Welcome to the first second day of the rest of your life 2008.

And now that the holidays are over, welcome to the return of Delicious Juice Dot Posting More Than One Sentence at a Time. It was getting a little old, and felt sort of cheap and tawdry – I have more words than that. When did I become such a verbal pinchpenny?

Our Adventure was exhausting but fun. We had only one night in Victoria, and it was full of mom-errands and mom-mending. She’s still really sick with the bronchitis, so we did a bunch of things around town for her after our wee gift exchange. It was a nice visit, but it left no time to see Mike and Krista who were home from California for the holidays, or meet up with Lisa and have a long-overdue coffee. I have confidence these things will happen at some point, though.

Sunday morning saw us up bright and early to catch the ferry from Sidney to Anacortes, Washington. The sailing was 3 hours long, and I spent a lot of it trying to sleep in the car. My mom still hasn’t gotten around to getting a sofa bed, so I dread our visits because sleeping on the ancient leather love seat (complete with steel girders) is just brutal. I got about 3 hours of freezing cold and paranoid sleep, so I tried to catch up on the ferry. Sounds easy, except the car decks of Washington State ferries are much different than those of the BC Ferries by which I mostly mean they are much more open and therefore INSANELY UNBELIEVABLY BRUTALLY COLD. Rarely have I been as cold as I was down on that ferry deck, but I just didn’t have the energy to move so I slept what little I could, shivering madly beneath my pitiful and not-at-all-warm jacket. COLD.

When we finally docked, there was an unexpected border crossing. We had surrendered our passports for swipin’ on the Sidney side, but once in the US they stopped each and every car for a physical inspection by cranky men with guns and flashlights. This took a very long time. Our cranky man tried to trip us up in our glaring, homeland-security-affecting lie – why did we claim to live in Vancouver, yet entered the US from Victoria? DUN DUN DUNNNNNNNN! He grudgingly accepted our explanation, and we were finally allowed to drive through exotic downtown Anacortes and make our way to Seattle.

And, we did. We found Doug and Ali’s new house (which is gorgeous) without a problem, and settled in for an evening of visitin’. Mexican food was consumed and it was delicious with the exception of the ceviche, a normally fantastic dish but in this instance had clearly been left to marinate in the lime juice of the potent yet undead. The strength of the lime was unbelievable, rendering the whole thing sadly inedible. Boo! Ali and I ran out to run some party errands, then we settled in for a very cozy evening in the very large house.

Monday had Ed, Laura (the imported babysitter) and I taking a trip into Seattle itself to visit the wonder that is Archie McPhee’s. Ali had to work, so we were tasked with showing Laura around a little. I also had a fat wad of Ali-cash and a list of things to get at Archie’s – we were making goodie bags for the party. I had way too much fun picking out party stuff. After many large bags of goodness, it was time for my traditional visit to University Village where I used some mom-money to get all girlie with my bad self and also pick up a tablecloth for the party. Laden with goods, we headed back to the house in Kenmore to prepare the goodie bags and make with the pretty.

It is here that I must take a moment to let Carla, Ali’s nanny, know that I am not nearly as stupid as I appeared to be when we met. I don’t know that she’ll read this, but I am confident that Ali can pass on the message. During our initial howdy do, I let it slip that I didn’t watch TV or movies because, as I so elegantly stated, “I don’t have the attention span and I’m kind of stupid”. Carla Batman’d her way to an immediate conclusion that I must not read either, if I can’t sit through moving pictures on the talkie box, but obviously that is far from the truth. We assured her I can, in fact, read quite well, but attention was then turned to other things and the matter was dropped (until now). Carla! Please note that I am not dumb! You just met me and I didn’t feel it was a good idea to make you worry for River’s safety by going into my long-winded and complicated reasoning behind my no-movie-watchie ways! Our initial exchange bothered me from the get-go, so this is my do-over: hello, I am Kimli from Canada, and I am truly awesome in every way.

There.

The party was many good times, not in the least because Josh and Shan decided at the 11th hour (seriously, I got the head’s up they were coming around 11:30 that morning) to come to Seattle even though they had just returned from Texas about 9 hours previous. Yay! They showed up around 6:30 after enjoying a very easy border crossing. Drinking was done (not by me), “special” brownies were eaten (again not by me because I think Ed ate them all – he’s probably still stoned), and many many hours of Rock Band were played. I would like to take this opportunity to gloat that I didn’t completely suck horribly at drumming and actually did quite well, AND I managed to get over my ironic fear of microphones and do some singing to score 100% on “Dani California”. Yay for me! See above re: truly awesome!

We awoke sometime on New Year’s Day a little blurry-eyed (and in Ed’s case, still out of it) but happy. It was a good New Year’s Eve spent among friends. After breakfast we packed up our respective vehicles and gravy-trained it back to the completely deserted border, arriving home at 5pm. GOOD TIMES!

So, anyone know where I can find Rock Band for the 360 in Vancouver? Want! We have a 4-person band ready to go!

Oh, and staying up until 5am finishing Trace Memory was probably not the smartest way to start the second day of 2008, but the half-finished story end was totally worth it. At least the game was free.

Yay for home!

Now, someone hire me.