This is what I do on my day off

In a stroke of pure fate The Boy and I both had Thursday off this last week. Since we never ever leave our house until work most days we decided to take advantage of the daylight and head downtown.

We took the Max into Portland proper with several goal in mind. Our first objective was feeding ourselves, and since it's been a while, we wanted sushi. I knew SushiLand was somewhere near Powell's aka the best place on earth so we got off the Max ans started walking.

In the two or three blocks between our stop and Powell's there were about six hobos asking for change, which seemed a little extreme for that part of town during the week. The Boy never carries change (we have a bucket for that shit; it's called a beer fund) and I was mysteriously out, but even if we would have had some we would have run out after a block. There were several more people begging around Powell's, including a juggler and a man with a violin but we averted our eyes and hurried past, intent on sushi.

SushiLand ended up being one of those places where the little plates go past you on a conveyor belt. The Boy loves these restaurants because he can get a little* of everything, but I always have to order things to be brought to me because I'm allergic to half the things in there. No shrimp, no crab, mussel, clam, oyster, lobster, squid, octopi...

The hostess was a little scared to serve me at all because there may have been contact between one of those things and my food, but I assured her I wouldn't die. No, this is not going where you think it is. I did not die.

After sushi we went to Powell's and bought entirely too many books, and then we swung by Spartacus because... well, why not? Something you may not have known about me: I enjoy going to porn stores just to laugh at how awkward half the things in there are.

We Maxed back home and hit the mall, where I bought myself a used copy of Guitar Hero 2! I've been looking for a cheapish copy ever since October when I came home from a weekend visiting The Boy to find that my selfish inconsiderate roommate had played it in my xBox and then left it on all weekend, burning a ring into the disc and rendering it unplayable. And then she refused to replace it.

Bitch owes me twenty dollars.

Then we had friends over for beer, including one of The Boy's best friends who was in town from Seattle for a job interview. He had to leave early to get some sleep before said interview, and the rest of us decided to watch Pirates 2.

And I don't mean Pirates of the Carribean.

It was odd, but very amusing.


*Actually a lot. The Boy puts away enough sushi for three people. It's both disgusting and fascinating.

Death by Cheese

Although it's a little late for breakfast, The Boy is currently frying bacon and cooking a frozen pizza in the oven; one for breakfast, one for lunch, although it seems as if we might have them simultaneously.

Wait, did I say cooking a frozen pizza? I'm sorry, that's incorrect. He was cooking a frozen pizza.

He had made another one two nights ago, but when he oh-so-cavalierly tossed it into the oven cheese fell every which way, including on the bottom of the oven. Do you see where this is going yet?

That pizza came out fine and without incident, which is good because we were a couple beers in at that point. This time though, the scattered cheese that he must have forgotten about caught fire. From my spot on the couch I looked up to see The Boy pulling open the oven where there was one foot-tall column of flame and toss a glass full of water on it.

I went to put clothes on so I could look cute for when the firemen get here to put out our house, because I obviously need a man who is a little better with the oven.

I had no idea how The Boy remained so calm about the whole affair, so I asked him. His response? "I just didn't want you to find out the oven was on fire."

And then he scraped the cooled down oven free of cheese with an ice scraper made for car windows. I love this man.

...

Oh lord, he's about to try again. Wish us luck!

Adventure Three or Giant Robots Take Over the World

The Boy and I have been meaning to go see Transformers 2 ever since it came out in theaters, but with both of our work schedules to juggle plus last week's visit from his parents we hadn't had a chance. But then we managed to find a time that worked.

Oh my goodness, that movie is beyond description. Well, not really, but I'm a writer, I have skillz. If you're a girl, skip the next paragraph.

Boys, there were giant robots who wrestled and punched and tore each other's limbs off, HUGE explosions, and cool cars. Which transformed into robots. Also Megan Fox. The next paragraph is for the girls; don't read it!

Girls, there was a poignant story of young love and a boy who got the girl of his dreams. He loved her but he couldn't tell her for fear of losing her because she was sooo out of his league. Eventually he told her and then went off and did brave things or whatever. Also this girl kicked ass and wore cute shoes while doing it.

I enjoyed the movie for all these reasons and because I'm a giant nerd. I think the best part was when The Boy whispered that Optimus Prime must have been watching Jet Li movies because he was kicking Megatron's ass and I whispered back, nah, he's just rusty.

...

Because he's been under water for two years. Get it?

Adventure Two or Cole's Parents Come to Town

The Boy's parents came from out of state for their birthdays and camped near us at Champoeg. The Boy took that half of the week off to stay with them, but because of Adventure One I had to drive him down after I got off work on the first day that they camped, and we didn't get there until 1:30 AM. Even though I had to work the next day I stayed: it would have been insane not to. The Boy set up our tent while I held my mini flashlight (re: shined it in his eyes) and then we went over near the bathrooms (I love state parks) to blow up our air mattress so as not to wake up his parents and their friends with the noisy pump.

As The Boy held the nozzle to the spigot or whatever I stood there uselessly. A cricket jumped at me and I shrieked (just a little. Okay, that's a lie). Then I looked closer and realized that it was a tiny green frog. And there were a bunch of them! They were so cute, hopping around and bumping into the wall of the bathroom/shower building.

I wandered around the corner, following a fat frog until I got distracted and went back to The Boy. Next to him was this dirt clod kind of shaped like a frog so I crouched down to look at it. It was a squashed frog! The Boy had killed the cute little thing! And then it moved. I made him put it out of its misery but I cried the whole time. I told the adult-type people in the morning and no one let him live it down for the rest of the trip.

We all came back into town the next morning and The Boy and I took everyone to lunch at Cheesecake Factory, mainly to share the most amazing food in the world: their avocado egg rolls.


Oh my god. I can't even believe I've gone almost 23 years without tasting these. Seriously, I don't care if you hate egg rolls AND avocado, get up right now and go get some. No really; I'll wait.

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...
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Oh hey, you're back. Weren't those amazing?! Here, someone else has provided the recipe for you.

Where was I? Oh yeah, lunch. We had lunch and then I had to head to work. The Boy went back to the camp site with his family and I drove down after work again. Thankfully I had the next three (!) days off and got to hang out the whole next day in the wilderwild.

Actually we went to the local museum and leaned a lot about the local Indians and Oregon becoming a state. There was this old fashioned kitchen garden there, and we wandered around looking at the little hand-labeled signs and figuring out what spices and stuff look like when they're growing. It was pretty damn cool. So was the ice cream we had afterward. That day was a hot one.

The Boy and I even found something to buy in the museum gift shop: a fundana. As far as I can tell, they're these bandanas printed with games that all have to do with nature: trees, bugs, birds. The one we bought was a constellation map, and when we took it out into the middle of a field that night we discovered two things: 1)the stars and text on our fundana glows in the dark, which is sweet! and 2)it worked a lot better than we expected.

We found a lot of constellations whose location and/or existence we didn't know, including draco and the summer triangle. It was one of the coolest things I've done in a long time, and damn romantic* to boot.

The next day we came home and showed The Boy's parents our house (re: apartment) and his mom borrowed a spare bikini (he may have been just a tad bit horrified) and we went swimming because it was effing hot. I can't remember if it was before or after the pool, but she and I definitely discussed shaving of the bikini area and our experiences with it. I literally saw The Boy's skin crawl a little.

We watched movies and had ice cream and The Boy's parents went to bed in our library. We then went and did quiet naughty things and fell asleep early. Not at all a bad visit.


*Not so much the stars themselves as the level of nerdery involved.

Adventure One or The Time Cole's Truck Got Stolen

The Boy's truck got stolen.

And no, we haven't found it. I was at work when it happened, and he showed up to bring me lunch because it was his day off and because he's the sweetest man alive. I had gotten a text from him that I would never guess what had happened, so when he showed up I was ready with some guesses:

The Boy: Hi honey!
Me: Our neighbors got a Great Dane? The Iranian* women who live downstairs invited us to dinner tomorrow? You met a girl who wants to come home with us?**
TB: Nope. None of those.
Me: What then?
TB: Do you see my truck?
Me: Um... *looks around* no... Where is it?
TB: It got stolen.
Me: What?!

Apparently there's this tow truck that is stealing cars. It's rather ingenious really: the truck tows cars, never from the same place twice, and no one ever questions it because it's a tow truck. But, according to the cops, it's not a legit operation and it's been stealing cars around our area for the last few weeks. And they took my baby's truck. Boo!

So now we're a one-car household and I drive him to his store before going in to work, which is fine, but now our hypothetical wedding fund has become a hypothetical new car fund, and that's just not fun. *Pout*


*Or Pakistani, or Palestinian, or something. I am woefully inept at determining these things.
**What? Shut up.

I'm really bad at this whole regular posting business

Sorry Italian readers and The Boy and maybe one or two other people that stumble upon this blog: I haven't posted in forever. I have a few adventures to share from the last two point something weeks.

When last we left our heroes (that would be me and The Boy, because honestly, I don't do anything if it's not with him) they had just done the stripper-inspired nasty. Since then, most of their waking hours have been spent at work (yeah, we sleep a lot...) but there have been some notable adventures worth telling, both dirty and non.

So, without further ado...

Swinging Pillow Dicks and Other Adventures

One of The Boy's work friends is getting married on Wednesday and she very sweetly invited me to her bachelorette party last week. I thought that bachelor parties were all booze, cigars and hookers pretending to be strippers who only accepted you money for a hummer because they "thought you were cute" while bachelorette parties were more like baby showers but with lingerie.

Well not this one. When the bride-to-be first invited me to Darcelle's I thought it was a bar. I expected fruity drinks (which I had), tequila shots (which I had), and not-so-subtle comments about the bride- and groom-to-be's sex life (which were made, mostly by the "ladies" of the establishment).

Yeah,... Darcelle's is a drag show. I wasn't completely taken by surprise (thank you google) but it was definitely more than I was expecting. I think my favorite part was when the two "ladies" on stage flipped up their bright orange tiger print wrap dresses to reveal underpants with stuffed junk attached. That's right: someone sewed two sets of oversized men's dangly bits, stuffed them like a pillow, and attached them to underwear for drag queens. My sincerest hope is that it was their mothers or grandmothers. Such support.

After the show, which surprisingly did not include and Cher, we headed out without having really decided on a destination which I can tell you is always a mistake when you're in a group of drunk (or sober, really), fickle women.

Finally I took charge and, picking up on a rather revealing comment from the bride-to-be earlier in the evening, led the group to Cabaret, my favorite strip club that just happened to be a few blocks away. It was her first time at such a place but she liked it; the dancers were very attentive (as they tend to be when a group of women come in) and the bride found a dancer she really liked and who really REALLY liked her. Let's just say that many of the club's rules were broken that night, despite the fact that the owner was on site and wandering around the club's tiny premises.

Aside from a brief interlude where we attempted to go to the nearby gay club where we had heard there were male strippers*, we stayed at Cabaret for the rest of the night. When The Boy got off work he came downtown to pick me up (I had to work in the morning and was fading fast) and one of his other work friends insisted on buying him a dance from the bride's favorite girl. She invited me to watch and it quickly turned into a couple's dance. Like I said: there was definitely a lot of rule breaking going on, I'll spare you the sexy details.

After the dance we left and although I professed my stripper-kindled desire for The Boy on the whole ride home, when we arrived I found myself unfit for the task at hand and slowly, gracefully crashed face-first into my pillow, dead to the world.

But I made sure to make up for it when I got home from work the next day.


*They didn't let us in! We wanted to see those sexy gay men strutting their stuff in technicolor banana hammocks, but they claimed that one of the girls in the party was visibly intoxicated (which she was) and they couldn't let her in (which is crap). Oh well. Maybe next time.

Jena's First Party

Last night The Boy and I threw our first party in our apartment. It wasn't big, just a few new work friends and one long time friend from The Boy's old job. I'm going to call him Titan, a moniker that is as incongruous as it is amusing (especially to those of us who know the reason). Everyone arrived and we settled in for a long night of drinking games.

We started off the night right with a game of Moose, and I'm happy to say I didn't have to drink the Moose Cup, an unholy conglomeration of whatever everyone happened to be drinking at the time, all rolled into one tasty refreshment. My new friends seemed to pass the cup back and forth for most of the game, but they learned their lesson: always pay attention and have the reflexes of a puma (no, not a moose. that would be bad).

My new awesome lesbian friend, who I'm going to call CD for reasons that shall remain unexplained then taught us the dice game she and all her lesbian friends (I swear they flock together or something) play when they drink. Basically someone rolls the dice at any point in the evening, saying "If I roll a *insert number not seven here*, so-and-so has to *insert dare*." This made for some pretty interesting situations, including rules everyone had to abide by for the rest of the night.

We played dirty Jenga and I had to serenade Titan's roommate, give my underwear to the someone (I picked The Boy because I'm lame like that), and describe my worst sexual experience. *shudder*

Next CD taught us another game called Queens (also invented by lesbians, although I would have guessed gay men) which is a variation on Kings, only with more making out and nudity. I had to trade pants with Titan and shirts with my other new work friend, Strip Club, and I kissed my second lesbian*.

The dice game was going on through all of this, and there were shots being taken and dares being fulfilled by everyone present. The Boy had to hit on Titan who was out of the room at the time of the roll and had no idea what was going on.

The last two games of the night (I know, we're ridiculous) were asshole and sevens, the former taught by CD and the latter taught by me. Sevens was kind of half-assed because most of us were drinking water by then, but I still say the night was a resounding success. We sent the boys safely home and gave the girls pillows and spots on the floor and passed the fuck out in bed, without even a perfunctory attempt at getting it on.

This morning we sent our new friends on their way and collapsed back in bed until one. I woke up still drunk, but I'm better now, and since The Boy is at work on this the day of America's independence, I'm meeting my new friends downtown for dinner, drinks, and some big noisy sky flowers.

Happy 4th everyone!


*I've kissed a lot of girls, most of them straight, some of them bi, but only one other lesbian. Oh college.