Weekend [part 1]

** Disclaimer: low sleep = incoherent writing. But, here goes **

This last weekend was one of the most interesting, good, and strange weekends I have ever had. On Friday, I flew home. This was sort of spontaneous, I bought the plane ticket on Tuesday. When I got into Pullman, I was met by Hilary and my parents at the airport. After we drove home, Hilary and I went to the Boothmans' Pullman house to make bread for the Highland games the following day. The oddest things become interesting when you do them with someone you really enjoy. Even though I'm clumsy in the kitchen I got to help out, and was amazed by the incredible, artistic way that Hilary was able to make something so good tasting out of so little. I wish I had brought my camera, because everything she did from pouring the salt to handling the dough spoke skill. It was enjoyable watching and helping her do this. We took the dough back to the Marston house and ate dinner while we let it ooze out of the giant bowl like some growing blob of good bread smell. After dinner, finding myself completely useless, I watched on as the womenfolk in the house hacked and slashed up the dough into over one hundred perfectly shaped dinner rolls, arranged in ranks on a set of pans.

We took them back to the Boothman Pullman house, where we loaded them into an oven, and I got to meet a most interesting person, with a singular knack for taking photos. His name is Neil. It would be worth anyone's time to visit his blog. In addition to the photos, the stuff he writes is quite good. Adding to their already large number, Neil has apparently been adopted into the Boothman family, and everyone of them seems to treat him like an older brother. He helped us load up the bread and met up with us afterwards to watch Ian Skavdahl at Cafe Morrow.

Ian has, in my absence, developed an affinity for song writing. He was actually good, and I highly enjoyed his coffee house music, which is unusual anymore. When walking into a cafe Morrow he was messing around with a looping pedal, harmonizing with himself and the catchy progressions he had written.

In the crowd at Cafe Morrow, Hilary introduced me to a number of her friends. One of them, Snook (sp?), is a photographer but also good at the drums, and hopped up on stage to bust out some rythms with Ian. He is a very amiable fellow, and I'm going to try to track down his blog/photo page/something where I can see some of his highland game photos. Something interesting about the friends Hilary has... they seem to have a similar spiritual aroma. I've been home enough to know that the people she's around have a similar genuine love for God, regard for the word, and desire to apply the teachings. I really like being around these people. Because I was functioning on very low sleep we took off early, and I crashed in my old bed.

The next morning we headed over to Moscow to set up for the market (unfortunately I did not bring my camera (again)). This time we were only selling produce and fruit. Since it was raining most of the time we set up a canopy and several umbrellas. The market is something I would do every weekend if I could... you have to wake up really early, but it is worth it. Peter, Jane, Kate, and Ana came to help work the market as well. We ended up selling almost all of the fruit, had a good time doing it, and just got to hang out with eachother which was the best part. Hilary gave me a Honey Crisp apple to eat, which might possibly be the best tasting apple variety on the face of the planet. Good enough that even though a person is sopping wet and cold, they still a freezing cold apple worth eating. They go for $2.00 a pound, but sold out before any of the other fruit. I worked at the cash register for the first time... it was rough, tasks I'm not very good at like adding/subtracting two digit numbers, organizing fruits and vegetables, and sorting out change were involved, but I leveled up my status.

But the thing that made me most happy about it all was that Hilary put my jacket and hat on when she was cold.

To be continued...