mia got lasik done today and i got to watch/comfort/drop my jaw in amazement at modern science. the good news is that she can now see without glasses — one minute(!) after some oddly clockwork orange/chien andalou (both nsfw!) eye-opening/eye-slicing surgery (which was pretty awesome and pretty insane to watch from my ringside seat), she had 20/30 vision. the bad news is that it hurt when the valium wore off, so she’s now in a deep vicodin-induced sleep. i think that the wake-up-in-pain-request-a-vicodin cycle is going to persist until tomorrow morning’s follow-up appointment. and of course, lots of different eyedrops.

to summarize: cool to watch, cool that she can see, cool that she came out of it ok (touch wood), but megabummer that there’s so much pain.

also, in rereading this post, it seems that it was maybe written by an in-love-with-quirky-punctuation(and parentheticals) 12-year-old. bleh.

mia is in phila for the weekend because that’s the kind of patriot she is. she called me from the wedding of three centuries, which was taking place at independence hall. apparently the guy who plays ben franklin is marrying the woman who plays betsy ross. i had a million follow-up questions, but there was a concert starting and she had to go.

oh. wait. this actually made the news? really? follow-up questions averted.

full story here and here.

last sunday morning, i woke up with this mysteriously achieved cut across the bridge of my nose that made me look like someone (the cat?) punched me with some amount of force. it hasn’t healed yet. this weekend, pc was in town and we went down to the western bridge gallery. there was a bouncy castle installation. we went in and jumped around. i had this awesome idea to attempt a back flip, which led to me landing on my head (sucked) and then kneeing myself in the eye (double sucked). insult to injury: pc was taking video while the jumping around was happening.

there’s something awesome about receiving a black eye for conceptual art, there’s something less awesome about being taunted for it at work on monday morning.

and spending some time with her little brother in the magic kingdom. because she’s gone, i’m taking full advantage of dude time: catching up on movies i’ve never seen (the manchurian candidate was awesome), buying the queen mother of all juicers (used on craigslist), eating cilantro (she has that thing that makes cilantro taste like soap), going surfing up in the strait, and today i headed over to the range to fire off a few rounds on the rented ar-15 assault rifle.

it’s a fine weapon. light, accurate at 50′, easy to shoot. however, it’s expensive to rent, so i’m not sure i’ll be getting it again.

i first saw the plane on the train from my office window the other day and became giddy with excitement. there’s something about a plane on a train, the same way there would probably be something about a hare on a tortoise, if that ever happened.

my ride this morning took me through the train yards, where i spotted them again. but this time i had (a shitty blackberry) camera with which to document this love story.

a chance encounter on a train. a weekend layover in seattle before they had to get back to work on monday morning.

not even a small stenciled warning could keep them apart.

my baby brother, who just emailed me this gem:

i went to see a friend’s band play at the hollywood house of blues last night. super-weird night. i was in the bathroom next to dee snider when “we’re not gonna take it” came on. pretty awesome.

i have no idea how he kept a straight face, i suspect that he didn’t.

steinberg and i have been dating for four years as of march 1st. to celebrate, we went out to the olympic peninsula. it’s a really amazing place. huge mountains, views of canada, and beautiful beaches (and sometimes good surf, but not yesterday, luckily). we wandered around these beaches i’ve been wanting to show her, we went on a short hike, and took a short xc ski up at hurricane ridge. evidence below.

more photos here.

strangely, it only just occurred to me that if we had gone on our first date one day earlier than we did in 2004, we’d only celebrate it every four years. leap-year anniversary would maybe be cooler. anyway, it was a perfect weekend. thanks, berg!

sort of strangely, i can’t recall seeing any photos of my parents before their wedding portraits in 1968. there are stories: first date at aunt jemima’s house of waffles (my father ate his and then finished hers — if i remember correctly), my mother going against my grandfather’s wishes and visiting my father in incredibly snowy oswego ny for homecoming weekend, etc. but no photos.

luckily, lately, my aunt has been scanning and sending photos from her old collection. i think that this one is my favorite because it gives me a glimpse into my parents’ pre-married lives (i’m pretty sure this is pre-1968). though the more that i look at it, the more i realize that their pre-married lives don’t look particularly dissimilar from their lives now (minus the cut-off levi’s). that’s something, i think. forty years is a long time.

oh, and the other reason i love this photo is the hands on the neck. without smiles, the context changes, especially given the three people he already strangled on the ground behind them. just kidding, pop.

the year was 1982 and e.t. had just hit the theaters (my brother and i used to call him, ‘e.t. — the extra testicle’. which used to make us crack up. hey, fuck you, i was 8.). universal studios california did a whole big e.t. thing. my grandmother (gram, to us) went to visit a friend in l.a. and got her picture taken as elliott.

i had forgotten all about this picture until a few years ago when i went back to my parents house and was rummaging around in some boxes. finding it was like striking gold, only without the monetary reward.

i’ll spare you the sentimentality and simply say that she was rad. and funny. peep that grin.

hey hi. happy new year. i was gone for a while. a few action/family-packed days on the east coast and then back to seattle for a day before a fun-filled backcountry trip to the eastern side of the cascades for new years. both christmas and new years were great, however the coming-down after is, as always, hard. i feel a little lost. and isolated. and out of shape. i think that only the last of those three things are bothering me.

we went up to scottish lakes high camp for three nights to do some xc skiing. we drove about two hours from seattle, which is more remote than you think it could be. we got picked up at the base of the mountain in a suburban with chains on its wheels for a four-mile drive up to mid-mountain, where we transferred our gear to snowmobiles and rode the next four miles up to high camp.

matt and i got to dogsled attached to the backs of snowmobiles. it was super-fun.

our cabins didn’t have electricity or running water and the only way to heat them was by wood-burning stove. in all of my escape fantasies (i have many), this is how i picture myself living.

the terrain up there was incredible. scenic, empty, and tons of powder. we would go break trail in the morning through 18″ to 24″ of snow, work up an appetite, and then go back out in the afternoon to reap the fruits of our trail-breaking labor, only to find that a bunch of snow had completely filled in our tracks.

it was one of the most beautiful places i’ve ever been and it was hard to leave but the lure of a hot shower and fresh produce proved too much for me to resist.

with my usual sea-kayak partners otherwise occupied yesterday, i headed out on my first solo expedition. on an empty lake with no wind, i made my way over seattle’s industrial waterfront.

it goes without saying that i am no fan of commercial fishery, but there’s something that i find so compelling about seemingly smallish boats that can head out into the ocean and make it back with tales to tell. surfing is teaching me that the ocean has the potential to be a cruel mistress, and i have nothing but respect for its power.

but i wasn’t out on the ocean yesterday, i was on a lake. i assumed that spending a few hours paddling alone would feel the same as spending a few hours running alone but it turned out to be different. maybe not good different. maybe a little boring. that could be the difference between sport and recreation for me: sport is good to do alone, recreation requires others.

apropos of nothing i typed about, here’s the underside of the aurora bridge:

people jump off of this, i wish they wouldn’t.

with the womenfolk off to see some “progressive hiphop” tonight, jason barnwell esq and i felt that we somehow had to balance our small universe, be a yin to their yang, if you will. originally i had suggested beowulf, but then realized that we should go big: head out to eastern washington for indian food and 200 9mm rounds at the indoor range. as my lawyer put it on our way over the lake: gandhi would be proud.

we rented a 9mm pistol. on either side of us, dudes were busting off fully automatic weapons. shit is both loud and disquieting. i was thinking it and then jason said it: there are dudes in close-quarter combat dealing with that all around them as we speak. terrifying.

tuesday is ladies’ night at the range. apparently you have to get there early because it fills up quickly. this won’t be a problem for us because i’m pretty sure that mia has zero interest in joining the second amendment sisters.

i will be a participant. the theme is ‘what i did on my summer vacation’ ‘the environment’. now i just have to think of an appropriate topic. i wish i hadn’t already used that crying indian post.

jesse, mia, and jay did the puyallup (pronounced: pew-AL-up) fair. specifially, the puyallup fair rollercoaster. here’s a video:

we also saw some mutton bustin’. it was funner than i thought it would be. in case you are in the dark about what mutton bustin’ is, here’s an explanatory photo:

just kidding.

that said, if i did smoke, i’d own this cigarette dispensing donkey. the cigarettes come out of its butt.

it’s making the rounds at work today. amazon humor.