Went to the farmer's market again this morning. Carrie was working there once more, albeit for another vendor. Instead of selling crystals, she was filling in for a woman who sells hand-made cards. As I arrived, I came across this pack of recently decommissioned greyhounds, led by a volunteer group dedicated to acclimatizing them to the everyday world. The dogs were a little fidgety, but seemed really sweet. Poor greyhounds - they do seem to get something of a raw deal...
Carrie was really sleepy. Here you see her consummating a vigorous yawn. I brought her a chocolate croissant and a coffee (with cream!) as a pick-me-up. Seemed to help at least a touch. And then I went home to work for the afternoon. Primarily on the review. Which is still going slowly. There's just a lot of material to watch.
Once again I bought some (typically excellent) produce from the farmers' market. And did my best to cook a chicken I bought from the Thriftway. And met with qualified success, anyway. Though it ended up something more like chicken stew than I'd originally envisioned. Here you see Carrie resting mid-meal. Incidentally, substituting red wine for white (it's what I had!) makes your chicken purple-grey. But it tastes ok.
So, after dinner, Carrie went off to work at the Mark, and I went to Bryan Connolly's Pudding (B-Day) Party. The idea was for everyone to bring pudding, in some form. I bought both pistachio and chocolate, but had nothing to mix them in. So I just brought the boxes. Luckily, there was plenty of pudding to be had. When I arrived, Bridget was frosting cupcakes. Blue this time, so no menstrual blood, I suspect.
Here's Bryan, the charming host and birthday honoree, decked out in an excellent smoking jacket. At the time pictured, he was recounting his frequent troubles with mistaken ethnic identity. Apparently, while living in Bellingham, Washington shortly after 9/11, large fellows of the "Greek" persuasion frequently mistook him for a fellow named "Abdul" and suggested rather forcefully that he "go back where he came from." Presumably, they were not referring to Olympia.
Anyway, here's a snap of the pudding collection. Selections ranged from the conservative (vanilla, chocolate, butterscotch), to the "gourmet" (rice pudding, rice pudding with raisins &c., vanilla with skittles), to the avant-garde (chocolate w/ chocolate milk, pudding-to-go (or rather "Xtreme Jell-o Brand Pudding Sticks," or pudding in a otter pop-like plastic baggie), a quasi-trifle), to the positively nauseating (pudding with fakin' bacon, pudding made with rice milk & bananas (didn't gel at all), tofu "pudding" (looked like curdled milk)). Brian took a sample of each an added it to the pudding suicide bowl, to be sampled later in the evening. I politely begged off that one, visions of Jim Jones dancing in my head. With that as the theme, Bryan posed a difficult metaphysical question: Did the intergalactic cruise ship secreted behind the Hale-Bopp Comet have first class & coach, or was it general boarding?
While milling about, I met Carly (sp?), a photographer recently graduated from Evergreen. She admired my new Polaroid iZone 300 digital camera, but found the viewing screen subpar. I have to agree, but it looks so good I'm willing to compromise. And what the hell, it was pretty cheap, anyway.
Bridget made several birthday cakes, including one with the full 25 candles Bryan deserved, and the one pictured, stating "Nice Mustache Dude." She set the cakes aside for when Bryan's co-birthday celebrant arrived later in the evening.
Bryan's parents were also at the party. Here's his father Bob, who was very funny, and talked a mile-a-minute.
Later, Bridget whipped out the brand-new ".45" she bought as a prop for Bryan's film. Cocked it and...
Wham! Luckily, it's the sort that shoots BBs, rather than bullets. With a spring, at that, so I suspect they're less than forceful. And Bridget didn't have any to load it with anyway.
Surprisingly (?) the tentacles of the law (or law school, rather) had infiltrated the partying crowd. Carly's boyfriend was planning to attend law school shortly, and Hilary (pictured on the right, her friend Alison (I think) on the left, in an excellent Las Vegas sweater) is a 2L evening student at Seattle University Law School. She was amused to find that I was clerking on the Supreme Court, as she had just finished working on a moot court brief relating to one of the Court's opinions. And was familiar with Justice Sanders. Another nice fellow I met named Jacob Arthur Sunday was also planning to attend law school, possibly. Jacob shared his 6-pack of Rainier with me (it's actually pretty ok), and we discussed politics, &c. (on his prompting, really!). Hilary got in a bit of a tussle with Jacob over the propriety of rent control and zoning. She took an exceptionally hard-line property-rights position, which is kind of surprising, given that she's an Olympia native. And which made me respect her all the more. But Jacob was having none of it. Eventually, Hilary excused herself, and Jacob and I moved on to the subject of his run-ins with the police. I studiously refrained from giving any legal advice, not having received bar admission as yet. When I realized it was 1am, and the Mark would be closing soon, I excused myself, so as to make it there in time to catch a drink and watch Carrie work. Jacob said he knew her, as they'd "been trapped on a boat together." Which Carrie later confirmed, without specifics. I'm sure there's an interesting story there.
I close with an image of an inexplicable, but very amusing sign hanging on Bridget and Bryan's wall. Apparently its bona fide - Bridget (as I recall) found it tacked to a pole. She said it made her want to become a "pet detective."
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