Steven and Vic are on their way to Bali via Hong Kong. He writes...

Just thought we would reach out. We have some time to burn in Hong Kong while we await the next flight to Bali. We have been in travel now for about 28 hours. WOW! Seems like less since we were able to sleep much of the night. We slepts about 10 hours! We have not stopped eating of course. The business class service. Wow. The little asian ladies I want to bring home. They are not only beautiful but so nice and just treated us so nice. amazing. This airport itself is amazing. Large, spacious and not at all what I would have thought. The walk ways large and spacious and of couse enough Prada and gucci shopping to burn any wallet up! The business class lounge is amazing. Beautiful simple elegance. There is a water feature pond next to where I am now. We have been in the noodle bar and will soon partake in the "long Bar" which spans across the front of the lounge with Views over the airpot and bay of Hong Kong. Amazing. The showers were something out of the W hotel in New York for sure. Huge rain shower heads above and even a little magic wand that makes for a very clean little (YOU KNOW WHAT). HE HE! You know me..gotta give the details.

Vic and I compared notes later and funny...he said the same thing about the magic wand. We both think we might need one. HA! Why is there not one in the steam shower is what I want to know.

Today I drove in with a co-worker. His native language is not English.

He told me that while he was learning English, the first time he saw "Objects in mirror are closer than they appear." on a passenger-side mirror he thought it meant "The components used to make this mirror are much more densely packed than you would expect."

Yesterday was William's 45th birthday. Who is William? He's my other roommate. He's very quiet. He doesn't work. He doesn't pay me rent. He helps around the house. He does odd jobs to earn some cash. He plays piano and has performed at weddings and bars.

Other than that, he's just there. He watches TV. He hangs out with friends. He cleans up after himself. He rarely dates. I've never known him to have a boyfriend.

Maybe he's going through a mid life crisis. It's just odd to see a man so free of goals and ambition.

Saturday night RO and I went to a great party. Rebecca, who use to be my boss, invited us to it.

What made the party so great? The hostess was a wild child.

Working backwards... At the end of the night, everyone was dancing samba, salso and tango around the living room. There were a few great dancers there and they gave the rest of us lessons. Rebecca and RO did an agressive tango. They would swing aground and check other dancers onto the couch.

Before that, I noticed that some of the guests were vanishing for long periods of time. When I went looking for them-- they were on the back patio smoking pot.

Before that. This one is the hardest to describe. The hostess would run her teeth over the bone behind your ear. It tickled gave you the shivers. It first happened to RO and T. There were sitting there giggling like they had a secret. They wouldn't tell us what it was. They just said "Go to the back room and find out."

So I did. And it happened. It was so weird having a stranger do that to me.

Later on RO and I sat on either side of the hostess. RO and I started to do the same thing to here that she did to us. She started laving and shaking so much that she broke my wine glass.

It was a great party.

The black berry wine is off to a good start. It's bubbling away in the primary fermenter. It smells good, better than the grape wines.

Tommy Boy is safe and sound. He's been away for a couple of weeks thanks to Hurricane Katrina. I knew he was safe, his friend told me so the couple of times that I called him. But still, I hadn't heard from him.

RO and I went to the Boeing surplus store over the weekend. Boeing surplus is surreal. There are endless bins of oddities that you'd never realize were needed to build jets.

You can buy old laptops computers by the pallet. Bins and bins of drill bits, some of the 2 or 3 inches thick, large aluminum sheets, reemers, sonofiers (what the heck is a sonofier?) casters, instructional videos, hand carts, binders and much much more.

Some of their old desks and drafting tables look like a bureaucracy gone haywire. They had a desk on hydraulics that could turn anyway. Another desk had a precision magnifying glass attached.

I didn't buy anything. But, it is a junk collectors paradise.

Had a maintenance weekend. RO and I did chores around the house. Mowed the lawn, moved furniture, cleaned out gutters.

Saturday night we watched Nine Dead Gay Guys. It's not bad for a corny gay comedy. It's very amorale. I think it tries to mock movies that have a moral-of-the-story. At the end there is a moment where the characters realize that it's possible to have sex because you love someone, not because you are paying them, or you are in a dark room.

Today RO and I started a batch of black berry wine. We'll see how that turns out. We picked all the berries our self. This will be the first wine we did, from start to end, without a kit.

The bugs...

Last weekend when we were driving back from Wenathee we drove through a large cloud of bugs.

At first it was gross-- six or seven bugs quickly splatted on the windshield. Then it was kind of funny and weird-- more bugs kept colliding with the windshield. After a minute of bug death, it stopped being funny and was just creapy. How many bugs where there? How long before they stopped hitting the truck? Has anyone ever had an accident because they couldn't see through bug crud?

It stopped after about 5 minutes. I tried to clean the bugs off with the wipers, but they just smeard the bugs.

Steven has moved out. He's got a great townhouse over in West Seattle. I'll miss him. He was a great room mate and a better friend.

He's already jokingly asked me when I was moving to West Seattle. It would be nice-- West Seattle is a better place to live than where I live, Renton. West Seattle has many great restaurants and stores within walking distance. Renton-- you drive everywhere. West Seattle has Alki Beach

As nice as West Seattle is, you pay for it. My commute would be over an hour one way. Real-estate prices in West Seattle are sky high. And as nice as Alki Beach or the clubs and restaurants are, I wouldn't use them every day. Instead, I can drive to them regularly when I go and visit my best friend at his great now townhouse.

For the weekend, RO, Matt and I headed east to Twisp. I slept over at Matt's family cabin. Saturday night we went to the Okanogan Fair and watched the Rodeo. Matt's cousin was the Fair Queen.

They are different in Okanogan. The normal people are the same as normal people everywhere. It's the fringe people that are different. In Seattle, the fringies are very left wing. Around Okanogan, the fringe people are very right wing.

The announcer at the Okanogan Fair Rodeo told a very ruthless, right wing, poor taste joke, over the P.A system to hundreds of people. It suprized me. Matt's cousin told me to not worry-- the annoucer was a local nut that everyone ingored. His opinions weren't the norm.

C2 in Iraq writes:

It's good to hear from you. Yes, it's fall here too. I think today may have been the first day when the temperature didn't get over 100. Yes, Jack Frost and pumpkins are right around the corner!

Vic was in town. Vic is in the navy and may be redeployed to Louisiana. Steven has mixed feelings about this. Vic could be gone for months. At the same time, Louisiana needs all the help it can get.

Yesterday RO and I hiked up to the bathing rocks by Snoqualmie Pass. Very nice.

I'm starting to get a lot of comment spam. For that reason I've had to turn on the image verification thingy. No big issue since this blog doesn't get many comments, and those that do comment are smart enough to figure it out.

Ro, Mac, Joe, Behr and his BF drove up to Port Ludlow on Saturday. It's a beutiful small town. Really just a marina, many vacation properties and the stores needed to support them. As Seattle gets larger, many of these old lumber towns are converting them selves to weekend vacation destinations. Port Ludlow is one of them and they are doing a good job.

Last night RO baby-sat Steven's brother's kid's-- two of them, aged 8 and 9.

We played Halo 2 for a while. They were very excited-- "I don't think we are allowed to play that! That's for teens! Halo is rated mature! Is Halo ok for me?"

I told them there parents wouldn't know if they didn't tell them.

We played a very safe version of Halo, bascially driving around and ramming into each other; bumper cars.

After that, the 8 yo wanted to see my sword. I have a real sword that I keep as art. I pulled it out so they could touch it. They were delighted and scared at the same time. They ran behind the sofa and didn't want to get near it. Everything they know about swords comes from movies-- if you touch the blade, your finger will get cut off. It was hilarious. I just held it and they were amazed.

Of course, when their parents get back, what do they say? "We played Halo2! I didn't think we could play it because it's rated mature! Bob's parents won't let him play Halo! They have a real sword! I touched it!"

Arghhh!