I was supposed to meet her to camp. It had been a long day. Things never quite work out the way they are planned, though, so I found myself wandering around aimlessly. I found the campground's office and asked if they could help me, and they said they couldn't.
There was another man in the office who was just there to warm up. He said he didn't have any of his sleeping bags or anything and he was simply cold. We talked for a while. I knew we were so different it would merit a cliche, but we were in the same boat. He knew where I was at. He told me I could use his tent if it came to that. I said thanks.
It all worked out in the end. But what I'll really remember is that it was cold out.
True, I talk of dreams, which are the children of an idle brain, begot of nothing but vain fantasy, which is as thin of substance as the air.
20060530
Funny thing about fires
So, a funny thing happened the other day. I was driving from Moses Lake to Ellensburg early in the morning (like ~4), having been spending time with the Echo Base crew. Well as dawn started to break I saw smoke coming from the little town of Vantage on the far side of the Columbia River. I stopped by to gawk and perhaps take a nap when I realized I was the first person at a little eatery.
As I slowed down to call 911 a pajamaed woman in a golf-kart yelled at me to get out of the way of the firetruck. Not being one to argue with a firetruck I did so and the firetruck pulled up to the fire.
I jumped out to see if I could help, and ended up hauling around hoses. Once the truck's water supply was set up I was given a hose and the west side of the building to spray.
None of this is particularly funny, but what is interesting is that I had brought my fireman's jacket, or as I now know are called 'turnouts'.
I am not a fireman, nor do I really have any good reason to have a flame retardant jacket.
Although I do like to run around in it yelling “I'm retardant! I'm retardant!”
20060514
existential angst in a coffee shop
She was too bored to be nice. I was too tired to be affronted. She took my money and turned away. I took her coffee and sat down somewhere I wouldn't have to listen to any of the other patrons, nor be in danger of falling victim to their conversation. The nearest patron was a girl, probably in her early twenties, with a figure just this side of attractive, pretending to be absorbed in a Dostoevsky novel. I wondered if she wasn't simply hoping to attract some mature intellectual or some pretentious artiste. I didn't wonder for long. There were more important things to worry about. I picked up the newspaper and read more evidence that the world was going to hell.