Personal

The stuff about me and my life. The “diary” side of blogging.

Before I was around

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Last time I went up to visit my folks in Anchorage, I snagged some old family photos. I’m (finally) starting to get some of them scanned in.

First up: four photos of my Aunt Kay. I never met Kay, as she died long before I was born. However, I’ve been told on a few occasions that she and I are very much alike. While I’m sure I’d seen pictures of her before, I didn’t remember any of them before I found these while digging through the stacks of pictures at mom and dad’s house.

From left to right: Kay sometime in 1960; Kay in a kilt sometime in 1961 (possibly at the University of Iowa, according to the handwritten note on the back of the photo); Kay and her date for Senior Prom sometime in 1961; Mom and Kay dressed up for Kay’s High School graduation in 1961.

Kay Ward Kay Ward Kay Ward, Senior Prom Berta and Kay Ward, Kay's High School Graduation

Lastly, Mom pinning Dad’s wings on after his promotion to 2nd Lieutenant in 1968.

Dad's 2nd Lieutenant Promotion

Where I’ve Been

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Where I've travelled in the world

USA, Canada, England, Germany (twice), Austria, Hungary, Yugoslavia (which doesn’t exist anymore, so I had to choose Bosnia/Herzegovina), Italy, and Greece.

Where I've travelled in the US

Alaska, Arkansas, California, Washington DC, Florida, Georgia, Idaho, Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Kentucky, Maryland, Mississipi, Montana, North Carolina, Ohio, Oklahoma, Oregon, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, Tennessee, Virginia, Washington, West Virginia.

(Some of these are “visited” in the sense of “drove through or rode through in a train”, others were when I was very young and can’t really remember. Still…in once sense or another, I’ve physically been within the borders of the state.)

Create your own visited states map or visited countries map.

Kind of sad that this is all I’ve been to, and yet that’s enough for many people to consider me “well traveled”. There’s still so much of this planet that I need to get to…I’ve barely gotten started!

Prairie’s birthday

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Birthday Bouquet, Prairie's Birthday, Seattle, WA

We had a very pleasant evening last night celebrating Prairie’s birthday. Since I worked ’til 9pm, she’d gone out to dinner with her sister H and H’s boyfriend P, and they all met me back at home after they were done. Prairie had baked herself a cake, so we all sat back and enjoyed birthday cake after she opened her presents.

H and P got her a little goodie bag filled with fun stuff, including Dirty Girl Bubble Bath and lip balm, and Atonemints. From me, she got Uno H2O (waterproof Uno cards for use by a pool) and Shel Silverstein’s last book, Runny Babbit.

More photos are right here. Yay birthdays!

Halloween Weekend

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Erk. Forgot that daylight savings time kicked in (out?) today, and got up an hour early. Meh. Could’ve had that extra hour in bed!

Hit the_vogue last night with Prairie, joined the table with gracesine, newwavegirlie, Aaron, and a couple other people that I didn’t catch the names of. So many wonderful costumes last night — all the schoolgirls in our group looked very cute, anzu looked great as a victorian schoolmarm (until she took off the coat and breasts popped everywhere…still looked very cute, just not quite as schoolmarm-ish)…while I got a laugh out of a guy who showed up dressed as a World Trade Center tower (very very wrong…but funny), Trish was wearing her Strawberry Shortcake outfit — and let me tell you, you have’t seen Strawberry Shortcake until you’ve seen her in red leather 20-eye Docs and a vinyl (satin?) corset that had her millimeters away from popping out of it.

Unfortunately, I’d neglected to bring my camera along for the night, so no pictures of the various costumes this year.

The only downside to the night was a higher than usual jerk quotient (mostly the group that invaded directly behind our table, who were loud, obnoxious, pushy, spilled drinks on newwavegirlie and gracesine, and at one point sent a cloud of horribly noxious cigar smoke across us…ick…before they were told to put it out). Prairie and I decided that we’d had all the fun we could stand around 11:20pm and came home to relax with an episode of X-Files before bed.

Playing the race card

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On our way home from Charlie’s tonight, Prairie and I got a sudden hankering for ice cream and stopped into the Baskin Robbins just down the street from our apartment. A couple of teenagers were hanging out in the store, chatting with their friends behind the counter.

Sitting at one of the tables, a skinny black kid, decked out in street-standard clothes (sneakers, baggy jeans, oversize t-shirt) said, “I don’t think I could live with you people.”

His friend, a heavyset white guy with longish wavy hair in slacks, shirt and tie laughed and answered, “White?”

“What!?” the black kid said, and all of us started laughing. “I didn’t say that!”

“You said you couldn’t live with ‘you people’…!”

“Party animals!”

The white kid laughed again. “White? Dude, you’re not supposed to be playing the race card….”

“Yo, man, no, party animals….”

“You keep talkin’, all I’m hearin’ is ‘fuck whitey!'”

By this point, all of us were cracking up. Absolutely hilarious, good-natured needling between friends.

God’s Total Quality Management Questionairre

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God would like to thank you for your belief and patronage. In order to better serve your needs, He asks that you take a few moments to answer the following questions.

Please keep in mind that your responses will be kept completely confidential, and that you need not disclose your name or address unless you prefer a direct response to comments or suggestions.

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