Delectare

Our good friend (and ex-roommate) Matt recently wedded Lynsee, the sister of our other good friend Micah. They were all nice enough to let me spend the morning and afternoon with them, and I did my best to help when needed and get out of the way the rest of the time. Sometimes I can be a little over-eager or over-curious, and get involved when I probably shouldn’t. There’s a fine line between involved and intrusive, and I occasionally forget where it is.

The ceremony was quirky, beautiful, and touching - just what I’d expect from Matt and Lynsee. They picked a gorgeous location in Peninsula Park, and the weather and greenery could not have been any nicer. Their reception was fantastic as well. We got to mix and mingle with a lot of people that we haven’t seen in years, while eating and drinking like royalty. We didn’t make it to the after party, but I hear that it was a blast. Sara had tried out for (and made!) the Eugene Roller Derby squad earlier in the day, and was ready to call it a night after the reception.

Matt’s bachelor party was a few weeks back. Meat, beer, and cigars were the order of the day as we camped up at Trillium Lake near Mt. Hood. Saturday we hiked a bit and drove in to Government Camp to watch the Ducks barely squeak out a win against Purdue, before returning to the campground for more meat, beer, etc. Truly, a manlier weekend has never been had.

Here we are, back home again after the 10-day trip whose highlight was Kat and Justin’s wedding in Polebridge, MT. I can’t remember the last time I was away from work and home for 10 days, so this was quite a trip for me. It also went a lot better than the last long-distance trip that Sara and I took, down to LA for E3 years and years ago. The general itinerary was:

• Friday/Saturday: Drive from Eugene to East Yellowstone via Portland/Boise/Twin Falls
  
• Sunday: Sightseeing in Yellowstone
  
• Monday: Drive from Yellowstone to Glacier National Park via Helena.
  
• Tuesday/Wednesday/Thursday: Backpacking at Cracker Lake
  
• Friday: Hanging out in Apgar, rehearsal dinner in Polebridge.
  
• Saturday: Wedding!
  
• Sunday: Drive from West Glacier to Eugene via Coeur d’Alene/Portland
  

As you can see, we kept quite busy… and spent a lot of time in the car. That went about as well as it ever does. 10 days is a lot of time to be cooped up in a small sedan with 3 other people, no matter how well you all got along going into the trip.

Anyways, pictures are posted in the gallery, and there’s another panorama. I would have liked to have taken this from a better position, but this way you all get to see Micah busy bleeding all over the Rockies. Protip: Cut dried sausage AWAY from yourself.

Last weekend a few of us llamas went up to Seattle to celebrate Kat and Justin’s bachelorette and bachelor parties. The ladies hung out in town, but us guys headed up to the Olympics to revisit Upper Lena Lake, site of our earlier failure to summit Mount Bretherton. Despite record high temperatures, humidity, and mosquito populations, we had an awesome weekend. We even found time to conquer the peak before the thunderstorms caught up with us and chased us back down into Olympia.

Just got back from Drift Creek with Kyle and the Hartleys. Good times were had by all. Protip: avoid stinging nettles.

So I had this weird dream last night.

Sara and I were living in an old house - kind of like our current house, except there was more to it; it had kind of a ranch style layout. Somehow we we had filled up a number of rooms with old junk that we hadn’t thought about in years, and had sort of just realized this. We decided we were going to clean the house, and set to entering old rooms - pulling out unused items, remembering what we’d used them for, and throwing them away. As we did this, all kinds of things started popping out - old pets that had died years before, things we’d been afraid of as children, the faces of old acquantences. Like the junk, we realized we no longer needed these things, and that the things that had one frightened us were no longer so fearsome, when dealt with properly. Eventually we finished cleaning out the rooms, and realized how much more space we had. Behind some of the junk in one of the rooms, a door had been hiding. I entered the door, and passed into a space that clearly did not belong in our house. It was red and cavelike, and looking back, I could see that the entire house was actually contained within this one small room.

At this point, I realized that I was dreaming, and that the cave was my mind, and the house my self. The housecleaning I’d done - both metaphorical in my dream, and physically when we moved - was an analogy for my departure from adolescence - throwing out the lessons of my youth that I no longer needed, addressing my fears and weaknesses, saying goodby to the things I loved - leaving me with only the things I need, and a clean house in which to build my new life as an adult.

Sorry if this seems a little head-on-a-slinky, but it’s something that stuck with me today. I hope that there’s actually some truth to it, and that I am actually moving forward with my life. Also, I had a beer or two after soccer, and that tends to (as Sara will confirm) make me a little maudlin and talkative, and I felt like getting this out of my system