All My Little Words

Despite the fact that I won’t touch Facebook with a ten foot pole, social networking and I go way back. It’s true. Before Twitter, there was Myspace and Friendster, and before that there was Livejournal, and even before that message boards like the one at Chic or Shriek (a fashion do or don’t website), and waaaaay back in the dark ages, we used to socially network with personal websites. I was the shit back then – I had my own domain (yes, I still have it) and hand coded my own websites, (yes, plural, I had many, they were legion) unless I was feeling lazy and used Dreamweaver, which back then was considered cheating, but compared to the ease with which we build websites and blogs now, it was a monster to use.

Instead of @replies, we painstakingly linked to our friends websites. There was no concern about privacy – there was no Google, and getting your photos on a webpage could take days, if you (like me) had as many as we anow throw onto Myspace in a matter of minutes.

Back then the internet was still a new thing that no one really thought would catch on, and the only people who used it much were geeks like myself. You couldn’t just do a simple search for friends in those days – yeah, there were chat rooms, but those were lame even then. You’d spend hours combing the interwebs for good websites among the giant piles of crap on Angelfire and Geoshitties, and even more hours keywording and metatagging your site/s so that other geeks could find you.

Or you could find friends on ICQ (I Seek You, hahahaha), which was omnipresent, always on, always ready for a late night/early morning conversation. At one point in time, I had far more far flung friends around the world than I had IRL. And I’ll tell you what, I hope many of them are working in the digital media/social networking industry today, as they put out some beautiful, amazing and complex websites the like of which you just don’t see any more.

These days, it is all about simplicity. We want clean, simple lines, easy to navigate sites, and a plethora of features at our fingertips, just a single click or tap away. And there IS a lot to be said for “User Friendliness”, I agree.
It is nice to be able to quickly snap a little blurb like this out while I’m cooking lunch or keep my friends updated on my whereabouts on the fly.

And that, my friends, is kind of what inspired this. Yesterday, I somehow came across @mashable, the Twitter for the CEO of – you guessed it – Mashable, a Social Media Guide. I slogged through a veritable onslaught of tweets, stopping to read this article or that, when I came across what stuck with me today as the most noticeable article I read on Mashable (yesterday, anyway), Yelp vs. Foursquare vs. Gowalla.

Turns out that Yelp just got into the “Check-In” game by updating their iPhone app to support checking in pretty much anywhere, much like it’s two predecessors, but without the points. Hopefully, they’ll add that soon, because, let’s be honest – stealing the title of Mayor, or getting your Overshare or Super User badges are half the fun.

So of course, I went straight to the ole App Store and updated my Yelp app, so that I could check it out. And today, I went out to play with all three together to see what would happen.

Let me start by saying that I don’t spend a lot of time at THE MALL, but my husband’s wedding ring was waiting to picked up after being re-sized, and what better place to test my ability to check in with so many places to do so?
I drove to Northgate and parked, and sat in the car to check in simply, AT THE MALL. Yelp picked up Northgate Mall right away, no problem. Ditto Foursquare. Gowalla wouldn’t even load, a problem I’ve been having with it from the start. I’m just going to kick Gowalla to the curb right here and now by telling you that I tried a few more times to get it to at least load up, but it didn’t do it anytime during the 90 or so painful minutes I spent at THE MALL, much less let me check in. I would be more than willing to admit that maybe I AM DOING IT WRONG somehow, but – see above. I’ve been doing this kind of shit long enough that I can figure out almost anything on a computer or my iPhone in a matter of seconds without even trying. And as also noted above, everything is supposed to be so easy these days, it shouldn’t matter if I am The Man Who Fell to Earth. If I could figure out how to turn the iPhone on, get to the app store, download and install Gowalla, it should be a snap to get it to load up and check in. Everybody else seems to love it, though, so who knows?!?

Finally out of the car, I went into THE MALL through the Forever XXI store. I was just there the other day, but it was kind of awesome to be in there when there wasn’t 850,000,000 teens, and the clothes weren’t dumped into heaps all over the floor. Side note: Going during the day does have it’s downside – TONS of little kids.
I browsed and wandered through while I tried to check in. No problem with Foursquare, but Yelp told me I was too far away! I tried again immediately, and then later right when I walked into THE MALL, and again as I was leaving and I exited the same way I entered. For some reason, Yelp didn’t recognize that I was IN the store, it seemed to think I was a little over a mile away. Curious. I even tried “Forever 21″, to see if it could match up with another (incorrect) listing somehow. Nope. -1 Yelp.

Next, I headed over to Ben Bridge to pick up the ring. Yelp found that one okay, but no one had entered it on Foursquare yet. I checked in without adding it, (I know, I know, what’s the point of being a Super User if you’re not gonna add stuff? I add a lot of stuff, but unfortunately, it is sometimes unexpectedly difficult to add businesses, and I didn’t feel l like messing with it while I was standing in the middle of the mall.) thus, missing out on the points for that stop. -1 for Foursquare.

Honestly, I was a little lazy and forgetful because I wandered into a bunch of stores for a minute or two and didn’t check in. It didn’t seem worth it when I was just passing through on my way to another destination. At least I’m not a big cheater, I could have checked in at every store I passed! (I know people who do this sort of thing.)

After checking out the food court to see if anything looked good for lunch, I went to get a coffee from Starbucks. Checked in here just fine with both Yelp and Foursquare (Gowalla still down for the count), then used the Yelp app to see what was up at Blue Fin Sushi for lunch. I’d been there for dinner, and thought maybe I’d go shovel in some all-you-can-eat sushi for lunch (it’s better than you might think). First, I got really confused and thought they were closed, because the app shows the lunch and dinner hours, and next to them whether they are CURRENTLY open or closed. As it was 11:28am, it said “Closed” next to the lunch hours, which begin at 11:30, so I was like “WTF Blue Fin??” and I got a little annoyed. I ended up looking again a few minutes later, which cleared up the confusion, but then I took the time to see how much lunch was and ended up deciding that I didn’t feel like spending $16, although I totally would have if we weren’t having dinner at home tonight, and that was going to be my major meal for the day.

After I realized that I am a dumbass and forgot to order my venti latte iced instead of hot, I kind of just felt like going home and pouring it over ice instead of going to the At&T store to look at iPhone cases and to Payless to check out cheap purses. I also skipped looking for jeans in The Gap, and bypassed Macy’s even though I still have a gift card to use there. I ended up deciding that I should just leave and try checking in at a different location. First, I was going to try to go to the new orchid store in Ballard, but I was still hungry, so I opted to just go to Safeway on the way home instead.

I successfully checked in there, on both Yelp and Foursquare while I was waiting to turn left at the light that takes forever to change (oh, the irony) and after getting a few things, came home to write this while making and eating my lunch (Stir Fry!) and drinking my (now iced) latte.

I checked in at home (La Casa) on Foursquare (this is my friend Erik’s fault – he just joined Foursquare the other day and the first thing he did was add his house, an entity known as “The Sausage Ranch”, something which had previously never even occurred to me to do. I won’t add La Casa on Yelp, that just seems too weird.)

Conclusion? The social networking combination of “Tag” + “Hide and Seek” is fun. I got a few Tweets in there while I was at it, too.
I think Yelp is going to give Foursquare a run for it’s money, once it works out the bugs, but only if it becomes more of a game with points or some other reward. GoWalla can go suck it. To be fair though, I’m going to continue this little experiment by trying to figure out what’s up with my GoWalla app so I can give it a fair shake.

Okay, kids, I’m off to go check out some more articles on some of the above mentioned sites and maybe try to fix my Gowalla app. Until next time…

I just realized (like, an hour ago) that it is nigh upon the 2nd anniversary of my friend Bobby’s death.
To this day, I honestly don’t really know if he died on the 18th or the 19th. He was in New York at the time, and it happened sometime in the middle of the night. I got a phone call at about 4am. Phone calls at that hour are never good.

I tried to go to work that day. I don’t know how long I lasted before I became so overwhelmed with emotion that I had to leave. I don’t remember much about that day except that I went straight from work to Liz’s house, where I spent the whole day with her and Eric. I think we played Monopoly. Grant may have been there. Other people may have been, too. But mostly it was me and Eric. It wasn’t too long after that that I sent Eric to rehab.

I remember all the time I spent thinking about Bob, and all the people I talked to about him, and shared stories and memories with.
I proved that misery brings out the best in us by writing the best thing I’ve ever written – about Bob. I was reading it just now and unlike many other things I’ve written which I thought were brilliant at the time, and later realized were just embarrassing, I realized that what I wrote about Bob is still every bit as good as I thought it was the day I wrote it.

I wish I knew him more, so I could write more things about him. He was a great subject. He was handsome and funny and honest. He had THE. BEST. ADVENTURES. EVAR.
How many people do you know who went to Dive School and became underwater welders? He wasn’t working when I met him because his arm was broken, but every day of his life was just as interesting as the ones he spent underwater in the ocean with the sharks, off the coast of South America or wherever he may have gone to work. We had soooooo many adventures together. I don’t know that I will ever know anyone else as fun or engaging or charming as Bob. We missed him when he wasn’t here, and always looked forward to the times he’d get off the boat and come flying back into town with $5 in his pocket after making $30k (or whatever) in something like 2 or 3 months. Whether he had money or not, he was always somewhere interesting. When it wasn’t here in Seattle, it was Chicago or New York or LA.

You know how sometimes you come up with crazy things to do, but then you never do them? Bobby did them, without even thinking twice about. Whether it was dressing up and pretending to be someone else, or getting into a bar brawl followed by a car accident which he would miraculously survive, he would tell me his stories in this offhanded manner, not realizing that they would be unbelievable coming from anyone but him.

One day when he’d been gone for months, he just showed up one day, SURPRISE!!!! at my house, and came right in and started calling out my name. Too bad I wasn’t home! But he was at home at my home. He told me the most delightful story that visit, when I asked about the new scar on his head. It was from a car accident that he miraculously survived, after a drunken bar brawl, if I recall correctly. He went to the hospital and they asked him where he lived. He said “At Bella’s house in Seattle!” as if he were surprised that there were people who did not know this.

After all the things I’ve written about Bobby, I imagine that some people think that we were lovers, that we dated, or at the very least, that I was secretly in love with him. I loved him very much, but as much as I found him handsome and delightful, never like that. I suppose it could have been that way, but it wasn’t because everything about Bob was perfect, and it was perfect that we were never that. Being involved that way might have ruined it (doesn’t it always?) although every woman I ever talked to about Bob loved him, still loved him, and I think always will love him.

I didn’t realize until after he was gone, and a number of girls contacted me about him, and what I’d written about him, that he literally had a girl in every port. That makes him sound like a real asshole, but in talking to these woman, I realized that he made each and every one of those women feel like she was the one. The ONLY one. Whether they were aware that they were not didn’t seem to matter. They all loved him, and he loved each and every one of them. He wasn’t playing them, they weren’t conquests in any way. He was a loving person, and he loved people, and people loved him. While most of us can’t handle “managing” multiple partners, it worked for him because, again, it wasn’t something he thought twice about. He took it all in stride. Every city was like a separate life, and Bobby was a rolling stone, and why should he not enjoy the company of different women wherever he went? It made him happy, and it made THEM happy. The world is a better place for all those women having known him, rather than if he’d only “dated” one at a time, and therefore only been with a few women in his too short life.

I left a comment on his Myspace page, and then I looked down at the last several comments before my new one. It had been a while since the last, but I was glad to see a lot of familiar names in the last half of last year. I was glad to see that he has not been forgotten.
Wish you were still here, mang.

When I was a kid, I think I was pretty well behaved until I was about 3. At that point, perhaps I became a little more…
self aware, perhaps? Because for some reason, at that point, I guess I started testing the waters to see what I could get away with.

As I had mentioned in the other post about spanking, when I was a kid, all kids knew that if you did something bad, you’d get a spanking.
It was definitely the norm back then, although I think the tide was just starting to turn, as I think I thought that I would NOT
get one, simply because I hadn’t ever before. I was really probably just too young for one, or too young to have done anything to
“deserve” one.
I “got away with” stuff for probably about a year before my parents must have realized that reasoning with me was not working.
They told me not to do stuff and why and it went right in one ear and out the other, I guess.

One day when my dad wasn’t home, I was hanging out in the kitchen while my mom had something going on the stove, maybe hard-boiled eggs or something because she left the room with the pot still on. The cookie jar (which I had been warned repeatedly to NOT get into for a number of reasons) was on a shelf above the stove, probably to make it inaccessible to me. I had also been warned to stay AWAY from the stove, ALWAYS, because it could be hot and I could get burned. I saw my opportunity though,
and dragged a chair over and reached OVER a hot stove with a pot of boiling water on it to get that cookie jar, and in the process,
the jar fell and broke.
Of course, I was caught. But I wasn’t worried, because I knew I would just get a talking to, which I did, from my mom.
Then my dad came home, and I didn’t think anything of it when they went to talk in the other room. Then my dad sat me down to give me a talking to, which again, went right in one ear and out the other. Until he flipped me around and started spanking me.
It didn’t hurt, but I was shocked. I did not know what to do at first, but then it occurred to me that I’d heard that kids cry
when they got spanked, so I started crying. I think I wanted it to stop because it made me realize that I was bad. And I didn’t want
to be bad anymore. No one wants to be bad at that age.
So I started to cry and my dad stopped, and then he hugged me and I could see that he felt bad. My mom felt bad. I felt bad for
making them feel bad. But that was the end of that, and I knew now that I could get a spanking if I did wrong. I still did a few things
that I shouldn’t have over the next year, and I got a couple more spankings, but after only one or two more, I stopped doing stuff I
had been told not to.

But I didn’t stop getting into trouble. I think things were fine until I was about 6. I was well behaved, now understanding the
consequences of my actions. I didn’t intentionally do anything wrong, and in fact I made really sure to not do anything
accidentally wrong either.
One night my parents had a party, and I guess they decided that I was well enough behaved that I could just stay in their room
and sit on their waterbed and watch the little tv in there. All fine with me, the waterbed was fun, and I had stuffed animals.
After a couple of hours, I must have gotten bored. My mom had a bunch of posters push-pinned into the walls which I was fascinated
by, so I stood on the bed to take a closer look. I don’t know if I was bouncing and screwing around, or if the bed was just sloshy,
but I must have knocked one of the pins out of the wall. I didn’t even realize it. AT ALL. The poster was over the bed, so the tack
probably landing right on it, and then as I squooshed around on there, it probably bounced and rolled to edge, where it fell
between the mattress and the frame, and poked a hole in the mattress. But it would have been a tiny hole, and I was a tiny kid,
so hours passed with no visible evidence. It probably wasn’t until my parent’s much heavier combined weight was on the bed hours later that it really started to gush.

And my dad got really pissed. And he yelled, and it scared the everloving shit out of me, even though I didn’t even know what had happened until he started yelling at me about how horrible I was for puncturing the bed, and on and on and on.
This was WAY WAY WAY worse than getting spanked, and I hadn’t even done anything. (not intentionally anyway, or that I was aware of.)

I must have been too old to be spanked at that point, so instead, I was grounded. For 6 months. No friends, no tv, no dessert.
That was a billion times worse than the spanking that only lasted a few seconds. Even worse was the fact that my dad didn’t believe
that I didn’t do it on purpose. Even worse than that was the fact that after that, I don’t think he trusted me at all.
Because I didn’t intentionally go against my parents for years, but there were a few more times when I accidentally broke things
(things I was allowed to touch or whatever) that I again got the yelling, and even worse, the long term grounding.
This continued until I was a teenager, and I was accused of increasingly more and worse deeds over the years, and I
probably spent half of every year for the next 8 years being grounded. No wonder I became socially stunted, overly shy,
self conscious and overweight.

So, I guess, in short, spanking worked to straighten out my behavior, but I also got to experience the other side of the disciplinary
coin. I’m not saying that anyone would advocate verbal abuse in any case, as an alternative to spanking or not, but I think
even in the cases in which I was wrongfully accused, I would have taken the spanking over the verbal abuse and grounding.
When I was spanked, I felt like I had hurt my parent’s feelings and it made me feel remorseful.
When we moved on to the groundings and yelling, I didn’t feel like my parents had hurt feelings – I felt like they were angry and
wanted to hurt MY feelings. The pain on my butt would have faded long before the pain in my heart would have, as it obviously
still exists.
Again, I’m not trying to say that no one out there has a better disciplinary plan than verbal abuse or spanking – I’m sure many of you
do. My only point is that, in my case, the spanking wasn’t that bad.
And if I knew anyone today who was whaling on their kid on a daily basis, or for shit they didn’t deserve, or was actually
doing any sort of lasting damage (physical or mental) I would be sure to do something about it.

Oh dear lord, it’s almost over. My Winter Break, gone, just like that, passed by in a flash, as I knew it would all along. Even the extra two snow days didn’t do much for extending it. Sigh.

I didn’t get to do so many of the things I wanted to do, mostly because of the snow, mostly because a lot of those things were to do with Sage, who ended up being at his dad’s house for a couple of extra days because driving in the snow here sucks. Then there was driving to pick up the new washer and dryer in the snow because we were tired of waiting for them, and apparently, if you want something done right, you have to do it yourself. Christmas Eve seemed lost because we didn’t even get there until the day was half way over, and the drive was so harrowing (it included a chunk of ice the size of a cinder block flying across several lanes of the West Seattle Bridge and hitting the windshiled of our car) and we were so stressed out that we may as well forget that day even happened. Christmas Day, as always, so long anticipated, was over almost before it began. And then another two or more hours of that day eaten up by getting Sage to Shoreline for his big gift at his dad’s house (a new laptop) and worried that I was going to get stuck in the snow there. I didn’t get stuck that day, but I sure as shit did when I went back to pick him up several days later.

Which is not to say we didn’t have any fun. There were midnight walks in the snow, and snowball fights that ended in Jaxon slipping and falling big time in the middle of the street, much to the delight of the rest of us. There were great Xmas gifts, and delicious dinners. And I did do a lot of the things I had intended to do, but as I sit here and think about the rest, I have a hard time bringing myself to get up and do those last things because my time is almost gone. That’s why these things remain always undone, because there is just never enough time for it all, to rest and relax AND get these bigger projects done.

So my break was a mix of great and merely okay, which is pretty much how things always go, I guess. Every year, we come to the end and reflect back, and every year, it all comes out kind of the same as the one before. it is only over a long period of time that we start to see big changes. This past year of mine was certainly much better than any year that I had a decade ago. These days, each year finds me a little happier than the one before, even if the year starts out looking completely shitty like 2008 did. Ultimately, this past year was good to us – we bought a house, we have a bunch of cool new stuff, and we have each other, and a lot of laughs and love. But before we got the house, it seemed like we’d never even be able to remotely find one that was within reach, and then when we found this one, it seemed like all the forces of the universe were plotting against us so we wouldn’t get it.
And ultimately, 2008 will always be the year that Bobby died. Maybe it wasn’t the year everything changed – it seemed like that happened when we all left La Casa, against our collective will – but everything sure continued to change, and here we are, about to embark on 2009, with everything so much different. For our part, I’m glad for us that things have changed. We are better off. But the remnants of how we were lingers, and makes it difficult to continue to move on.

I know that 2009 will see us moving forward further, away from the past, but I have to wonder where the future will lead us. Ultimately, it seems like not much of anywhere. After all, here we are in our house that we plan to live in for long time, and trying to shake all the good times and bad that came before. More and more, we are content to just be at home by ourselves, just the two of us, where before we didn’t seem satisfied unless we were within a large group of people. It’s been ages since we went to a show, our trips to the bar become less and less frequent. Guests are fewer and farther between. And we seem happy that way.

I know my own social cycle waxes and wanes, I was perfectly happy at home alone for years, after years of being out everywhere all the time, and now after another period of being hyper-social, again, I find myself happiest here at home alone, or with Alex only.

Even though 2008 started like a big turd, with Bobby’s death and Eric’s subsequent incarceration into rehab, it slowly but surely became better. I hope that 2009 will get off to a slow start and simply get better as well.

Happy New Year.

I awoke today with a greater sense of optimism than usual, and so far the only thing that has gone wrong has been parking. I never love having to walk two blocks to work, especially when I have stuff to carry in. Of course, there are plenty of spaces now.

It was springlike even through the closed windows, which I made sure to open up before I left for work to let the fresh air in. It’s Friday, which is almost always a good day. I do have to work tomorrow, but Saturday is always a money maker and not the longest day of the week. Today is the shortest day, and it’s nice to be able to look forward to getting home early, and relaxing for a while before we do something. Tonight I think we are going to try to go eat at Elemental, which I have been wanting to try for about a year now. From what I understand, you don’t really order off of a menu, food is brought as seen suitable and each course is accompanied by different wines. I have also heard that it is fairly inexpensive for all this, people have said that for two people, they’ve spent around $60. We shall see, it is something different and therefore to be looked forward to.

I also found this morning that my tax refund has been deposited to my account, and I’m glad to not have to think about that anymore. It will be largely going towards bills, but that’s okay with me. It’s only a few weeks until tax rebate time too, so it is big catch-up time.

On that note, I made a trip to the grocery store this morning, so I definitely am feeling a sense of accomplishment.

To round all of this out, I received a Myspace friend request from what looks to be my best friend from childhood. We met in the fifth grade, both new to the school, and our brilliant teacher Mr. Hickam sat us next to one another. It worked. We not only became friends but were practically inseparable. I would ride from my house to hers every morning before school and we’d arrive at school together. We always hung out at recess, and after school we’d hang out some more. Back home in time for dinner, we usually spent all night on the phone together if not at each other’s houses. Every weekend there were sleepovers, and every day off from school was some sort of adventure. When we were kids, I think we had more freedom at school, as I remember having plenty of time to talk about…whatever. What I remember most about us was that we were always laughing. I don’t know if it was because we were actually both really funny or we just delighted in each other’s company so much, but if I had to say, I’d guess a lot of both.

Like many friends do, we drifted apart eventually, but not for many years. We were still the best of friends for at least 8 or 9 years, living together when we were older even. It was when we stopped being roommates that it kind of all petered out. I remember trying to visit her in the ‘burbs, and that she had a hard time visiting me with no car. Then she and her boyfriend got pregnant. She decided to have the baby and give it up for adoption, a decision I’ve always respected although it did honestly surprise me a bit.

We didn’t see each other again for a few years, until I looked her up in the phone book one day. This time I was pregnant. I was married and keeping him (Sage, who is now 11). I don’t know if that made things weird, or if it was just Sage’s dad who sort of made everything weird for me, especially as it pertained to my friends.

Now it has been almost eleven years exactly since we last met up. I think it may be okay again now. I always feel anxiety when it comes to seeing people I haven’t seen for years, but I’m actually kind of excited this time. Sara is a person, who if we made that connection again now, I would feel totally comfortable having her just drop by anytime, just like when we were kids. I would totally play a 3 day game of Monopoly with her just like we used to in the summer when we would sleep in a tent out in the backyard.

Here’s to seeing what the rest of today will bring.

On June 6^th, 2006, Bobby came down from Heaven, drunk on whiskey and wearing a tie. We were friends right away, exchanging knowing glances and sly grins. Bobby took life in stride more than anyone I’ve ever met. I remember being really surprised the night that he arrived, and Reno told me he was taking the bus from SeaTac. He thought absolutely nothing of it, and I later learned that Bobby just wasn’t the kind of person that asked for a ride from the airport, or would have thought to take a cab or a shuttle. He’d show up in town by the seat of his pants, with little more than the clothes on his back, and a few bucks in his wallet.

That first night, neither Reno nor Bobby even had money to take the bus, so after getting off of a flight from Chicago, and taking a bus to Belltown from the airport, Bobby walked with Reno up to Capital Hill to the Comet.
Bobby had broken his arm in Chicago, and was sporting a bright pink cast. He will wear that cast in my memory forever, even though he did eventually get it off, and I have seen him plenty without it. The cast stayed on for months though, and when it came off it was replaced by another. Bobby had the cast on for the first 6.5 months I knew him, which is why it’s easier for me to remember it on than off.

Bobby had an infectious grin and a great laugh. He always looked great in his hodge podge wardrobe that consisted of a wide variety of Vibrators t-shirts, dress pants that were always just a bit too small but looked great anyway, and a pair of Vans that he wore well after the expiration date had come and gone. I always felt good when I was around Bobby. I never had a single problem with him, we never found a thing to disagree about. We always had a great time, and he was one of the few people I know who would always show up.

The last time he was here was around Thanksgiving again, and I didn’t see him as much as I’d have liked to, but he showed up for Thanksgiving Friday, again taking the bus, this time from the ferry from one of the islands, I think Bainbridge. That was the thing about Bobby. If you invited him, he’d come, and he’d get himself there, never complaining about whatever means it took to get to where ever you were, no matter how much it might seem like an inconvenience to any other person.

I never really heard Bobby complain about much of anything. He was always a pleasure to be around. That first summer he was here, he barely had two pennies to rub together because there wasn’t much he could do for work in that cast. He did what he could though, and because he never said boo about being poor, and always managed get by, I was always more than happy to give him a place to sleep and as much food as I could stuff in him. He was always appreciative, and had good manners.

One morning that first summer, we were at Reno’s and Bobby went outside, I guess looking for someone to bum a smoke off of. There was a homeless guy outside, and Bobby talked to him for awhile. He came back with a few cigarettes, a beer, and some spare change. That’s what kind of a guy Bobby was. He didn’t ask for all that, but he was such a likeable guy that this homeless person who had nothing gave Bobby probably half of what little he did have. Bobby wasn’t one to look a gift horse in the mouth, and so he accepted these meager gifts gratefully, I think even sharing them with others.

He left to go back to Chicago at some point, to get that damn cast off, and returned a few days before Thanksgiving with a black one. He was at that first Thanksgiving Friday, and I was glad to see a lot of him that next month before he left again on Christmas Day.

He had this coat that time around that was both awful and perfectly stylish, all at the same time. Really, no one else could have gotten away with wearing that coat, but he rocked it. At one point that winter Bobby lost his coat, or it got locked in someone’s house and he couldn’t get it. There he was, walking around in the freezing cold in a T-SHIRT. After a while he somehow found a vacant apartment, and managed to get inside. He wrapped himself in some curtains and went to sleep on the floor. When I heard about this, I decided that Bobby needed a better coat anyway, and a few days before Christmas, Liz and I set out to buy him one. We finally found one, and the next day, we presented him with a big gift-wrapped box. I’ve never seen anyone so surprised to get a gift, and when he saw the coat, tears streamed down his cheeks. I have never felt better about giving anyone anything.

Bobby was beautiful inside and out. I’ve never met anyone so photogenic in my life. I didn’t realize how many pictures I have of him until now. My camera seemed to be drawn to him, and there is not a single one in which he actually looks bad. He was a handsome devil and a sweet guy. I’d have trusted him with my very life.

He went back up to Heaven on January 19^th, 2008, still drunk on whiskey and wearing a tarnished and slightly dented halo. I don’t know if he was sent to be our Guardian Angel, or if he simply grew bored and slipped through the Pearly Gates when no one was looking to come down here and enjoy a little Earthly pleasure.

Alex and I were looking at his pictures today and this one made us laugh and laugh.

When we were done, we saw that there were the most amazing purple clouds in the sky, all lit up with the most amazing rosy orange glow I’ve ever seen. I imagined that it was Bobby’s megawatt grin lighting up the sky with his delight as he laughed with us, his one size too small wings slightly askew, and those damn Vans still coming up apart at the seams.

I love you Bobby. We all do. Since you have been gone, I’ve felt you with me in a dozen different ways. That sunset the other day, the brightest moonlight I’ve ever seen that night. Yesterday, I sat outside and watched cigarette smoke swirl through a gentle sunbeam like a ghost. That must have been you. Monday night Heather and I were talking about you, and some stupid guy from Buffalo started asking us stupid questions, and when he was gone I told her that I was sure it must have been you playing a prank on us somehow. Then yesterday, I went to get some straight pins and found a whole package of safety pins that I’d bought for you because you were always asking me for them to pin your shit together.

I am privileged to have known you and to be able to call you my friend. These past few days, remembering you, I have laughed more than I cried because you are a delight. Thank you for being you. Thank you for being there. Thanks for some of the best times ever.

And thank you Reno, for introducing us.

I’ll see ya someday, Bob. Sooner than later.

(all photos by Isabella Borlo, except the Johnny Walker Red Alley shot, by Tyler Lee Soverns)

2007 was simultaneously shitty and awesome. I began it fairly miserably (nothing new for me, it seems almost every year has begun that way) missing someone that I’ll never forget. I ended it with someone else I’ll never forget, which besides the fat that he is pretty unforgettable, I hope will be because he’ll be around until my sorry ass finally kicks the bucket.

It’s funny how things change. At the beginning of this year, I hardly knew him. In fact, I barely even noticed that he existed at all. That lasted for a couple more months, even though my circle of friends totally embraced and absorbed him, and we hung out plenty.

I was pretty surprised the Saturday he called me right as I was getting off of work and asked me if I wanted to go to dinner with him at The Ruins. For free. I didn’t know it at the time, but The Ruins is this amazing and bizarre private dining club in which people pay something like $1000 a year for membership, and then pay for their meals and drinks on top of that, and those aren’t exactly cheap either. As far as I could tell, that membership fee got you nothing more than the privilege of being allowed to dine there. We had been invited by his friend, who I had   only met ONCE, and who had been working there for a year, so he earned the privilege of having 4 of his friends come to dine with him, free of charge. There were 5 of us.
At any rate, it is an amazing place, and we had an amazing time. It was St. Patrick’s Day, and I was just glad to not be out in the general public with all the amateurs in green. There was hardly anyone else there, and we took our time eating, with a break to retire to the garden after each course for a cigarette. Alex was allowed to bring Sasha. Actually, I guess that is one thing membership gets you – the privilege of bring your canine companion with you. We drank. A lot. We met the lady who owned it, who is “elderly” if you were, but lovely and sweet.
After dinner, out gorgeous waiter gave me a tour of the rooms I hadn’t had the pleasure of visiting. I’d never seen anything like and it was quite a treat. Thanks, Alex!
The most surprising of all the surprises that night came after we had left and we were all hanging out outside by our cars, and Lucas (the friend who worked there, and was pretty loaded at the time) told me that Alex was in love with me.

Wow. What a whopper.
But then I realized that all the signs were there. When he asked me to go to the park with him, or when he told me he’d teach me how to snowboard. When he told me he’d buy me shoes. When he asked me if I’d rather have a new camera lens or a flash for my birthday – things that I thought he was kidding about. The night I remember sitting on his lap at Cyrus’s house, something which I’d never have given a second thought to. After all, we are all a flirty lot who are quite comfortable with each other and holding hands and hugging and kissing each other.

I had just finally convinced myself that I didn’t need a love of my life, and had just started to get into really “dating”. I was seeing something like 3 other people at the time. This new revelation really confused me. How could I not have known, when he would often carry me to bed after I fell asleep on the couch after a long night of tv and wine? Did I like him that way? If not yet, could I? I didn’t know what to do.

The following week was my birthday, and I had a lovely dinner at my house with plenty of friends. During the day, some beautiful flowers were delivered, from Alex. He was late, late, late showing up at my party, but he arrived with a camera lens as a gift, and later that night, after we had a little afterparty at my house and everyone else had left, he carried me to bed, and crawled in with me. We haven’t slept apart but maybe a single night since.

That was the awesome part of my year. I may have finally found the perfect guy for me. I love him more than anything, and I hope that he really does want to stick around forever because I can’t imagine living without him now.

On the shitty side of things, I lost a lot of friends. Not lost as in had a fight and are no longer friends, although a few of them have just changed, circumstances changed and we just don’t hang out anymore and that is just as sad as by any other means. Fortunately, no one died, but a lot of people moved away, and many others went away for a long time. A lot of them just can’t really handle the complexities of socializing any more and so they just don’t. That is okay, in most cases it is much better for them, but still, it is sad, and I miss them too.

I got kind of raped by my former landlords, but at least I do like my new home better, and I’m sure that my old house is still rotting on the market with it’s way too huge price tag, and I feel much better about the money that I could only fight to get back so much, so as not to have a stress induced heart attack, due to the fact that they have more than likely lost a lot more in rent that they could have still been collecting if I still lived there. Additionally, because of the move, I no longer have roommates, and I was totally over that. I guess that part really ended up more in my favor than anything.

I have come to realize that I really ahve a lot of issues with my job and I’m pretty much over that too, but I kind of have to deal with it for now. All I can do is try to get to a point where I am working less.

I guess really this past year was just shitty because of lost friends, and because of all the bickering and drama between the ones that remain. That doesn’t sound so bad, but most people don’t have friends like mine. Most people don’t have friends who regularly get robbed by other “friends”, or the majority of which are really poor, or drunks, or addicts, or any combination of any or all of the above.

I had a pretty crappy New Year’s Eve. nothing REALLY bad happened, but it certainly wasn’t what I had hoped for. It was too crowded, not everyone was all together in the same place, and by the end of it all, I was so tired that I feel like never leaving the house again. Grant says that it’s not “tomorrow” until after you’ve gone to bed and slept, something which I’ve never been able to get down with. Tomorrow has always been tomorrow as soon as the sun comes up. But I think in this case, I’m going to let everything that happened up until I went to bed on January 1st remain as part of 2007. 2008 began this morning when I got up.

Alex and I have already decided to not “go out” for a month. We will still go places around home, out for our Friday nights of mexican food and margaritas, and out to dinner and the movies by ourselves on Saturday, but I don’t think I want to stay out late or get even close to drunk. I also really don’t want to see people, but I will make an exception for Sky and Victoria, since they will only be here for another week or so, and I conceded to Alex that people could maybe come over on Fridays to play Rock Band. But not this week. I need some alone time, some peace and quiet. I am looking forward to going to bed early, but not too early, and fairly sober on Friday, and going to a nice dinner and to see a movie on Saturday. A movie, for chrissakes! And waking up in the morning on Sunday. Maybe even getting something done during the day, with maybe even time left over to watch a dvd as well. What a concept.

I also suggested a do-over of New Year’s on the last Saturday of the month. A fresh New Year’s just for us, alone, the way we should have done it this time – a nice dinner somewhere, just the two of us, then go home and drink a NICE bottle of champagne, ALONE, and then have the New Year’s kiss we should have had, rather than the brief peck in a crowded bar stretching to reach each other that we did have.

It’ll be a better year this year.

When I read the bulletin that last night was Kincora’s last night to Alex, he asked me if I was going to go, presumably to say my goodbyes to a bar that played a big part in making Seattle what it is today – formerly Squid Row and Tugs, just to mention a couple of infamous places that previously occupied the corner building of what had become one of Seattle’s dive-y-est bars.

I surprised him a little by saying no, but it was no surprise at all that I didn’t because I wanted to preserve my memories. I saw no reason to go when it would be crowded, not the same little place where me and 8 of my friends could just swing and grab a table for the night. I didn’t want to feel the atmosphere of sadness, when I could remember all the good times.

Sitting in the back booth with Victoria, always trying to avoid the caved in part of the booth seat, trying to get Eric to sit there because he’s tall.

Playing pool on the kind of crappy little pool table that never had enough room around it to take a shot without hitting someone.

Christmastime last year, the night of the Santa Hat, the night that Eric threw his beer glass across the room, and no one got thrown out, absolutely nothing happened except that we sat back down and drank more.

The nights when I was there hanging out afterhours, when I would suddenly realize that it was 4am.

Even the night that Kiki practically attacked me in the bathroom stall, and I could hardly get his drunk ass off me.

All the times Reno and all the other guys would leave the Cha Cha to go the bathroom at Kincora.

And maybe best of all, sitting on the couch, looking up at my then future boyfriend, the aforementioned Alex.

It’s these little scenes, the smallest vignettes that stick, single moments frozen in time forever, that matter. I didn’t need to go have one last drink there – I’ve had plenty. I didn’t need to see it one last time – I’ve seen it more intimately than most. I didn’t need to be the last to leave before it’s gone – I’ve been the last to leave more times than you’ll ever know : ) And I didn’t need to try and capture any more memories – I have the best there’ll ever be.

What more could I need, when I know that everytime I ever think about Kincora, I’ll remember Alex’s smiling face looking down at me as I sat on that couch, and then a flood of other colorful and happy memories will wash back over me?
In a lot of ways, I wish they weren’t tearing Kincora down, but I also realize that just like every dog has his day, every bar has it’s night, and Kincora has had so many nights…I know from experience that sometimes you just can’t make any more amazing memories of a place. I was done making mine there a while ago, and that had nothing to do with the impending demise.

I’ll miss you Kincora. Just the way you were.