expats.

A Vancouver birthday weekend with the girls is just good clean fun, and the mere fact that we aren't in college anymore, heading up with frat brahs for morning boozing and "formal dances," completely revolutionized the experience.  Three cheers for trying to be grownups!  We stayed right downtown in the fancy Westin like big girls, ate good sushi like big girls, spent too much money on clothes and booze like big girls, and had an incident with a crow at the border that will become our new meal ticket once the video goes viral. 

Things about Canada that have changed since we were heading up there for countless fratty trips in college:

1.  Added stress of now having to show your passport at the border, like Canada thinks it's a different country or something and not the 51st state.  It's like sorority rush because you reeeeeally want the border guard to like you, even though HELLO, you're CANADA; it would be your great honor and pleasure to let us in.

2.  There are things to eat there that aren't pitchers of beer or street cart hot dogs at 3 am (even though those items still haven't lost their luster).  In fact, they have entire other food groups available for consumption, some of which are even on the food pyramid!

2.  They have daytime in Vancouver!  I literally never knew this.  Previous experiences led us to believe there is only rainy nighttime spent trying to avoid your date, who is geting a leeetle too handsy after the aforementioned pitchers.  Observe, the city from a sunrise walk on a lovely bridge:

  We crossed back into the US of A with renewed hope for our northernly sisters.  A beautiful autumn weekend in one of the world's most gorgeous cities, surrounded by maple leaf paraphernalia at every turn?  We don't mind if we do, happy birthday Shauna! 

mawwage.

Drew Moore: gentleman, scholar, married man.

On my first day of 4th grade, I got on the bus for my new school after having spent a summer being suuuuuper nervous about being cool. I had friends and boyfriends and I knew where all the classrooms were at my old school, and I really wanted to be awesome at Voyager too. THEN this short punk got on the bus two stops later, made fun of my Blossom hat, and literally did not cease to mock everything I did for nearly twenty years. Not kidding. Luckily, I am a saint with a heart of gold because I withstood the pressure and Drew became one of my oldest and best friends. You know, the kind where you can go a few years without so much as speaking and then pick up exactly where you left off.He's so cocky that he WOULD get married on our nation's birthday, but once we all got over that, we had an awesome mini-reunion of GHHS Class of 2002 where my main take-away lesson was that everyone I know is going through some phase of med school or becoming an ambassador to Serbia while I'm still making butt jokes. However, there was enough love and dancing and sparklers and Hendricks gin to make everyone okay with that, and as it turns out, a 4th of July wedding with some of your favorite people isn't so bad after all.

bollywood calling!

Excuse me, I have to take this.

ATTENTION EVERYONE: I AM INVITED TO AN INDIAN WEDDING.

Hitha is getting married in Hyderabad in December (look, there she is at her engagement party, looking all pretty) and I'm invited. I've only seen Monsoon Wedding half a dozen times! I only rented the VHS copies of Lagaan from Blockbuster like, whenever possible because I thought it was the best story ever! It's like The Universe, by way of Hitha Palepu's engagement, has extended it's starry hand my way and beckoned me towards a real-life version of the weddings I'm obsessed with-- the kind where everyone wears saris and has henna on their hands and plays cricket and sings a lot with really beautiful voices and their cups overfloweth with joy and HOLY BRITISH IMPERIALISM ESCAPEE will I make it to that wedding if I have to scrape together the meager scraps of what's left of my bank account and live in a box in Belltown upon my return.

birfday!

The birthday came and went and unlike the big backyard bash for 25, this one was more wine-soaked, more personal, way more amusing and ended with a handful of my favorite people in the world sprawled out on every inch of my living room floor. I can think of at least 26 reasons why I'm so LUCKY to have this motley crew* for my best friendskis. They make everything so much more fun, ridiculous, and heavenly.
For those who were wondering, Dower and Ashton did indeed wrestle shirtless until 4 am.

*(crue? Which one is the phrase and which one references Tommy Lee?)

la felicidad

Buenos Aires is not an aptly named city. As soon as your plane lands, the "New York of South America" hands you a fine film on your lungs and a halo of smog, like getting lei'd on Oahu. The grime follows you around (save for brief respites if you can get to a Palermo park) and relentlessly reminds you that you are trading being clean for being in a place that is always alive. Last weekend, the two of us welcomed with open arms the rolling clouds of a three-day storm that blanketed the city with cool rain, kept us up at night with pounding thunder and brought lightning that criss-crossed the sky with astonishing frequency. We put on our jackets and happily took advantage of an October weekend that felt like home (except that people don't have rain gear here. They still wear their pretty clothes and just carry an umbrella).

You always expect to be happy when travelling, but sometimes dirt wears you out before you're ready. And other times, an endless summer storm comes along and makes you feel peaceful again.

Other things that have cleared the smog the first two weeks:

• Last Thursday, I found myself at a tiny restaurant eating pancetta out of a pumpkin and discussing politics and religion with a bilingual socialist revolutionary. I met Diego at Cafe Victoria (this is the view, which I will never cease to be delighted with) and we met up for coffee/dinner not long after. Diego is a fascinating character with the energy of a kindergartner and the drive of Eugene Debs, who went from being "a Christian militant to an atheist" because he couldn't justify the world he saw with the world Christianity presupposes (I'll have to write about that conversation another day). As we chatted in the corner of the tiny restaurant, a pinstriped and graying man walked in with a gorgeous blonde and belted out a perfect note, which was promptly matched from behind the bar by a dusky voiced woman with long hair and a massive grin. The warmup notes then turned into a full-fledged tango show for a restaurant that was empty... besides us. My Malbec swirled in the glass, the music filled in the cracks between the bricks, and I realized again what a lucky girl I am. "Para ella!" the woman called out, gesturing to me, la americana, and the guitarrista struck up a folk song to wrap up. Yep, nights like this are how I can justify quitting my job...
  
  
• Marlo and I got cool again when we stayed out till 9 am. No one needs to know that it was an accident, or how excited we got when we left the party to discover a light sky. Our throats scratchy from smoking hookah, our ears ringing from the Colombian band that changed our lives, we got so energized from our all-nighter that we dragged Martin across the city on foot to go see the Floralis. GREAT PLAN, ladies. We were so tired by the time we got there that we had to taxi home. So much for being 19 again.
  
• I was wandering the side streets in San Telmo for some quality time with my camera when I glanced up and got a wave from a guy standing on his front porch, a wrought-iron jut peeking out of a wall full of flowers. It was such a beautiful building but I was too shy to take his picture, so I just grinned and kept walking. Halfway up the next block, I heard someone calling to me so I turned around to see the same fellow jogging towards me. Picture a young, Argentine version of Cosmo Kramer and we are on the same page with Esteban. He ended up walking me back to my neighborhood (don't worry ya'll, we took main streets to avoid creepstering) and I was pleased to finally meet someone who didn't speak English. For a mile or so, we had the most pleasant, unexpected chat about the relative merits of working vs. travelling ("Pero no tiene ritmo!"--"Without work, there's no rhythm to life!"). I told him how much I loved the architecture in the city right when we hit a block surrounded by bland, terrible apartments, and we laughed at how 1970s architecture was nothing to write home about. "But it's also a sad city," he explained. "All of our beautiful buildings are just imitations of the same ones in Europe; we are always trying to copy other people." How nice it was, to take a walk and have a chat with someone I'd never met before and would never meet again, and not worry about places to be or time to be spent doing other things.

Another week and a half left in this massive city of dirt, and I can't wait to see what little storms await us next.

Being Really, Really, Ridiculously Good Looking Is a Full Time Job

December had already started off on a fortuitous foot when Tara and I snuggled into our seats at Joe Bar on Capitol Hill, steaming up the paned windows with our foamy cappucinos as we watched Blizzard 2007 draw the movie-like qualities out of life: as a soft white began to cast the outside world with a gentler tone, passerby got cuter and people became visibly nicer to each other. A middle-aged couple, appropriately clad in Danskos and Teva gear, opted to take their lattes outside and let the massive flakes settle onto their hair and eyelashes as they sat together on a lazy Saturday morning date. People grinned at each other as they entered the cafe, stamping their boots and shaking their wet hair. Somber dogs peered through the glass as their best friends warmed themselves on coffee and crepes. Joe's provided the jazz-heavy soundtrack, and Tara and I kept hugging ourselves and beaming about how perfect the world was at that exact moment.

(Later, as we tromped through Broadway, we found a bookstore I'd never been to that had, quite possibly, the world's most perfect cards. One summarized our day succinctly: "I bet snowflakes wouldn't be quite so lovely if they were shaped like prostitutes." So true.)

So the blissful beginning of December meant that, despite not feeling my greatest (5 am bedtimes and too much Three Buck Chuck will do that), I had a good feeling about Studio 54 Lives Again. My high school friend Ryan, who works for the Seattle Models Guild, had invited me to this fundraiser for a school in Kathmandu and obviously, despite the fact that I hate people (especially kids) with a passion, I wanted to go to see what the craic was all about. I donned a one-piece pantsuit (tight in the waist but loose in the crotch, for maximum awkwardness in the lower torso region), brushed my hair into a serious white girl fro, and headed out into the snowy night to see what I could find.

The first thing I found was a homeless guy who mumbled to me as I passed him outside the Last Supper Club, "I'm tempted to stab you for no reason." This was, perhaps, the scariest thing that's ever happened to me, besides the time I got groped on the street in Alicante. I chalked it up to him not appreciating the lace tube top portion of my pantsuit and hauled ass into the club.

After tromping ungracefully down a plush red carpet, the second thing I found was: myself, right in the thick of Model Central. Apparently, Studio 54 is a yearly phenomenon in which the big three Seattle model agencies put all their people together in the same room so they can stare at each other and write fat checks for poor kids while getting beautifully drunk (unfortunately, my drunk can more accurately be described as "Bag Lady"). To the untrained eye, watching shirtless guys with bow ties wander around flexing their oiled chests and asking for dollars in exchange for beads seems like a scene out of a skeezy Miami back alley, but to a professional model, this is what "fundraising" looks like. Cover your eyes, kids.

I clutched my free drink tab and headed straight for the bar, desperate for a higher gin:blood ratio before I could face the gorgeous hordes head-on. The bartender winked at me in a non-sexual way, which brightened my mood, and I turned back to the dance floor, sucking on a lemon and looking for a short redhead I could relate to. I scanned the room: giants. Lush-lipped, smooth-skinned, eight foot Glamazons. Not a split end or zit, as far as the eye can see. What an annoying crowd.

I made a personal goal of being purely observant for the entire night, but having at least one entertaining conversation. This is when Ryan popped up, and insisted on taking me around to his various circles and introducing everyone at length ("this is Sergio, he's a photographer..." "Daria, model..." "Francisco, agent..."). After the fourth or fifth blank stare I had to forcibly stop Ryan from continuing on his social rampage and let me stumble around in my own awkwardness. He dragged me to one last circle, and rambled off a few more models' names. One of the guys I recognized from my gym, so I attempted a little friendly chitchat with the most basic of commonalities-- "Haven't I seen you somewhere?"

KIDDING!! I didn't say that. As Mike Birbiglia would advise, what I should have said was NOTHING. What I did say was something sarcastic about not only knowing where he works out, but knowing where he sleeps (trying to make light of my already semi-stalkeresque comment... you know?). My joke went over like the Hindenberg. "So how do you know where I live?" my new friend asked me a minute later.

I'd like to pause narration here for a second to mention that this gentleman was named BLISS. That was his God-given name. Write that down, it becomes all too applicable later on.

As I backpedaled my way out of my overly sarcastic "new friend" test, Bliss became even more confused about whether or not I was actually his stalker or not. Let the records note that the only reason I recognized this guy was because he was awkwardly flexing in the weights section and not because I thought he stood out as a paragon of male attractiveness. As I kindly helped him get over himself, he relaunched the conversation in a new direction that sent me even deeper into my G&T. "So tell me something interesting about yourself," he said, apparently competing for "Biggest Cliche of the Evening." I mentioned something about my near-obsession with travelling and seeing how other people do things, which brought up his recent travels.

I was so excited to have something in common with this vacant-eyed dolt, but when I asked him to tell me more, he just rolled his eyes. "Well, I told you a few minutes ago, but I went to Southeast Asia for a month." I looked around, trying to figure out who exactly he had been speaking to previously that looked remotely like me, but let it go in favor of hearing more... the story already sounded suspiciously drug-induced.

"I went to Asia to search... for bliss. And I found it, right here (points to heart)."

Oh my good God. He just made an analogy with his name. This is gold. I'm leaving this conversation while it's at the peak. Fortunately, Whit showed up and pulled me away to dance at that exact moment.

Ah, Whit. How to describe a person like Whit? He is more of a force of nature than a person, a tornado of random inappropriate comments and stories that are better than fiction. Throughout college, I could always rely on Whitney to bring a heavy dose of the unusual to my life. He would call on a Monday afternoon from outside the sorority, waiting to take me for a spin in his new ride; a massive, gas-guzzling farm truck that looked better suited for central Wyoming than the middle of Seattle. One week later, he would call again, but this time the ride was in his shiny new Audi. Whit had mullets, he had rat tails, he had a joie de vivre that some saw as annoying but which I adored. He worked as a sandwich delivery guy on a bike, as the captain of a massive ship, as a model in Thailand. He came up with elaborate plans to buy Thai property and become a music television VJ. He showed up in random magazine fashion spreads we didn't even know he had done. He always makes me laugh.

Whit was there as one of the Beautiful People, but also bridged the gap as one of the sarcastic people who didn't really try too hard, so we danced in a very aerobics-friendly, non-sexy manner for quite a while. At some point in my Jazzercise endeavors, I got pulled away by Latin Lover Jorge with a minor ponytail who matched my rhythm (miraculously, because after a few more of those drink tabs, it didn't really "sync up with the music" per se) and stuck by my side for the next hour or so. After throwing a few stray dollars into the direction of one of the ubiquitous bare nipples, I closed the night out, content. I think I had more fun the pretty people in the end, anyway.

Bill Gates Touched My Butt!

Now that you know the end of the story, here are the preliminaries:

Somehow Shauna got a job at Bungie, which, as the roommates soon learned, is the company that makes Halo (our non-gaming tendencies have recently done a 180 since the discovery of this semi-subculture that is opposite of everything we know... it's like Aladdin discovering the secret cave: we realize what a total jackpot it is, but we know we're not really supposed to touch anything). As some may know, Halo got released at 12:01 am, September 25. This major event, years in the making, required proper buildup.

So this is how we spent 12 hours on Sunday at the company barbecue in Bellevue. Technically hired to babysit the kids and keep order amongst the nerd proteges, we ended up schmoozing with the vast spectrum of employees and their wives: from Claw, the 300 pound security guard and his hippy wife Kate, who owns "Hot Chicks" hair chopstick co., to Harold the CEO and his delightfully down to earth and fake-chested wife who shared stories of when Channing Tatum told her she was hot (jealousy doesn't even begin to describe it). Things got good as Shauna forcefully encouraged her coworkers to start drinking (many of whom hadn't seen the light of day for a good nine months.... these games don't perfect themselves, you know), but the highlight was when the roommates got coerced into "babysitting" two actors from LA who were up as Bungie guests. The most awkward setup of our lives went like this:

"Hey, you guys are from Washington, right? Go tell them some facts about Washington."

Seriously?

One of them apparently voiced a character in Halo, the other was as unqualified to be there as we were, and after bonding over how bizarre our introduction was, we realized they were "our kind of weird" and we were inseparable, taking the kids' bouncy castle by storm and carefully maneuvering conversations away from video games.

The next night was Bungie's Halo Launch Party. Since Bungie's location is technically a secret, the event was invite only, but thanks to Shauna, we found our way in via newfound connections. The place was posh, the shots flowed like wine, and everyone was buzzing with Halo-ticipation. One room was chock-full of pre-release gamers: playing Halo 3 before anyone else on the West Coast? Priceless! They had made mini-movies with game clips, interviews, and other footage that I considered obscure-- until the room would erupt with joyful, drunk laughter at one of the jokes, or cheer rabidly when certain Master Chief/Cortana scenes flashed. Watching with Voiceover Chris, we were forced to realize that our worlds had been flipped for the night: we were the outsiders. There was an entire in-group that we had no idea existed, we loved it.

I'm not normally a pushy person, but after a vodka tonic and an unrealized dream, I will throw bows through any crowd and, prepped with my opening line, I shoved my way up to Bill Gates, forced him to make eye contact, and asked loudly, "BILL, did you know there's a place in Sarajevo called Club Bill Gates that sells pancakes and pizza and uses a picture of your face from 20 years ago as their logo and also your signature on their signage?"

And delightful little Aspergers-fighting Bill Gates, the richest man in the world, said no, he was unaware of such a place.

"And I stole a bunch of their cards so I could give you one but guess what, I totally forgot it!"

And Bill Gates told me to mail it to him.

"Copywrite infringement, Bill! Just telling you to watch out!"

And get this-- the crowd kind of laughed and I segued into our next roommate request:

"So can I get a picture with you and my roommates for our Christmas card?"

He chuckled, we got into picture formation, and that is when BILL GATES TOUCHED MY BUTT, thus bringing my entire existence into one blissful culmination and effectively making the rest of my life one massive downhill slide from here on out. I wasn't the first and I definitely wasn't the last, but the point is, Bill's hand was resting on my left butt cheek. Enough said.

The night continued with party busses to the Game Stops and Best Buys, where lines of junior high boys with long hair and trench coats waited eagerly for 12:01 am. The actors and the roomies hopped off the bus and signed autographs (I singlehandedly caused the majority of Eastside Halo fans' memorabilia to plummet in value, but dammit, when else will I be able to sign dozens of autographs and play PR agent for an aspiring voice-over actor? When, I ask you?).

In sum, it was the weirdest and best weekend ever. Aye aye, Bungie, aye aye.

PS: Here's the Bungie article from Time magazine a few weeks ago, an article which didn't mean a thing to me until we met the people it talks about (casually discussing with the Flintstones jingle writer over how Marlo could break into the jingle-writing world, for example) and experienced the inner Bungie stratum. It didn't mean a thing until we realized that for a lot of people it is a big freakin' deal. And now we have become those people.

http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1657825,00.html