Yesterday

To finish out the night I met up with Lauren in the Haggen's parking lot (meeeemories) and then drove out to O'Brien's in Tigard near King City but not before she presented me with a single Mung bean, which is an incredibly inside joke. But I was ecstatic, and it really made my night. We had a couple of black and tans and chatted it up about what's been going on in the last year, who's gotten pregnant, who's getting married, who's passed away, all the stuff I've come to accept as what catching up is going to mean for the next, I dunno, 20 years, after which only the last one will remain prevalent. Sad. Seeing Lauren was great though, I've missed her a lot because, well, she's genuine, and we're straight with each other. No frill, no nonsense, and I like that. Made it home by 2am.

Yesterday I had a note written for myself regarding what I needed to do, it said three things:
Cole
Marty
Caitlin's 21er
Here's how they all went down.

I met up with Cole at his place in NE Portland and there was a lot of Cole'ing and Dave'ing and it was good. Cole was still pretty much in the act of packing all his worldly possessions, and appeared nowhere near done. Was largely the same with me, so, no complaints there. We went to get Cole a haricut, and the lady complimented me straight away on my hairstyle, and so we got to talking about Japan, etc, it was funny. After that we drove up to Vancouver to drop off Cole's car, which, sadly, he is selling finally, after all that work he's done to it. I think we've both kind of realized now that well, you can work on that mediocre car all you want, but that Nice Car over there, is better than any work you could ever do straight out of the factory, and it doesn't risk falling apart at any moment, as both of us have had happen now. The place Cole was staying in Vancouver for a while got flooded by vandals and sustained extensive damage.
After that we came back, met up with Ashley and Ed, Cole's sister and dad, picked up his sister's car, which is now his, and went back to Cole's place, but not before picking up Burger King for old times' sake. Back at the house, EMf'nC showed me his new book, and I agreed to look into marketing it in Japan, where golf is a big thing. Maybe we'll see something come of it. I took off a little after that, because I was going to need to meet up with Shane and that gang for the 21er soon, so Cole and Ed and I said our goodbyes. Cole's on his way, as we speak, to LA, to get started moving in to his new place, and opening up his very own Dutch Bros in Santa Clarita. I wish him the best of luck in this because I'll doubtlessly need a job of my own when I come back to the states.

After I got back on the road I gave Marty a call, and swung by her place in the Hollywood District. Marty has become a beautiful mother, and had two beautiful redheaded boys, Pete and Bobby. Rambunctious little guys too, but after meeting them and getting over the initial, 'who is this guy?', they moved on into the 'will he play with us?' phase and the fun started. So for a good little while there it was Marty watching as I ran around the house and played with her sons. Eventually though Pete wanted to do a puzzle so we got some quality sitting time.

Pete and I worked the edges while Marty and Bobby did the inside. It was good teamwork. It was also hard not to do the whole thing instantly, cause it was a 63 piece puzzle, and I could have done it with the pieces flipped. I was happy to get in some good practice for when they're my kids. It was kinda clear that Marty and I wanted some alone time to actually talk and catch up, but boys being boys there was no real way to get them to do anything by themselves long enough to really talk. We'll have to get together again before I leave to see if we can't actually have that chat. She also embroidered a nice black shirt for me with a sparrow on the chest, which is really sweet and a little off on the size, but oh well. I'll definitely wear it. With a phone call from Shane, I again made my goodbyes, and headed in towards Portland to meet up with the gang at Kells.