bachelor party!

I had one of the strangest days today.

At 2 o'clock I went to Gasworks park for Tom Milsom's gathering/show that was supposed to start at 1. Even though I was an hour late, I still beat him. xD

There was an incredibly random assortment of people in attendance, including 3-4 people I did know about 8 I didn't know. We all went to find shade and Tom played a few songs for us. Our willingness to be outside quickly evaporated and we then went as a group to Chinook, a little fancy restaurant on the water that sold mostly seafood (ick) but a handful of nonseafood items so everyone was happy. After we ate our meals, my new friend Shannon and I (met her in Portland at the gathering) shared an amazing blackberry cobbler. I love blackberries. So much.

After lunch we ALMOST decided to part ways, but then decided we needed to go back to the park anyway for people to get their cars, so we caravan(ed? is that a word?) back to Gasworks. We decided to hang out a bit longer, and while we were sitting on the hills, I saw a woman in all white off in the distance doing yoga so I started copying her moves; we were probably 2-300 feet away from her and she didn't notice for awhile, not until I'd gotten everyone else to do it with me. :)

Mickeleh's roommate Leslie brought out all these kites (Gasworks is the perfect place for flying kites) so we all sat on the grass clumsily trying to assemble them. Mine was a 6 pointed star box kite, Tom had a US air force plane kite, and some of the girls whose named I've forgotten (I'm terrible - one of them was in the Phantom Tollbooth with my brother) made a pretty bird kite with dangly tassle things. We all flew them for awhile and I couldn't believe how much fun it was. I think my dad flew a kite with me at Ocean Shores when I was a child, but I hadn't flown one since then. I am definitely going to purchase a kite of my own soon. This kid near us had an octopus kite -- I want THAT one.

While we were kite flying, a group of guys came over and said, "We don't want to interrupt your kite flying, but you look fun and we need people for human checkers. Want to play?"

I can tell you now that a group of YouTubers does not turn down human checkers.

We put away the kites and hurried over to meet them. They had a human sized makeshift checkers board made of red and black fabric on the ground, and had enough red and black tshirts for two teams. They had collected a really odd mix of people who just happened to be walking by, which made it way more fun. Then we found out it was a bachelor party, which just made it more exciting.

The guy who was getting married was the player for one side, Tom Milsom ended up being the player for the other. I was on the black team. Tom's a jerk and sacrificed me for the good of the team and admitedly, watching the game was a lot less exciting then being a piece IN the game, but the few rounds I had were pretty exciting.

Then we found out they had a whole list of crazy things for the bachelor guy to do, so we played along for awhile. "Follow me and look interested," was all he said, so he starts walking over toward the people on the lookout pier, and we just walk behind him.. when we're within earshot he turns around and starts saying in an assertive voice, "So, Gasworks park was first build in 1896 to commemorate the.." We all started CRACKING up when we realized "bogus public tour of a local site" was probably on the list. We didn't get anyone to JOIN the tour, but it was still hilarious.

After a whole lot of confusion regarding cars and who was riding with who and parking, we managed to follow them down to Pike Place where he had to be a street performer long enough to get someone to give him a dollar, which was hard because all we had was Tom's ukulele and a squishy banana for a microphone. Finally a girl gave him some change and we cheered and I think she even joined our eclectic group for awhile.

We finally parted ways with our bachelor party friends when they decided to "crash a birthday party" and the only party they could find was in a 21+ bar... Adamthealien and I were the only two of age really, so we said our goodbyes and headed off in search of Dick's for food.

(I was a little bummed we didn't get to see some of the other things on the list.... climb a city landmark... convince a girl the bachelor's kissing skills are so good that she HAS to try it for herself, make a whipped cream work of art graffiti.. etc.)

My friend Austin was driving us around downtown and we got so horribly screwed over by the gps on his iphone... we kept having to go the wrong way on one way streets or drive 5 miles out of the way because a barrier wasn't letting us turn around or some other ridiculous problem... finally we found the particular Dick's we wanted, after probably like an hour.

I finally got home about midnight, and I'm exhausted, so I am going to stop typing and go to sleep.