ketchup

Okay, em and I put on a tropical party.
My mom sent a box of party favors and decorations.
we drank painkillers and dark and stormys through umbrella straws stuck in coconuts. We ate fried plantains and Jamaican rice and beans and everything.
we couldn't find em's camera, but our friend videoed the band playing. there was a great moment in one of the songs where em came up and told me I had my fly down. It was 4 song into the set so everyone had noticed it and someone finally passed it along to em. that has yet to be uploaded. feel free to click and paste this address to see said video.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ey2FGOkBibk

Also right as we finished, a beach-goer with a towel around her neck and sunblock on her nose told me that there were cops at the back door. When i announced this serious fact, no one believed me. I guess I've cried wolf before. anyway, the cop was nice and let me off the hook. she was baffled by the heat in the house. I had turned the thermostat up to 88 to make it tropical for our guests. I guess she had come without seeing the invitation em sent out. admittedly, trumpet playing at 11 on a saturday night might make a neighbor ask a neighbor to quiet down, but for our sweet neighbor,(crazy) Carla, it makes her call madison's finest, dispite having our numbers. Boo!
Props to em.
within 12 hours of the last guest departing our tropical island of happiness, em left the house to go study at our neighborhood coffee roaster. Hard working lady!

I got to drive a forklift this week at work and I tell you what, i like it. I learned that you can sweep a sidewalk clear of snow here as well, because it's cold. no shovel needed. the rest of the week was just a smear of meals and looking at daytrotter.com for new, free, and legal music.

Today we drove some of em's friends to go x-country skiing. While in the parking lot one of them came out of the honey bucket and recalled to us a time when she was inside a honey bucket and washed her hands with a bar of soap in the sink only to realize she had actually "washed" her hands with a urinal cake in a urinal. Who announces that? At that point, my day was made.

Oh, I'd like all west coasters to know that it is dry here. my skin shrivels up like a crumpled up newspaper. My hands look like my grandma's. Bad. Also, this dryness allows for more static electricity than ever before imagined. We have experienced sparking sweaters lighting up a dark room and unwrapping a pallet only to have a mighty bolt strike me in the crotch. does that count as a sign? and what does it mean? The sunny days are a decent trade off though.

enjoy your early spring!

g