Hooray!

First of all, Happy Birthday, Dad!

Secondly, I don't have a car anymore! I'm so excited! :) I had a fabulous trip down to California, and everything seemed to work out just right. I got to stay with DeMara on Thursday, picked up Quena on Friday (with some confusion about directions - apparently there's a Corvallis, CA, from which directions to Davis are different than from Corvallis, OR), had a scrumdiddlyumptious dinner at Graham's courtesy of Antonia, and then danced and talked all night at Big Dance. It was kind of an odd feeling to be back on the Stanford campus, showing up at Big Dance like I'd never been away. It was neat, though. I got a lot of great multi-stage reactions from old friends who at first just recognized me and said a casual hi, then realized that they hadn't seen me for two years and gave me a great big, excited hug. Even Richard Powers remembered me and came over and hugged me and inquired as to how I've been. So it was fun. Graham and I won Big Dance tee-shirts in the cross-step waltz balloon race, and got eliminated early in the swing dance competition (a condition of our even entering it). And I actually managed to stay all night (with a slight break to drive Quena to Graham's at about 3:00), making it my fourth year (I missed last year entirely, and didn't stay all night the previous year). All in all, it was a highly enjoyable event.

Saturday afternoon (after sleeping for about four hours), Graham and I took a walk down Palm Drive to see Stone River, the Andy Goldsworthy sculpture/wall that was built a few years ago. That was really neat to see, and it was an absolutely gorgeous summery day for a walk. We came home and took a nap, and then Dad and Betty Lue came over and we walked to dinner at the Vegan Cafe near Graham's house. It was good to see them again, even if it was just a brief visit. Then on Sunday morning Mom came over and we went to brunch at the Creamery, where I had a delicious strawberry milkshake. Mmmmmm, milkshakes. :) I flew home on Sunday afternoon, and have been trying to catch up on sleep and studying ever since. I had an environmental ethics midterm yesterday, which I think I did pretty well on, despite the fact that I felt woefully unprepared going into it. We'll see how that turns out.

Anyway, life is back to normal, or at least as normal as it gets around here. :) The weather has been alternately absolutely gorgeous and threatening rain today, but so far the gorgeous has won out. You'd never know it was mid-May by all the rain around here. Then again, this is Portland, so maybe you would. I'm glad we've had enough rain to pretty much cancel the drought danger, but it would be nice to have some real sunshine for a while! Happy Wednesday!