L’esprit d’escalier

Or, more accurately, gone drinking.

Off to Feathermeet for the weekend, spending time in Seattle with a group of awesome people and returning a book to its rightful owner (I hear he has one of my hair clips to offer in exchange).

Try not to blow up the internets while I’m away.

Dear Hill:

I still have it.

(And for the curious, if you can read it off the picture, the website still exists. Warning: the design alone will make your eyes bleed, not to mention the content…)

We spent this past weekend up in the North Woods of Wisconsin, at Marty’s family cottage in Three Lakes. There was drinking and boating and games and oh my god so much good food. I’m desperately waiting for Shannon’s guacamole recipe, so much so that I’m tempted to go buy some premade from Whole Foods for lunch today, though I know it just won’t be the same.

We went to the Mars Cheese Castle on the way there. I am sorry to say that it is not, in fact, a castle made of cheese, though I suppose that would get pretty stinky pretty fast. Still, there were many Good Things to Eat inside, including some kind of three-foot-long jerky sticks that made me pretty glad I wasn’t in the guys’ car.

The girls had tiaras (awww yeah) and travel games and snacks (Von won at travel bingo. I hereby claim the assist, since I managed to bury my board under stuff and just started pointing out things to mark off.) I was not on the trip to the store that yielded a bear sighting. I did, however, see a drunken chipmunk. He was quite disappointed when Marty took his booze-soaked watermelon away.

We took a walk down a country road in the dark, no flashlights, not a ton of moonlight. It was so very quiet, such a change from even our little suburb, where the sound of traffic is never really far.

Greg and Von made us a fire, and there were s’mores and geek-talk. It’s weird – I’ve, y’know, showered and washed my hair and all since coming home, but I keep thinking I’m smelling woodsmoke every now and then. It’s not a bad thing, really, sort of the last traces of an awesome weekend, making me smile while I ease back into this whole work thing.

Pictures forthcoming at some point, when I get them off of my camera and upload ‘em.

My inbox this morning was filled with 47 pieces of what I call corporate junk mail (“There’s cake in the fridge on the 17th floor!” Yeah, thanks, that’d be helpful if I were in the New York office) and 35 actual non-junk emails. Twelve of those were industry newsletters I’ve signed up for. 23 real emails, and most of those just FYI type things. Maybe seven that required any actual action on my part. Not so bad for three days off.

Anyway, yeah. Back at my desk, wishing I were still up in the woods, sipping coffee with friends and letting the day stretch out before us.

How’s everyone been?

I still have a couple of days left where I can state that I’m 29 and not be lying. (Although, I don’t think I’ll ever be making that false claim, anyway. I’m really not freaked out by the whole turning-30 thing.)

I got to start the celebrating a little early. Hooray for a birthday weekend! I’m still, as you can see from the title, /squeeing over it.

Friday night was a party for Greg’s mom’s birthday. I don’t know what was wrong with me, but just before we got there, I started feeling pretty sick. I chalked it up to not having eaten very much during the day, figured I just needed to get some food into my system. I managed a couple of sips of beer, some salad and crackers-and-tabbouleh, and then decided the wise thing to do would be to put everything far away from me and just kind of smile and nod my head at conversations while concentrating on not-getting-sick. Someone handed me a slice of rum cake about the size of my head, and I passed it to my mother after a forkful (ha! And she thought she was going to be all low-calorie.)

I finally gave up on the grin and bear it thing around 9:30, and told Greg I needed to head out. As we were pulling out of his parents’ driveway, he asked what my plans were for the rest of the night.

“Go home, lay down, and feel sorry for myself.”

“Oh,” he said. “Guess that means I’ll head down to Providence by myself.”

I blinked at the clock. “What the fuck is in Providence?”

“Marty and Shannon.”

I let out a very undignified squee. We went home and I crawled into bed for a half hour, though sleep didn’t come as easily as I’d been planning on for some reason. Excitement’ll do that to a girl. But I did drift off, and woke up feeling a hell of a lot better.

And down to Providence we went.

They flew in for my 30th, because my friends and family are the most awesome people ever. I had been entertaining the notion of “Wouldn’t it be wicked cool if they came out,” but even when a couple of people slipped up a bit, I told myself I was looking for clues where there really weren’t any.

Turns out I could have been collecting clues all along. Go me!

Saturday was for lunch at Legal Seafoods. I got to see my friends Maura and Jackie, who I don’t spend nearly enough time with (especially since I’d be surprised if Jackie has spent more than a year in the US since we graduated college.) That definitely needs to be remedied.

After our bellies were full, we moved along to the family-and-friends party in Abington. There were collections of Embarrassing Pictures From My Childhood all over the house, but none of them were actually scanned onto a cake, so it was okay. (I mean, come on, how creepy is it to slice into a picture of yourself, and then watch other people eat it?) If I can get my hands on the one of my at three years old with a bucket on my head, I may have to incorporate it into this page somewhere. My friends found it highly amusing. I think I was wise – even at three years old, I was hiding from the camera.

I was spoiled rotten with gifts – books and booze, a scarf from Afghanistan, a purse, pocket money (which translates into coffee and more books!), a pony… well, a pony ride… and haikus.

And best of all, spending a weekend with my favoritest people in the world.

I kept looking around the room, deliriously happy to just have everyone there, having a good time.

Afterwards, we made our way to Eric’s and watched Weeds which has reminded me of my love for Mary Louise Parker. I have a sudden urge to have a West Wing marathon.

Sunday morning, Dave, Hill, Marty, Shannon, Greg and I went to Strawberry Fair for brunch. Oh, sweet, sweet coffee. And fresh-baked bread. Then a trip to Plymouth so Shannon could see the Atlantic from this side of the ocean (we declared that Florida doesn’t count.) I am not sure if Marty went home with all his toes, what with stepping into the freezing cold water in February.

Then, as much as we wanted to keep them forever and ever, we had to bring the Chicago contingent back to the airport. And, except for the Pats game (which we will not speak of, Precious, noooo), the weekend was over.

I am still recovering from the awesome. I hope everyone had as good a time as I did. I have the best friends ever.