Buffista F2F: Seattle Edition, Part II: The Highs and Lows of Being Polter-Cow
Previously on Buffista F2F: Seattle Edition-I arrived in Seattle, hung out with friends, and explored the city a bit. Then there was an EXCITING CLIFFHANGER where I had just entered the Buffistas Hospitality Suite.
Inside were a great many Buffistas! "This is your friend from TWoP?" said Kristin. It was, and I introduced Brian to the gang, most of whom I had met before. But not sj, whose hair was so awesome that she looked like frickin' Scully, and not Buffista-by-proxy Teacup Guy. I also didn't think I'd met SA before! I went around giving hugs. And then there was general milling about, although we did take the time to admire the fact that Kristin & Drew were wearing matching kilts.
They are terribly cute together.
Lunch plans were made! Drew wanted to check out Golden Age Collectables in the basement of Pike Place Market, so we would head in that direction and either stop for lunch on the way or eat there. A large group of us went out while a couple others braved the Worst Bartender Ever for drinks: the tales of his inattention and ineptness caused someone to ask whether they may have secretly been on a reality show. "I'm a Bartender, Get Me Out of Here?" I joked, which got a laugh even though it didn't really make sense.
On the way to Pike Place-and it is Pike Place, not Pike's Place-we passed a giant metal pig.
When we reached Pike Place, Drew read a sign pointing to the Alibi Room, which served wood oven-cooked pizzas, and began walking down where the arrow pointed. We all followed him to Post Alley. His sly executive fiat kept us from wandering around for twenty minutes deciding where to eat (as JStew and I had done the day before!).
The Alibi Room also had the advantage of being completely empty and not mobbed with tourists. Also, they had a collection of random screenplays for some reason. Also, it was Happy Hour! ...From 11:30 to 5, which was quite a long hour. We decided to get a couple pizzas to split amongst the group and then a few half-price appetizers to round out the meal. Drew took point. Kristin wanted the ham-and-pineapple pizza because it was named Pine N' Swine, and someone else suggested the margherita. There was also intrigue at this weird pizza with grapes, but it was weird, so we went for the more well-received pizzas at first, knowing we could order another if we needed. On top of that we added hummus, apples and brie, and a couple orders of spicy mac and cheese.
As we waited for our food, Drew regaled us with tales of running his own business and racking up frequent flyer miles. Drew's a very put-together guy, and there's a lot to admire about him. Like Kristin said, he's got a very sexy confidence about himself; he has a commanding presence.
I'm not sure who decided tomatoes were good to dip in hummus, but...someone at the Alibi Room thought it was a good idea. The honeyed apples and brie were good. The spicy mac and cheese did have a nice kick to it. The margherita pizza was...not really pizza, as Brian noted. It was more like cheese bread with tomatoes. Kristin said her coveted Pine N' Swine was good, though. But all this food fed eight people-Brian, dcp, SailAweigh, Brenda, Scola, Kristin, Drew, and me-for about seven bucks a pop! I did not know how we pulled that off. Go Happy Hour go! I don't know whether the other table was able to so efficiently and cheaply order for the table as well, although Omnis's pizza was on the house since they delivered him the wrong one at first and he went hungry for a while.
Brian decided to use the Buffistas as an ATM and collected cash from everyone, including the other table, since they'd given us one ginormous check. We noticed that the other table was completely empty at some point while he counted the money. Someone (I think Drew) commented that he'd seen them go to the bathroom. "Together??" came the response.
Brian joked that they had ditched.
"Ah," said Drew, "but they made the sophomore mistake of leaving their jackets and purses."
Once they returned, we exited to admire the Wall of Gum.
You know you want a closer look.
Oh, Seattle.
We walked back up to the market. Laga was waylaid by a horsie, but then we proceeded to follow the golden hoofmarks to Rachel the brass pig. Kristin advised us not to attempt to stay together, as that just wasn't going to work with so many people wanting to see different things. I joined the group going down to Golden Age Collectables. On the way, we passed a dried bat skeleton or something. It was a weird shop.
Outside Golden Age were a bunch of awesome standees, including, er...Super-Obama.
Golden Age is an awesome comic book store filled with all sorts of awesomely geeky things. And they awesomely had the Daredevil trade I'd been looking for, the one that was out of print! And in other Things You Don't Expect to Find news, Laga found a copy of Jilli's book, Gothic Charm School...which hadn't even come out yet! (I have not explained about Jilli's book. As I will be mentioning it several times, here is the explanation: Jilli is a Goth. She has a website, Gothic Charm School, where she plays the Lady of the Manners, showing that one can be Goth and still be, you know, polite. The book came out on Tuesday, which is the past in the present but was the future in the past.)
I read the rest of Ex Machina and also blazed through Jack of Fables (curse you, Great Fables Crossover!). Brian discovered Farscape comics he did not know existed. Fay delighted the cashier with her British accent and general bubbly Foreigner in America mien.
If I were feeling more spendy, I would have bought the various fake ID cards and badges they had. Some of them were quite clever (Sam Winchester's driver's license has "Restriction: Clowns" and Dean's has "Restriction: Flying in Planes"). We spent quite a while in the store admiring all the trinkets, and then we went to play with the standees. Buffy was there, so we took an obligatory picture. The Doctor and the TARDIS were there as well, so Fay had to pose. As did I.
It was difficult for me to cross my arms the correct way, but it was worth the effort. My foot isn't pointed correctly, but clearly David Tennant is more adept at that stance than I am.
On our way out of the basement, Laga stopped in the candy store, which had a shelf dedicated to candy sex toys. Candy thongs, candy bras, candy...oh my God, they can't even show it on the box. More tame, however, were candy handcuffs, which Laga decided was how we were going to keep Fay from leaving. No fair living in Thailand and only seeing us all once a year!
We left the market and headed back toward the hotel, but people wanted coffee. "Where are we going to find a coffee shop?" I mused. We slipped into Seattle Coffee Works, the first one we encountered. I found some interesting local chocolate for my boss, and the others ordered drinks that took eons to arrive. They clearly weren't prepared for a large group of caffeine-starved Buffistas to barge in.
Meanwhile, Laga looked through the Stranger and showed off the many risqué ads. And an article about the Air Sex Championships occurring that night. Too bad we had plans already!
It was nearing five, which meant it was almost time for wine and Guitar Hero IV in the hotel lobby. As we walked down 4th Avenue...we ran into another group of Buffistas! Which included Frankenbuddha, whom I'd met in Boston, Erin, whom I'd met in L.A., and Dana, whom I had never met! It was good to finally meet her. Erin hugged everyone, most of whom she had not met, it seemed. "I've already met you, but I'm going to hug you anyway," she said to me, and I did not protest. The descriptor I used for her in that post was "delightfully pretty," and she remained so.
When we reached the hotel, Brian decided it was time for him to leave. I thought he would fit in well with the Buffistas, and I was not wrong. He had talked with Drew about gaming for a bit, having noticed the dice on his shirt. Before he left, though, we had to get a picture, of course.
We both have goatees! WHICH ONE OF US IS THE EVIL ONE? YOU CAN'T TELL.
So as I was saying, Guitar Hero IV. There was wine too, but I wasn't interested in that. I went up against Laga. We donned our guitars. She needed to adjust her strap to get it to fit her properly.
"Loosen that strap a little more till your axe hits the floor," she said, and suddenly that line made so much more sense.
I picked "Beautiful Disaster." I'd only ever played the first Guitar Hero, I think, and this latest version was much shinier, but I did pretty awesomely.
Then, however, it was Fay's turn. Fay, who'd never played the game before and barely understood how it worked. She would be going up against Drew, who chose the Expert setting on purpose (the woman monitoring the game was all, "You know you picked Expert, right?"). The woman explained to Fay how to play the game.
Unbeknownst to her, Pete, Jilli's adorable husband, loooooooooooomed behind her. She got the hang of it pretty quickly, though, and began to enjoy herself.
But then, uh, the song got a little harder.
Drew won the match, but, really, we were ALL winners. Oh, Fay.
It was time to put away the game, but Juliana took a gamble and asked if we could borrow the Wii and guitars for the Hospitality Suite. Alas, it was someone's personal console. But there was no more free wine, so up to the Hospitality Suite we went.
How many Buffistas can you fit in an elevator? LET'S FIND OUT.
The Hospitality Suite was home to food and drink and couches. Including what was dubbed the Couch of Awesome:
More and more lovely ladies piled onto the couch as the night went on. It was emptied to allow smonster to perform the Gudanov Memorial Couchflip, however. I moved the table so she wouldn't break her head open.
I sat on a chair by myself. There were over a dozen people in the room and several conversations going on in different areas. I came to a sad and terrifying realization about group online meet-ups: you know how when you post on a messageboard-and I mean any messageboard, not just b.org-sometimes you make a post and no one responds at all, everyone instead continuing with the current conversation or latching onto someone else's new topic, making you feel invisible and ignored, but of course you never know who actually read your post and just said nothing, like when you make an LJ post and it doesn't get a lot of comments? You know that? When everyone's in one room, that feeling is real. I wasn't being excluded, but I wasn't being included, so I excluded myself because I feel weird barging into other people's conversations. I realized that I'm terrible in large social situations even when I know and like everyone there. It was too overwhelming. I could post in a thread all day long, but for some reason, I felt like I'd be imposing if I talked to them in person. Maybe because I wasn't superclose to anyone personally off the board. So many of them had very strong friendships with each other, but I had failed to make those connections, I guess.
The upside, however, was that everyone was real. In the flesh, with names and faces and voices and everything. Real live people and not just words on a screen. Sometimes it was hard to process. Since many had met in person multiple times, being all together felt right and comfortable. We often joke about Buffista Island because that's the type of community we are. There's a certain intangible clickage.
You know what's not intangible, though? Jilli's parents! Okay, I don't think I actually touched them, so I have no confirmation on their tangibility, but I do have confirmation on her dad's awesomeness: when Jilli introduced him as the man who raised her as a science experiment, he corrected her...saying it was a sociology experiment.
Not far behind was Plei! Plei! I had been a Buffista for five years but had managed to not yet meet Plei, and I was very excited to meet her. Plei was one of the ones responsible for getting me to check out DC and the Batfam back in the day. I thought she was tops (a sentiment that was generally agreed upon). She is, apparently, the kind of gal who will drink absinthe through a Red Vine.
Jilli thought it was a crime against God and man, however.
It was also good to meet P, Plei's husband. But also in tow was her daughter, Lillian! Now, I had known Lillian since she was a fetus, since Plei put up an LJ poll to choose her name, which resulted in our dubbing her Princess Tickybox. Plei had been posting stories and pictures of her as she grew up over the last four years, but now she was real! Running around and being an adorable purple pigtailed princess! (Truthfully, I was almost as excited to meet Lillian as I was to meet Plei.)
As she was staying with Plei, Plei's arrival brought JZ, who gave me the warmest hug I had received all day. Trailing behind her was little two-year-old Matilda, who is terribly cute but never frickin' remembers me even though I've known her since she was a sproglet. JZ commented that I was the second-youngest person there, but with Lillian, I was actually the third-youngest.
I hung out with the little kids as they ran around. Apparently they had become BFFs on the way home from the airport, and now they were inseparable. Aw, proto-Buffistas. Small children like me except when they don't, so I tried my luck. They were a little more comfortable with their parents or people they'd met before, but Lillian did let me clean her hand of...cherry, I think it was, before she touched something.
I haven't mentioned the pink fizzy vodka! There was pink fizzy vodka. Jilli was excited. Drew said that the best way to drink the pink fizzy vodka was to mix it with actual vodka.
There was also the time a glass broke on the floor and the glass had ice in it, which made it difficult to figure out what was glass and what was ice. We cleared away the crystals as others kept the kiddies from walking on, walking on broken glass. After I thought I'd picked up the tiny broken pieces, I pressed my hand on the carpet everywhere to see if I came away bleeding. When I did not, I declared the area safe.
Which was good because that area was where JZ played horsie with Matilda. That's a good mommy!
Lillian played horsie with Juliana, but Juliana's version involved bouncing her up and down on her knee and singing about breaking someone's back. I didn't know any kid songs! If I knew kid songs, kids would like me more! I need to pull out my old Raffi tapes.
This is the Run Around and Around P game. It is also likely called the We Get Another Noise Complaint game. Oops. They had gotten a noise complaint the night before too, and it seemed to be a constant threat hanging over our heads. As a group, we are kind of rowdy.
Someone took it upon themselves to herd cats down to dinner; by this point, our group had grown to a couple dozen or so, at least. At the elevator, some other Buffistas exited, including one I did not recognize. She did not know some people, but she turned to me and said, "I know who you are." But I didn't know who she was! Oh, it was Zenkitty! Cool.
As we entered the elevator, Jilli said to me with great sympathy, "I'm sorry you have to have an arranged marriage." She looked at me like she wished she could do something but knew my fate was sealed. I had been doing much arranged-marriage bitching in Bitches the last few months; I'm sure I've started to sound like a broken record. But several people either offered me sympathy or made jokes about my situation. It's my Thing! It was nice to hear it instead of just reading it. It seems more...sincere? It's more real. I keep on using that word. But it's what I keep coming back to.
The hotel restaurant, Sazerac, was supposed to be good. They were able to accommodate us, but we had to split into two tables. I stuck by Seattle-ites Jilli and Plei. Also at the table were Pete, Jilli's parents, dcp, SA, P, Lillian...some other people I can't remember (meara? Scola? Brenda?), and JZ and Matilda. Wait, no, Matilda was too overwhelmed by all the people and wanted to go back upstairs. Wait, no, Matilda was dismayed that all her friends did not follow her upstairs and wanted to go back down. I hope we didn't drive the waiter too mad.
So I had heard that SA liked Star Trek. I could tell this because she was almost always talking about Star Trek. I had been afraid to talk to her before (see above re: social awkwardness), but now that we were at dinner and she was across from me, it seemed like a natural time to broach the topic with "So, I hear you like Star Trek." As someone who's been watching TOS for the last month, I have been wanting someone to talk Star Trek with! And SA was that someone, as she LOVED Star Trek. A lot. And she found my perspective interesting as someone watching the show so many years later in response to the movie, as opposed to growing up on it (she was younger than I was, so she didn't grow up on it live, but she still grew up on it). I told her which episodes I thought were great and which I thought were meh, and she had lots of interesting things to say about everything. A little too interesting! She was much more analytical about the show than I was; her level of discourse was way above mine. But she was very passionate about it.
"Are you having problems with your memory?" Jilli's dad asked Jilli. She asked whether he meant RAM or actual memory. He responded by handing her a little thing in a little bag.
"Are you having problems with your memory?" he asked me. I looked at him quizzically as he handed me a little thing in a little thing.
"What does it do?" I asked, looking at the little device in my hand.
"It's a flash drive," said Jilli. I looked at it more closely. It was a flash drive! 2 GB! Holy crap, awesome! I had been wanting a bigger flash drive! I thanked Jilli's dad. He said that now that he no longer worked there, he could hand out their stuff. I had totally picked the right table.
"Are you having problems with your memory?" he asked Plei. Oh, dads.
The cornbread they put on the table was sooooooo good, but SA declared it to be a mere attempt at real Tennessee cornbread. She said she would make it at Plei's brunch the next morning, but (spoiler warning) that didn't happen, so I still want to taste SA's cornbread. (Not like that, you pervs.)
I ordered the crispy Idaho catfish. I didn't know they had catfish in Idaho. SA refused to acknowledge the existence of catfish not from the South. But the Idaho catfish was very good in a nice jalapeño-lime sauce.
Jilli had gotten the rooster, crawfish, and Andoullie gumbo. Rooster? I had never seen that before. What is regular chicken? Roosters taste different? Plei explained it to me, but I didn't get it.
After dinner, I gathered those of us who were going on the Seattle Underground Tour (the special 21-and-up Underworld tour, to be exact) for the walk over. It was only six or seven blocks away, and although Pete suggested we take a cab, I was all about walking, and luckily, so was most everyone else. There was a light drizzle out, but we could brave it. I pointed us in the right direction; we just had to walk down 4th for a few blocks and then turn right on James.
"Hey, a Starbucks!" I said upon seeing a Starbucks. Frank laughed a lot and complimented my dry delivery (although it was more matter-of-fact than dry).
When we reached Pioneer Square and the corner at which the place was supposed to be according to Google Maps, I couldn't see it! Uh oh. I was the one who said I knew where it was. But luckily, I spotted it huddled back away from the street. We went in and got our wristbands and waited for the 10:00 tour to start.
The tour began outside. We crowded around Jenny, our tour guide, as she explained the history of the tour and of Seattle and the Seattle Underground. See, the whole city burned down this one time, and instead of rebuilding the city, they just built the new city on top of the old one, leaving the sidewalks and everything intact. Jenny took us down into a dank basement that looked like an old saloon. There was an ancient toilet and the remains of a bed in some adjacent rooms.
"This is the most scenic room in the tour, so take a good look," said Jenny. Then she talked at length about prostitutes! Or "seamstresses," as they were called on the paperwork. And there were different levels of prostitutes, from the ones who lived pretty good lives to the ones who lived in boxes. She told some stories that she definitely couldn't have told on the family-friendly tour.
We continued underground, sometimes going aboveground to walk to another basement. One time, she showed us a skylight that we had just been under. It was freaky! I mean, a whole world beneath our feet. The freaky thing was that apparently the Underground is still home to seedy activity; she told us about a huge gambling massacre...that occurred in 1983.
She also showed us one of the most haunted places in America, an underground bank vault. People would come in to get their money, but crooks were lurking in the shadows ready to kill and rob them before they could make it out. Jenny had never seen a ghost, but she'd experienced a bit of freakiness every now and then. And a friend of hers once saw a woman in a large petticoat, very Victorian-looking, just walking down the stairs.
We all looked at each other.
"Was it black and pink?" asked Laga. "Because that was probably our friend Jilli."
It was generally a pretty fun tour because of the stories; there wasn't really much to see underground. It was just the remnants of things.
The $21 admission-a $6 premium over the family-friendly version-included a drink at the end, so I asked the bartender to make me something awesome and non-alcoholic. I think she mixed a few fruit juices together for me.
Most people were up for walking back, so we walked down 1st. After a block or two, dcp suggested we go up to 4th since the hill was not that steep, but I remembered that the hills got better and almost nonexistence the further north you went...but I was thinking of Pike, which was past our hotel. Spring, as I had discovered the day before, was a bitch. I apologized to dcp when I realized that down the road.
But! Had we not stayed on 1st, we would not have encountered the random woman who told us that the Mariners had won and the Mariners and the Mariners had won with a score and she just wanted something Mariners and could we give her money. She followed us for a couple blocks, it was nuts. Earlier in the day, a bum had pestered Drew and Kristin for a while too, almost insisting that they have a conversation with him. Seattle panhandlers were persistent!
We also would not have encountered the store with a ceramic rifle in the window. And a ceramic bunny with a grenade. It was a pretty neat store, but closed, unfortunately.
Back at the hotel, we headed up to the Hospitality Suite. The door had a sign that told us to "Please close door gentley [sic]." So I got a pen and fixed it as soon as we went inside. The door was designed to slowly close and then SLAM SHUT when you were least expecting it, and all the comings and goings were liable to garner us yet another noise complaint, and we couldn't have that. We thought they should just fix the door (and Omnis wanted to go all ADA on their asses), but Drew pointed out that it was probably like that for fire code reasons. The door had to be sealed as hell. Erin, 911 operator, gave us all a PSA that if you're in a hotel and the fire alarm goes off, make sure to take your key when you leave because the fire might be in the hallway or the stairs, and then you're trapped outside your room. They can rescue you from your room, but not from the hallway.
We hung out in the Hospitality Suite for a couple hours. I looked through a magazine that had an article about the 12 Best Burgers in Seattle...one of which was a veggie burger! Huh, intriguing. It was at 22 Doors, on Capitol Hill, which is where the frozen custard place I wanted to go to was. I'd only had frozen custard in North Carolina and didn't even realize it was available anywhere else. I wondered if I could get anyone to go with me. If all else failed, I could suggest that course of action for my dinner with Rice folk on Sunday, which (spoiler warning) is what happened.
Oh, someone liked my shirt at some point.
The next morning, I dragged myself out of bed before 9 (although dcp was up and online around 7-something somehow). Plei was having brunch at her house at 10, and she had left helpful directions on which bus to take when to get there on time.
I met up with a few others in the lobby, including SA. I don't recall when it happened, but I know it was in the lobby either now or perhaps the day before, but she was on the phone with amy37, and she handed the phone to me so I could talk to her and tell her it was lame that she wasn't with us, and it turned out she didn't even realize it was me until I handed the phone back to SA. Later-and this did happen now, because there is a timestamp to prove it-she posted on the board to apologize, as she would have talked with me longer had she known it was me. SA showed the post to me on her iPhone. Hee.
We strolled down to the bus stop and met -t and her husband. We waited and waited and waited, and then SA pulled out her iPhone and GoogleMapped a lot. She was now completely dependent on the device that could always tell her where she was and how to get where she wanted to be. We looked for possible alternate routes and entertained the possibility of taking a cab, but, thankfully, the bus finally arrived.
Also thankfully, SA and I were on the same wavelength when it came to where to sit: we had to sit on the little rotating platform in the middle, what she called the "bouncy castle." And then we talked a lot about Star Trek. Frank put in his two cents as well. All the while, SA tracked our position on her iPhone so we knew when we were nearing the stop.
We kept wanting the bus to make sharper turns so we could have a fun ride, but our bouncy castle was just not that bouncy.
Since it was the weekend, I was able to get a Day Pass for four bucks, which would cover at least the ride there and back (I had run out of quarters, so I was paying two bucks for a $1.75 fare anyway). We found a place to cross and walked a few blocks to Plei's house.
The place was already crawling with Buffistas...and pancakes! Plei was busy in the kitchen continually whipping up new batches. Soon, out came scrambled eggs and...veggie bacon! That's right, we chowed down on some facon. Or fakon. Fake-on? I don't know how you spell what we were calling it. The general consensus was that it tasted better than expected, but the texture was all wrong. I thought it was nice, but not as tasty as turkey bacon, which is MY bacon. There was also bacon salt, which I discovered didn't actually have any bacon in it, so I sprinkled some on my eggs for kicks.
From the dining room, a staircase led up to the second floor. At the top sat Lillian and Matilda. I went up to talk to them. Matilda was in better spirits and more talkative; she told me that Lillian was eating butter, and the moon had no arms, but it had a nose and a mouth and a face. I had seen yesterday that Lillian was able to high-five, and I am all about high-fiving little kids, so I did all the fives. Adorably, she also knew "Too slow!" I think it was her favorite one to do.
Lillian also liked throwing stuffed animals down the stairs. I threw them back at her, and she threw them back down. It was fun.
JZ would come up for a bit and see if they wanted any more food, but Plei was stuck in the kitchen. Every now and then, we would hear the girls call, "Mooooooooommyyyyyyy." It was almost like a song. "Moooooooommyyyyyyyy. Mooooooooommyyyyyyyy. Mooooooooommyyyyyyy."
The Buffista chorus downstairs joined them: "Moooooooooommyyyyyyyyyy."
One time when I was upstairs, Lillian went into her room. Matilda was all, "That's her room!" She followed and asked me to come with her. Scola came in as well...
AND THEN LILLIAN SHUT THE DOOR.
It was awesomely hilarious. She wouldn't let us leave! When Scola made a move to the door, she got up and ran in front of it so he couldn't open it. Finally, we were able to escape, though.
Downstairs, Scola declared that Lillian had taken a liking to me and was going to keep me in her room. Someone joked that they should tell my mom that I'd found a wife! She's a little young, but...
Some of us moved out into the lovely front yard. Some brought cantaloupe and contemplated the mysteries of the universe.
I've always thought Lillian had sort of an impish quality to her, but she has her quiet moments as well.
Matilda gave JZ a pretty necklace!
The girls went up to the porch where Juliana and smonster were sitting.
Proto-Buffistas and actual Buffistas! Now the question is which one will grow up to be Juliana and which one will grow up to be smonster.
Now, as you can see, Lillian is looking at the ground, wondering if she can jump it. She did fine, but when Matilda was a little scared, she decided to be a little scared as well. They were like peas and carrots, those twos. They even switched shoes one time. Anyway, JZ helped them out. Compare and contrast their jumping styles:
I think Squeakaboo gets points for style.
Plei came out and showed us around her garden. There were strawberries! And, and, and...uh, other plants and vegetables. I'm not a herbetologist, so...wait, that's not the word. Herbarian? HORTICULTURIST. That's the one. The one I'm not. But I was impressed with all the different things she had growing all around.
Meanwhile, JZ was overrun with small children.
So I had a question for Plei. See, many years ago, she had asked me for my address because she wanted to send me a package. She never got around to it, but then when she was moving, she asked for it again because she wanted to send it to me. But she never got around to it. I didn't bug her about it, but I had always wondered what the mysterious package was. And now that I was, like, at her damn house, maybe she could just give it to me?
It turned out the thing she'd been wanting to send me all these years was...her extra copy of Batman: Year One! SWEET! I had passed on buying it used so many times because I wanted to own it but it wasn't a pressing issue. She was able to find it for me and yay!
As the brunch wound down and people began to leave, I declared my intention to go to the Science Fiction Museum and Hall of Fame. Omnis and Laga were interested as well, but they were going to call a cab. I'd bought a Day Pass and wanted to make the best of it, so I asked P how to get there by bus.
I set off down the street on my own, as Plei or someone made a quip about my becoming a famous travel journalist or something. I only caught a snatch, but it amused me. I put on Smellerbee to keep me company. It's always good to get some Designated Alone Time away from the crowd, beholden only to yourself for a while.
Next time on Buffista F2F: Seattle Edition-Science fiction! Music! Dancing! Books! ORGY! Maybe not that last one. MAYBE.
Inside were a great many Buffistas! "This is your friend from TWoP?" said Kristin. It was, and I introduced Brian to the gang, most of whom I had met before. But not sj, whose hair was so awesome that she looked like frickin' Scully, and not Buffista-by-proxy Teacup Guy. I also didn't think I'd met SA before! I went around giving hugs. And then there was general milling about, although we did take the time to admire the fact that Kristin & Drew were wearing matching kilts.
They are terribly cute together.
Lunch plans were made! Drew wanted to check out Golden Age Collectables in the basement of Pike Place Market, so we would head in that direction and either stop for lunch on the way or eat there. A large group of us went out while a couple others braved the Worst Bartender Ever for drinks: the tales of his inattention and ineptness caused someone to ask whether they may have secretly been on a reality show. "I'm a Bartender, Get Me Out of Here?" I joked, which got a laugh even though it didn't really make sense.
On the way to Pike Place-and it is Pike Place, not Pike's Place-we passed a giant metal pig.
When we reached Pike Place, Drew read a sign pointing to the Alibi Room, which served wood oven-cooked pizzas, and began walking down where the arrow pointed. We all followed him to Post Alley. His sly executive fiat kept us from wandering around for twenty minutes deciding where to eat (as JStew and I had done the day before!).
The Alibi Room also had the advantage of being completely empty and not mobbed with tourists. Also, they had a collection of random screenplays for some reason. Also, it was Happy Hour! ...From 11:30 to 5, which was quite a long hour. We decided to get a couple pizzas to split amongst the group and then a few half-price appetizers to round out the meal. Drew took point. Kristin wanted the ham-and-pineapple pizza because it was named Pine N' Swine, and someone else suggested the margherita. There was also intrigue at this weird pizza with grapes, but it was weird, so we went for the more well-received pizzas at first, knowing we could order another if we needed. On top of that we added hummus, apples and brie, and a couple orders of spicy mac and cheese.
As we waited for our food, Drew regaled us with tales of running his own business and racking up frequent flyer miles. Drew's a very put-together guy, and there's a lot to admire about him. Like Kristin said, he's got a very sexy confidence about himself; he has a commanding presence.
I'm not sure who decided tomatoes were good to dip in hummus, but...someone at the Alibi Room thought it was a good idea. The honeyed apples and brie were good. The spicy mac and cheese did have a nice kick to it. The margherita pizza was...not really pizza, as Brian noted. It was more like cheese bread with tomatoes. Kristin said her coveted Pine N' Swine was good, though. But all this food fed eight people-Brian, dcp, SailAweigh, Brenda, Scola, Kristin, Drew, and me-for about seven bucks a pop! I did not know how we pulled that off. Go Happy Hour go! I don't know whether the other table was able to so efficiently and cheaply order for the table as well, although Omnis's pizza was on the house since they delivered him the wrong one at first and he went hungry for a while.
Brian decided to use the Buffistas as an ATM and collected cash from everyone, including the other table, since they'd given us one ginormous check. We noticed that the other table was completely empty at some point while he counted the money. Someone (I think Drew) commented that he'd seen them go to the bathroom. "Together??" came the response.
Brian joked that they had ditched.
"Ah," said Drew, "but they made the sophomore mistake of leaving their jackets and purses."
Once they returned, we exited to admire the Wall of Gum.
You know you want a closer look.
Oh, Seattle.
We walked back up to the market. Laga was waylaid by a horsie, but then we proceeded to follow the golden hoofmarks to Rachel the brass pig. Kristin advised us not to attempt to stay together, as that just wasn't going to work with so many people wanting to see different things. I joined the group going down to Golden Age Collectables. On the way, we passed a dried bat skeleton or something. It was a weird shop.
Outside Golden Age were a bunch of awesome standees, including, er...Super-Obama.
Golden Age is an awesome comic book store filled with all sorts of awesomely geeky things. And they awesomely had the Daredevil trade I'd been looking for, the one that was out of print! And in other Things You Don't Expect to Find news, Laga found a copy of Jilli's book, Gothic Charm School...which hadn't even come out yet! (I have not explained about Jilli's book. As I will be mentioning it several times, here is the explanation: Jilli is a Goth. She has a website, Gothic Charm School, where she plays the Lady of the Manners, showing that one can be Goth and still be, you know, polite. The book came out on Tuesday, which is the past in the present but was the future in the past.)
I read the rest of Ex Machina and also blazed through Jack of Fables (curse you, Great Fables Crossover!). Brian discovered Farscape comics he did not know existed. Fay delighted the cashier with her British accent and general bubbly Foreigner in America mien.
If I were feeling more spendy, I would have bought the various fake ID cards and badges they had. Some of them were quite clever (Sam Winchester's driver's license has "Restriction: Clowns" and Dean's has "Restriction: Flying in Planes"). We spent quite a while in the store admiring all the trinkets, and then we went to play with the standees. Buffy was there, so we took an obligatory picture. The Doctor and the TARDIS were there as well, so Fay had to pose. As did I.
It was difficult for me to cross my arms the correct way, but it was worth the effort. My foot isn't pointed correctly, but clearly David Tennant is more adept at that stance than I am.
On our way out of the basement, Laga stopped in the candy store, which had a shelf dedicated to candy sex toys. Candy thongs, candy bras, candy...oh my God, they can't even show it on the box. More tame, however, were candy handcuffs, which Laga decided was how we were going to keep Fay from leaving. No fair living in Thailand and only seeing us all once a year!
We left the market and headed back toward the hotel, but people wanted coffee. "Where are we going to find a coffee shop?" I mused. We slipped into Seattle Coffee Works, the first one we encountered. I found some interesting local chocolate for my boss, and the others ordered drinks that took eons to arrive. They clearly weren't prepared for a large group of caffeine-starved Buffistas to barge in.
Meanwhile, Laga looked through the Stranger and showed off the many risqué ads. And an article about the Air Sex Championships occurring that night. Too bad we had plans already!
It was nearing five, which meant it was almost time for wine and Guitar Hero IV in the hotel lobby. As we walked down 4th Avenue...we ran into another group of Buffistas! Which included Frankenbuddha, whom I'd met in Boston, Erin, whom I'd met in L.A., and Dana, whom I had never met! It was good to finally meet her. Erin hugged everyone, most of whom she had not met, it seemed. "I've already met you, but I'm going to hug you anyway," she said to me, and I did not protest. The descriptor I used for her in that post was "delightfully pretty," and she remained so.
When we reached the hotel, Brian decided it was time for him to leave. I thought he would fit in well with the Buffistas, and I was not wrong. He had talked with Drew about gaming for a bit, having noticed the dice on his shirt. Before he left, though, we had to get a picture, of course.
We both have goatees! WHICH ONE OF US IS THE EVIL ONE? YOU CAN'T TELL.
So as I was saying, Guitar Hero IV. There was wine too, but I wasn't interested in that. I went up against Laga. We donned our guitars. She needed to adjust her strap to get it to fit her properly.
"Loosen that strap a little more till your axe hits the floor," she said, and suddenly that line made so much more sense.
I picked "Beautiful Disaster." I'd only ever played the first Guitar Hero, I think, and this latest version was much shinier, but I did pretty awesomely.
Then, however, it was Fay's turn. Fay, who'd never played the game before and barely understood how it worked. She would be going up against Drew, who chose the Expert setting on purpose (the woman monitoring the game was all, "You know you picked Expert, right?"). The woman explained to Fay how to play the game.
Unbeknownst to her, Pete, Jilli's adorable husband, loooooooooooomed behind her. She got the hang of it pretty quickly, though, and began to enjoy herself.
But then, uh, the song got a little harder.
Drew won the match, but, really, we were ALL winners. Oh, Fay.
It was time to put away the game, but Juliana took a gamble and asked if we could borrow the Wii and guitars for the Hospitality Suite. Alas, it was someone's personal console. But there was no more free wine, so up to the Hospitality Suite we went.
How many Buffistas can you fit in an elevator? LET'S FIND OUT.
The Hospitality Suite was home to food and drink and couches. Including what was dubbed the Couch of Awesome:
More and more lovely ladies piled onto the couch as the night went on. It was emptied to allow smonster to perform the Gudanov Memorial Couchflip, however. I moved the table so she wouldn't break her head open.
I sat on a chair by myself. There were over a dozen people in the room and several conversations going on in different areas. I came to a sad and terrifying realization about group online meet-ups: you know how when you post on a messageboard-and I mean any messageboard, not just b.org-sometimes you make a post and no one responds at all, everyone instead continuing with the current conversation or latching onto someone else's new topic, making you feel invisible and ignored, but of course you never know who actually read your post and just said nothing, like when you make an LJ post and it doesn't get a lot of comments? You know that? When everyone's in one room, that feeling is real. I wasn't being excluded, but I wasn't being included, so I excluded myself because I feel weird barging into other people's conversations. I realized that I'm terrible in large social situations even when I know and like everyone there. It was too overwhelming. I could post in a thread all day long, but for some reason, I felt like I'd be imposing if I talked to them in person. Maybe because I wasn't superclose to anyone personally off the board. So many of them had very strong friendships with each other, but I had failed to make those connections, I guess.
The upside, however, was that everyone was real. In the flesh, with names and faces and voices and everything. Real live people and not just words on a screen. Sometimes it was hard to process. Since many had met in person multiple times, being all together felt right and comfortable. We often joke about Buffista Island because that's the type of community we are. There's a certain intangible clickage.
You know what's not intangible, though? Jilli's parents! Okay, I don't think I actually touched them, so I have no confirmation on their tangibility, but I do have confirmation on her dad's awesomeness: when Jilli introduced him as the man who raised her as a science experiment, he corrected her...saying it was a sociology experiment.
Not far behind was Plei! Plei! I had been a Buffista for five years but had managed to not yet meet Plei, and I was very excited to meet her. Plei was one of the ones responsible for getting me to check out DC and the Batfam back in the day. I thought she was tops (a sentiment that was generally agreed upon). She is, apparently, the kind of gal who will drink absinthe through a Red Vine.
Jilli thought it was a crime against God and man, however.
It was also good to meet P, Plei's husband. But also in tow was her daughter, Lillian! Now, I had known Lillian since she was a fetus, since Plei put up an LJ poll to choose her name, which resulted in our dubbing her Princess Tickybox. Plei had been posting stories and pictures of her as she grew up over the last four years, but now she was real! Running around and being an adorable purple pigtailed princess! (Truthfully, I was almost as excited to meet Lillian as I was to meet Plei.)
As she was staying with Plei, Plei's arrival brought JZ, who gave me the warmest hug I had received all day. Trailing behind her was little two-year-old Matilda, who is terribly cute but never frickin' remembers me even though I've known her since she was a sproglet. JZ commented that I was the second-youngest person there, but with Lillian, I was actually the third-youngest.
I hung out with the little kids as they ran around. Apparently they had become BFFs on the way home from the airport, and now they were inseparable. Aw, proto-Buffistas. Small children like me except when they don't, so I tried my luck. They were a little more comfortable with their parents or people they'd met before, but Lillian did let me clean her hand of...cherry, I think it was, before she touched something.
I haven't mentioned the pink fizzy vodka! There was pink fizzy vodka. Jilli was excited. Drew said that the best way to drink the pink fizzy vodka was to mix it with actual vodka.
There was also the time a glass broke on the floor and the glass had ice in it, which made it difficult to figure out what was glass and what was ice. We cleared away the crystals as others kept the kiddies from walking on, walking on broken glass. After I thought I'd picked up the tiny broken pieces, I pressed my hand on the carpet everywhere to see if I came away bleeding. When I did not, I declared the area safe.
Which was good because that area was where JZ played horsie with Matilda. That's a good mommy!
Lillian played horsie with Juliana, but Juliana's version involved bouncing her up and down on her knee and singing about breaking someone's back. I didn't know any kid songs! If I knew kid songs, kids would like me more! I need to pull out my old Raffi tapes.
This is the Run Around and Around P game. It is also likely called the We Get Another Noise Complaint game. Oops. They had gotten a noise complaint the night before too, and it seemed to be a constant threat hanging over our heads. As a group, we are kind of rowdy.
Someone took it upon themselves to herd cats down to dinner; by this point, our group had grown to a couple dozen or so, at least. At the elevator, some other Buffistas exited, including one I did not recognize. She did not know some people, but she turned to me and said, "I know who you are." But I didn't know who she was! Oh, it was Zenkitty! Cool.
As we entered the elevator, Jilli said to me with great sympathy, "I'm sorry you have to have an arranged marriage." She looked at me like she wished she could do something but knew my fate was sealed. I had been doing much arranged-marriage bitching in Bitches the last few months; I'm sure I've started to sound like a broken record. But several people either offered me sympathy or made jokes about my situation. It's my Thing! It was nice to hear it instead of just reading it. It seems more...sincere? It's more real. I keep on using that word. But it's what I keep coming back to.
The hotel restaurant, Sazerac, was supposed to be good. They were able to accommodate us, but we had to split into two tables. I stuck by Seattle-ites Jilli and Plei. Also at the table were Pete, Jilli's parents, dcp, SA, P, Lillian...some other people I can't remember (meara? Scola? Brenda?), and JZ and Matilda. Wait, no, Matilda was too overwhelmed by all the people and wanted to go back upstairs. Wait, no, Matilda was dismayed that all her friends did not follow her upstairs and wanted to go back down. I hope we didn't drive the waiter too mad.
So I had heard that SA liked Star Trek. I could tell this because she was almost always talking about Star Trek. I had been afraid to talk to her before (see above re: social awkwardness), but now that we were at dinner and she was across from me, it seemed like a natural time to broach the topic with "So, I hear you like Star Trek." As someone who's been watching TOS for the last month, I have been wanting someone to talk Star Trek with! And SA was that someone, as she LOVED Star Trek. A lot. And she found my perspective interesting as someone watching the show so many years later in response to the movie, as opposed to growing up on it (she was younger than I was, so she didn't grow up on it live, but she still grew up on it). I told her which episodes I thought were great and which I thought were meh, and she had lots of interesting things to say about everything. A little too interesting! She was much more analytical about the show than I was; her level of discourse was way above mine. But she was very passionate about it.
"Are you having problems with your memory?" Jilli's dad asked Jilli. She asked whether he meant RAM or actual memory. He responded by handing her a little thing in a little bag.
"Are you having problems with your memory?" he asked me. I looked at him quizzically as he handed me a little thing in a little thing.
"What does it do?" I asked, looking at the little device in my hand.
"It's a flash drive," said Jilli. I looked at it more closely. It was a flash drive! 2 GB! Holy crap, awesome! I had been wanting a bigger flash drive! I thanked Jilli's dad. He said that now that he no longer worked there, he could hand out their stuff. I had totally picked the right table.
"Are you having problems with your memory?" he asked Plei. Oh, dads.
The cornbread they put on the table was sooooooo good, but SA declared it to be a mere attempt at real Tennessee cornbread. She said she would make it at Plei's brunch the next morning, but (spoiler warning) that didn't happen, so I still want to taste SA's cornbread. (Not like that, you pervs.)
I ordered the crispy Idaho catfish. I didn't know they had catfish in Idaho. SA refused to acknowledge the existence of catfish not from the South. But the Idaho catfish was very good in a nice jalapeño-lime sauce.
Jilli had gotten the rooster, crawfish, and Andoullie gumbo. Rooster? I had never seen that before. What is regular chicken? Roosters taste different? Plei explained it to me, but I didn't get it.
After dinner, I gathered those of us who were going on the Seattle Underground Tour (the special 21-and-up Underworld tour, to be exact) for the walk over. It was only six or seven blocks away, and although Pete suggested we take a cab, I was all about walking, and luckily, so was most everyone else. There was a light drizzle out, but we could brave it. I pointed us in the right direction; we just had to walk down 4th for a few blocks and then turn right on James.
"Hey, a Starbucks!" I said upon seeing a Starbucks. Frank laughed a lot and complimented my dry delivery (although it was more matter-of-fact than dry).
When we reached Pioneer Square and the corner at which the place was supposed to be according to Google Maps, I couldn't see it! Uh oh. I was the one who said I knew where it was. But luckily, I spotted it huddled back away from the street. We went in and got our wristbands and waited for the 10:00 tour to start.
The tour began outside. We crowded around Jenny, our tour guide, as she explained the history of the tour and of Seattle and the Seattle Underground. See, the whole city burned down this one time, and instead of rebuilding the city, they just built the new city on top of the old one, leaving the sidewalks and everything intact. Jenny took us down into a dank basement that looked like an old saloon. There was an ancient toilet and the remains of a bed in some adjacent rooms.
"This is the most scenic room in the tour, so take a good look," said Jenny. Then she talked at length about prostitutes! Or "seamstresses," as they were called on the paperwork. And there were different levels of prostitutes, from the ones who lived pretty good lives to the ones who lived in boxes. She told some stories that she definitely couldn't have told on the family-friendly tour.
We continued underground, sometimes going aboveground to walk to another basement. One time, she showed us a skylight that we had just been under. It was freaky! I mean, a whole world beneath our feet. The freaky thing was that apparently the Underground is still home to seedy activity; she told us about a huge gambling massacre...that occurred in 1983.
She also showed us one of the most haunted places in America, an underground bank vault. People would come in to get their money, but crooks were lurking in the shadows ready to kill and rob them before they could make it out. Jenny had never seen a ghost, but she'd experienced a bit of freakiness every now and then. And a friend of hers once saw a woman in a large petticoat, very Victorian-looking, just walking down the stairs.
We all looked at each other.
"Was it black and pink?" asked Laga. "Because that was probably our friend Jilli."
It was generally a pretty fun tour because of the stories; there wasn't really much to see underground. It was just the remnants of things.
The $21 admission-a $6 premium over the family-friendly version-included a drink at the end, so I asked the bartender to make me something awesome and non-alcoholic. I think she mixed a few fruit juices together for me.
Most people were up for walking back, so we walked down 1st. After a block or two, dcp suggested we go up to 4th since the hill was not that steep, but I remembered that the hills got better and almost nonexistence the further north you went...but I was thinking of Pike, which was past our hotel. Spring, as I had discovered the day before, was a bitch. I apologized to dcp when I realized that down the road.
But! Had we not stayed on 1st, we would not have encountered the random woman who told us that the Mariners had won and the Mariners and the Mariners had won with a score and she just wanted something Mariners and could we give her money. She followed us for a couple blocks, it was nuts. Earlier in the day, a bum had pestered Drew and Kristin for a while too, almost insisting that they have a conversation with him. Seattle panhandlers were persistent!
We also would not have encountered the store with a ceramic rifle in the window. And a ceramic bunny with a grenade. It was a pretty neat store, but closed, unfortunately.
Back at the hotel, we headed up to the Hospitality Suite. The door had a sign that told us to "Please close door gentley [sic]." So I got a pen and fixed it as soon as we went inside. The door was designed to slowly close and then SLAM SHUT when you were least expecting it, and all the comings and goings were liable to garner us yet another noise complaint, and we couldn't have that. We thought they should just fix the door (and Omnis wanted to go all ADA on their asses), but Drew pointed out that it was probably like that for fire code reasons. The door had to be sealed as hell. Erin, 911 operator, gave us all a PSA that if you're in a hotel and the fire alarm goes off, make sure to take your key when you leave because the fire might be in the hallway or the stairs, and then you're trapped outside your room. They can rescue you from your room, but not from the hallway.
We hung out in the Hospitality Suite for a couple hours. I looked through a magazine that had an article about the 12 Best Burgers in Seattle...one of which was a veggie burger! Huh, intriguing. It was at 22 Doors, on Capitol Hill, which is where the frozen custard place I wanted to go to was. I'd only had frozen custard in North Carolina and didn't even realize it was available anywhere else. I wondered if I could get anyone to go with me. If all else failed, I could suggest that course of action for my dinner with Rice folk on Sunday, which (spoiler warning) is what happened.
Oh, someone liked my shirt at some point.
The next morning, I dragged myself out of bed before 9 (although dcp was up and online around 7-something somehow). Plei was having brunch at her house at 10, and she had left helpful directions on which bus to take when to get there on time.
I met up with a few others in the lobby, including SA. I don't recall when it happened, but I know it was in the lobby either now or perhaps the day before, but she was on the phone with amy37, and she handed the phone to me so I could talk to her and tell her it was lame that she wasn't with us, and it turned out she didn't even realize it was me until I handed the phone back to SA. Later-and this did happen now, because there is a timestamp to prove it-she posted on the board to apologize, as she would have talked with me longer had she known it was me. SA showed the post to me on her iPhone. Hee.
We strolled down to the bus stop and met -t and her husband. We waited and waited and waited, and then SA pulled out her iPhone and GoogleMapped a lot. She was now completely dependent on the device that could always tell her where she was and how to get where she wanted to be. We looked for possible alternate routes and entertained the possibility of taking a cab, but, thankfully, the bus finally arrived.
Also thankfully, SA and I were on the same wavelength when it came to where to sit: we had to sit on the little rotating platform in the middle, what she called the "bouncy castle." And then we talked a lot about Star Trek. Frank put in his two cents as well. All the while, SA tracked our position on her iPhone so we knew when we were nearing the stop.
We kept wanting the bus to make sharper turns so we could have a fun ride, but our bouncy castle was just not that bouncy.
Since it was the weekend, I was able to get a Day Pass for four bucks, which would cover at least the ride there and back (I had run out of quarters, so I was paying two bucks for a $1.75 fare anyway). We found a place to cross and walked a few blocks to Plei's house.
The place was already crawling with Buffistas...and pancakes! Plei was busy in the kitchen continually whipping up new batches. Soon, out came scrambled eggs and...veggie bacon! That's right, we chowed down on some facon. Or fakon. Fake-on? I don't know how you spell what we were calling it. The general consensus was that it tasted better than expected, but the texture was all wrong. I thought it was nice, but not as tasty as turkey bacon, which is MY bacon. There was also bacon salt, which I discovered didn't actually have any bacon in it, so I sprinkled some on my eggs for kicks.
From the dining room, a staircase led up to the second floor. At the top sat Lillian and Matilda. I went up to talk to them. Matilda was in better spirits and more talkative; she told me that Lillian was eating butter, and the moon had no arms, but it had a nose and a mouth and a face. I had seen yesterday that Lillian was able to high-five, and I am all about high-fiving little kids, so I did all the fives. Adorably, she also knew "Too slow!" I think it was her favorite one to do.
Lillian also liked throwing stuffed animals down the stairs. I threw them back at her, and she threw them back down. It was fun.
JZ would come up for a bit and see if they wanted any more food, but Plei was stuck in the kitchen. Every now and then, we would hear the girls call, "Mooooooooommyyyyyyy." It was almost like a song. "Moooooooommyyyyyyyy. Mooooooooommyyyyyyyy. Mooooooooommyyyyyyy."
The Buffista chorus downstairs joined them: "Moooooooooommyyyyyyyyyy."
One time when I was upstairs, Lillian went into her room. Matilda was all, "That's her room!" She followed and asked me to come with her. Scola came in as well...
AND THEN LILLIAN SHUT THE DOOR.
It was awesomely hilarious. She wouldn't let us leave! When Scola made a move to the door, she got up and ran in front of it so he couldn't open it. Finally, we were able to escape, though.
Downstairs, Scola declared that Lillian had taken a liking to me and was going to keep me in her room. Someone joked that they should tell my mom that I'd found a wife! She's a little young, but...
Some of us moved out into the lovely front yard. Some brought cantaloupe and contemplated the mysteries of the universe.
I've always thought Lillian had sort of an impish quality to her, but she has her quiet moments as well.
Matilda gave JZ a pretty necklace!
The girls went up to the porch where Juliana and smonster were sitting.
Proto-Buffistas and actual Buffistas! Now the question is which one will grow up to be Juliana and which one will grow up to be smonster.
Now, as you can see, Lillian is looking at the ground, wondering if she can jump it. She did fine, but when Matilda was a little scared, she decided to be a little scared as well. They were like peas and carrots, those twos. They even switched shoes one time. Anyway, JZ helped them out. Compare and contrast their jumping styles:
I think Squeakaboo gets points for style.
Plei came out and showed us around her garden. There were strawberries! And, and, and...uh, other plants and vegetables. I'm not a herbetologist, so...wait, that's not the word. Herbarian? HORTICULTURIST. That's the one. The one I'm not. But I was impressed with all the different things she had growing all around.
Meanwhile, JZ was overrun with small children.
So I had a question for Plei. See, many years ago, she had asked me for my address because she wanted to send me a package. She never got around to it, but then when she was moving, she asked for it again because she wanted to send it to me. But she never got around to it. I didn't bug her about it, but I had always wondered what the mysterious package was. And now that I was, like, at her damn house, maybe she could just give it to me?
It turned out the thing she'd been wanting to send me all these years was...her extra copy of Batman: Year One! SWEET! I had passed on buying it used so many times because I wanted to own it but it wasn't a pressing issue. She was able to find it for me and yay!
As the brunch wound down and people began to leave, I declared my intention to go to the Science Fiction Museum and Hall of Fame. Omnis and Laga were interested as well, but they were going to call a cab. I'd bought a Day Pass and wanted to make the best of it, so I asked P how to get there by bus.
I set off down the street on my own, as Plei or someone made a quip about my becoming a famous travel journalist or something. I only caught a snatch, but it amused me. I put on Smellerbee to keep me company. It's always good to get some Designated Alone Time away from the crowd, beholden only to yourself for a while.
Next time on Buffista F2F: Seattle Edition-Science fiction! Music! Dancing! Books! ORGY! Maybe not that last one. MAYBE.