hiking and dancing and other creative ways to make your legs sore

Today Benoit and I went hiking out past North Bend, at Olallie State Park or whatever. I figured it sounded like a fairly nearby, fairly easy hike. It was neither, but that's okay.

We stopped at Uwajimaya on the way out to get lunch at Thai Spice, which was good, and then rode out I-90 to the park. There was no real ranger station, nor could we find a decent map of the trails, but somehow we figured out how to get to the Twin Falls trail. From the website it had sounded like a pretty easy hike, but it was actually fairly long and had a lot of up and downhill stuff, and took several hours.

The waterfall was pretty neat, though.

After that we came back here, showered and changed, and then went swing dancing!!! Wheeeeeeee. We went to the Century Ballroom, which I had never been to. It is scary and crowded, but overall the crowd seemed pretty good, a lot less like Wightman with all the skeezy old guys but contrariwise, more like everyone was several years younger than us. Benoit made me go dance with a bunch of strangers and so I did, and it was fun, except, like I said, the super-crowded floor made me pretty terrified to really swing or spin out or anything. Still, it was fun, and it is good to get back into the swing of things.

Oh, and I wore a skirt. We even took a picture or two as proof.

I walked back into the apartment dancing around and singing, "I feel sweaty... oh so sweaty... I feel sweaty, and skanky, and gross!"

Baseball filk -- "Ball"

This is the second installment in "Mariners! The Musical", a work in progress. I've tried to differentiate talking and singing by having spoken words be in italics... this one is kind of a tough one to represent visually.


"Ball", to the tune of "Belle", from Beauty and the Beast

(It is pre-game at Safeco Field. Jennifer, ballgirl for the Mariners, walks out of the dugout at a gleaming, lovely Seattle evening sky, and sings:)

[Ballgirl:]
Little park
After batting practice
Every game
Eighty-one in all
Little park
Full of guys in black shirts
Walking up to say:

[Umpires:]
Play ball!
Play ball!
Play ball! Play ball! Play ball!

( Cut because it's long, but if you know the music from Beauty and the Beast, you may enjoy this )

Leaders of the C Team

I tried to get chai this morning from Gelatino's or whatever the gelato place at 3rd and Union is called. They don't have chai. They have tasty banana nut bread, though.

The day was mostly a tired blurry achy day for me, although we did quiz night for the first time in ages, Megan and Josh and Eli and me and Benoit. We sucked. It wasn't entirely unexpected. I sadly missed a presidential fu question (which presidential name is used the most? I said William (Taft, McKinley, Clinton, and Harrison), then upon finding out the answer was James, immediately was like "Oh duh... Monroe, Madison, Garfield, James K Polk.... and goddamn Jimmy Carter. Dammit.").