Rocks

Song of the Day: You're Not There by Eddplant

My butt is so tired. (I bet THAT got your attention). But for good reason! Allow me to start at the beginning of this tale.

Today started out like any mundane Thursday with a trip to the doctor's office, where they unexpectedly stole my blood. It's funny how I'll willingly get tattoos, and then you put me in a doctor's office and I'm all, "BLUH, needles!" I don't actually have a problem with needles (like queasiness or fainting), I just find them unpleasant. But tolerable. ANYWAY. I was slated to hang out with Kayley afterward, and on the way to her house I saw a tweet from her saying she wanted to do some quintessentially "American" things before she leaves for England.

So she got in my car and I mentioned that. We looked to twitter for ideas (most of it was pretty unhelpful, although my favorite suggestion from her followers was "salute things") but eventually settled on finding a "World's Largest" thing near enough to drive to. She looked it up on her iPad and found nothing, but in searching for landmarks she found out that there is a replica of Stonehenge in Washington. She turned to me and said, "It's on the river. That's a four-hour drive." I thought for a second and replied, "I have nowhere to be tonight." So at about 1:30 p.m. we set out for I-5.

It was actually a really lovely trip. I-90 through the mountains is always beautiful (I actually prefer being a passenger for that so I can look at the rivers, but oh well) and there was only a bit of Eastern Washington that lived up to the stereotype of being "dead." Seriously, the hills were drained of color. But THEN we got into some gorgeous farming country with patchwork fields bright green, and there were white wind turbines on top of the hills against the intensely blue sky. Living in a place with so many trees, I don't often see that much of the sky, and it was wonderful. Kayley's Twitter followers got to see some of my finer quotations from the trip xD

We finally made it to the Columbia River Gorge and Stonehenge. Basically the story behind why it exists is this guy went to England and saw the real thing during WWI. At the time the theory behind it was less calendrical and more human-sacrifice-y. He saw parallels between that and the war, so he came back to the States and built a replica of Stonehenge as a war memorial to fallen soldiers. It's pretty cool. The view on the Gorge is STUNNING, especially in the evening (we ended up being there around 6). The Henge sits right on a cliff-ish type deal, Below it is a small vineyard or some such thing, and then the river. There were some rock outcroppings that made excellent spots to stand and yell things like, "I'm king of the world!"

Besides a sore tailbone from a combined 8 hours of sitting in the driver's seat, this trip pretty much didn't do anything negative for me. There was something beautiful and liberating about deciding to go somewhere and just going there. Just because we could. Gas prices be damned. It also reminded me that I really like being with Kayley one-on-one (not that I remembered it unpleasantly, we just don't very often). When it's just us, just Padfoot and Prongs, we fall back into being buds and it doesn't feel like we rarely get to see each other. We were able to make jokes and car-dance and just be goofy, and we were on an even keel again. We also listened to a lot of Ed from Chameleon Circuit's solo music and I'm really inspired to write songs now, except that I'm shit at songwriting. I gotta get some tragedy up in my life or something (but not actually).

I also tried the most simultaneously horrific and beautiful sandwich in the history of creation. Kayley got some footage today and that was part of it, and I can't imagine she'd leave it out when she edits it together. I'm actually pretty excited to see the final product xD

So yeah. Excellent day all around, and I have a sore tailbone and inner elbow to prove it. And even though it is now past midnight this is Thursday's post. Now I have to go never spend money ever again to make up for filling up the tank today.

I have seen all I need / to roam free within these streets / Climbing up walls that are never too tall / feeds my soul. -Serendipity, Greg Holden