I believe I said that

My future husband's step-sister's husband's mom owns a bakery in the city in which I work. I stopped by during my lunch break to drop off a check for the wedding pies, and met her. She was SO nice and friendly and smiley, and when I expressed amazement that she was able to stay so skinny, working in a place that smelled so good, she gave me cookies, and a pumpkin pie! Life is good.

Eight more days until the wedding! I have a ton of stuff that I'm going to attempt to get done today and tomorrow. Saturday we're driving up to Vermont for my friend Nick's wedding, and won't be back until Monday. On the one hand, it's sort of a shame that I don't have this last weekend in which to accomplish things; on the other, I can't do anything from Vermont, so it means I get to RELAX. And that is the greatest unexpected pumpkin pie of all.

Hi!

I'm up at 3:30am because I always leave packing until the last minute because I am a dummy. But who cares! Tomorrow I am flying to Amsterdam and it is going to be totally sweet.

It is supposed to rain every freaking day that we are there! Booooo. Please hope for us that the weather changes. A little sun, perhaps? Some rain-free days? I don't know what rain is like in Amsterdam. Hopefully it's just drizzle. Yeah, it'll just be drizzle.

I suppose I should just throw some more stuff in my suitcase and call it a night. I have stuff to do tomorrow morning. Like drop Henry off at a boarding place! Oh man oh man oh man, I hope that he just deals with it and does not freak out on the poor kennel people. Hopefully he will be soothed by the easy listening music, and will enjoy the room service. (I am not even kidding, these are real "features" of this place.)

I'm taking along my journal from 1998, when I went to Europe for the first time. I'm going to fill in the rest of the book. It was strange, to read some of it earlier this evening. Man, college-kid-me! You are so dramatic sometimes. And yet, not as unlike today-me as I thought you were going to be.

Anyway.

I should go to bed to ensure that I wake up tomorrow when I am supposed to.

Please pray for no rain! Keep an eye on the US for me whilst I'm gone.

Cheers,
Kerry (Washu)

Hey, guys: I'm planning a trip to California, and I found similar flights for similar prices on Southwest, and American Airlines. Is one going to be way more pleasant than the other? I don't think I've flown either one.

Fjellanger and I had tentatively decided ages ago that we would see a Mariners game on Saturday; I wanted to see SafeCo Field, and I hadn't been to a baseball game all season. But they lost to the Angels 7-1 or something on Friday, and we made new plans to see a sporting event Saturday night, so we scrapped the ballgame plans (they ended up beating the Angels that day after all, the bastards). Saturday morning we had McDonald's breakfast, because McDonald's breakfast is one of the best damn breakfasts to have the morning after drinking. Diner food is good too, but not as swift. I think maybe it's the grease that cures what ails ya. Fjellanger went while I took a shower and whatnot, and get this -- the menu is different! OMG! I thought McDonald's was supposed to be universal, was supposed to unite us as nation! The number 5 over there is BREAKFAST BURRITOS!! I don't even think we HAVE breakfast burritos at the McDonald's over here! Man, what an exciting vacation discovery! Seriously, though.

We went to Marymoor park, because I said I wanted to be outside and people-watch. We found the RC field, where all these dudes had radio-controlled planes. It was rad, they were doing tricks and stuff. And there was a sign that said "PILOTS AND THEIR ASSISTANTS AND ALSO THEIR DOGS ONLY" because it seemed like everybody there had a dog. Also there were RC helicopters, which didn't seem as fun, because they just went up and down, up and down. Fjellanger took this opportunity to explain how helicopters work, or something, I'm not sure, I wasn't really paying attention.

He tried to show me a lake, but he couldn't find it. So we went to a grocery store and bought strawberries to eat. Just as it was in New Orleans, my appetite was way down from all the pot I wasn't smoking. Then I think we took naps, I took lots of naps, which is as it should be, because I was on vacation, and that's what vacations are all about, napping.

That evening we went with Doug and Naomi to see a UW football game. They're the Huskies. (Yoo Dub, not Doug and Naomi, that would be just mean.) They say "dawg" a lot. (UW paraphenalia, not Doug and Naomi.) Oh man does that rule. Dawg. And there's a real live Husky that they showed on the big screen, he has some froo-froo name like Prince Renoir-Lafayette, except froo-frooer. I asked Doug if anyone had ever stolen him like they do in those crazy teen sex comedy movies, but he said he didn't think so. There were MAD people going to the game, and they were all old, which I thought was really weird. Rutgers has a really really shitty football team, AND it probably doesn't have as locally-concentrated an alumni population, so we don't get that many old heads at our games. Or maybe we do, what the fuck do I know, I never went.

I had a Polish dog. It was Band Day, which meant that there were three million local high school bands there for halftime; more importantly, it meant that there were lithe highschool CHEERLEADERS milling about near where we were eating our Polish dogs. In very short skirts. And we were sitting on the ground. I'm going to jail.

The stadium was big and gorgeous. So big, and so gorgeous. It's about twice as high as the Rutgers stadim (okay, I went a few times), and we were real high up. The right side was open, and beyond that was . . . water. Again, not sure what body of water it was, but boats could pull up and watch the game supposedly, though I don't see what kind of angle they would have . . . the city was to the left, and the gorgeous university buildings stuck out. The university is gorgeous, by the way. The sun set over the city; as it did it turned the water lavendar and the boats a pale green. Then the moon came up. Oh. My. God. It was a full moon that night, and the moon came up big and orange over the MOUNTAINS. Like, it comes up from behind the mountains, which take a jagged bite out of the bottom; then it rose a little above and painted an orange streak on the water. Man. What a ridiculously beautiful football game. It was cold and we all had blankets, I sat on one. I talked to Doug about football a little, and man oh man did I like Doug and Naomi, a whole freaking lot. We got along real real well and talk came easy and . . . yes. Very nice, very nice indeed, and I'm so glad they invited us.

The halftime show was pretty impressive; the whole fucking field was FILLED with bands. It was fun to watch the white gloves of the conductors or drum majors or whatever, they weren't in sync very much. And then all the cheerleaders came into the middle of the field with shiny pompoms and danced to (swear to God) Eddie Murphy's "Party All the Time". It actually looked pretty cool, and my amusement knew no bounds. Oh, and UW has a he-uge marching band -- they made a gigantic "W" out on the field in the beginning, it was very precise-looking and very big -- but they have a really really small dance/cheerleading team. Which was fine, because we were up so high we coudn't see their abs them anyway, but you know. At the Rutgers games, that's pretty much all I watched the whole time.

And the Huskies won! By like a million! It was a lot of fun to watch, they beat the crap out of the Wyoming Cowboys. Then we crept back across the river at about -5mph, MAN is traffic in Seattle a bitch. I fell asleep on the way home. It was . . . my best night there, I think maybe (sorry Elvis!). And no alcohol the whole day! See, I'm not a drug fiend after all.

So I arrived at the airport and dismbarked and rode the monorail or tram or whathaveyou over to baggage. OH so one of the male flight attendants, right? He appeared rather . . . gay. Frosted tips, cute square glasses, stereotypical speech and hand movements. I was waiting for the monorail tram thingy, and so were the flight attendants from my flight; said gay dude strolled up and said to one of the female flight attendants, in reference to her pocket book, "that is the CUTEST bag!" Man. Stereotypical gay guys fucking rule.

I walked to baggage claim, and finally met Fjellanger in the flesh. You will be pleased to know that he doesn't look all scary and severe like his userpics that I hate; and he's more interesting and funny than most of his journal entries might imply. Thank fucking goodness, because otherwise it was going to be a long five days.

He drove us back to his condo. He took a wrong turn or something; I think he was distracted by how gorgeous I am in real life. I had a drink at his place. It was 12:07, which is after noon, and WAY after noon Eastern time, which was where I started, and besides, I was on vacation! Vacations are for drinking. Then we went to the Space Noodle*. It's right next to that music museum that that guy made, which I guess is ugly if it's in your city, but if you're just walking by it, it's really cool to look at. We went to the top of the Noodle and looked at stuff. A German cameraman filmed us looking through the binoculars, which means that we're going to be on German TV, so if you see me, tape it, thx. The weather was BEAUTIFUL, as it was to be for the entirety of my trip. Know why? Because me and God, man? We're like THIS. And He wanted me to enjoy my vacation, because He knows how miserable I am at my job. Thanks, God! Oh also, I don't know if You noticed, there, Big Guy, but it's eighty-eight freaking degrees here in New Jersey. And also October. Right. Just thought that might have slipped by.

ANYWAY, the Space Noodle was awesome, but there's not a lot I can say about it. OH yes I can! Man, the mountains again. Mountains freaking everywhere. Like, here's the thing: they're at the horizon. You look out, and there they are, like someone painted them on the back wall. I . . . I just can't get over that shit. We don't have that here. We have . . . I don't know. Trees. And flatness. You look at the horizon, and there's . . . there's nothing painted on the back wall. No one took the time. And then there's RAINIER, which the locals refer to as simply "the mountain," and which is 90 miles from Seattle but looks closer because it's so goddamned tall. (These were all facts from the inside of the Space Noodle. And what's funny? Is that last night I was talking to my dad and he told me about how when HE went to Seattle, he had the flu or pneumonia or something for either eleven or twenty-one days, he can't remember, and it was gray and overcast the entire time until the very last day when the clouds parted and THERE was Rainier, and he said that it looked real close, but that's just because it's so big, and really, it's far away. Man, Dad.) Mount Rainier looks like it's FLOATING out there, and it's got GLACIERS on it and it's gorgeous and Eric said "do you want to go to a mountain one of the days you're here?" and I said "YES" and he said "which one? There's ____ or ____ or Mount Rainier" and I said "RAINIER PLEASE" because there it is, man, just sitting there, chillin' chillin'. Man. Mountains.

[Oh and also Eric pointed out the pier on which Real World Seattle took place, the one where the black dude smacked the crazy girl right in the freaking face. MAN I hated that guy. I didn't watch that particular Real World when it was on as a series, but one time senior year Henky and I got caught in a marathon and we sat there, all day, in our pyjamas, and watched the whole entire thing. Kim and Keith came over to meet Henry, because he was new and cute then, and Henky and I just sat there and watched Real World in our pyjamas and talked to Kim and Keith during the commercials. But the point of this paragraph was that when I was in New Orleans, Slick and/or Scrow pointed out the Real World house THERE, so now I've seen the locations of two Real Worlds. Whoopee.]

Inside the Space Noodle was lots of stuff to read, and a lot of it was sciency, which was good because (as you may know) I'm a scientist, and Fjellanger is a . . . um . . . well he's not a damn thing I guess, did you know he hasn't even graduated COLLEGE yet? He can't even say he's a college graduate. He tries, but it just comes out "I'm a college gagaguwa". But he IS a nerd, so we ate that shit up. We didn't eat at the restaurant because I guess it's a little too rich for Fjellanger's blood, and he's unemployed and doesn't even have a degree, so I guess I understand.

Then we ate at Dick's, which is a hamburger place that's real cheap and I liked it. You have to pay ten (five?) cents for ketchup, and it comes in the leetle Solo cups that I use to make Jell-O shots. That means that somebody has to do that every morning, fill up eight million little Solo cups with ketchup, and then put the tops on, and that part is a BITCH, I know from all my Jell-O shot makin'. I wonder if I would like the squirting-in-the-ketchup part, though, I bet I would.

After Dick's we went to the Pike Place Market, which is where they throw the fish. We didn't see them throw fish, though, they just threw crabs, which weren't as impressive. Maybe if they were alive, and snapping, that would be cool. But they did holler in unison. And they had crab legs there that were like three feet long, I swear. Seriously. Gihugic. Ridiculous. They looked like legs from some shit at the Museum of Natural History or some shit. They apparently belonged to Alaskan King Crabs, maybe. And I was talking about how freaking big they were, and I said "fuck" or something, and there was a lady with a camcorder right in front of me, and right after I dropped the F-bomb she shut her camera off and went away. Oops! I guess I need to watch my mouth in public.

Also at the PPM (as Scrow likes to call it) were various little booths of various stuff, and your street musicians, and OH MAN fucking flower vendors. These flowers . . . were amazing. Simply amazing. The colors blew me away, and everything was so BIG, there were these things that I think were called sunflowers, but they didn't have the big blank spot in the middle, they were filled with feathery petals. And there were these purple flowers that formed a big ball, they looked like . . . you know those balls that you unfold, they're made of tissue paper and they're flat and then you unfold them and clip them the other way and then they're a ball? I have one for Thanksgiving that's a turkey, so his head is cardboard, and his body and tail are this tissue paper thing . . . man, either you know what I'm talking about or you don't, that's the best I can do. Anyway, that's what these purple flowers looked like, they were tight and the petals looked all woven together . . . gorgeous, everything was gorgeous. The ol' PPM is a great place for looking, and man, if there's one thing I like about Life, it's the looking. So many people, and flowers, and wreaths of chile peppers that are so bright and shiny . . . and downstairs there was this store, man. I couldn't stop thinking about Jon while I was in there, and how much he would have liked it. They had all these old prints, originals and reproductions . . . amazing art, I guess a lot from the Forties? Maybe? I don't know shit about it. But all these old prints, advertisements and posters and stuff . . . if I lived in Seattle, my whole house would be covered with that shit, but the things were too big to take on the plane, and besides, I'm broke.

Fjellanger bought blueberries, and we sat on some grass in the sun and ate some, I don't think I had ever had a blueberry before, even though I live right by Hammonton, New Jersey, which, as everyone knows, is the Blueberry Capitol of the World. There was a parasailor in the water out there (there were waters all over the place, rivers and sounds and lakes, and I couldn't keep the damn things straight), as well as a cruise ship, and we tried to brainstorm ways to sneak on, but we didn't really come up with much. OH I just thought of one! We could have hidden inside a laundry cart, maybe, underneath the sheets. No, wait, they probably do all the laundry on the ship. Dammit.

On our way out of the city, we were in some wicked traffic. And this fine-looking brunette pulled up next to us in a cream-colored car, old school, it was real nice, and then I noticed it was a DODGE DART! That's what I want! That's my car! I've been talking about Impalas more because it seemed like a Dart would be hard to find, but man! I leaned out the window and said "I like your car," and she said "thanks," and I said "what year is it?" and she said "sixty-four." Dude, THAT'S MY YEAR! Seriously! I immediately regretted that I hadn't said "what is that, a sixty-four?" because then I bet I could have gotten her number, right? Don't you think? But I didn't and I didn't and she crept away.

Traffic in Seattle seems to be a real bitch.

*P.S. It isn't my idea to call the Space Needle the Space Noodle, it's Jeff's. Isn't it funny, though?