and still, i got nothin’.
i asked my washington native friend jessica for her insights on orcas island and her response was:
peachyjessica: orcas island is PARADISE.
that was an excellent endorsement. jess was the first roommate i ever had. we lived together at olivet nazarene university when we went to chicago on a wider opprotunity for girl scouts. it was called press pass 2000!, and yes, you must include that exclamation point in every reference. anyway, we had such a great time. there were no hangers in our closets and we needed to hang up our uniforms (like those but worse) to prevent wrinkles, since we had to buy them, so we went to the cafeteria and “borrowed” some hangers from the coatracks. i hid them in my cardigan and we booked it back to our dorm, only to be intercepted by…someone. i forget who. but i do remember that they were not very observant (especially for a couple of aspiring reporters.) we stood there chatting for a few minutes before heading our seperate ways, and they never once mentioned or questioned the hangers protruding from my sweater. maybe they were just really accepting of our, well, differences.
i couldn’t have ever asked for a better first roommate experience than what i had with jess. on our first night together there was a thunderstorm over the horizon and we both opened up our windows and hung out as far as we could to see and hear and smell the storm. i remember talking in the dark for hours every night before we fell asleep. i also remember the first time i overslept for a class in a college dorm. jessica and i were both pretty shocked with ourselves. could that have been foreshadowing for my now customary lazy morning ritual? as i recall, jessica and i lived on the fourth floor. could that have been foreshadowing to my fourth floor prospect residency last year? at least prospect had an elevator! i have not yet been able to reunite with jess, but she goes to ithaca, so we should arrange that. or we could hang out on orcas island this summer.
press pass 2000! also led me to my dear friend ellen. ellen is an old soul. i love her penmanship. especially when she writes me one of her great letters. she always understands my dramatic losses of emotional control and always offers reliable advice. i wouldn’t even call it advice, ellen’s words are better than that. whenever i have a problem, she imparts this insightful message to my heart and everything is good again. oh, press pass 2000!. oh, my girls. they’re both studying journalism, by the way. so devoted.
this evening, i spent two hours watching a william baldwin hosted informational video about disaster response from the american red cross. and now i have an internationally recognized certification. it was almost too easy. done and done.
quote of the day: “everything i need is right here in my hands, right here in my hands, right here in my hands.” – melissa ferrick
love always, em locke
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