Yesterday was no exception. Beyond the fact that up until the day before we were told by a (mistaken) forecast that starting at noon, Sunday was to be sunny and warm.

Bullocks.  This is what we got:

I don’t even.

But rather than let ourselves be deterred, the picnic had to go on! Only, inside. And with less nature. Boo. But it was still lovely. And we had a lot more pillows, to say the least. Sandwiches were made, strawberries were washed, and pasta salad was packed. We even opened the windows to listen to the rolling thunder.

Yes, it was raining, despite how bright it looks out my windows. Blowout is blowout.

And look, I finally lit the candles Daniil got me for Christmas. We’ll just ignore that it’s almost 6 months later. They smell amazing. He was pretty insistent that lighting Cappuccino, Warm Sugar, and Wedding Cake all at once was a very terrible, not-so-good idea, but I showed him. Not overpowering in the least, and not too faint, either, for that matter.

And of course no picnic would be complete without me stuffing my face full of sammich. Absolutely not.

The kicker of all this being, of course, was that after our post-picnic nap, it was bright, sunny, and hot. The rain had blown through and humidity had set in. I know, right?  So the happy ending to this story is that we got the bike ride in after-all.

We’ll just pretend that the hard-shell bug flying into his eye never happened.

Well, during our camping trip to Pere Marquette, I hit the motherlode.  I present to you a moving tractor on a ferry.  A moving tractor on a ferry that promptly drove into the bar right next to the ferry.

We settled that this was worth at least a hundred points in the game.   And I got to ride the ferry!

While walking in the hallway today, I passed one of them. He waved real big and said “Hi, Lunch!”

What a booger.

If I include every single thing that I did that I don’t normally do, this included: bowling, billiards, dancing, drinking (heavily), milkshakes, icecream, icecream cake, long-lost friends, long-lost dates, movies, swimming, hiking, dunes, baking, more baking, cake, soup, wine, wine, wine, heels, driving, trains, boys, girls, fake-lesbians, creepy dudes, free drinks, birthday crowns, birthday hugs, end-of-school hugs, end-of-school tears, smiles, new buddy games.

Oof. Pardon me while I recover.

In places where the consequences of falling weren’t quite as dire, I ventured out in the shoes.

Others, such as Daniil, were far braver than I. Granted, they have far more rock climbing experience than me. Both Daniil and Hannes made it all the way to top of Devil’s Doorway. They were the Crazy Foreigner Contingent of the trip.

Photos courtesy of Hannes van Rooyen and Daniil the Russian.

What a fun little adventure that was. While I was sad I didn’t make the cut to be a contestant, the whole evening proved to be excellent. If having eyes made at me by multiple cute girls is any indication to how the night went, well it be that! The winner of our night’s show was a very brave soul who spoke at some length about her experience as a transwoman, which of course prompted discussion among my male companions. I had to have a talking to them about how their “so brave and I support but ew ew ew” comments were not really supportive.

As sad as it is, I can’t really blame them. I know I still say really stupid and wrong things, and I’ve dated a transman and had a couple friends transition the other way. So for two heterosexual white males with no experience with the trans community, I guess I should be happy with what I got. Not that it makes it right, but it’s better than it could be. Also, I’m sure I said something else really stupid in this paragraph alone, which I sincerely apologize for and assure I meant no harm.

Back on track: Headed over to Rock Bottom with Michelle, Jeff, and Joe. I somehow wound up drinking three margaritas. This somehow lead to drinking wine until 7:30 in the morning at Michelle’s. None of us are sure when we decided this was a good idea. It was nice to see the sun rise; it’s been a long time for all of us.

Joe and I headed to Reggie’s to see his friend’s band, Under None, play, and to meet up with Kevin. This was a smashing success, led to some G&T’s and a SoCo Lime shot. However, my shirt broke. Yes. Broke. And suddenly my right boob was hanging out of my shirt (let’s all be thankful I was actually wearing underthings). This lead to lots of leering by creepy old dudes and yet another instance where I’ve had to pretend to be a male friend’s girlfriend to keep them off. Sigh.

The other instance being the previous night when some drunk dude in a dive so awesomely asked if I belonged to Joe with a pretty offensive gesture. Yeah, that’s a way to win girls over. I don’t care how drunk you are; that’s not okay. So yea, you bet your ass I belong to him in that moment. I belong to everyone except you.

Ken is clearly the more friendly of the two of us.

But I’m way cuter, even if I am wearing a hideous and cheap life preserver.

See! I totally helped.

Photos courtesy of Daniil the Russian.

Tony and I and a bunch of other people went to the Festival of Colors last Saturday, which was held in Knoch Knolls Park in Naperville. It was, how do you say? A pretty rocking time. Basically I got to spend an afternoon chasing little kids around trying to cover them in green and yellow flour. As you can see, I managed to get quite colorful myself.

The Festival of Colors is an Indian thing welcoming the coming of Spring. It was really amazing, punctuated by  delicious Indian food. It really made me wish that American culture had more active cultural festivals. Ours are far too passive. It seems that our culture is becoming more divided and making us feel more isolated. Sometimes all I want to do is reach out and touch somebody, make them acknowledge that I exist, and they exist, and we exist.

How is it that I feel most alive when I play on borrowed time?

Photos courtesy of Tony Thomas.

Okay, okay. I’ve run out excuses. I’ve been back in the country for a week and still have yet to post about my adventures. I’ve had a heck of a time recovering from all that travel and all the horrible things that happened. Namely, my passport disappearing, and then my camera getting stolen. Luckily I had most of my pictures off, but I still lost a bunch.

The picture of of my Spanish tutor, Herberth, me, and my sister’s instructor, Wilberth. I had such an amazing time in Spanish school, even if I technically only had three days of school. And I made a bunch of friends, including Herberth and Wilberth! And also Mikelle and Nikolaj, friends from Iowa and Denmark respectively. Sadly, their pictures were among those jacked with my camera.

The good news is that I have all of my pictures from the Aurora Zoo, the zoo in Guatemala City. My sister and I got to go with our hostel owner and his two-year-old son. This is good news because now you get to see the most excellent David Bowie impersonating rooster ever.

Need I say more?

Between my server going down and a ridiculous amount of work that had to get done yesterday, I didn’t get a chance to post. Much apologies for the interrupted service.

Let’s see, what have I missed? Well, there was the earthquake that happened yesterday morning. You know, the 3.8 magnitude earthquake with the epicenter about 12 miles from my domicile that woke pretty much everyone up at exactly 4:00am. I had the added pleasure of having a puppy launch herself onto my body in a fit of panic.

Another thing that happened yesterday was a touch embarrassing. I was taken out by a first grader. And I don’t mean on a date. I was pretty much bowled over by an autistic seven-year-old. Sweet kid and, to some extent, my fault. If I’d been watching my buddy a little closer I could have stopped him from waving and thus prompting a bit of a freak out on the other child’s account. Gosh darn my kid being so friendly! Luckily, it turned out okay and I managed to get my buddy out of the way so I was the one who got run into and not him.

As for today: today was a special day. Today was 100 Day! Our kids had their 100th day of school today (thought it’s only my 97th; shhh). So I got to wear my educational tshirt on a non-friday and was given an awesome sticker. And boy did we count to 100 a ridiculous amount of times. Out entire day was filled with math activities involving counting to 100 and kids brought in collections of 100 things and it was awesome and silly.