summertime...

i'm 29 now. my birthday was last saturday.

through some strange turn of circumstances, it was the second birthday in a row that required me to spend most of the day on a bus to seattle. last year, it was to catch a plane to fly to san diego for a friend's wedding. this year, i only had to go to seattle to attend my friend's bridal shower (i'm a bridesmaid in the wedding, and her oldest friend). there are better ways of spending a birthday than being on a bus for 5 hours (traffic, paranoid border patrol and their drug-sniffing dogs) but i think there are worse ways too.

a few friends cooked up a birthday breakfast for me and we sat at picnic table at the beach to enjoy it. it's finally summer-like here. they armed me with an audio book for the journey and took me to the bus station. i made the rookie mistake of sitting on the sunny side of the bus, and was slowly baked to a crisp the whole way down. really, i've made the trip down there enough times to know to avoid this situation.

as mild sunstroke set in, i amused myself by imagining what i would like for my birthday dinner. i knew i'd get to pick because, hell, it was my birthday. i came up with two requirements as i came over the bridge into seattle and considered popping open the emergency exit window and throwing my scorched body into the bay, or sound, or whatever that body of water is: patio dining, and a humungous cobb salad. the salad that starts out healthy because it's a salad but then gets piled with toppings like bacon so it's not that healthy after all.

james and katie came through, and along with some other old friends, we dined at a restaurant overlooking downtown seattle and mt. rainier. besides the bus thing, it was great to have a chance to celebrate with different groups of friends, and to eat a heck of a lot of food. don't think i need much more than that.

katie's bridal shower, apart from being in an stifling hot living room, was fun. i have mixed feelings about these types of parties (like yay! a spoon!), but usually enjoy myself. it's cool to see how well she and james know each other now, and to see what they admire and value about each other. it's kind of a mysterious process how two people come together to be married. like you can't really explain it with a diagram or powerpoint presentation (thank goodness), but you can look at two people and see that's it's happening.

i've known katie for about 12 years now, my oldest friend. it was funny for me to see how well i knew katie from the little bridal shower games that we played. we've had ups and downs because of being awkward teenagers, and then being awkward twenty-somethings. i am assured that even though we may be in different places and circumstances, we'll be friends in some form or another. it takes time to get to a point like that. and work. and a lot of grace. i am glad to have a friend like her.

back to my paper. i also picked up a four square ball while i was in seattle (damn stores don't carry them up here. communists). beer and four square night is imminent.