I attended a writing retreat at the end of July called Writers Weekend which is being renamed Cascade Writers. I have some photos for you, and an exhortation to attend if you have the chance.
In 2010, the retreat managed to continue the “family reunion” atmosphere of the two prior years with the presence of strangers–we didn’t all know each other this time, and yet it felt like we did. We split into two groups for the critique part of the workshop, and I was impressed by such unexpected professionalism in the analyses of my work. This people aren’t all pros yet–but they’re going to be. If I have the cash, I will definitely attend in 2011.
And now, on to the photos:
...Starting with Seamus, Hanzo, and me. Apparently in 1948, before they invented color.
It looks like a stock image in a paranormal YA book cover
I like imagining Hanzo as a were-pitbull a la the old Buster Wylde webcomic.
And the next image in the series is entitled, "Randy Shrugged."
Just kidding. There’s no next picture. Randy Henderson is still there on the beach, holding the moon and shivering. He was yelling, “Come on you guys, someone else do it now–seriously, my arms are getting tired,” but we all laughed and climbed the excessive number of stairs and went to bed. I bet he really has to pee.
When I'm crapping myself in a nursing home, this is one of the things I will remember.
…So before it slips too far behind, I’d like to photographically chronicle a recent hike I took. We went on Excelsior Pass. I gotta tell ya, that hike is a pain in the ass. I had to crabstep sideways during long stretches because it was uncomfortable to take a forward step when it meant my foot was going to be at a 45 degree angle to my shin.
You can see, though, that it was worth it. Not just to lay in a waterfall, with hot sun on my belly and face and cool mountain water soaking the sweat out of my t-shirt. There were lots of tiny details to enjoy.
They must be poisonous, or there'd be more than one bite taken out. hehehe
One of those photos you take because you know it'll make a good LOLcat some day...
Favorite photo I took on that hike.
We didn’t make it up to the top because of time and heart attack constraints, but we’ll go back again some time. I know this because we need to dangle a camera down The Hole. Neither WTA.org nor Google can tell me what this mystery hole is for or how it came to be.
John threw a rock and it made noise for a long, long time.
Photo by John Poor
I didn’t look much like Lady Gaga, but it was close enough for most drunk people to figure out who I was, and then holler encouraging nonsense at me from blocks away. They were only excited because they didn’t see this photo:
(You don't want to know. But you can probably guess.)
However, let’s not get ahead of ourselves. At the beginning of the evening, I looked like this:
Click the jump to see the rest of the step-by-step process! » Continue Reading…
At about 9:30 p.m. my boss calls to let us know that there’s been a string of robberies in the past few days. The perpetrator was a Caucasian male in black clothes who told the clerks he had a bomb hidden under his clothes; alternately, he would show them a butcher knife.
Good plan.
Now, I don’t actually tell my co-worker about this, because I don’t want to worry her, and what are the chances this goon is going to pick our store? Right? We’re as prepared as we always are. We have a selection of panic buttons, two phones, state-of-the-art security cameras, and we’re double-staffed.
Half of an hour later, this clown shuffles in wearing an outfit his big brother must not have wanted and insists he has a bomb hidden…somewhere. He flails around on an explosive Easter egg hunt inside his own pants, and while to us this just looks like public masturbation, he clearly thinks this indicates he has a Looney Tunes-sized case of TNT in his jockstrap.
The way he walks and talks sounds like he really hopes he’s the bad guy in a low-budget blaxploitation flick. If you’re going to use the M.F. word as punctuation, and you want me to be threatened by it, you better sound like you mean it at least as much as Samuel L. Jackson does. Especially when you have sweaty withdrawal skin, googly Cookie Monster eyes, and you’re hiding half of your face like an Old West bandit.
I think the poor robber was just trying to hide his messed up meth teeth.
Him: “I have a bomb! Give me all the money!”
Me: “No. You don’t. We already got a call about you.”
(This is the point where I suddenly realize my coworker ‘Tasha actually thinks there might be a bomb strapped to this nervous wreck’s genitals. Oops. Prooobably should have told her.)
He isn’t stunned for long, but his next brilliant move is to pull out his butcher knife… Which is still in the sheath, with two snaps holding it there. If I was the kind of idiot who refuses to give money to an armed robber (I’m only the kind of idiot who tells them they’re a liar), I could have made it to Miami and been sitting in a wicker chair sipping a freaking maitai by the time his shaky hands got that thing loose, and even if he tried to chase me, he would have tripped over his floppy pants and stabbed himself in his penis. (I don’t know how his junk managed to get out of our store in one piece.)
Also good plan.
Me, as I reach toward the button that opens the register: “Okay, I’ll give it to you. But the police are already on their way here. We hit the buttons.”
Him: “You’re [Redacted]suckers. [Redacted] this!”
He throws a plastic bag on the counter and storms out just as awkwardly as you’d expect from someone who is trying to walk inside of a camping tent. He was a two-second wait from getting several hundred dollars. And he left.
Robber: 0. Me and 'Tasha: Plastic bag.
In conclusion,
1. My retired police officer father is going to kill me when he finds out I sassed a robber after the stories he’s told me and
2. This guy is just lucky he didn’t spill anything on ‘Tasha:
On Saturday, I went on a hike with Hanzo and my friends Elizabeth and Studphish (don’t ask, it’s a long story). We were looking for this little-known trail with lots of big sandbars sticking out into the Skagit River, but instead we found ourselves at a derelict concrete factory by an abandoned limestone quarry.
IT. WAS. SO. COOL.
It's a fixer-upper.
Stud was the first to venture inside:
(sing with me) Fat man in a little hole! Fat man in a little hole!
The inside smelled of pee and wet stone, exactly like a real goblin lair! We set about looking for goblins, but mostly we found dangerous holes and graffiti that could have used some copy-editing.
This building was built by the Swiss. Or maybe by Frank Lloyd Wr--Okay, I won't. I won't. Just put down the hammer.
He doesn't see the resemblance.
» Continue Reading…
Now it’s time for something funny.
On December 18, 2009, Seamus and I drove down to visit my Grandma Moonie in Everett. Some of my Spokane family had driven there as well. We hung out for a few hours (with Shai, who by then was forbidden from long, fun walks but was still allowed long, fun car rides). At about 11:00 p.m., Seamus, Shai, and I left.
We stopped at Albertson’s, and as we were walking toward the building, we saw one of these:
I don't actually remember if it was an A8, just that it was totally bitchin'.
It came around the corner without headlights on, so I waved at the bespectacled driver, who looked a lot like this guy:
The guy in the car had slightly better hair. SLIGHTLY.
He was busy talking to the lady in his passenger seat, and though he was driving very slowly, he wasn’t looking up.
When he finally did, I guess he thought we looked like this:
BAM! POW! OOF!
because he totally panicked, stomped on the gas, and shot across the parking lot. I started laughing. For those who haven’t met me, allow me to explain: You expect me to be taller. Being afraid of me only makes sense if you have a pants-pissing fear of leprechauns with glittery faux-diamond facial piercings.
For some reason, he circled back around a row of cars, still with no headlights, and drove past us again. Keep in mind that Everett is not a bad neighborhood. It might be a little skeezy, but this guy clearly thought he was about to get carjacked by a gay couple with their dog. His windows were all still up, and when he stopped the car, it was a good twenty-five or thirty feet away from us.
Now the young woman collecting grocery carts started laughing about it too, and she also gestured and yelled. We’re all hollering, “Turn on your lights!” He rolled down the driver’s side back window, presumably to hear us–and then threw money onto the ground and zipped away again.
…DIED. LAUGHING.
I fell down on the ground because I was spasming so hard it was easier not to hold my own weight. I was gasping for air. Even though the store clerk had been yelling with us, and I’d been pointing at his car, not rubbing my fingers together, he apparently thought we were begging. Or that he could pay us off with this:
I guess it's useful if I purchase blow in Mexico, but I want to buy it here!
BUT THE WEIRDEST PART IS YET TO COME. After throwing out what only barely qualified as money, he drove another fifty feet and then slammed on the brakes. Then the passenger side door opened, and guess who got out?
I'm glad it's fashionable in 2009 for everyone to look like ladies of the evening! Now the real ones don't have to feel like Goodwill mannequins.
Well, not her exactly, but you get the picture. Captain Nerdboy of Bellevue Or Some Other Clueless Over-Privileged Suburb decided we were so threatening that he didn’t want his hooker anymore.
In the end, I feel he deserved his azure testicular condition, and I feel like we saved the prostitute from her worst client of the night. After all, if he thought a dollar would stop us from jacking his sweet Audi, I don’t think he was a generous tipper.
My pet archaelogist flew up to Seattle for a couple of days. I was kind of hoping we would go solve mysteries about long-dead people like on Bones, but instead it turns out the only thing she likes more than dead people is dead pennies. We went on a search for machines that ruin U.S. currency for fun and profit, and hit something like eighteen of them in one day.
Our adventures included this hairy little friend:
Cute Japanese dog need diet! He too fat!
We fed him two fistfuls of pennies before his owner noticed we realized he wasn’t going to smear them and stamp them with an image of a bone.
So, I constantly argue about car art with my partner. He thinks cars are beautiful when they’re sleek and subtle, with only minor aftermarket adjustments; I think they’re boring, and you should paint all over them and glue things to them, like kindergarten art projects with wheels. This van, for instance, is the coolest SF-themed vehicle I’ve seen in a long time, but he gave me the “You voted for McCain, didn’t you?” face when I showed it to him.
Whatever. I love you, space van. <3
(Giant) van featuring (tiny) spaceships.
This is my favorite photo from the trip:
This shrunken head is about to sneeze.
I put my phone number against the glass, but it wasn’t interested. Fine, I can take a hint. I know when I’m not withered enough for the popular curiosities to want a piece. At least I’m not a fake, Head! Yeah, you heard me. You and (most) everything else in that display case. A skillful fake that fooled me even after I stood there for three hours and eventually had to be escorted out by security, but a fake all the same. Maybe I’ll make a post about shrunken heads later.
Next, we had dinner in the rotating restaurant at the top of the Space Needle. The restaurant spins around, making a full rotation once ever ~45 minutes, but the walls remain in place. We found a napkin on the windowsill with a conversation on it between two people presumably on opposite sides of the restaurant.
Slowest conversation in Seattle.
Check out the pantspissing gorgeous view from the observation deck.
If you see puke on the camera lens, that was me.
My fear of heights isn’t crippling, which means it’s basically a psychological toy I can use to torment myself when I’ve run out of pranks to play on the people around me.
And speaking of pranks…vandalism isn’t always wrong:
Cyborgs use the crosswalks, too.
That’s public art, man. I would pay extra taxes to have more signs like that.