Weekend Wrapup

Back from Portland, and it was a whirlwind trip that tested every limit of my endurance. It started Friday with a landing in a small private plane, which is cool and all, but then of course we dropped from the sky to land at the Jetport pretty swiftly which caused my ears to scream for mercy. From that point I was thinking "some beer will put out that fire" and lo and behold, our buddies Jen and Ron--who I'd just gotten acquainted with before leaving for DC back in February--hosted a cookout at their fancy East End abode. The roofdeck was re-done, and offered a panoramic view of the bay and the city, and of course we saw our friend Tess and her gang on one of the nearby balconies and like the classy people we are we hollered at them for a while.

Stayed over at my friend Paula's (also in the East End) and the cat allergies weren't too bad--though by morning this guy was Johnny Sniffle! We did a long brunch downtown before Mark and Chole (who were in town for their pal's graduation ceremony from law school) picked me up for the trek to New Gloucester, deep in the country. We spent the day fixing up the yard and preparing delicious cake and burgers, while Mark's lil' tyke collected snakes and a frog (for the snakes to eat, even though the frog was clearly too big for these snakes, it'd be like feeding an elephant to a monkey) into a terrareum that was less than fully escape proof. Sure enough, I hear lots of sceaming and there's Chole and Mark's daughter chasing after this slithery thing on the floor. Mark loves snakes about as much as I love big spiders--or about as much as Hitler loved all the children of the world--so we didn't call him in, just used all our guile and cunning (and an empty Gatorade bottle) to recapture the beast. All went well, and we'd eventually free the animals in the yard the next day.

Sunday started a bit drizzly, but I discovered some Captain Morgan's rum and so I didn't care. It did clear up as guests started arrivinig, and before long we were grillin' like a villain and tapping some Allagash White. The night descended into the usual hijinks, and the next day it looked as though World War Three had broken out--and like any other nuclear war, there were no winners! All told though, it was good clean fun and a fitting way to get Mark safely out of his 20s.