Twenty-eight pounds of turkey later

I ate more or less constantly this weekend, eschewing the concept of meals for the preferred one of “continual force-feeding”. I also went on several adventures; here’s a breakdown.

Gig Harbor was much as I left it. My mother’s penchant for fattening me up continued unabated, and she prepared a feast for Thursday the likes of which I haven’t seen since… well, probably since eating dinner at Chris Baker’s parents’ house this summer. My mom’s pumpkin pie is the best in the world – obviously nearly everyone says that about their mother’s cooking, but they’re all liars. Take my word on it.

I no longer heart Edith Wharton. In fact, my present feelings for her are somewhere between mild antipathy and seething hatred. I forced myself to make use of the relative calm of my parents’ house to finish The House of Mirth, and now I’m caught up with my reading through last Wednesday.

Friday afternoon Marta picked me up from Fox Island and we drove to Port Angeles. I opted to commandeer the wheel of her Golf, since it was raining, dark, and she doesn’t know the lay of the land west of Tacoma very well. Neither do I, technically, but at least I could get us off Fox Island and back onto highway 16 without incident. 16 and the highways it spawns – 3, 101, 104 – are one-lane for long stretches and have absurdly low speed limits in surprising places. These factors, along with drivers freaked out by the rain, turned a two-hour drive into nearly three.

Every year Kelly hosts an event on the day after Thanksgiving called “Mock Thanksgiving,” a potluck to which you’re not allowed to bring any Thanksgiving food whatsoever. In practice, most attendees just brought beer or vodka, but there was enough food, supplemented by her mother’s cooking, that things worked out. Dude strolled among the revelers all night, and attended a few low-key duets Kelly and I performed on the guitar and viola with fierce enthusiasm. Kelly also spun fire in front of the entire throng, who I corralled outside with a timely announcement – she was a little worried about her parent’s appraisal of spinning fire, but her mother was upstairs and Dude, as Kelly later pointed out, loves burning things. The party wound down around two am, which is tragically early for one of Kelly’s get-togethers.

Kelly woke us at 9:30 the next morning and we went to breakfast at downtown PA’s finest eatery; I think it’s called the Corner Kitchen, or something. It’s one of those charming greasy-spoon diners where everything on the menu has meat in it and the waitresses are all over 70. Business wasn’t terribly hopping, so they tolerated our continued presence at the table long after we’d finished gulping down stacks of pancakes, eggs by the dozen, huge slabs of home fries, and liters of strong coffee. I liked it a lot.

PA literally cleared out after breakfast, leaving Marta and I alone to represent Seattle. Kelly and her sister Lindsay suggested a trip to the Punch Bowl, which we agreed to amiably enough without knowing what it was besides a quaint geographical formation somewhere nearby. I had an idea we’d drive ten minutes, see the thing, then drive back; in reality, we drove for about a half hour to Crescent lake, then hiked a mile or so to the Bowl – Marta and I were sort of itching to get back to proper civilization in Seattle, and I’m not sure we would have agreed to the excursion if we’d known its true nature in advance. What we hiked to is a bluff called The Devil’s Punch Bowl, and is a little lagoon some forty feet deep framed on all sides by sheer cliffs – the water is a beautifully clear blue, and you can see the rock face dive straight down, uninterrupted by the water line. It’s a perfect spot for cliff jumping, and I couldn’t resist. Egged on by the cheers of the assorted freshmen that Lindsay brought along, I plunged 40 feet down into water so cold that my testicles immediately withdrew into my chest cavity. Thankfully it was a short swim to shore. Afterwards we took a “shortcut” through an abandoned train tunnel, groping about in the darkness with only one flashlight between the twelve of us, wielded by Kelly, who brought up the rear. Eventually I became so frustrated with her lighting work that I struck off on my own, stumbling along by the light of my cell phone, which was dimmer but a good deal more constant. Later Kelly told me that she couldn’t keep the light trained ahead because she had to keep swinging it backwards to ensure that no subterranean monsters were in pursuit – I’m serious here; Kelly entertains any number of irrational fears with a light chuckle (ask her about lake weeds some time). At the other side of the tunnel we had to scramble up a bank of shale through an opening less than two feet high, getting thoroughly filthy in the process. I asked one of the freshmen, already waiting at the top, why I’d just crawled about in the belly of the earth for ten minutes when we could have walked around the hill in half the time; they didn’t have a good answer.

Kelly has several dogs that all seem to be identical at first – they’re all the same breed of Spaniel – but are completely different. Bogey is the overgrown puppy, who is so easily excited that they leash him to a clothesline most of the time, and he runs from one end to other constantly, attacking anyone foolish enough to wander inside his range with the full force of his love. The dog has so much energy that when he runs he looks like he’s always about to fall forward onto his face. Dosey is the second-oldest, but due to her slight obesity and strange eye condition seems ancient. She’s generally unpleasant, especially when she sticks her leering, dripping face into yours. Hoko is the oldest, and is everyone’s favorite dog. He’s well-behaved, lovable, and affectionate, and has no unpleasant hygiene problems. We took him on a walk of Jensen estate, and he tore into the base of an old snag in which some animal had evidently nested at some point, using his mouth to ply off big chunks of dead wood. It was hilarious. Meanwhile, Bogey ran frantically back and forth, grasping twigs that were attached to huge braches and hauling them around dumbly. They’re fun dogs.

Marta and I are both sick. Laurel came down with it first, then passed it on to her roommate; I should have known I would be the next to fall, but I’m still stubbornly clinging to the idea that I have a strong immune system, a claim being continually repudiated lately. We’re both coughing up cubic miles of dense mucus, and my voice is almost completely gone – not being able to talk is kind of a big deal to someone like me. I never knew the human body could produce this much snot. On the positive side, the illness is more of an annoyance than an impediment, as the last two were. I’m still running at near 100%, but just have to pause every now and then to launch something unspeakable from one orifice or another into the sink. Driving to breakfast yesterday morning, I kept rolling down the window to hock globs of mucus out of it. Kelly thought this was hilarious, especially since Marta was doing the same thing in tandem, and I reminded her that she stole my beer several times the night before – let’s see how funny she thinks it is in three days.

In the financial quarter, I have good news and bad. On the good side, I just found $15 in the pocket of jeans I haven’t worn in a few months; on the bad side, the grant I applied to for $4500 dollars fell through. I have a hard time understanding the latter, given that I was awarded it last year for the same research, and I now have more experience and a higher GPA. Basically, I netted a loss of $4485 this afternoon. Adjust your Christmas present expectations accordingly.

Posted in Musings.