In the Line of Fire

Oh man. A week ago I found out that my entire office was taking a trip to Boise, Idaho for a company retreat of sorts. We recently went through a merger and were going to get together with all the other offices and have dinner and social time, stay at a hotel, and then have a meeting in the morning and do a team-building activity. I pictured holding hands with my LDS co-workers preparing to catch a blind-folded person falling backwards and then sitting in a circle using feeling words while sucking down Dr. Pepper. I shuddered. And then I was torn from my reverie to hear the words "paint" and "ball". Together. In one word. As in, we were going to go paintballing. This, my friends, is the height of team-building innovation.

This paintballing experience involved wearing full camouflage gear, a camo balaclava, and running shoes. The course was in this huge, dim, warehouse with a sticky, sandy floor and old cars, and plywood walls with crude windows cut into them. They divided us into teams, told us to stand in opposite corners, and then set off a bullhorn. This was just like war. Rapid fire, screams, bullets whizzing towards you. I was one the last to survive only because I crouched, squealing, behind a large barricade until everyone else had shot each other in fits of heroism and aggression. We then broke into smaller groups and went to the outdoor courses. One of the courses consisted only of tires which are not that tall, the result being I eventually was shot directly in the forehead. This totally hurt and to make matters worse, I was never hit anywhere but my forehead. Which means I was hit in the forehead many, many times. This may indicate to an experienced paintballer that I did too much crouching and peeking from behind things, but it seemed a lot more logical to do this than move around. The one time I did I was shot by my own teammates.

I'm not sure how therapeutic the whole thing was. Today I have three welts on the top of my head and my arm aches from toting that gun around. The overseers of the paintball company commented that this was the most aggressive group of adults they had ever seen.

I throw something

I am not so good at throwing things. I do that limp wrist, arm-flail that is peculiar to girls and nerds with glasses. Sometimes I play catch with my dad and my brother and they egg me on and snicker when I attempt to huck a football at them. On Fourth of July we were discussing my throwing skills and eventually a demonstration was requested. This is what happened.

Red Weekend

This weekend is going to be brutal. Tonight is Kyle Arthur's "party" at his "apartment". He is still promising spanakopita. On Monday I will provide a full report on the verity of his home and said spanakopita. On Saturday my friend Jacob is having a lawn games birthday party over in North Portland, including but not limited to: Portland parks liquor license, croquet, and bocce ball. And hopefully lawn darts. I was visiting with a friend the other day and we ended up throwing lawn darts from his porch in an attempt to hit the strip of lawn between the sidewalk and the curb. It was pretty miserable but I will have to add that I was closer to hitting it than he was.

Then the Red Dress Party is happening. It's a fundraiser for the gays (this year's recipients: The Q Center, Men’s Wellness Center, and the SafeChoice Program of the YWCA of Clark County) and everyone in attendance has to wear a red dress. According to the website kilts don't count. A Portland-wide shortage of red dresses is occurring right about now and the luckless will end up in weird old lady dresses that Betty White would refuse to wear. Not that that doesn't have its own appeal. The above photo is from last year's party and those are my adorable housemates shaking it to what was probably mildly bad techno. The party will be in this space, which looks pretty amazing. We have friends coming from Boise, Idaho for this thing. That's how serious it is. Liz has promised a follow-up champagne brunch on Sunday and then Monday (which isn't even the weekend anymore) is the Yeasayer show. Like I said, brutal.

Minigolf Takeover

Holocene had its annual minigolf tournament on Tuesday and Wednesday. I attended last night after sitting at Roadside Attraction for hours (that place is in a time vortex and I always drink whiskey lemonades there. Always.) and they had a fire outside that was shooting ash out over the picnic tables like Mt. St. Helens and I smelled heavily of campfire by the time I left. Ran into DJ Aaron who said I smelled like the forest. Which is slightly better than camping, which is what Carl said. Our friend Carl is a welder. He used to do the floats for the Rose Parade but he has recently moved on to bigger things. Kind of. Not size-wise, but job-wise. Anyway, designers and artists and friends get together and design a mini-golf hole and compete for prizes, including cash money and tattoos. Carl's reminded me of that game Mouse-trap, you had to blast the ball up this tube and then it went around in these wire tubes suspended from the ceiling. It took me about five tries. Jocelyn was failing in ways that Carl had never seen before, eventually losing her ball in the crowd and Alex got a hole in one. My favorite was this super simple hole, just an L-shaped bit of astro-turf but the trick was that there were two dancing people rolling around on the green, just like, spazzing around and messing with you. It was amazing. Kind of like watching a weird french bum busker mess with people on the street except that you are prepared for it. The guy was wearing black leggings with a hole in the crotch (seriously) and he was absurdly tall, and he had a sweatshirt with a neon galaxy on it and the statement You Are Here (I have this sweatshirt but not in neon) and I feel like it was a kid's sweatshirt because it was too small for this guy and kept riding up. I don't know if this was an outfit that he specifically chose for dancing and messing with people at mini-golf but either way it was something really special.

p.s. Check out Alexa's Shiny Things and Cake. She says nice things about me, kind of.