I haven't updated in nearly a week! Here are some long summaries of what I was up to:

Weds: We rushed down to Grammy & Grandpa's to meet my aunt & uncle. I forgot my toothbrush so we had to buy a new one. We started on the long drive up to Port Townsend, stopping every hour & a half or so for a restroom break. I dozed off a couple of times. Very long drive, but it was the fastest trip they've made so far (just under 4.5 hours). Nearly to their house, I saw a deer grazing by the side of the highway. They live in an oasis of a gated community, tall trees and rhododendrons. Lots of gangly trees with peeling bark, showing a red wood underneath. My aunt took me with her to pick up a pizza in town, lots of older impressive buildings, sailboats & tourists. We brought the pizza home & ate on the patio, as a deer grazed on some plants in their backyard. That evening we went to the private beach for the community, walked around and looked at the boats, speculated on what looked like a chair stuck to a raft out in the water... Odd to see land around all that sea water, it took a little while for me to accept that the Hood Canal we drove by is all salt water. Driving back up to the house we saw a deer and her twin fawns.

I showered early, and joined my aunt and uncle reading in the living room till about 11. I slept wonderfully sound, and woke up by 9 am. Thursday: Gumby the fluffy cat, I remember him from 9 years ago when we visited their old house in Portland, let me take a few pictures. Aunt Donna took me out early to see Fort Worden, & we went into a cement structure that once stored artillery. Foggy in the morning, but it cleared off (or as everyone seems to say up in those parts, "burned off"). We went to some little touristy shops & drove by some fantastic Victorian houses. Then we had to head back, and drive to the ferry on Bainbridge Island. Aunt Donna decided to go with me as it was a beautiful day, so we had a really lovely trip over to Seattle. Although a bird did a fly by pooping on one of my bags... I've held a grudge against those nasty seagulls for the past week.

Lindsey found us right away, and we said goodbye to my aunt, who caught the ferry back to the island. We went to Lindsey's apartment, to my mind a perfect home for a college student. MHC is so restrictive about living off campus that I hadn't realized how nice it would be to live in something other than a dorm, and get out of the crazy study-till-you-drop atmosphere... Anyway, if I ever have an apartment, I hope I have similarly good taste in decorating without breaking the bank!

Lindsey made dinner (better than anything I've ever made, of course!), and then we got ready to go out. I got to meet a lot of her friends as I tagged along for a birthday party. Maybe one of the first times it really hit me that going to a women's college has restricted my friend group a bit... To have guy friends, wow!

Friday: A busy day! Lindsey introduced me to the bus system, our first stop the University of WA. A great campus, lots of plush grass that actually grows (unlike the sod at MHC... why can't we get healthy grass??) and some very nice buildings. Three libraries! Visiting Lindsey has, like nothing else, given me new images of what my college experience could have been. Maybe if I get into grad school I'll have a big university experience AND a co-ed experience...

Next stop was downtown, and we went to the Asian Market first. Hello Kitty cookies, Thai iced tea, muscat gummies... All those hard to find delicacies. Those gummies have oddly translated descriptions on them... I remember Madelyn once had the muscat gummy description on her away message. What fun!

Lindsey introduced me to a whole new concept: sandwiches on croissants! Very good sandwich place, and it was in a sort of mall place with a Tiffany's, so there was plenty to look around at. We went to an Old Navy, where Lindsey patiently helped me pick out a couple of tank tops. Dark red and light blue. Then, Pike Place, which smelled of flowers & fish. Bouquets of every sort & fish being thrown to the loud selling routine, all seen through crowds of other people just as intent on seeing everything but not necessarily on buying! Passed by the first Starbucks and a sidewalk "musical ensemble" including a banjo... Sat for a while looking out on the water, it was a perfect sunny day, not terribly hot, but balmy...

Back home, we watched The Importance of Being Earnest (which I loved, Reese was great, naturally) & complained whenever a good line was cut out. They broke up a lot of the scenes, which was pretty effective, esp. for short attention spans. After, we went to Krispy Kreams, which was, wow. How fun to SEE the donuts from dough ring to warm gooey goodness. We had our free ones, and I think we ate about 5 combined... But they're so light feeling, however different the reality of the calories may be!

Saturday: We started out for the Space Needle, and spent it must have been at least an hour up on the observation deck. The Blue Angels were in town, and we saw one plane really close up. Took tons of pictures this day as I was dumb and didn't bring the camera along the day before. We took lots of "self portraits" & probably confused some people as we opted for our own funny pictures instead of letting others take them of us. We took some funny ones around the orange tube structure, too. The music project place was crazy, and all the "mini carnival" surrounding the Space Needle was, well, such a blatant money squeezing attempt... Anyway, lots of funny pictures from this day!

I had my first Starbucks experience! Lindsey introduced me to the Mocha Coconut Frappacino. Yums.

Back at Lindsey's place, we checked out the Lake City festivities. Lots of sketchy people selling sketchy stuff. A palm reading woman yelled at us, we just kept walking away. The parade was great though, there's a drill team for every ethnicity. The Chinese American Drill Team was the best, with the best costumes and the best routine. Next to us were four gorgeous children, and they watched with their grandparents as their equally gorgeous mother drove by all dressed up in the parade. That upset us a little, I mean, where do these people come from??

We skipped out after an hour, and had Thai Chicken pizza. Surprisingly good, actual peanut sauce, not the peanut butter glaze that passes for, well, something edible, at MHC... The parade finally ended after we returned home and went down the block to survey its progress. Long talks and donuts, a late night!

Sunday: I woke up with my nervous stomach condition, but I was better after a couple of hours of being awake. Lindsey taught me the bubble magnet and tack tricks, so that I can have a fun floor activity! We had to go to the train station, very sad to leave!! Saw the Blue Angels & all their smoke trails again on the way.

Met someone with the same Levi's bag at the station, had a bathroom fiasco as I realized the water wasn't turned on and had to wait to wash my hands, and watched Finding Nemo. Cute movie, I was getting emotional over, well, fish.

It was strange to be home, I definitely missed Lindsey & seeing so many new things.

Back home, we're taking care of alpacas. C & M have a bunch of new ones, some to keep and some to board for other owners. Well, today I heard this weird noise, between a squirrel barking and a bird chirping. I saw Wampo, a new white male, huffing as if he were the one making the noise. So I yell at Mer, "Look, that alpaca made that noise!" Mer says, "No, there's no way, that was a bird or something." So a couple of minutes later, "Look Mer, fast! He's doing it again!" Created a strange situation, all the alpacas came running to see what was going on, & Tess the guard dog was barking. We can't figure out where this animal learned how to do this. Never heard it before from the others... Usually just short "beeps."

Today I went to town with Mom & Mer, as I had my annual gyno. appointment (the actual examination was close to pleasant, as I had my usual wonderful RN lady who talks with me and I don't even feel like I'm in any sort of potentially embarrassing situation).

Went to see Dad, and scheduled us to go to Families in the Park on Thursday night. We exchanged recent stories and all talked for a bit... Dad has decided to try to get me to meet this Peter fellow who is six years my senior (last time Dad tried to pick out someone he'd approve of me marrying, it was a 19 year old (I was like 9 at the time, btw) from Alaska). So, yeah. Maybe I'll finally have a guy friend though.

McDonald's has adopted Dippin' Dots, so on the way out of town, guess where we went? I had Oreo, which was, well, heavenly. Below zero these little dots of ice cream are kept, and for the Oreo mixture the dots are vanilla/the fatty sugar cream in Oreos flavored, with Oreo cookie mixed in. We all shared some chai earlier, so it was a very yummy day.

Benji The Hunted was on the Hallmark channel tonight. What a horror show of a movie. Anyway, it's late, and this was a very extended update, so goodnight!