Happy Memorial Day a day late to all our fighting men and women in uniform and all the ships at sea. A weekend of some happiness. Sense of psychic, physical well-being. Helped Tom shop for guitars Friday, then Saturday. Stopped at Dusty Strings, The Trading Musician, even Satan's Pit, aka The Guitar Center. And we still didn't see one as nice as the Larrivèe over at Guitar Emporium. Sunday another great party at Hal's. Met up with our new neighbor Noralee, a husband and wife who work for a petroleum industry newsletter and have a Goth industrial band. With one Green Tortoise driver. With one actress from Open Circle Theatre, who'd just returned from performing a flamenco dance at the Northwest Folklife Festival. With our neighbor Amy's niece Amber. (So she plus the Goth band gal had that name.) And many, many more, all enjoying barbecuing meat or fish (or maybe even one of our Morningstar Farms healthy corn dogs!). So tonight it was time to take cousin-in-law Kia out for dinner shortly before she leaves Seattle for good. She didn't get into the UW School of Social Work for the second time in a row, and cousin Jonnie has a job at Sequoia National Park for the next six months, so it's off into adventure land for them.

And damn, I'm in love.

Mark goes to the movies: Day After Tomorrow (dir. Roland Emmerich) Gloriously silly, with Dennis Quaid substituting for Tom Hanks as Heroic Everyman, Jake Gyllenhaal as a nerdy 18-year-old who gets (maybe) his first kiss from a young woman, the city of New York as a popsicle, and an argument between a librarian weenie and a pragmatic young female person about whether it would be better to preserve Nietzsche in book form or burn him for firewood. (PYFP: "He's a chauvinist pig!") Irwin Allen is smiling down from heaven. Mark's rating (Stupid Points): ???