that cross species thing is a little taboo. Right now we're leaning toward Tater-Tot, since she's a little baked potato sized dog but any suggestions would be welcome.

I was careful not to count my chickens before they hatched.
When one finally hatched I counted the hell out of it.
Then it was killed in its infancy.
Stupid chicken.

I am now an Apprentice Optician. School starts March 31 with Ophthalmic Laboratory -- Course covers how to transform optical prescription content into lens-grinding information; select blanks, calculate curves, markup, grind,an inspection, assembly of eyeglasses, frame repairs and national standards.
I'm starting about halfway through the rotation of courses, in what appears to be a very small program. There are thirty seats available and at this point, only two have been filled.
I am hoping that starting in the middle doesn't put me at a disadvantage, since I won't get back to anatomy for awhile. I suppose that's the good part about apprenticing -- I have people I can turn to when I have questions.
The Bakery is sad to see me go, I think. But the congratulations are genuine, and I think this will be a good move.
Anyway, I am excited to get started.
P.S. I uploaded all the videos (5 total) from the first night of Harvey Danger to youtube. I have the same screenname there. I hope to get up the second night's video along with a bunch of video from some other shows within the next coupla days.

Job interview in the AM. Not for a new employer or anything, just a new department. The gal that's interviewing me interviewed me when I first got hired. She's been sure to let me know when this position would be opening up and she's made a number of rather promising comments to and about me, but I'm trying not to get my hopes up. If things don't pan out with optical I'm getting trained as a cake decorator, so that's probably okay too. I might do both. Dunno yet.

Holy hell. Everyone I ever knew is now married, getting married, having a kid, or has a kid. I never thought the Ricky Pants would marry and now he's getting hitched and has a baby on the way. I am truly shocked.

Having so much time off is kinda okay. The not having money part is bogus, but the extra time I have to fool around in the kitchen is pretty nice.

I made this a couple of days ago:

--Fakey Chicken Pot Pie--

And tonight I made a pizza:

--Thai Peanut--

I am not great with dough. But I've been making it from scratch to work on my skills. It's weird. Batter has never been a problem and the stiffer doughs are okay, but the stickier doughs give me trouble.

I finished digging in the front and I've planted most of my flowers and I planted my blueberries yesterday. And this afternoon I went and found a notary so I can finally send off paperwork I filled out in December but never bothered to finish so that should take care of the no money issues soonly.

Soon I think I will learn to sew. Because making stuff is the best.

Oh "Blonde on Blonde," you always make me feel better.

Brooke and I made a spur of the moment decision to go to Disneyland for a weekend. It was super beautiful outside and I loved it.





We saw Hot Hot Heat at House of Blues and pretty much had an all around great time.





While we were in California we noticed that lots and lots of people had nasty coughs, which is odd because in my mind it can't be cold and flu season if it's 75 degrees outside. But it was and by the time we got home on Tuesday I was pretty sick. We had tickets to see MC Chris and Pinback on Valentine's Day, but I was too sickly so we stayed home.

I've been home for four days and slept probably 75% of that time. And poor Brooke's gotten sick too. So sleeping and drinking orange juice has been pretty popular around these parts.

As of yesterday I was feeling slightly better and mostly able to breath and it was sunny outside so I decided to start digging. I am not nearly done but I got tired. It's still frosting over out there so I've got some time.

Last night I submitted a FAFSA and looked at schools in case that's something I might be interested in doing soon. (It is something I am going to have to do soon or I will forever be doomed to repeat my pattern of three years of employment and promotion followed by quitting for no real reason other than there's no more room to promote with my limited schooling and lack of long-term goals for or interest in whatever it is I'm doing. Run-on sentences are teh best.) We shall see.

Today we planted seeds indoors so in about two weeks we should see starts for peppers, tomatoes, watermelon, cantaloupe, chives, basil, catnip, and dill. Having a yard is going to be so much fun. I may be overzealous with my plans for planting but Brooke thinks her mom would let me plant in her yard and a guy at work offered me a plot on his property if I need more room.

Working only four days a week is cool--so long as I can keep myself occupied.

I hope tomorrow is a short day since I still feel like hell and would rather be at home digging holes than sniffling over bags of bagels.

And that is how I spent my summer vacation.

(And you too Brian, because I still am certain that (yes + no) /2 does in fact equal a positive response. Or a maybe -- probably a maybe.)

This is the basic stuff I know so far. I think these will probably be the dates and such -- since mostly all it takes in one person to make a plan before everyone else either joins up or asses out:

Vegas Vacation - September 2008 - THIS IS AN OPEN INVITE VANCOUVER, BELLINGHAM, EVERETT KIDS

Sooo.. a number of someones have been talking about going to Vegas in September, and because I'm a crazy planner, I've been looking into airline ticket/hotel/car rental prices. Brooke and I are definitely going, and Anthony and Lauren are definitely going. We don't have a specific date that it must be, but I've been looking at flying down the evening of September 10 and flying back the afternoon of September 15. (From the dates in September that I've checked, those seem to be the least expensive.)

The four of us would like to stay at New York New York because during vacations we like to stay in semi-decent or better places. Not to be like SUPERCOSTCOMAKEOUTPARTY or anything, but if we book through Costco.com we're looking to pay $536.14 per person including a rental car and free room upgrade. Without the car you're looking at $480.04.

We want a car because we'd like to go places away from the strip, but of course that's a personal choice -- and really, someone could rent a minivan or something and split the cost a million ways. Same with rooms. You kids are wily, I'm sure you know how to get your money's worth. ;)

I think it'd be really cool if we were to all stay in the same place, but dependent upon personal preference and budgets and such, I suppose it'd be okay if we were scattered about.

Anyway, the important part is -- We need specific dates! Some of us have to give vacation notice way the heck in advance in order to be sure to get the time off.

(Sorry, I get excited and antsy and nervous and weird if I don't know what's going on a million years in advance!)

I think it's a bit funny that when I feel just a little bad about something, if I dig deeper, I can feel so bad about everything.