What? You're still reading??

So the ol' blog is a year old this week. Gootchie-goo! Isn't it cute?

It's grown bored of navel-gazing and has toddled off to taste those chemicals under the kitchen sink. The Drano should make for a FANTASTIC blog entry! And if stomach pumping is involved -- all the better!


NOTE: If the video gets stuck, click on the progress bar just after the marker.

Thanknesses

Starry nights

Airplanes

Photos of freaky phosphorescent fanged fish at the bottom of the sea

Warm spring soil

Squash, squash, squash

Vaccines

Screamin' orange poppies

People who are required to love me

People who choose to love me

Words

Arch support

Godiva in all its forms, even naked

Seashells

A God who knows me

A God who keeps his distance while I decide what I want

Clean tap water

Funky bass lines

Kevin Kline

A certain revolutionary feminine hygiene product that I'm too shy to name

Air conditioning

Things that are nothing like Ronald McDonald

Extended deadlines

Small children who look into my soul and smile anyway

Freedom to flee the kitchen

The kitchen

This post brought to you in part by...

Doughnuts.

In recent years my mom's childhood friend has invited us to stay in her parents' beautiful beachfront house on Maury Island, west of Seattle. Her father made his fortune designing and manufacturing doughnut machines, and one of my mom's first jobs was working his doughnut booth at the Seattle World's Fair.

So thank you to Mary for the hospitality and the fridgeful of delicious food, thank you to Mary's parents for letting us stay in their house, and thank you to America for trading your dough for doughnuts. Y'all got happy tastebuds, and we got a lovely vacation. Everybody wins!

Here is the view from the deck of the beachhouse.

Here is the view from one of my bedroom windows.

And here's the view from my other bedroom window.

Are you jealous yet?

Here is the spider who hung out on the deck the whole time we were there. I called him Irving. He looks less creepy when you call him Irving.

The inhabitants of Maury Island (and its sister island, Vashon) have their own angle on life and sense of humor. The island's mom and pop thrift shop won't take unwanted exercise machines and the mainland is only accessible by ferry, so the residents have started a waterfront gym with their castoff hamster wheels, for any crazies who would rather run in place than explore the beautiful island.



The first night I stayed in Bellevue with my wonderful cousin Jen. We went to a funky Seattle costume shop in search of her Halloween getup.

Satan needs a hug!

Murderous warthogs make fun pets.

Does your boyfriend have a weird thing for Hermione Granger? Then here's the costume for you-ewwwww. (On second thought, just dump him -- he sounds like a sicko.)

Sign o' the times, I'm tellin' ya. Sign o' the times.

Formal accessories: for that final touch of upper class sleaze.

Wynne's blog had a link to a page where you can buy these neat haunted portraits. It was fun to see one for myself. (They seem to be super good holograms.)

And on the way home: the spooky Fremont Troll, lurking beneath an overpass.

We spent an afternoon at the Museum of Glass in Tacoma, and got to watch the Venetian artist Lino Tagliapietra work his magic in fire and ice.

Is he really the "greatest living glass blower," as billed? I don't know, but he was fascinating all the same.

And with a name like that, you know he has to be the greatest living something.

Outside the museum, on a bridge over the freeway, are permanent installations of Dale Chihuly's glass work: one of his glass ceilings and a wall showcasing some of his funky vases.

Now let's play a quick round of "Spot the Chihuly Transparent Hermaphroditic Cherub Being Eaten By a Sea Creature"!

This one's harder -- can you see it??

Pike Place had all its regular charms, and a few new ones. Or at least new to me. This is the first street pianist I've ever encountered. I wish I'd asked him where he keeps that thing at night. Does he wheel it up the steep steep hills to his apartment? Or just bike lock it to the street sign?

If there's anything funnier than French people, it's American people who reeeeally want to be French people.

We discovered a Russian bakery, Piroshky Piroshky, that was so so yummy. The others got dinner pastries and I got a whole apple baked in pastry and piped with fresh whipped cream. Might as well crawl back into the womb. Who knew Russian food was edible -- let alone delicious?

We even spotted one of those blessed doughnut machines, spitting out hot little spudnuts for the Market crowd.

Yummy sugar.

Yummy vacation.

All in all, a splendid little trip. I could definitely be a Washingtonian.

'Cause when it rains, I look up, not down.

And when the fish hits the fan, I open my mouth.

Sometimes I love spam.

I thought I'd seen it all, when this little beaut arrived in my inbox. Do you think it could be for real? I don't think they have female exorcists -- or do they?

Someone stop me before I click "Reply"...

Honorable

It is with great honor and pleasure that I the President and Founder of the only Portuguese Association of Exorcists located in Fatima, Portugal, wish to introduce to you our goals and objectives in anticipation of your future collaboration with our organization.

In order to familiarize you with the founder I wish to offer you the following curriculum vitae information which will clearly shows my lifelong dedication to this study and cause.

Your past and present interest in this area is of mutual interest and more so to our organization as it is composed of only international professionals in the area and study of Exorcisms.

As a roman Catholic Priest, ordained in the Jesuit Seminary I have now seeked to establish a society where all members would assist and collaborate towards a common goal of continuing study and practicing of this ritual.

We will be promoting the assistance of priests and other practitioners from all religious and non religious sectors in order to provide this much needed and in high demand service to the needed. The society members will be recommended after properly certification from our Society to perform the ritual as it is requested from all parts of the world.

We further intend to hold an annual convention of practitioners in our headquarters in Fatima, Portugal and would be honored to have your presence in this event to be scheduled at a later date.

The International Society of Exorcists, proudly invites you to become a member of this organization and would be very interested in receiving your reply and recommendations as early as possible.

I wish to thank you in advance for accepting this invitation and we are looking forward to meeting with you here in Fatima, Portugal in the very near future.

Best Regards

Fr. M. Humberto Gama
Founding President

I'm only vain on Halloween. I swear.

Okay, so it's not the best costume of all time. But I dreamed it up on October 31 during my lunch break, found all the materials on the way home from work, and assembled it before the party. So yes, I'm pleased with myself.

Oh, in case you're wondering what in the *%!!#@ I was supposed to be, I was a Nuclear Disaster. But you can call me Captain Kirk's latest conquest if you prefer.

Of course, I learned a painful lesson with this hurried costume. Turns out the reason spirit gum was invented is that Rubber Cement, when applied to the face, causes intense burning and redness. Cheapskate Marie learned this the hard way, after applying all 20 googley eyes to her forehead, and then having to rip them off, rub off the Rubber Cement in a agonized frenzy, and start over with Alene's Craft Glue (which, as it turns out, does great on skin and comes off easily at the end of the night -- phew!) Hopefully my children won't be born with 20 eyes as a result of this toxic costuming blunder.

Since high school I've preferred these improvised last minute costumes to the more thought-out numbers. No doubt this has much to do with my college-honed talent of last-minute paper writing and the excitement of pulling something mildly impressive out of my head right at the buzzer. Makes me feel all superior. My most successful day-of-the-party emergency costume was the Relief Society Centerpiece* hat, which won rave reviews from my coworkers and made a very popular White Elephant gift the next Christmas. I still get a glow of pride when I think of it.

An eerie green glow of evil mutant pride.
















What were you for Halloween?




* Mormon in-joke.