What I Did With My Weekend...
Good weekend?
Yes. As is often the case, it’s half a book.
I’m making some plastic claves out of some stuff I melted down a while ago. Cleaning efforts recently show that I have a buttload of red milk caps, so I guess this pair is going to be that color.
So, Laura eventually comes in, and I sit there for a few minutes, quiet. (Do you know how hard that is for me?)
Highlights and lowlights:
Had an excellent lunch at a place called Hogfish Grill. Excellent Thai habanero wings. Cute waitress. Laura was smitten, left her number, and almost immediately felt guilty because, well, she has an internet boyfriend in Walla Walla, Washington.
Next, we went to a whiskey bar and processed the experience with the bartenders. As luck would have it, her phone (Laura’s) rang. Guess who?
The IBF.
She goes outside to have a very serious-looking conversation for about 20 minutes.
Mind you, L has never spent a minute of time in meat space with IBF, but they do World of Warcraft (WoW) raids a lot together. In a guild, I guess she’s in leadership. They’re serious enough to state it on Facebook. He’s a prison guard (!!) out there in WW, W. They call all the time, say “I love you” and shit. Occasionally I am in the room while she has conversations with him. He says “motherfucker” a lot. She has always told him I am there. For some reason, he trusts me not to move in on his girl. She’s not interested in me that way; I’m the same age as her dad. I’ve met him, nice enough guy. Really into his guns, does custom loads, nice workbench, or so I hear.
She eventually comes back in, we sit in silence. Do you know how hard that is for me? I’ll bet you both do.
Eventually, I ask if she wants a shot. Yes. Please.
L loves her whiskey, Irish, blah blah blah.
Mind you, this is a whiskey bar, distillery in the back.
She asks what the bartender’s favorite kind is, thinks she ordered a shot and a whiskey sour, turns out the lady heard it as a whiskey sour with that kind of whiskey. It’s gone fairly quickly. Somewhere along the line, L gave me her keys.
She was the Blackwater soldier at about 18, who used to drink Marines and army dudes under the table.
I notice that there wasn’t a shot; bartender explains her understanding of the order.
L orders another. Bartender says, “Um, well, I, um… don’t think I can serve you any more right now.” Well, shit. Good thing; actually, the drinks were kind of expensive, but nice place. Bottles impeccably arranged, lots of nice glasses, the whole deal. What do they call yuppie places now?
At some point, I ask if they ever have used whiskey barrels because I’m interested in making 1-3 giant drums out of them. I get the founder’s card.
We end up back at her place after visiting Wally World. I was tasked to get:
Caramel chocolate Chocolate with fruit Ice cream I needed to go there to get a headphone to RCA phono jack cord so I can plug NewNumberTwo’s old Polyend Tracker into my stereo.
I drive us back to her place.
A few weeks ago, she asked me if I would be willing to wash her dishes. She doesn’t keep up with them all the time, and the first time, it was kind of bad. (But as we will learn later, there are levels of bad.) I did her dishes, she was surprised that no, I really enjoy doing that.
It’s kind of a meditation for me. My first couple minimum wage jobs were washing dishes.
She sends me back out to get some tonic water. Makes a… whatever you call it when you mix tonic water, gin, and I guess lemon juice. At some point, she has a shot of whiskey, and I have to join (rules), so I had a little bit of rum.
Promised she’ll buy pizza later.
Cracks me a beer, sets it next to the microwave…
Changes into something a little more casual. Shorts, T-shirt.
I have to make a detour to 2002. So we were in this house we called the 93 House. Where Michelle and I lived before we ended up on Crack Street. It was me, Will, Molly, Craig, Michelle, and I think Puck in the basement. Maybe Craig had moved on by this time. Why 93 House? Well, 93 is this significant number to Crowley people, and we were all in the OTO. Masses in the garage out back every month. I took my First degree there.
In those days, I’d learned PF Tek mushroom culture, kind of old and inefficient by today’s standards, but we had a bunch of dried fruits, and we’re having a house party, everyone is tripping. Someone had some Gatorade, it was “Fierce Melon.” I was tickled by the name, I mean, what exactly is fierce about melons? So the joke of the evening is “Fierce Melon, grr.”
Back to 2025. Somewhere in our adventures, she asks me to go into the gas station and get her some Gatorade. What kind? Blue. Or if they have Elon Powerade, get that. I tell her the Fierce Elon story.
And she says, “Well, I have some Elons.”
I was so mean. I can’t believe I said this. I said, “More like grapefruits, but sure.” Kind of hurt her feelings a little.
I get the drinks, got myself a Mountain Dew. I think this was on the way to Hogfish Grill.
Anyway… so I’m washing dishes at her place later, and she comes into the kitchen, says, “This is a one-time never-to-be-repeated offer.”
If I clean up my hands, I can feel her boobs.
I wipe them on my shirt really quick. There was apparently a moment a while back when she offered… well, what I would have liked… one day, and I missed the hint.
Not wanting to do that again, I did… and at first… well, it’s been a little while… and things started happening… and she pulls back and says, “This is weird.”
Because, well, it’s me. So…
But yeah.
I had decided we needed to watch the movie Wizards.
But she says that she doesn’t have the attention span for that, and lookie, there is a women’s soccer game to watch. She’s a fan of the Orlando team, they have this really good player named… I don’t know, African-American chick. We watch that, talking… and she says she’s starting to get hungry for that pizza.
Wants Abo’s.
So I take her debit card, my car, and go to Abo’s, order the pizza, and wait. I was gone for a little bit.
When I got back, I call out that pizza was here. She’s in the bedroom, door closed, having a phone call. Laughs, etc. The pizza starts getting cold, so I ate mine. Eventually, I sit on the dual lazy-boy chair that I helped up the stairs when it was purchased, and she was with her ex, a lesbian woman named Jess, who is now as close to persona non grata because of how she broke it off.
She eventually comes out with her phone on speaker and says, “You guys have never really met… give me the phone.”
Hi Ryan, I’m Bob.
We’ve of course heard stories about each other…
Within a few minutes, R asks if I’m one of those sensitive types… wants to tell a joke.
Ok.
So, what’s the difference between Andrew Jackson and Jack Daniels?
I have no idea.
Jack Daniels is still killing Indians.
I guess they have a kind of 1974 notion of what is funny in WW, W.
I didn’t go all Boulder County on him, but I wasn’t impressed.
So I ask him what WW, W is like. I mean, what do people do for fun?
Well, there’s fishing.
Uh-huh… thinking, ok, that’s a couple weekends, maybe.
Got to do something with the plastic…
Looks like I’m making two pair tonight.
One set a little under 300g apiece, one more like 350. Bigger ones, I guess.
Where was I?
Oh yeah, talking to Ryan.
So I keep asking him about WW, W.
Looks like on the map, the nearest place that is bigger is Spokane, about an hour to the north, and after that, the nearest what I would call big city is Portland.
The Tri-Cities are three closely linked cities at the confluence of the Yakima, Snake, and Columbia Rivers in the U.S. state of Washington. Located in the Columbia Basin of Eastern Washington, the cities border one another, making the Tri-Cities seem like one uninterrupted mid-sized city. Wikipedia
He says, “Yeah, and then there’s the Tri-Cities.”
I’ve of course never heard of this, but ok.
And I say, I’m gonna guess that big concerts don’t get to WW, W very often, so seeing something like that (recent example is the Disturbed/Three Days Grace show we saw at Ball Arena, formerly Pepsi Center)
So it would be a drive, probably a hotel, that sort of thing.
We talk for a little bit longer and end the conversation.
Oh, he was at work, and so there were a couple of phone calls that interrupted, and some coworkers in the background, something about someone giving someone else head.
He says, “Yeah, that’s what it’s like around here.”
Ok then.
At one point, L interjects with something about “that otherfucker” in a tone like… I mean, it’s not like she’s deranged or anything, but I’d never heard her say that quite like that.
We continue watching the soccer game. Orlando is doing well. We discuss the conversation, she says she wasn’t really paying attention, but it was on speaker, so…
Somewhere around fishing, I asked her if she… well, she grew up in Lafayette, one of the cities whose names start with L that grew up because Boulder wanted to keep growth under control. You know how that turned out, Shane.
Boulder used to be a kind of hippie place, but now it’s so expensive that basically only the 1% can live there.
And there’s a school, they have Naropa, a Buddhist place founded by, among others, Allen Ginsberg.
Lots of Buddhist culture there.
And during this part, L says, “Yeah, I’m kind of a city girl.”
So we talk about this and that.
Eventually, she announces that she’s falling asleep, I should probably go.
10 minutes left to the game, but there was no way the other team was gonna catch up…
So I leave, and as I leave, I say that she should probably check out if there was a subreddit for WW.
There’s one for Longmont, so…
And I go home.
By way of Best Buy, picked up a couple of items.
So I sit down and start googling and shit.
Yes, of course, there is a r/wallawalla.
About 2/3 of the posts are people asking where they might be able to find a job.
WW is surrounded by farm country. Lots of vineyards.
People come there to taste the wine, etc.
Shops.
Little downtown.
Oh yeah. One of the things I learned about WW, W is that it’s a bit bigger in population than Lafayette, 34k vs 30k people.
Now.
What are the politics like? Turns out they have voted (R) every time except like 3-4 since WWII.
Uh-huh.
Oh! There is a college! Guess what? It’s a Seventh-Day Adventist place. Ok.
State-wide officials are all red except for the attorney general.
I guess their local state rep is blue, so there’s that.
Look up LGBT stuff.
Oh, lookie, they have a Pride event. It happens one day from 5:00 till 8:00.
Let’s check out Walla Walla Pagans.
Uh, well, I guess there’s a rather violent motorcycle gang around there called the Pagans.
It goes like that.
I guess there are some Blue Mountains nearby that people like to hike around.
One of my Best Buy items was a little switch, so I now have this one tower that has been sitting behind the TV not doing much… upgraded it to Ubuntu 24, putter around with some other things, and got to bed earlier than has been my habit recently.
Today Maybe 1.
Fell asleep watching Severance.
I wake up around 7:30. Text L.
After a few texts, she calls me. She’s more of a phone call kind of girl.
We talked, I tell her about the results of my research.
At the end of our conversation, I said, “You really gotta meet this dude’s friends.”
So that’s the Laura story.
Meanwhile…
Marie.
She’s been getting ready to move because the alimony she has been getting from Pat is ending.
Marie had a really bad car wreck, got a TBI, had to relearn language, math, etc. There was a point where her conversation would go back and forth between spoken English and ASL because, in a sense, that was her first language. Both parents were deaf, she got pressed into inappropriate translator service at a young age.
Like, her dad would watch soap operas and she would have to tell him what was going on. You know, at the age of 8.
We were out of touch when she was recovering from the accident.
While we have been dating, I was never allowed into her place. She’d come to mine, or we would go out places to eat, movies, etc.
A few weeks ago, facing the deadlines (she is supposed to be out on, I think, the weekend of 6-Apr), she finally let me in recently and it’s a hoarder house.
Dishes a foot deep from the stove to the sink, which is overflowing. Lots of empty boxes in the dining area.
Last week, I came over and I took dishes while she’s packing excess clothing into garbage bags. I gave it about 7 hours, and only got the sink cleared (had to unjam the disposal with a plunger handle), tossed boxes down the back stairs. Left the kitchen table piled with clean dishes. IMO it didn’t look like I did much but…
It got out of control because she gets seizures. Anytime she’d try to make progress, she’d get tired, sit down, and never get back to it.
That’s fine; I really kind of dig the space of doing dishes.
She has scrubbies, all the things, but could never get at the sink. Had been doing her day-to-day in the bathroom sink. When I left, she had an empty sink, half a stove, and a little counter space. As far as I know, all the dishes that were scattered around the apt got handled. Probably more, never got to the bedroom.
We agree I’ll come back next week (this week) and I’d continue with the kitchen.
Filled her trash cans with trash, broken down boxes, dumped out a lot of dead plant pots. I was busy, so was she. By the time I left, she was like, “Dude, you gotta go because my brain hurts.”
So this morning, I texted her asking if she still wanted me to come over.
She tells me about her daughter Shayla, who is recently divorced and had been dating this dude named Robert.
She sees she broke up with Robert last Monday, and last night, he came over, broke into the place, raped her, and tried to kill her.
… (This is the low light part.)
Shay was coming over and it was probably a good idea that it just be the two of them. Jason, her other dude, was going to be over as well and he wasn’t doing that now.
Shay was fine with the idea, but probably too much for Marie. She likes her techno parties, kind of has a taste for asses. Her daughter Jacqueline, who is like 6, has a favorite DJ and has been to a couple of things that seemed to include a lot of sparkly flashy toys.
I get this news when I’m at the T-Mobile store getting a screen saver put on my phone. I’ve got this set of bongos I’ve been refurbishing, $8 at the ARC, so I decide it’s a good idea to go down to the Boulder Drum Store to get the last bit of hardware I need.
I think I told you guys about the drums I just got recently…
Coming along nicely. The blob in the middle will be a plastic ball.
It’s a bit like working with clay. Don’t worry, John, the overhead fan is on.
Took the drums to Pat’s drum circle on Friday, had some thick drumsticks, got the feedback they were kind of bright for the room, how about some mallets instead.
So I decided that I’d probably get some mallets.
I’d been overthinking what I was going to do for stands, realized that milk crates work just fine.
Long story short, I decided it was time for a stool to sit and play.
Went to the store to get either a tuning peg or a nut for the one I had because I was short that for the bongos. But the stool… it’s a nice one, has a back. $350 out the door.
How was your weekend(s)?