staycation

This has been the most amazing weekend thus far, and it’s only 2/3 of the way over.  Heck, it’s just been a great week.  While I was pretty bummed that I didn’t get to go backpacking like I had hoped to, it turns out that I made the right choice. My stay-at-home-vacation has been so damn much fun that I’m apparently going to write way too much about it, so here we go…

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It started on Thursday with a day off of work white-water rafting with the fine people from my office (pictures here).  I’m glad I sucked it up and “risked” the trip, even though my doctor surely wouldn’t have approved.  Everything turned out fine, in fact, it’s got me feeling like I’m pretty well recovered.  Being that I’ve never white-water rafted before, I really didn’t quite know what to expect.  I have to say that I loved it and I’d really like to do it again.  The Wenatchee river was a lil high, but we still had some nice class 3 waves to ride.

IMAGE_163 Friday was a lil rough at work, but it both started and ended extremely well.  The day started at one of my favorite breakfast places, Glo’s, with Jim who is an friend from Illinois who was in town with his wife for their 20th wedding anniversary.  I really enjoyed the time we had to catch up.  The work day ended with a couple glasses of home-brew porter from my friend Mark and the promise of a great dinner with Andy at Senor Moose.  Following that, we hit The Apple War‘s CD release show at the Tractor Tavern.  I was pretty damn impressed with the Apple War.  I hadn’t seen them live in a few months, and this time around they did a phenomenal job. 

However, the surprise win of the night goes to Or The Whale.  This band just rocked my socks off.  I was apparently in an alt-country mood on Friday, because their songs just really hit me in that gotta-move-your-feet place.  Particularly the song “Call and Response”.  I walked out of the Tractor with two new albums that are real winners.  Little did I know just how much of my weekend was going to spent moving my feet…

IMG_1071Saturday and Sunday were super-chill-fun-time.  First off, the weather this weekend has been simply amazing.  Firewallender and I started Saturday together on Lake Washington exploring via canoe.  We saw an amazing number of turtles, great blue heron, and a few geese, and had a great time just being out in the early-morning sunshine.

I headed down to the Northwest Folklife Festival at the Seattle Center with Andy & Abby in the afternoon.  Folklife is a hodgepodge of various musical and “other” performances spread across several stages that runs for four full days.  We saw everything from Kenyan dancers to Texas-style Fiddling.  Every pathway is lined with craftycrap, festival food, and street performers.  It’s a little overwhelming.

We took a break in the evening to come back to my place to do some grillage on my freshly cleaned grill.  Andy had these amazing sausages that he had made in a cooking class that he’d been saving, paired with some grilled asparagus and sauerkraut.  I only talk about it because it was really that good and worth the text to say that it was possibly the most satisfyingly perfect meal of the weekend.  There’s nothing like chilling with friends on the front porch watching the sun go down.

IMG_1090 The rest of the day… and the highlight of Sunday evening as well… was dancing.  More specifically, I’ve discovered contra dancing with the help of Andy.  The best way I can describe it is square-dancing meets line-dancing.  I’ve never done any folk dancing before and it was so much fun!  Apparently it has origins in the Northeast where it’s pretty popular.  It’s mostly an older crowd, interspersed with people in their 20’s-30’s which makes it a lot of fun and totally low-pressure.  The most awesome part was watching Andy cut a rug with the older women.  He has a face that just says “dance with me, you know you want to because I really am that much fun!“.  They just eat him up.  Abby and I kinda stuck together while we learned the ropes, but it wasn’t that hard. 

In fact, the contra dancing was so much fun that I ended up back with Andy on Sunday night to do it again.  After which we had another great dinner out, and I ended up doing even more dancing at Century with Firewallender.  This time it was swing dancing, and I can’t say just how much fun it was.  I had seriously forgotten how much I enjoy swing.  She’s a great dancer, and her friends were amazing as well, which made it a great way to cap off a Sunday evening.

As for now… well… my legs are shot, my body is tired, and I have a big grin on my face that says “give me more!”.  I wish every weekend could be this packed and simultaneously chill.

Pictures, as usual, can be found at Picasa yonder.

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