GOOD

Sand volleyball with some of my favorite people. Horseback riding in the mountains. Touch rugby. Cupcakes and Liz. The Spokane boys. India Palace. Great conversations. Sardines in a tiny apartment with all the lights out. Tumbling gym. Swimming. First day of school. Hot dogs. Cycling so hard that I dripped sweat. Reading Harry Potter 5. Sunday morning breakfast. Family.

All components of the last week.

But, one of the best things about this last week was this incident:

Friday night I was playing some Sardines with some guys. Michael. Mac. Mitch. Thomas. Brian. David. And one girl--Alyssa. There was a lightning/thunder/rain storm outside, so while someone was inside coming up with the best hiding spot they could think of in the tiny space in the apartment, the rest of us were outside on the porch watching the lightning. And then we would begin searching. In the dark apartment with occasional flashes of lightning coming through the windows. Brian curled up in a ball on top of the fridge. Genius. Thomas curled up in a ball in the cabinet under the sink. Michael laid on the couch--UNDERNEATH the cushions. You get the gist. This game forced creativity, and it was fun. Don't worry, the best of this story is yet to come.

Thomas walks Alyssa home at about 11:30. I say, let's scare Thomas when he gets back. Now when we scare people, we mean business. None of this "he opens the front door and we jump out from behind it and yell in his face" mess. I mean professional scaring. We were scaring ourselves as we were masterminding our plan. And when I say we I mean Mac. Here's how our sheer ingenuity went down. We find the breaker panel up by the stairs. A couple flips of some switches and we now control the power in the house. Mac finds some scary music on his phone, plugs that bad boy into the iPod player and cranks it. I find an app on my iPhone that allows me to record myself saying something, and then changes my voice into another voice. I find a voice titled "haunting voice." Perfect. Download that app and we're good to go. We turn the tv on so that it is just static. Hide under a sleeping bag that's balled up in the corner and turn the vacuum on and off. Check. Use one of the Spokane dudes to be our spy. Done. In fact he probably sacrificed his reputation around the apartment complex by hiding in the shadows by the apartment across the street and creeping out some girls, just so that he could text us and tell us when Thomas was coming home.

Alright. So now a play-by-play of how we freaked the crap out of Thomas. It was very rewarding.

We're setting up, and Mac gets a text. "He's coming!" it reads. David casually comes out from behind the girls apartment so that he reaches the apartment about the same time as Thomas. Thomas walks in. We are all hiding. The lights are on. Suddenly, David slams the door behind him and holds it tight so Thomas can't get out. Michael flips some switches upstairs and the lights go out. Mac turns on his scary music. The lightning storm is still happening, so there is still flashes of lightning coming through the windows. Then, the tv turns on by itself (we had the remote) and it's just static. Brian's little finger sneaks out from under the sleeping bag and turns on the vacuum. Occasionally you can hear a "Tttthhhhhooooooooommmmmmaaaaaasssss" in a ghostly voice issuing from my phone. Thomas says, "What the freak is going on?! I hate you guys! I am not moving from this spot!" This goes on a for a few minutes and we are all thoroughly enjoying it. Finding that we are not going to let up on our little fright night scheme, Thomas flees out of the apartment, ("I'm leaving!"). We turn the lights on, emerge from our hiding places, go outside to where Thomas is and just start busting up. Thomas was laughing too. He's a good sport.

Seriously, I felt like I was twelve. It was so great.

The other best thing was that my mom got this:

She's wanted it for years. A Toyota Camry. It's a 2010, XLE. V6 engine. Lots of power. Glad you got your dream car, Mom.

Meet Steph

This is one of my dearest friends, Stephanie Edwards. I met Steph briefly my freshman year on a Sunday. About two years later, I walked into apartment b22 in the Elms after having been homeless for six days and announced to the strangers (except for Jill Fitzgibbons Mohlman, who I knew from home in Las Vegas) that I was moving in. Steph was one of those strangers. I knew she looked familiar though, and after a few minutes we made the connection of when we had met freshman year.

Steph and I quickly became friends, which is funny, because we are very different in many ways. For example:

1) Steph likes to wear bright colors and sparkly things and dance and sing and scrapbook and all sorts of jazz. My favorite color to wear is black. And I play the beastly sport of rugby and don't dance. Or sing. Or scrapbook. I do enjoy looking at her scrapbooks, though. I'm pretty good at that.

2) Steph has on several occasions thought of setting me up with a theater friend. I have to tell her, "Steph, I want the guy I date to be manlier than me." ***

3) Steph's married. I'm not.

4) Steph's an open book with everyone. It takes time and trust for me to open up to someone. I'm one of those diaries that has a lock on it. And the key is lost somewhere in the ocean.

5) Steph loves all things country. I.........................don't.

Yes, there are some major differences, but I love those things about Steph. I think she is exciting and funny and brimming with personality and open to new ideas and blunt and sparkly and so on. I truly appreciate the fact that she is different from me in so many ways. And she appreciates my differences. And that's how we are the same. That's the similarity. We love each other. I can say that confidently. Which means that when we get together we can talk like it's nobody's business. I trust her. I tell her pretty much everything. And she does the same to me. And she always has wicked good stories for me.

All in all, I'm so lucky to have her in my life. Life won't be the same when she moves up to Seattle and she starts her bomb job at Apple and her husband starts law school. We won't have our frequent get-togethers. But you better believe that she will always be one of my best friends and that we'll keep in touch.

Steph, I'm excited for this huge step in life. I love you. Save a couch for me up there in Seattle, will ya?

*** Not all theater dudes are effeminate. No offense meant by this statement.