Esprit de l'escalier

Honestly, I am blessed up the whazoo. I have awesome friends, a family that I still love even when I feel like hurting them sometimes and I honestly don’t feel like I deserve a speck of it. It’s hard not to feel guilty. But anyhow, I’ve had a great week. My parents have been gone since last Sunday and I just picked them up from the airport today. It’s good to have them back.
Work has been easy this last week. I’ve been filing and scrapbooking pictures from company events for my mom in an attempt to feel like I’m being constructive enough to justify getting paid for my time. It’s kind of fun scrapbooking somebody else’s photos. I mean, you have to put commentary or something. I wasn’t present when the photos were taken and I only know like a handful of the people in the pictures so what I did for commentary was make up stories for each series of pictures. It was rather fun. I’ll have to see if I can scan any of the pages to post them or something.
It’s been kind of weird this past week not having my best friend around. But hooray! She’ll be home soon! I’m counting down the days. Thankfully I have been keeping myself busy in the evenings when I would usually bug her to hang out.
Well, let me see….Tuesday I hung out with Mac Man and it was fun to just sit and catch up. He’d been gone for a while working at a camp in Massachusetts (I think). Anyway, I had missed him quite a bit. It was exciting to hear how God had been working through his experiences while he was there. And it was nice to hear about his plans for the future and his ambitions and dreams. I always enjoy listening to people describe their dreams. It’s different than having someone describe just any old thing, there is something about dreams. When someone opens up like that it’s almost like your one the ride with them going through the ups and downs, the twists and turns. People generally put more heart and energy into talking about something that they’re passionate or excited about. I love bringing that out in people that I talk to, even if I’m just getting to know them. It’s hard to describe the conversations I have with him…they are very different than any type of conversations I have with other guys. I wish I could find the words to describe it…it’s like trying to describe the flavor of bottled water and how it differs from tap water. One is just as refreshing as the other on a hot summer day, but somehow it leaves a different taste in your mouth. I have very intellectual conversations with Juan too, but those conversations leave me with a different flavor after thought than Mac Man’s.
Anyhow, I always learn something new when I talk to MM and its always fun. I can only hope that he enjoys them just as much as I do.
Another person I got to hang out with a lot that I have missed tremendously is Juan. Now there is a glass of refreshing water that everyone should get a taste of! I had gotten to hang out with him briefly a few nights and finally I was able to take a day off of work on Thursday and we had the whole day to ourselves! Now, I’m not sure how he does it, but Juan is one of those people (like Loreanne) who somehow have the ability to read my mind. He put together this whole day and I had such a great time that there were moments that almost brought tears to my eyes (and for those of you that know me pretty well, you know that’s very hard to do). We went to the city and went through the metereon and that was fun, especially when he showed me the upper level that is constructed to illustrate the entire book “Where the Wild Things Are”. I love that book! It’s right up there with “If You Give A Mouse a Cookie”. Those books really strike a cord with me. Plus, they were playing all my favorite songs when we were walking through there, it was really trippy. They played Enya on the lower level and then they were playing Louis Armstrong upstairs! When we walked outside, the sun was shining, people were smiling and the jazz band was playing. It was like a scene straight out of a Norman Rockwell painting. Next we went to the art museum, talk about hitting all my weaknesses! I love art museums. (I’m such a nerd!) We spent a good couple hours walking through the upper levels of the museum and discussing ‘art stuff’. Juan is an artist too, which is one of the many levels that we connect on. But did he stop there? Of course not! After the museum we went to Bodin’s Sourdough Cafe, a cute little cafe that has really yummy breadbowls and hot chocolate. We sat in there and talked. Juan is a great person to talk with. You start talking with him like you would with anyone else, but before you know it, the next time you look at a clock you realize you’ve been talking for a good three hours or so and you stop to think about what you were talking about to realize that your initial ‘small talk’ turned into ‘big, deep, intellectual talk’. Not to mention that you always walk away from the conversation with 20 gazillion different outlets streaming through your mind and the inspiration to create.
After that we sort of walked around the city looking at all the shops and sites and talking and he took me to this really cool, whole in the wall-type archeological gallery that was just amazing. From there we went back to his place and then I had to hurry back home to lead my Bible study.
Carly, one of my girls in my jr. high study, made cup cakes and a cake from scratch and brought it for us. It was good. We had a great study and I took the girls to Blenzers and they all got to know Amber, another staff person from church who is going to take over the Bible study for me when I go back to school. I really like her and I know she’ll do a great job leading the girls while I’m gone.
After the Bible study I went back over to Juan’s place to watch a really neat thought provoking movie “Waking Life” and to have some really yummy pizza from “Zac’s Pizza Place”. I met his family and they are really fun people. I love his mom, she’s really sweet.
The other times I hung out with Juan I met Heather. A super sweet girl that struck me as the kind of girl I would have run into on any other given day and totally have just clicked with. She was quiet, but I know that she was simply holding back just so she could examine the scene before the jumped in, which is exactly something I would do! haha. I could tell by the look in her eye and the few comments she did make that we are a lot alike and that I’m going to have a lot of fun hanging out with her when I get back to school. I can’t wait!
Another person Juan introduced me to last night was Russell. Now, this was a very strange happening. It turns out that Russell lives in CV and he went to school with me, but I never knew it. He was actually friends with my brother and had a German class with him! They were even tennis buddies! That sorta tripped me out, but the more I thought about it, the more it made sense. There was something strangely intriguing about this new guy that I couldn’t quite figure out. I’m not talking like, I was interested in him as a guy-type attraction or anything. I mean like just the way he thought about things. Well, here’s a quick run down on what happened that evening. I had started to watch Bounce because I thought I was going to be chillin’ with myself for the night. Plans that I had with my friend Jonelle had fallen through and I was really bummed because I hadn’t seen her for a long time. Then I was checking my email and that turned out to be a blessing because I got a really sweet thank-you email from Heather (Juan’s friend). Then I got a call from my buddy Lance to hang out, so I was all jazzed about that and I threw on my shoes and got in the car to head to Lance’s house. On my way there I was just sort of tuning out and thinking about the past week and how much fun I had had with Juan and everybody. I was thinking about how he had told me he was heading up to a camp to visit a friend that was counseling there and I was supposed to go with him and his friend he had told me about, Russell. But we had come to the conclusion that I wasn’t going to go because it would have been awkward because this guy wasn’t very comfortable around girls. Just then I got a call on my cell phone and it was Juan and Russell wanting to know if I could hang out before they had to leave tomorrow. So I was like alright, I’ll stop by Lance’s for a bit then I’ll meet you at Blockbuster. So I got to Lance’s, gave him the t-shirt I got him from the Weezer concert and chatted a bit and left. I got to the video store and as soon as I walked in the door I immediatly made eye contact with this guy. And I was like “whoa, that was weird”. So I did what I normally do when that happens I ignored it and pretended I was looking past him for something. Then it happened again and then again. I was kind of freaking out and frantically looking for Juan and pretending to look at the new release section. Then next time the eye contact was made again, I casually smiled, because I thought to myself, “well, maybe I know him from somewhere, he does look kind of familiar.” Then I turned back to my intense search for a newly released DVD. A few moments later I felt the relieving kick on the back of my shoe, which I knew was from Juan. He said hi and then led me over to meet this Russell character and another friend they had run into. Of course, as you probably guess earlier, he led me to the guy that kept looking at me so curiously. I just assumed, after learning that he had been friends with my brother, that maybe his interesting examination of me was instigated by his nagging recognition and trying to figure out who I was. I dunno. But I felt kinda bad because he seemed to bring out the journalistic side in me and I somehow felt this compulsion to ask him all these random questions and try to somehow figure him out. It was probably really annoying to him, I apologized like 50 times which probably came across as an annoyance as well. I dunno, perhaps the whole thing was just some strange illusion I had in my head because it had been a long day and I was sorta tired. Who knows?
So all that leads me to tonight, which was another wonderful perfect evening. I got this really sweet email from Quinn thanking me for inviting him to go to the Weezer concert with us. (Which honestly was my pleasure because he’s always fun to hang out with.) So I thought hey, I should return the thanks and I called him up and turns out he was having a dinner party with some friends and family and he invited me to come. So I went and we didn’t end up staying at the party very long. We went out to Starbucks and got our usual hot beverages and took a seat on a nearby bench and looked at nice cars and talked about random stuff like we always do. The times I have with Quinn are the times you look back on and reminisce about. They are the moments you think about when you’re talking to your friends about the ‘good-ol-days’. I always have fun and memorable times with Quinn; it’s a rare occasion when we just do dinner and a movie. After we left Starbucks he took me to this park to see if we could catch the tail end of the meteor shower. We parked and hopped the fence to the soccer field and walked around looking at the sky, but the moon was a bit too bright and we couldn’t see much. But we talked about stuff and it was fun nonetheless. Those are the type of things I look forward to.
Well, tomorrow is actually something I am looking forward to. I’m going to church to teach my Sunday school class and then I’m meeting up with my brother and his Heather and we’re going to my Grandma’s house to pick her up and take her to church and then we’re going to all have lunch together and hang out. I love my Grandma and I always look forward to seeing her. She’s so wise and such an encouragement. In fact I should dedicate a whole entry to her. I could go on and on about her.
Anyhow, it’s late, *suprise suprise*. I talked with my mom for a long time after I got back from Quinn’s. haha. Good times, good talks. hehe. Well, until next time kids!