Boarding Areas August 18, 2007

I’ve been on the road.

More like, I’ve been in the boarding areas.

Two weeks ago I went to Minnesota for Danette’s wedding. D and I were both in Peace Corps so her wedding proved a great opportunity for the PC Thailand group 116 crew to get together and road-trip it up to somewhere-not-near Minneapolis. We did it Thai style — stopping every hour and buying way too much food. Anyway, here’s what the wedding looking like:

So what were the highlights of this trip…? Luke thought it was weird that when I have a magazine from home on the plane, I rip out the address label and furthermore, I rip the label into tiny pieces and scatter them in my area. I suppose I can’t really explain why I do this, but I am sure that it is the right thing to do. For example, should the next passenger find my un-ripped address label, they might try to send me more magazines or worse, stalk me and try to kill me in my sleep for leaving my crap in their seats.

Though we missed the actual wedding and our camping trip turned into a motel trip, it was a great two days. I have a long history of camping trips turning into motel trips and an equally long history of having a blast in random, side-of-the-highway towns (this one was called Fergus Falls). My PC friends are family, so being around them makes me feel all warm and fuzzy (though that also may have been the beer).

Moving on, the next weekend my best friend Jacki came from Madrid via NYC, Massachusetts, Michigan and a few other places. For the occasion, we threw a BBQ in the yard behind the apartment. We crocked it pretty hard all day and as a result, the chili was widely praised (yes, chili for a 90 degree summer BBQ. I do not limit my crock pot seasonally). Add to that burgers, pork loins, mojitos, no-trees-falling, and you get a really fun Glover Park evening. Jacki, Luke and I rounded out the weekend with a trip to the Portrait Gallery which is now my favorite museum in all of DC.

So this week I went on back-to-back work trips. First stop was Raleigh, NC, where I basically saw nothing and have nothing clever to say. They call their Beltway a Beltline. That was pretty interesting. Oh, my car was “upgraded” to a soccer mom mini-van. When car rental companies say “upgrade” they really mean “bigger, clunkier, uglier GM car.” From Raleigh I went to “but-it’s-a-dry-heat” Phoenix. My friends, when it is 115, heat is heat. This dry heat nonsense is bunk, I say. Phoenix looks like LA, only orange-ier.

So now I’m back in the district. I’m seriously considering unpacking but not able to motivate as of yet. It looks like a beautiful Saturday (read: not humid) so perhaps we’ll take the Kia out for a Saturday afternoon spin.

 

Jessica June 10, 2007

My weekend visitor, fellow Peace Corps Thailand group 116 volunteer, Jessica. Jessica lives in an igloo in South Anchorage that she built with her own two hands and she commutes to her job at the ice factory on a dog sled.

She was very impressed by the fact I could stay out till 2am on Friday while Luke was off to bed shortly after midnight. Of course, on Saturday I fell asleep at midnight while she and Luke and fellow PC volunteer Amanda were up to 4, so it all evened out.

Highlight of the visit: looking across my porch and seeing Jessica on Saturday night and remembering how many hours we passed sitting next to each other on my porch in Wang Thong, Thailand. She was a regular there because she lived in the next door province. She used to come over all the time and watch the dogs and the water buffaloes and motorcycles go by. I hadn’t realized how much I missed Jessica porch time!