Common Place

My god it’s been quite the month. The last week of the semester began with a goodbye, at least in this lifetime, to Holls. I hope her spirit-as I’m sure it is-is somewhere in the woods, or back on the beach in San Diego, where it’s peaceful and quiet. I finished the semester with a 3.9, which was higher than expected considering my professor’s incompetence in the compassion field; this is ironic considering she has a doctorate in Social Work, or maybe it’s not ironic at all. Anyhow, I’ve grown to not care (okay, to try and not care) about the grades anyways, so just the fact I finished and got to head out on a fantastic adventure out West was good enough for me. Dad and I headed West for a week in early May. Portland was our first stop and it was beautiful and hip- just not as hip as it’s made out to be, considering it took us 2 hours of unsuccessful searching to try and find a bar with some live music that didn’t cost a $20 cover. In hindsight we should have just gone into the blues bar with all of 8 people there-6 of who were young couples awkwardly slow dancing. Definitely next time. The view of Mt. Hood from Pittock’s mansion with the cityscape in the foreground made it perfect in my book. Our adventure to Mt. Rainer was certainly a highlight. We were trapped by more closed roads, like last year in Yosemite, and when we finally made it were greeted by 615ft. of snow total on the volcano. Again in hindsight, maybe I would’ve researched the climate and have been more prepared to hike than shorts and keds. Of course we made it work and it was fantastic, the early stages of frost bite and all! Next was Seattle, which certainly lives up to its name as a great city. Obviously went up the Space Needle and visited the Experience Music Project. But the highlight was probably taking the fairy over to Branbridge Island to eat dinner with Mike Burns, who ran the fishing boat in Alaska Dad worked on for years when he was my age. He was a wicked awkward dude, which made hearing them reminisce even better.He offered me a season on the boat someday, and I may just have to take him up on it one of these days I find myself willing to leave everything behind and hop on a boat for 6 months; I’m sure this moment will come sooner rather than later. Vancouver won my heart. I already have a thing for Canada, and British Columbia supported my romanticized feelings. We biked the entire city and buckled our knees across the Capilano Suspension bridge, cliff walk, and tree-top bridges. Talk about post-vacation blues coming home from that trip. But I got to head up North for the first time of the season the weekend after, which only helped a little. Black flies are out, but Jacky made it up the mountain like the tough man he is and I’d never seen Dad so wasted, on account of Brady’s presence. Midnight babysitting hikes up Eagles Nest kept the adventure from the West going to say the least. Now I’m back to working full time at the child care center and today met with Watkins to begin this book. She had a change in plans, as to be expected. We’re going to work on a girl focused book now- the focus being: girl culture in out of school time youth centers. The goal is to send it out to publishers by the time I walk across the stage a year from now and say Adios. We’ll see how well this goes. Also came on board with the Cardboard City Committee, so planning is in action for the event in late July. Today was relieving, as Brantley took the plea and will be locked away and out of mind- at least for the next 12 years. Tatum faces brain surgery tomorrow, which I’m going to jump the optimistic ball and say will go text book and all will be fine. Leeds is a go, although there’s still a lot of logistics to be worked out in all this free time I find myself having-not. At least the new mewithoutYou album is fucking amazing? Yeah, at least there’s that. Phew. All caught up.