Category Archives: Dave

high school haunting

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In just a few short hours, I’ll be getting on a plane headed for Seattle. Hooray! I’ll be getting back around 3:30 or 4 in the afternoon, and I am going straight to Dave’s house to see Teenie and to lounge in his big jacuzzi tub until he gets home from work. I have been counting the hours until I get to enjoy those jet-produced bubbles since yesterday. I absolutely cannot wait.

Other news: A couple of months ago, a guy I went to high school with called my mom because he’s organizing a class reunion & wanted my contact information. I had just moved, and my mom (being a total scatterbrain) couldn’t find my new address, so she just got his email address & said she’d have me get in touch with him. This is not a person that I have particularly strong feelings about one way or the other – he was a relatively nice guy for a jock-type. The weird part about him contacting me is that I technically didn’t graduate with him – I skipped my senior year of high school & graduated in ’93, not ’94. But I guess my graduating class was small enough (about 30 people) that he was trying to get as many people as possible. And we did go to school together for 7th through 11th grades, so I suppose that’s close enough. Fine. So I emailed him, said hi, gave him my address & phone number, and told him that I probably wouldn’t be able to attend since I live in Seattle now and only get back to Mississippi once a year at Christmas. It was quick & painless, and I thought that was the end of it.

Then the day before yesterday, I got an email from him, which had absolutely nothing to do with class reunions or high school, it was just some forwarded thing about not using Swiffer WetJets because they supposedly have some chemical in them that will kill your pets (which I’m almost positive is an urban myth). But the email was addressed to everyone in his address book, which includes damn near everyone that I went to high school with. I can’t explain how mixed my feelings are about that. Some of them are people who I wouldn’t mind talking to, just out of genuine curiosity to see how they’re doing or what they’ve done with their lives for the past decade, and a few of them are people who I still actively dislike to this day. I don’t like knowing that I could contact them if I wanted to, or (even worse) that they could contact me. So for the last 2 nights, I’ve been having dreams about people from high school trying to track me down, with me trying to run away and escape. It’s weird because I know that I’m not the same person I was in 1993, and I’m sure that none of them are either, but I don’t want anything to do with them, as childish as that may seem. You’d think that since I’m proud of the accomplishments that I’ve made with my life, I might want to get in touch with them just to show off – like, “look what I’ve done, ha!” But that’s not me. I have never regretted skipping my senior year and not graduating with the rest of my class, and I always thought doing that would make me exempt from these particular types of situations, but apparently not.

More in the other news department: My cousin, who’s four years younger than me, just got engaged. I know I should be happy for him, but… throw up.

Oh, and I’m getting my tattoo tomorrow. Pictures will be posted. Yay!

happy 4th

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I made an attempt at throwing a party last night for the 4th. The roof of my building has an amazing view of the fireworks over Puget Sound, so I thought I would take advantage of that and have a few folks over to take in the sights with me. It turned out to be a pretty low-key event – just me, Dave, Carl, and Krissy (who was so well-behaved that I almost didn’t recognize her) – but I think everyone had a reasonably good time. I personally had a lot of fun, it’s nice to just sit and talk about nothing in particular for hours. And I’ve never watched fireworks with a boyfriend before, I was surprised at just how romantic it is. (Who knew?) I also drank waaaaay beyond my limit, which I suppose is fine since I was at home, and if you can’t get sloppy drunk in the comfort of your own surroundings, where can you? Surprisingly, I feel fine today, which is probably due to all of the water and vitamins I downed before I fell asleep last night. I’m a bit sleepy, but no nausea or headache or anything. So that’s cool. I guess I’m a pretty efficient lush after all. (Ha!)

This afternoon, I’m heading out to Duvall with Teenie to get her settled in for another week at Dave’s house while I’m in California. I think she’s starting to like it there, she has much more space to run around than she does here. She seems to have a bit of cabin fever in this tiny apartment, there’s been lots of pacing and meowing over the weekend. Now if we can just get her to stop bitchslapping Dave’s cats whenever they come within 10 feet of her…

no international travel for now

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Yesterday, Dave & I were supposed to go to Victoria, BC, for the wedding of a friend of his. I’m not allowed to tell the full story of exactly why we couldn’t go, but let’s just say that he & I are apparently both far too irresponsible to be trusted to leave the country without adult supervision. So instead, we went to Alki and lay on the beach for a couple of hours. That was great, except it didn’t occur to me to bring sunscreen, and I got burned pretty badly. Ow.

One funny moment at the beach: At one point I was lying on my stomach and sort of surveying the people walking on the beach between us (at the shore) and the street. I saw this guy, thought “gee, that looks like… [insert double take]… I mean that REALLY looks like…. [insert triple take]… hey, I think that’s Scott!” And sure enough, it was. Very random to just spot him walking along the beach like that. He sat & chatted with us for a while, then went off to explore the tent where the scientologists were trying to cultivate new members. (I’m not making that up – they really did have a tent set up at the beach.)

After the beach, Dave & I went to Artcore Studios to talk to Bishop about the tattoo that I want. He roughly sketched out his idea for my tattoo based on what I had told him I wanted (sort of a repeat of the conversation we had a couple of months ago, but a bit more elaborate), and I think it’s going to be really awesome. And I set an appointment, which will be on Saturday, July 10th, at 2:30 p.m. I can’t wait. There will be photos when it happens, don’t worry.

Oh, also, Dave & I met up with my cousin Catherine for dinner on Friday night. That was a smashing success, if I do say so myself. It was great to see her & catch up on family stuff, dinner was great (mmmm… Flying Fish), and Dave & Cat seemed to like each other. So for an initial family member meeting, I think it went really well. I’m still waiting to get the pictures that Cat took on her digital camera, but I’ll post them as soon as I get them.

Actually, thinking of photos, I have a lot that still need to be added to this site. I suppose I should work on that today while I’m just slacking around the house doing laundry and cleaning. Hmmm… We’ll see.

I’m going back to California tomorrow morning. Yippee.

frequent flyer miles, here I come

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Last week at work was pretty interesting, it’s just taken me this long to try to wrap my head around what’s going on so that I can write about it coherently, and I’m still not sure that I can. Basically, even though I’ve been in Seattle for the last couple of months, my job is to be a consultant for anywhere on the west coast that I may be needed. So as of this Wednesday, I’m going to be flying to Santa Ana, CA every week from now until Labor Day. (They said something about 8 weeks, but I looked at the calendar & counted – it’s actually 11 weeks – so I’m not sure which number is accurate.) But in a nutshell, for the next 2 months, I’m going to be flying out every Monday morning & flying back every Friday afternoon. So I’ll still get my weekends in Seattle, but I’ll be gone most of the time.

And even though I knew this was going to be a big part of my job when I took it, I’m really not happy about it at all. I feel like I was just starting to really enjoy my life here in Seattle – I have the new apartment in the city, I’ve been much more active socially, I found a really great guy (awwww…), I’m getting more exercise, etc. And now I feel like that’s all getting yanked away from me. Plus, I love the mild summers in Seattle, so why the hell would I want to go to southern California? (Granted it’s been brutally hot here for the last few days, but that’ll pass soon – it always does.) It just sucks, I’ve been crying a lot lately. Plus I hate flying, I have anxiety attacks every time there’s the slightest bit of turbulence, so the thought of doing it 16-22 times over the next couple of months does not sound like fun at all. I have a doctor’s appointment tomorrow afternoon, I plan on asking her for some kind of mild tranquilizer to help chill me out. I usually just drink before I get on the plane, but I think a prescription would probably be safer (and cheaper).

On the other hand, it sounds like the work I’m going to be doing is really good – it’s all interesting stuff that I haven’t done before – I just wish I could do it locally.

Meanwhile, Dave, who is rapidly on his way to earning the title of the Best Boyfriend In The Entire History Of The Universe (or, BBITEHOTU), has offered to take care of Teenie while I’m gone. How sweet is that? We’ll give it a trial run this week to see how she gets along with his kitties (I’m expecting lots of fur to fly). If that doesn’t work out, then I guess I’ll have to figure out what to do with her, whether that’s a pet-sitter or maybe I’ll fly her down with me sometimes. We’ll see. But that’s the update of all the goings-on in my life right now.

weekend summary

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Friday: Dave & I went to see Scott do his Emerald City Swing thing. That was cool. We hung out briefly afterward just to say hi to Scott & Ted, then went to a (very late) dinner at the Waterfont Restaurant at Pier 70. I must say, if any of you Seattleites haven’t been there, you must go. It’s expensive, but so worth it. I’ve been fantasizing about the scallops for the past 2 days, they were incredible. And the desserts… mmmm… in retrospect, we probably should’ve gotten the creme brulee in a to-go box, because it was really hard to keep myself from making little happy noises while I was eating it. It is so awesome, it’ll make your toes curl. You can quote me on that.

Saturday: My cell phone died. For some reason it just wouldn’t turn on at all, even though it was charged. I took it to the T-Mobile store, and they had to get me a new battery, except what should’ve taken 10 minutes ended up taking almost an hour because they couldn’t seem to get my phone apart. It appears that the cover was jammed somehow. (I swear I didn’t do it.) They ended up having to cut the back of the phone off completely and then gave me a new cover. So finally that was fixed, then I ran a couple of other errands and headed out to Duvall. And I must say, Dave’s house is actually quite lovely, and not nearly as “scary bachelor pad” as I was expecting. (Except for the wasps’ nests on the eaves of the house, those have gotta go.) It’s obviously still a work in progress, but it’s got potential to be really amazing. And the master bath has one of those gigantic jacuzzi tubs with jets in it – the kind of bathtub that’s been in my fantasy dream house as long as I can remember – so I told Dave that even if he turns out to be a complete jerk, I’m still going to try to make things work so I can come over & use his tub. 🙂

So, Saturday night, we made dinner – or rather, I made dinner, and Dave entertained me while I made a mess of his kitchen. And we watched the end of “Lost in Translation” (which we started last week but never finished) and “Monster”. Both were really good, I thought. But “Monster” had some truly disturbing scenes in it that I can’t seem to get out of my head. It’s definitely not a movie for the squeamish.

Oh, and for the record, I never saw a single alpaca in Duvall. I did, however, see a mama duck leading her little troop of baby ducks across the street, and they were damn cute.

Sunday: Slacked off. Made a bunch of phone calls. Went to the grocery store. Watched the first episode of the new season of “Six Feet Under”. Was fast asleep by 9:00. Overall, very very good weekend.

geeks + pop culture = uh… something weird

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This morning as I was walking to work, I noticed something strange as I approached my building. The sidewalk widens out quite a bit in front of the building, so cars can pull up onto it – it’s a 30 minute load/unload zone. I spotted this huge black Suburban, which wouldn’t have been all that noticeable except the personalized license plate said “FABPRTNRS” and it was trimmed in hot pink maribou (explanation for the guys: that’s the fluffy feather stuff that they make boas out of). Perhaps more conspicuous than the SUV itself, was that in front of the SUV was a camera crew, complete with crane microphones and all. The Suburban backed up, sped forward, screeched to a halt, 5 of the gayest-looking men I’ve ever seen hopped out, they did one of those sports huddle things (all hands in the center and they yell something in unison), then they ran into my building. The camera crew filmed the whole thing. The weird part is that it wasn’t the guys from “Queer Eye”, but it sure as hell looked like that’s what they were filming. I ran into one of my co-workers outside and asked him what was going on. He was like “Oh that, it’s some internal Microsoft thing for one of their meetings or something…”

Did I mention that we share a building with Microsoft?

I have to say, I was kind of disappointed. There are a few dudes at work who are in dire need of make-overs, I was kind of hoping that the Queer Eye guys had come to Seattle. But alas, it is not to be. Still, that is one of the strangest things I’ve seen all week.

Apropos of nothing: last night I got a paper cut on my right thumb when I was opening my mail. This morning, when I went to get my bagel out of the toaster (Friday is free bagel day at work), I burned my left thumb. I am such a klutz.

Tonight, I’m going to see Scott boogie down with his Emerald City Swing group. Tomorrow, I’m going to explore the thriving metropolis that is Duvall, WA. I feel bad making Dave drive 45 minutes into the city every time we go out, so I’ve volunteered to go to the boonies. If you guys don’t hear from me again, it means I’ve been attacked by a roving gang of alpacas. I hear they’re all over the place out there.

pimp my friends

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So, my weekend with Dave was lovely. We went to the Seattle Art Museum yesterday because the weather was kind of icky, so we figured it’d be good to stick to indoor activities. I’d never been to the museum before and I had no idea just how extensive their collection is. Right now there’s some rich family’s private art collection on display, and they have a whole roomful of Van Gogh’s. Color me impressed.

After the museum we walked through Pike Place Market (always nice, I love the little old Asian ladies selling those enormous bouquets of flowers) and wandered back to my place. We chilled for a while, then went to Blockbuster, rented a couple of movies, and ordered in for dinner. And of course, at some point I opened my big mouth and mentioned something about my blog (damn spiced rum & diet coke! It’s like truth serum, I tell ya), which seemed to really peak his interest. I wouldn’t give him the address because all I’ve been doing for the past 2 weeks is talking about how big a crush I have on him, and that’s kind of embarassing. But he’s a reasonably intelligent guy, so I’m just waiting for him to Google me & find this site. Oh well, what are you gonna do? Everyone say “hi, Dave!”

Oh, and today I just found out that Kris (this would be my best friend Kris, not insane Krissy or guy friend Chris G., or my little brother Chris) is in Chattanooga for some work training seminar thing, but she was bored because she has nothing to do until tomorrow morning. So I called my ex-boyfriend, Stowe, who lives there and told him to take her out for a drink. She called me from the ladies room a few minutes ago to tell me that she was having a great time. She sounded a little bit drunk. I’m sort of wondering if they’re going to hook up. I know it’s probably weird, but I honestly have no jealousy issues with that at all. I’m totally over him – we dated 5 years ago, for god’s sake – and I know he’s a good guy, so if they want to have a good time while she’s in town, that’s fine by me. Good for them.

Hope everyone had as much fun this weekend as I did.