a weekend in squameesh with H

wow.  i've been a bad bad blogger as well as a bad bad person because worth depends on how often you blog, as everyone knows.

ok so i'm in squameesh right now for conference weekend.  it's my conference tradition.  all year heather comes to visit me on lulu island.  twice a year i visit her in the mountains.  when heather visits me, i may or may not clean my house.  i may or may not have food in the house.  when i visit heather, she has a clean house with my bed already made and lots of food planned.  what i'm saying is that besides being a bad person and a bad blogger, i'm a bad host!  hahahahah....no.  i'm saying i appreciate what a good host heather is.  she's grrrrreat!

speaking of grrrrrrrrrrrrrreat, has anyone noticed what a terrific rolling 'r' president Uchtdorf has?  it's amazing.  he does a fantastic job rolling off all those names from all those different places.  i mean i like  watching him read the names of all the releases and all the new callings.  he doesn't just read them off. he puts excellence into it and i appreciate it.

i have really enjoyed watching conference so far.  i feel like so many of my thoughts and struggles and doubts and questions and deep down needs are met and answered in an overflowing, flood, spilling over and out and around kind of way.  he is a giver of good gifts.  hunger and thirst are satisfied.  windows of heaven do pour out blessings that i don't have room enough to receive.  i have learned that this he is constant and he keeps his promises.  i so wish that i kept mine better.

yesterday afternoon heather and i went 'downtown' squamish and did some lookiloos in the shops there.  there were lots of cute neato things that i wasn't willing to spend any of my meager cashflow on.  but then we came to a store front that said "bookstore"  "what!  i didn't know we had a bookstore!" exclaimed heather in surprise and delight.  we walked in.  it wasn't a book store towering with books in every corner by any means.  i'd describe it as quite sparse.  a man sitting behind a table with a ziplock baggie of cash explained to us that the bookstore was a community boookstore, that all adult books were 2.00 and all children's books were 1.00, and that all the money went to literacy.  you have to agree that literacy is a very good cause and that the price was right.  i didn't think i would find anything but that didn't stop me from diligently looking.

as i browsed i couldn't help but smile as the man behind the table with the ziplock of cash kept interrupting heather's browsing with instructions and what i would call 'unwanted info'.  heather was very nice about it.  nicer than i would have been, i feel.  anyways somewhere between browsing and smiling i found a book by sofie kinsella, which i snapped up because i learned from the last book of hers that i read, she is a super funny and sometimes hilarious as well, read.  then on a back table i found two treasures.  each were books, as one would expect in a BOOKSTORE , and each were poster sized books of posters of art.  by artists.  one was a bunch of different posters by different artists who made posters for different things.  the other is all by gustav klimt. i  love his work despite the frequent appearance of gratuitous nips.  so instantly i think this is cool because its' basically two books full of posters of art, some of which i can put up if i am so incline and others of which i can use to make cool things, such as books or WHATEVER I WANT.  so i bought them and am pleased with them.  one poster is even in SWEDISH.  hey! I SPEAK SWEDISH!  i hope you see how this is special and exciting.

we also went into this shop that was towering and squished with none other than piles and piles and piles of junk.  it reminded me of an inside version of the recycling place store.  heather said the store made her clausterphobic.  i try to emphathize with people who have feelings of clausterphobia, but its' hard because it's a feeling i don't ever feel.  although sometimes when walking through a store that is dimly lit with narrow aisles, i do feel some rage.  but that's different.  anyways i wanted to go in so heather came in with me, which was nice of her.  she's a nice person.  we've established that.  after inching our way down the barely traceable path that one might call an aisle if one is feeling generous, and down the other 'aisle' to the front, knocking over with a clatter a stack of tea cups placed on the floor just at the corner when one might run into them with almost 100% certainty...after that, i saw some cameras and lenses on the shelf behind the till.  i asked the sketchy looking but pleasant enough proprietor if they had any pentax lenses.  he half heartedly lifted a few lenses and then asked me if i wanted to come look.  i agreed and gingerly picked my way over to the shelf.  i then went through what lenses there were, some had tabacco leaf dust inside, others were precariously balanced on empty video boxes, and others were underneath naked plastic dolls.  they were all labeled 50.00.  the only pentax thing i found was a flash.  when i was done i looked around.  i didn't see heather.  could she have left the store, overcome by the threatening, leering piles of junk?  or was she swallowed up by the bowels of the store as i perused the filthy lenses?  i squeezed by some ladies and went outside. she wasn't there.  just as i began to think that heather was no more, that she probably lay, curled up in a ball in the stomach of the store who ate her, slowly being digested into junk herself, she emerged out of the darkness of the store into the sunlight of downtown squamish.  we looked at each other.  we were both survivors.  we made it out.  we were our own support group.  we shopped on.

after looking at some other stores and finding a bakery that was also a wool shop and bulk tea, organic nuts and grains and pastas and treats store we decided to explore a little bit.  i observed an abandoned building down by the river and we explored it. it was clear that a homeless person lived there and i think we met him as we left.  he had a long wiry grey beard and curly hair.  he answered a soft "hi" to my cheery "hello" as we both crossed the train tracks going the opposite direction.

heather showed me some apartment buildings that she lusted after.  perhaps.  she's not sure.  but she does like them.

then we drove to a view point but decided not to get out of the car and to drive to the sign and read it from inside.  then we drove to marin park.  the same place where years before karey, barb and i went for a quick impromptu dip in the lake.  the lake, which is browning lake, not marin lake as we thought, lies right beside the highway.  heather and i walked around a bit, went up on top of a bluff of sorts where a bench was waiting for us.  we sat for a few minutes but heather was hungry and that propelled us on.

we made enchiladas.  well heather made them.  i just performed some support duties like chopping two different kinds of onions and crumbling goat cheese.  that's right i said goat cheese!  these enchiladas had black beans and zuchini, onion and goat cheese was the filling.  enchilada sauce on top with some more goat cheese crumbled on top of that.  wow and yum.

then we watched two episodes of little dorritt which heather had not seen.

then we went to bed.  both nights i had more than 8 hours sleep and vivid interesting dreams.

time for the next session of conference.

Comments

Andrea said…
Ah, finally! I was getting a little tired of that perky "hi" .... Sounds like a fun Squamish trip!
Sarah-Lynn said…
I was saying to Kyle that they probably get Uchtdorf to read all the names because he does such a good job. He tries. I am so going to try that enchilada recipe!!
amyleigh said…
it IS Klimt on my journal cover!! it IS IT IS!!! (but there is no nip)

nice post of a lovely sounding Squameesh visit. I am envious of your finds and excited for you to show me when I COME VISIT. which will be happening soon!
Beth-a-knee said…
I somehow missed this post! sigh. all those lovely shops. laughed a bit at your musings on heather being int he bowels of the junk shop. hehe. that enchilada recipe sounds amazeballs.