Yo ’sup dawgs. If you haven’t read Fuggin’ August: Pt. 1 this won’t make a lot of sense, so I suggest you do that first. Ya dig?

Weekend Two: Latin Lovers + many Things + Hairy Lake Water  = Brilliance

Some history so you can keep up. JT went to high school with Ken Jennings, Idina, and Lea. The four of them went to school with Andreas as well, and he and JT have been friends since elementary, but Andreas has been away for a year and they haven’t had the chance to really hang out for longer than that. Jeanine is Andreas’ girlfriend, who I had never met before this weekend.

Now that you have some idea…

Andreas and Jeanine showed up and JT was happier, I think, than he had been to that point. I loved seeing him and Andreas catch up; they were both so eager to get back to being friends. I went into super-hostess mode. JT had to tell me to “Sit the f**k down” eventually. Though I notice he said it after I had put out three different kinds of chips with dips, three kinds of cookies and banana bread, and got him a drink.

JT and Andreas made us perogies and ceasar salad and we put on the painful football game. Luckily a distraction from the horror came in the form of Danny and Joan, two of my best girls from high school. They showed up, gorgeous and vibrant as always, with cookies, muffins, brownies and a giant cooler filled with alcohol.

Danny lifeguarded while we swam, and we came out with a reddish algae covering that stained our towels a rusty colour. With JT and Andreas taking charge of cooking, Danny and Joan getting everyone drinks (and designing personalized cups with coloured ribbons even), and everyone eager to do dishes and tidy up, all of my super-hostessing stresses were stifled.

A rousing girls vs. guys Pictionary game (with the oh-so-remarkable and beautiful ladies taking the crown) kicked off an amazing evening. Twister came out again (Jeanine took first place), and then Screw You which morphed into “I never…” once the cards ran out. The night wound down around 3:30, when we all tuned into Latin Lover 2 and tried to find a story line.

Sunday morning rolled around and most of us slept in. The best thing about Sunday morning? My eggs. I made some great eggs. I was so impressed with myself; you can have no idea how much.

What was Sunday? Sunday was watching Tiger Woods lose and swimming in the rain. It was leftovers and Boggle over the sound of Mario Kart. It was the new Cranium (how do you sculpt a mannequin?) and a Game of Things that revealed more, maybe, than the “I never”’s of the night previous. It was team cleaning and new inside jokes (will we ever look at a javelin the same way, or trust Joan with a sharp object around children?).

As you can tell, it was great and I’m happy. I probably should have started these two posts with “Dear Diary” since that’s basically what they became. I wanted to remember this weekend, and where better to preserve it than online for the world to see?

It’s late/early and I’m sleepy. This campus beat reporter has some stories to finish for the first issue of my school paper tomorrow, so I’m going to get some rest.

I have Joni Mitchell stuck in my head. How strange.

inksplAt bookworm

I sat alone at the edge of the world and wondered, “What fool said this planet was round?”

Hello loyal, new, and other ink splAters. Excuse me in advance for liberal use of  vulgarities and descriptions of liquored escapades in this entry.

We’ll start off with my disgustingly shameful “progress” with my Project. Ugh. I haven’t been writing. Went from two pages a day to more like two pages a week which is… disappointing. I’ve banned myself from Harry Potter until I reach over 100 pages as a result. Suggestions of other punishments for my laxity are encouraged. But wait! Before you tell me to cut out the letter A from all my conversations, steal my cat, or force me to watch Saturday’s football game again *shudder*, I will present my excus- I mean, legitimate reasons.

Reason number one: Work

I was scheduled more than full time for the last pay period, leaving me scant writing hours.

Reason number two: SYTYCD

Dancing finales took up a couple evenings; catching up on the episodes I missed took a couple more. SYTYCD is vital for a happy life.

Reason number three: Family Badity

We got some bad news in my family in the last couple of weeks. An upsetting diagnosis sent me into a fundraising fury and fantastical worlds got left by the wayside. Darn reality, shoving its way back into my summer.

Reason number four: Greyness

It’s so gross outside. Every day. All. The. Time. What does this have to do with my book, you ask? Well, technically nothing. But a generally perky demeanor can only provide enough energy for dealing with crowds of sullen book buyers; a flash of sunshine is necessary to encourage creative industriousness.

If, after reading all my completely reasonable explanations of what kept me from writing, you are still inclined to dish out punishment, please make suggestions below.

Now on to what I actually wanted to blog about. YaaaaaaaaaaY!!

My Cabin Weekend

(cue dramatic, majestic, sweeping, triumphant, “we won the battle against all odds and will now loot the houses and have our way with the women, even though you won’t see that part” music)

I’ll admit it. I was fuggin’ nervous. After the amazing trip to New Iceland, August had collapsed into a heap of soggy frustration. It was an ominous prequel to what was to be the wondrous culmination of summer escapades. The crew (Idina, Lea, JT, Ken Jennings, Joel) were coming out to my cottage. I was going to be hostessing. I was freaking out.

Leading up to my test of hostessing prowess I had turned the weekend with the six (sometimes seven) of us into a more casual event, allowing people to show up as they were able and leave as they were forced. With plans falling apart and facing the prospect of my giant leap into party-giving being a failure because no one would show up or stay, JT and I invited a bunch of board-game-loving friends along (Cisely, the real C, Belu, and Bree among them). Far from having an empty party headquarters, at one point we expected to have to provide sustenance and sleeping quarters for 16 people. One extreme to the other. At any given moment I was on the verge of hyperventilating (OK, so I’m exaggerating a bit, just go with it).

While making plans, and even during the weekend, I had an ideal situation worked out in my mind. The actual weekend did not resemble at all what I had envisioned. It was better. Leaps and bounds better. I could never have designed this weekend to make me any happier than I am right now, thinking back on it. (Well, maybe something involving a hose and a left shoe could have slipped in there, right Danny?).

The event wasn’t so much three days as two separate weekends. And JT, Ken Jennings, and I did start to call them “weekend one” and “weekend two” on the way home to differentiate. I’ll keep that up here.

Weekend One: Long Live the Six

On Friday I worked until five. Cisely had bowed out of the weekend, and the real C was stranded in a ditch near her cabin (unharmed but forced to opt out as well), so JT, Ken Jennings, and I drove out together. We got there just before Idina, Lea, and Joel. Enough time to turn on the oven for the pizza and start unloading the food. And then the power went out. Great. Perfect beginning.

It came on within a half hour, and, luckily, worked flawlessly for the rest of the weekend. The six of us went for a midnight swim, played Twister, drank, and abused the karaoke machine (making liberal use of the six new CDs I bought for it. What an investment). We crashed at a fairly reasonable hour.

Saturday morning  involved JT and I having our first real test of cooking ability. He fried bacon like a pro while my pancake making was… lacking. I think it could have been worse. As mistakes go, accidentally pouring half the package of chocolate chips into the mix isn’t the worst thing that could have happened.

Have I mentioned the weather yet? No? Well then, surprise! It was grey, windy, and raining. I think that in a couple years I will still remember how much fun I had this weekend, but I won’t remember how terrible it was outside, which is saying something.

We watched Arthur and Babar, and I realised that my friends are probably right, my vocabulary was bolstered by that elephant family. On how many shows do you hear the word “eschew” casually tossed out?

Some Boggle, and maybe Cranium later, we realised that if there are any Password replacement packs available somewhere we need them. I’m sure we’ve done every list in that box once, some of them twice. We defied the rain a bit and played in the gazebo, demolishing the vegetable plate in the process (with few Broccoli Challenges to put up with. “Broccoli Challenge” is an event that Ken Jennings and JT take part in whenever there is raw broccoli nearby. They each grab comparable sized stalks and eat them whilst exclaiming how utterly gross uncooked broccoli is. There really is no winner.)

The inevitable Mario Kart/Tennis/Golf tourneys were broken up with some Diddy Kong Racing, thankfully. It gets awfully tiring losing the Mario games over and over again, and at no one else’s cabin had my personal favorite N64 game ever been an option. I rocked a few races of Diddy Kong Racing, happily reacquainting myself with the strategy and shortcuts that came from hours of playing against my sister on similarly rainy days in our childhood. It was nice. For me.

Weekend One ended before dinner on Saturday with Idina, Lea, and Joel taking off just after Andreas and Jeanine (new to the blog and, pretty much, to my life) arrived.

I will post this and finish “Weekend Two” soon.

Large love sent by post with three stamps,

inksplAt bookworm