Words are inadequate

As previously mentioned, rbandrews and diadelphous came out from Texas for the weekend. On Friday they braved the flurrying snow and went into the District to wander through the Smithsonian, accompanied by uilos. I joined them all for dinner at Afterwords and we browsed the bookstore and got cupcakes from Hello Cupcake. (While waiting for them I had time to read It's A Book, which was very cute and also had a monkey.)

HC was out of the day's gluten-free cupcakes, which was a disappointment since half the point of going to Dupont was to pick some up so we'd have them the next day. Oh well. The cupcakes they had were delicious and totally worth the trip.

( But why, you may ask, did we need gluten-free cupcakes? )

Sunday we got up and saw our Texan visitors off, and stopped by my parents' place for my father's birthday lunch. Then we came home and collapsed for several hours.

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People keep asking me if I feel any different. The only answer I've been able to come up with is "Now I have less cake."

My calendar tells me that Friday was National Boss Day. Mine celebrated by getting sick and going home midway through the day. I don't remember where Friday evening went; we must have stayed home.

Satyrday I slept lateish, and made pancakes because I was wanting pancakes instead of an omelette. Eventually I got on the road to head out to D&D, a little later than I might have liked, and stopped at Safeway to pick up crack chips. Was running not nearly so late as I'd thought, so I figured I'd swing by Trader Joe's to pick up a couple things of Vintage Cola (which, incidentally, tastes like the Platonic ideal of Coke).

( Cut for traffic bitchery. )

Thankfully, after all that I got to hit a bunch of things with a hammer, so it was all okay. (In retrospect a Big Freaking Axe might have been a better choice than the Big Red Hammer. The difference between d10+2 ("d12 brutal 2") and 2d5+2 ("2d6 brutal 1") damage is mostly a matter of taste and whether one prefers a bell curve; the slight deficiency in average damage in the former is compensated for by its "high crit" quality, which means that if roll a 20 on my to-hit roll I get to add an extra die of damage. And most of the time I'm rolling two d20s to hit and picking the highest one, so my chance of a crit is effectively doubled.) (Here endeth the D&D neepery for the day.)

Satyrday evening daghain was in a play, and it would have been good to have seen that, but I was sufficiently beat that I just wanted to stay home. So I did.

Sunday started off with the sink flooding the kitchen during laundry again, which was about as much fun as it sounds. Eventually I got that cleaned up and finished and headed out for a ramble through Riverbend Park (on the Potomac, just north of Great Falls). Too warm, too many small children, and it turns out that what I was wanting was a ramble in company, but a decent walk anyway. Came home, had a fight with nixve, had dinner, tried to clear the sink with Drano, vacuumed, wrote email.

Was unfortunately still online at just after one in the morning, which led to an unexpected continuation of said fight, which led unrelatedly yet inexorably to getting sort of half-assedly dumped around two. There followed an hourish phone call during which, after some prompting, the dumping was performed with a whole ass, and then the ritual Changing of the Facebook Relationship Status, and then uilos being a Heroine of the Revolution. I remember hearing the clock chime four, and later hearing it chime 6:15, so I guess I slept for two hours in there. Emailed work to say "not today, sorry" and probably got another 2-3 hours of sleep. uilos also called in sick, so I had someone to fall apart on at random times throughout the day.

The apartment maintenance guys came by to fix the sink pretty quickly, which was nice. Later, I confirmed with nixve that it was neither a bad dream nor one of those things one says when exhausted but regrets the next morning, and talked with ancientsong, which helped an awful lot as well. Then home, and crashing.

Today I've listened to Inches and Miles and Trees Still Bend (which made me sniffly the first time I heard it, a little more than a year ago, and now just feels right and true). And now I'm at work, where I have an annoying blurry ache in my eyes and no keyboard tray.

Tonight is sushi with someone cool, and Wednesday is probably pumpkin acquisition, and Thursday is likely to be hanging out with elf, and Friday is Belly Horror, and Satyrday is Ren Faire and then ABG if we feel up to it, and Sunday is rislyn's followed by Tribal Cafe. I'm keeping busy, and sociable, and both of these are probably good things.

My favorite highway interchange: "There's even a train station in there somewhere."

Brown Out: the true story of Van Halen's "no brown M&Ms" clause. Absolutely bloody brilliant.

Via rislyn, Depression's Evolutionary Roots. I need to read this again before I can have anything coherent to say on it, I think. It's. . . thought-provoking.

"'The primary difference between these two subspecies of Formicidae is that the one on the left has longer legs and therefore a greater height from the ground,' Tom Swift said tolerantly." --xiphias

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I had a really good time last weekend, for uilos-definitions of "weekend." Wednesday night I took her out to dinner at Kazan, where by sheerest coincidence we were joined by a dozen other cool people. Then we went back to the apartment for cake and games and "please take some of these books away now."

Thursday and Friday were slow, though I did get a decent bit of writing done. Satyrday we went out to Reston for some gaming, and also to retrieve an 8x8 pan that we'd left somewhere last October. (I know it was October because we also got a jar of roasted pumpkin seeds we'd forgotten we left, which she pronounced "stale, but edible.") Played a dogsled-racing game twice, which is good: the first time I thought it was great, the second I could see ways in which it irritated me, so now I won't need to pick up my own copy. And other good stuff as well, of course.

(Unfortunately I think that the intense climate changes between rooms in the house in Reston caused me to come down with a summer cold. The space under my eyes is filled with sand and I've been a little drifty the past couple days.)

Sunday continued the weekend's tradition of being pretty darn cool. We slept very late and lazed around a lot, and eventually made it out to Adams Morgan to meet tamnonlinear at DC Tribal Cafe. I'm a little surprised by how much I enjoy watching the dancers. Something about the flow of movement, and the energy, and the beat of the music. It's entrancing, and sexy in a way that's more "oh, nice" than "WANT," and it pulls me out of myself in a way that not much else does.

Also stopped in the used bookstore next door, which has some of the oddest stuff. I found an archy and mehitabel collection, and a volume of Piet Hein's Grooks, which always make me happy.

Last night we buried Keishi out in the woods. I haven't anything else to say about that, really, but it feels wrong to let it pass without notice.

Tomorrow I get on a plane to go spend a wonderful week with nixve, and then the weekend after I get back I'll be camping at Assateague. The back half of September, however, is suspiciously empty. For now.

I've been sort of resisting writing up my week and a half of travel, because there was just so much going on (both physically and mentally/emotionally) that putting it into words will miss a good three-quarters of it. I had an amazing time despite the near-constant rain (and snow, once), and am in deeply besotted with Vancouver.

The easy facts: uilos and I flew into Vancouver on Thursday night the 12th, and flew back again on Monday night the 16th. I went to work somewhat jet-lagged on Tuesday and Wednesday, and flew back to Vancouver on Wednesday (the 18th) to meet up with nixve. We hung out in the city for a day and then headed into the Cascades for a couple of days before I flew out again Sunday night, to return to work for a very jet-lagged week. It's everything in between that's difficult.

( Vancouver, to and in )

( Vancouver, from )

And really, that explains absolutely nothing. Vancouver felt freeing, in a way that I've not felt in years. The people are friendly and helpful, the bus system is pricey but it gets you where you need to go and runs pretty often, and the city's just. . . really nice. They stop for pedestrians and yield to buses. The SkyTrain works on an honor system with spot-checks. And Stanley Park and the mountains behind and all the water everywhere and non-neoclassical buildings and tea everywhere and crepes and new accents and fog and the intense brightness of the sun when it shines through.

Much of it is that I didn't feel tied down to a car. Living in the DC area has seriously broken me of much desire to drive places. I want to be able to walk to where I want to go, or take transit if it's a bit further. The sprawl, the distance between people, is killing me. As is the constant sense of rushrushrush. I expect these things are connected.

I miss it.

(Trip part 2, and photos, to come later.)

Update: photos now available.

Ten years ago I didn't think I'd see today. I wasn't sure I'd see next month, really. I was something of a mess. I had close-geographically friends, but none that I felt comfortable talking to about what was going on. (Mostly because I was having trouble acknowledging it myself.)

Ten years ago was a week after Technicon and two weeks after a spring break I'd spent with scathach and her family. Ten years ago was my fourth semester in college.

Ten years ago I followed uilos back to her dorm room rather than go home and lie there on my own in the dark.

It's been a bumpy ride at times but I wouldn't trade it.

Happy ten years, babe.