Well, I’m wrapping up my vacation to the Northwest today which has been very relaxing. I flew to Spokane last Friday which was a bit of an endeavor with all the snow but I’ve had all week to stay up late and sleep in. The weekend and first half of this week was spent with my long time family friend Leah. She’s going to WSU getting her MBA so I got to hang around Pullman where the school is, go to the WSU/USC game (which went into double OT), do some nice scenic jogging through the hills and started learning how to really use my new digital SLR camera. Wednesday I flew from Spokane to Seattle to meet up with Dave. Great to see him again since it’s been a year and half since we got together last. We hit up happy hour immediately after the airport and then came back to his place to watch the Departed and drink scotch. It was probably the manliest day I’ve ever had. Thursday I got to see where Dave works as a rocket scientist (literally) at Aerojet. Afterwords we went on a Red Hook brewery tour in which no one else showed up so we had a personalized version and got to walk into all the processing rooms. I had never heard of Red Hook before but their Black Hook lager is nice and tasty so I’ll have to look for some when I get back to the Midwest. Friday we went down to a cigar shop in Kirkland and picked up some Vox for my regularly scheduled dirty martini Friday night with the cigars adding an even nicer kick to the evening. We drank and were merry with Cynthia, Dave’s girlfriend, who came up from Portland. I can now claim that she is not just made up like some of Dave’s other girlfriends (Courtney Jeanue anyone?). Saturday we hung out downtown by going to Pike’s Market to pick up some fresh dinner and then to the Experience Music Project. EMP was awesome, besides Pike’s Market it’s the best thing I’ve done in the city. They have the beige guitar that Jimi Hendrix favored at many of his shows including Woodstock. They had a nice big grunge shrine too that got both Dave and I all excited. And to top it off there even was a brief reunion show for The Piece. Like most crappy reunion shows though the entire band couldn’t be there so it was Dave on guitar and me on drums playing “I Love Rock n Roll” while Cynthia and passers-by watched on embarrassingly. I flew home tonight an hour late thanks to Northwest never being on time. It will be sweet to not sleep on the floor, couch or airplane seat tonight. I’m definitely looking forward to Dave and Pat’s visit next weekend, I’ll be chalk full of catching-up-with-old-friend goodness after all of this.