You Remind Me of Home

It's obviously been a long time since I've posted. I feel like I start every post with that. That's because I'm totally unoriginal. Wooooot.

After the last post, I did nothing but work and, occasionally, party. I even completed that official leap into "stupid-ass-college-kid-gone-wrong" by showing up to a 6am work shift hammered. That was the most horrible shift of my life and I wanted to end said life by the time I was off. But, as you can probably tell, I did not end my life. At all.

Anyway, the last week of August was spent in Portland, Oregon. Ah, the home of my elementary school years. It might be one of the coolest places on earth, and I might eventually put up all my pictures on some sort of webshots-type thing so you can see them. But until then, I'll just have you know that the picture below this entry is taken on Cannon Beach, and the friend I was visiting, Lauren, is the one sitting on the blanket. I love childhood friends. Nomatter how long it's been, they're still the same, and you still really get each other in a way no one else can. But yeah, sunsets on the beach, man... that's why I've gotta move to the west coast again.. sunsets actually hit the horizon.

I won't leave you empty handed, picture-wise, for this particular entry. On the way to the beach, we took a detour and landed in Tillamook, Oregon. Um. Have you ever heard of Tillamook cheese? It comes from Tillamook!! Who would've thought? Anyway we wanted to stop for a map or something that we ended up not needing, but we decide to stop at the cheese factory, which is apparently a big tourist spot for its delicious tasting ice cream! Sadly, Lauren and I were on a two-day "no sugars" bet and the aroma of waffle cones was excrutiatingly painful. And then as we were searching for some kind of travel information center... we see this...



Lauren: Do you want to see the cheesemakers at work?
Me: No.
Lauren: Well it's right here if you do.
Me: (pause) well... what the hell, let's just do it.

So we walk up the staircase, and we see a large glass window that a LOT of people are intently looking through, and behind it is a large room with factory-workers... making cheese. I'm not sure what we expected. Keebler elves or something? But no, these were just random low-wage workers doing their low-wage thing while high-paid tourists pointed and found some sort of fascination in the factory-made-craft of how blocks of cheese are cut and packaged. It was like some kind of sick, ironic, waste of our time. So Lauren and I immediately looked at each other and burst out laughing. No one else was laughing. Just us. Could no one else SEE the IRONY here? Much to our dismay, one of the "cheesemakers" (seriously, doesn't that sound like a magical elf?) looked up at us with these big puppy dog eyes and just kept staring. I can't explain how awful it feels to know that somebody thinks you're laughing at them and their horribley repetitive line of work when you're really laughing at the people who set up the whole attraction, and feeling a little bit sad for the cheesemakers who must have felt, on some level, like animals in a zoo.

But, since they already thought we were laughing at them, we decided to take it one step further and act it out in picture-form.


intriguing process!


look how it moves down the conveyor belt!

Anyway, that was just one of the many entertaining random events on our trip. Maybe if you're lucky I'll tell you about our underwear on the beach event.

THERE IS NO QUOTE OF THE DAY
"go cry about it" -me.