7.27.98

    I am back from my whirlwind trip up to Portland with only a few battle scars. It was great fun. A shout out to Sarah who informs me that she's still reading the stories! Hope your beach trip was fun.

    I don't know where to start. Maybe I should go backwards. Right now my throat is really sore from shouting and smoking. I have an earache and the rest of my body has only started to uncramp. T. picked me up from the airport last night and we both romantically complained about each other's breath. I pulled out all the gifts from the shower and showed them off to T. who was indeed impressed. The girls did a great job of getting me really cool stuff. Gotta get to those Thank You notes.

    The plane trip home was painful. Avoid Southwest Airlines at all costs. They never give you anything more than peanuts to eat and they are never on time. I think Delta and United are pretty good airlines. One of the most enjoyable was actually Aspen Air — but how often to you get to fly with them?

    I was tired and cranky and needed sleep but couldn't get it for the pounding going on in my head. I'm not cut out for full nights of drinking. It used to be that I could have a big glass of water before going to sleep and I'd be okay in the morning. Nope. Getting too old, I guess. I actually woke up with the spins on Sunday morning. Has that ever happened to you before? Me neither. I was in pain. Chels and Byrne helped me pack all the gifts and whatnot and get me ready to go. Thankfully not everyone got hammered the night before.

    First stop on the bachelorette was Darcelle's — a cabaret club and Men of Paradise strip show in Portland's East side. For extraneous reasons we missed the Men of Paradise but the drag show was pretty entertaining in its oddity. While there I had a Cosmopolitan and a Darcelle, the house drink. I'm pretty sure that the Darcelle was the one that got me drunk. It was bright pink and served in a large hurricane glass. It tasted just like pink lemonade which I knew meant that it was some sort of death cocktail. It was.

    I got a lot of attention at Darcelle's and around town for my lovely outfit. A new tradition among my college friends started with a horrific pink, flowing veil that Sonia made for Sarah's bachelorette last summer. My evening out was its third ride around Portland. Along the headband were a string of blue condoms held there with loving stitches. In the buttonholes of my shirt hung two pink, phallic "suckers" and on my wrists and neck were candy necklaces. The piece de resistance was the rum 'n coke filled, highly phallic, sport bottle that I cradled throughout the night. I was a vision, I'm sure.

    Next was Ringler's Annex for cigars and a Vodka Citron bought by somebody. After that I helped demolish a fish bowl of extremely toxic Mai Tai at The Gypsy. Yergh. Sam graciously gave me some plastic monkeys. I was not the only one off my rocker that night but I'm mightily glad that there were a few people completely sober to do the handling. I fell asleep buzzing and I woke up spinning. Yergh. Thank God that these events only come around once in a lifetime.

    Earlier that day was the bridal shower which was loads of fun -- everybody likes gifts! I was exhausted from the night before. I arrived in Portland around 7 p.m. and then a bunch of us went out to a McMenamin's that I hadn't been to before. We went to the Cornelius Pass Roadhouse & Brewery and sat and talked and talked late into the night. The biggest disappointment was the beer. I really, really wanted a Rubinator (cross between Ruby Ale and Terminator Stout) and they were out of Ruby. I couldn't believe my bad luck. We ended up trying a cross between some new-fangeled blueberry ale of sorts and the stout (dubbed The Bluebinator or The Termiblue) but it just wasn't the same. I tried to explain that I had flown all the way from the pits of L.A. but there was just no getting around that. *sigh*

    The arrival into Portland was lovely. I got teary over how green the land was and how clear the sky was. I got a great view of the Three Sisters mountain range, Mount Hood and Mount Rainier. All of them looked lovely and it was a special treat. By contrast, flying into Los Angeles was overwhelming and somewhat dismal. It was dusk so the lights were starting to come up which was impressive but the urban and suburban sprawl is beyond compare.

    Which brings us to today, Monday, in L.A. I'm still ill.

    Rhetorical question of the day: Outside of serial killers, when is all-encompassing egocentrism a good trait to have?