January 24, 2000

Keith and I are back from the barren Midwest, and I must say we had a simply fantabulous time.

We almost didn't make it at all, though, thanks to Keith's directions. See, I had to go pick him up at work before we went to the airport, but that was OK, because I know how to get to his work. I've been there before and everything. His job is moving to Redmond, but he had a meeting at the old place in Bellevue, so he said he'd just stay there and wait for me to come get him. Yay. All cool.

Flash forward to 2pm. I'm supposed to pick up Keith at 3. I'm rushing around the house tossing stuff into overnight bags and trying to make sure all the lights/burners/etc. are turned off. The phone rings.

KEITH
Hi, hon.

ME
Hi, babycakes. What's up? I'm about to leave.

KEITH
Um, can you come get me in Redmond?

MY BRAIN
Oh God no! Not new directions! I'll get horribly lost! Noooooo!

ME
Uh.

KEITH
I can give you directions!

MY BRAIN
That's what I'm afraid of.

ME
Uh.

KEITH
Really good directions?

ME
Pretend I'm a 5 year old child. Give me directions in terms that that child would understand.

KEITH
OK, I can do that. Here, you take this highway and get off at this specific exit. Then you go north -- you have the car compass right? good -- you go north on this road. Then make a left onto this other road. Go about a mile, until it intersects with this road. I'll be standing on the corner waiting for you.

ME
Got it.

It all sounded fairly easy. I was cautiously optimistic. This was, of course, my fatal error. God laughs at the hubristic among us.

I followed the directions up until the "make a left onto this other road." I made that left. Then, a quarter of a mile later, the road morphed into a new road. Keith had not mentioned this. I told him to give me very easy directions. Surely he would have mentioned the road morphing into a new road, right? I tried to keep going in the same direction, but the new road kept turning, and it became apparent that this was definitely the Wrong Way to Go. I took a random right to try to turn around and go back the other way.

To make a long story somewhat shorter, I got badly lost in Redmond. I crossed the interstate five separate times and cursed in frustration many more than five times. After half an hour I stopped at a gas station to get directions. After giving me the directions, the guy told me "good luck" and shook his head sadly.

Fifteen minutes after THAT, I finally managed to navigate the maze of back streets that leads from the Eddie Bauer campus (Eddie-Bauer-Land is right scary, believe you me) into one of Microsoft's campuses (campii?). Keith was standing there. I felt as though the heavens had opened and angels were singing. My Quest was over at last.

I was still pretty pissed off about the directions, though. Keith could tell. He looked very, very chagrined when he got in the car (it was about 40 minutes after I'd said I'd be there).

KEITH
I didn't give you the directions you asked for, did I?

ME
Aaah! No! It was stupid 158th! It turned into this other street and then that street went into a dead-end residential cul-de-sac! It didn't go through! Why would you think it would go through? Did you ask a stupid co-worker for these directions?

KEITH
(frowning) Hm. No, I got them off the bus map. It looked like it went through.

ME
It didn't. It so didn't.

KEITH
(looking at handwritten directions I'd copied down from his instructions) Oops.

ME
Uh?

KEITH
(in a very small voice) I should have said "make a right" onto 158th instead of "make a left."

ME
...

KEITH
I'm so sorry, hon. What a nightmare time you must have had trying to find me.

ME
(nodding sadly) *sniff*

KEITH
Let's go get some food.

ME
OK. I still love you even though you made me get lost in the Land of the Great Satan for 40 minutes.

KEITH
I love you too. Don't hit me too hard when we get out of the car.

ME
I can't make any promises.

Anyway, the upshot is that even though our food was late at Taco Time, we still made it to the airport with plenty of time. Yay! Minnesota, here we come!

I would like to make a tangential rant at this point that Northwest no longer shows movies on domestic flights. I mean, come on. We're on the damn plane for three and a half hours and they can't even show a movie? Instead, they showed an episode of Seinfeld, an episode of Frasier, and the k.d. lang episode of MTV Unplugged. What the hell? I'm not paying three bucks for headphones to watch that stuff. I want a movie! Where's the movie?!? I checked the in-flight magazine and it said that movies are shown only on international flights. Well, that sucks. Instead of watching the movie, I had to read, and I didn't bring enough reading material with me, so for half the flight, I was re-reading the same magazine. It sucked a lot. Bring back the movies, Northwest.

When the plane landed in Minnesota, I was so excited that I got off the plane without putting my parka on first. This was a tactical error. The temperature in the jetway upon exiting the plane was approximately -3,000 degrees. I'm just guessing here.

Actually the temperature was about 8, before windchill. Which is cold. Damn cold. Real damn cold. I was not mentally prepared.

It was all OK, though, because our friends were waiting there for us. Well, some of our friends. Other friends had not arrived at the airport yet, and even more friends had gone to meet the friends that had not yet arrived. It sounds confusing, but within half an hour we were all together and at the baggage claim.

I wish someone had taken a picture of what happened next, just to prove to the rest of the world what massive nerds we all are. The five of us in our party of nine who had cell phones immediately whipped them out and started programming each other's numbers into them. Much ado was made of who had the better cell phones and whose calling plan was more awesome. It was, I think, the nerdiest thing I've ever seen, and I have seen some pretty nerdy things.

Then we all went back to the hotel and drank the $35.08 worth of alcohol that Matt and Andy had bought. This might sound like a few six-packs of beer and maybe a bottle of vodka, from the price, but actually it was about six full bottles of hard liquor plus a case of Bud Lite. Apparently at the liquor store, they were only charged the last four digits of the actual price. This was a total bonus for everybody.

We didn't actually drink all of it the first night. We didn't even come close. I had about two drinks and felt like passing out from exhaustion. So, I snuggled into bed with Keith and Carolyn (thus lowering my purity test score even further) and went to sleep (but not that much further).

Day Two. I would like at this time to make a few comments about the Minnesota weather. I might have mentioned this before, but it was cold. Damn cold. Real damn cold. Before I left for this little trip, I'd been feeling somewhat nostalgic about Chicago winters. You know, snow, ice, all that sort of winter wonderland type thing. All that nostalgia ended as soon as I remembered what 0-degree weather is actually like. It sucks. A lot. If you don't wrap up every exposed part of your body, it freezes. It's too cold to breathe. It's too cold to do anything. Nostalgia? Who, me?

Anyway, in the morning when we woke up, everyone was making fun of Keith for his "wibblewibblewibble" noises. I told them I wasn't making it up just to be funny in my journal, and now they believed me. He really does that. Keith looked chagrined for a moment, but then pointed out that he was the one sleeping with two hot chicks in his bed, so everyone else should just shut up. I'm not sure I follow that logic, but I wasn't going to argue with him.

Saturday was the day of Sexworld, Benihana's, and the nightclub. First, we went to Sexworld. Actually, first we tried to go snow tubing, but when we told the snowtube place that we wanted to rent 14 tubes, they laughed in our faces and told us we'd be waiting approximately, um, forever. So we left and went to Sexworld instead. Sexworld is a big ol' sex emporium. They have toys, books, videos, porno-watching booths, clothes, and more toys. We wound up splitting into two groups for Sexworld, because Carolyn needed to go back to the hotel to get her ID so she could get in, and by the time we got back from the hotel (it was me, Keith, Carolyn, and Kien) the other group had already left for the hotel. I hear a rumor that somebody in the other group tried on a pair of assless pants, but it's just a rumor. Maybe.

Carolyn and I were most interested in the clothes, and Keith was most interested in watching Carolyn and I try on the clothes. Kien wandered off to look at something else in the meantime, I'm not sure exactly what, but I'm sure he was entertained.

I tried on a silver sparkly skirt that fit and looked cute, but didn't quite cover my butt, so was not really a practical item of clothing. Carolyn tried on some stuff too, but it wasn't really working for her, either. Then I found The Top. The Top was made out of something black and shiny, either PVC or latex, I'm not sure which. It zipped up the back, had shoulder straps, and exposed way more of my cleavage than I'm used to. I asked Keith if he liked it, and he said "Sure." I said, "Sure?!? 'Sure' is the first thing that came into your mind when you saw this on me?" and he said that's the first VERBAL thing that came into his mind, but that if I would let him into the changing booth with me, he would be able to express more fully his feelings about the latex top. I told him that was against Sexworld policies, but that I appreciated the sentiment anyway. So, I bought The Top.

After that, we went to Benihana's, which is the type of Japanese restaurant where the chef prepares the food on a hot grill that's set into your table, so you can watch him slice and dice. Some of the expert chefs get really fancy with the knife-throwing, but I think ours was only an apprentice knife-thrower, so we had to settle for him flipping shrimp tails into his hat and shirt pocket. It was neat, and probably less heart-attack-inducing than actual knife-throwing. The food was excellent, too.

So then, we all went back to the hotel, and the group that was going to the club started to get ready, and the group that wasn't, started getting ready for some serious alcohol consumption at the hotel. Not everybody could go to the club, because you had to be at least 21, and some people who WERE over 21 didn't feel like going anyway. The people who went were me, Carolyn, Keith, Matt, Andy, Adam, Jeremy, and... I think that's it. I'm all proud of myself for remembering everybody's names.

The club was faboo. I was not too optimistic about how awesome the club would be, seeing as how we were in Minneapolis and all. I was a little scared that it would be a bunch of people wearing flannel shirts and blue jeans coming out to see the freaks, but it wasn't like that at all. There were a lot of people who were all Gothed out, which was nice, because then Carolyn and I didn't feel out of place. Carolyn was wearing a... latex? I think? bodice, and leather pants, and I had on The Top and a miniskirt and fishnets. We were showstopping. At least at the hotel, we were. At the actual club we more or less blended right in, which was okay with me.

The club was having a bondage theme for the evening, which turned out to be really cool. In the upstairs section, they had a chaise lounge set up where guys would go up and pay, and then be "tortured" by the dominatrix for awhile. Some of it was really funny. This one guy, she attached a bunch of clothespins to his chest, and then ripped them off slowly, and he was screaming his head off and laughing at the same time. It was a riot. Another good part was when this frat-boy-looking guy (short blond hair, pullover sweater, chinos) went up, and she attached his hands to the pipe above his head and then proceeded to smack the hell out of his butt with her flogger. It was great because you could tell he was really trying not to react too much, because he was a guy and could take the pain, but man, it REALLY had to hurt.

So anyway, the upstairs dominatrix show captured the attention of all the guys in the group for most of the evening, I'd say. I did some dancing too, though. And Keith danced with me. And it was really great. I never really went dancing with Keith before, because we're not really into the whole club scene, but it was SO MUCH FUN! It was really awesome, and intense, and fun, and groovy, and.. anyway, it was a good time.

Carolyn did some dancing too, but not with me. *pout*

After the club, we went back to the hotel and discovered that certain other members of the group had managed to drink themselves into oblivion in our absence. I mean, serious oblivion. Really serious oblivion. I thought *I* was drunk, on my two tequila sunrises and one midori sour, but that was nothing compared to some of the people at the hotel. It was amazing.

Then I went to sleep with Keith and Carolyn again. Yum.

Day Three. We were going to try to go snow tubing again on Sunday, but we just ran out of time. It took people a really long time to get ready in the morning, and then we went to Perkins for brunch and it took them 45 minutes to seat us. That was OK, though, because the temperature was like -10 before windchill, so I was not too thrilled about the concept of hurtling down a snowy hill in an innertube and then smashing into a wall of snow, anyway. Keith was really disappointed for awhile, because he was really excited about going tubing with a bunch of friends, but it didn't ruin his day or anything. He asked me if I wanted to go tubing at Snoqualmie sometime, and I said, sure! So that was okay.

After Perkins and packing, we just went to the airport and said our goodbyes and hopped on our plane, that we almost missed. They were calling up standby passengers as we arrived at the gate, so I guess we were just in time.

Anyway, it was a great weekend and hopefully I get to do it again sometime. Carolyn keeps telling me I need to go visit her in San Francisco, so maybe this summer. Did you hear that Carolyn? Quit bugging me, I swear I'll go visit. Sometime. I swear.

THE FORUM: What do you hate about planes?

THE FORUM PART DEUX: Have you ever met people from the Internet?

X-FILES FORUM: I still wanna talk about the X-Files.

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