The War for Independent Lodging, Part I: The Search

Andy and I are idiots. We went to Upper Peninsula of Michigan on the 4th of July with no accommodation reservations. Well, we'd booked a room in Iron River for the night of the 3rd. No problem, we figured. We'll just go from there and see where we end up. After a fitful night of sleep interrupted by fuzzily remembered morning shouts about six-cylinders, we faced the day with optimism and heaping bowls of Count Chocula. We did a quick search on Google maps and wrote down the number for every hotel and motel that appeared within 15 miles of our destination, Copper Harbo(u)r. Things seemed promising enough at first. The woman who answered at King Copper Motel was quite friendly and, though they did not have any rooms available, took my number and promised, "I'll give you a call if something breaks." This was much more reassuring before my mobile lost reception about a half hour later.

But the situation began to look bleak as I dialed down the list. We quickly discovered that there seemed to be a stigma against late bookers. My naive inquiries were greeted with suspicion and distrust, as if the person on the other end of the phone wanted to keep anyone crazy enough not to have advance reservations at arm's length. We arrived at the end of our list of prospects quickly. One woman's crisp answer to my inquiry as to whether they had rooms available that night, "No, we don't, and I don't know anyone in the area who does," still rang in my ears. Perhaps our original plan to plan as we went had been reckless. But we decided to carry it out. After all, there were bound to be accommodations that weren't listed on Google. One of them would surely have a room open.

We began stopping at every hotel and motel that wasn't displaying a "No Vacancy" sign once we reached Eagle River. As part of this venture, we decided to try our luck at the Shoreline Resort. We rang the bell as a sign taped to the door directed. After waiting an inordinate amount of time without response, we opened the door and stepped into a completely deserted dining area. Our voices echoed in the rafters as we discussed what to do. Andy thought we should go around to the lakefront side of the resort to see if we could find the proprietors.

A row of lucky lodgers stood in swimsuits on the shore, watching as their similarly accommodated compatriots splashed about in Lake Superior. When we approached, the people on the shore turned to stare at us. Their glances registered confusion tinged with hostility. "You're not from one of the same families that's stayed at this same resort every year for 30 years," their eyes seemed to say. Andy asked one of the visitors where he could find the owner. "She'll be right back," the woman answered. "Or, he's right there," she smiled a second later, pointing at a man emerging from the lake in cut-off denim shorts. "These two are looking for you," she explained as he scrutinised us quizzically. Andy explained that we were wondering if he had any rooms available. "No, not tonight. Sorry," he replied, quickly veering off with one last curious and wary look back.

We continued on towards Copper Harbor, feeling quite discouraged. We looked intently for lodging signs along the road, but a "No vacancy" message was appended to each. With few options left, we took a sudden sharp turn when we saw a sign that announced Keweenaw Mountain Lodge was 1 mile down the road. We felt a glimmer of hope as we drove down the freshly tarred pavement. Perhaps other potential lodgers had missed the place. Our hopes were confirmed when we pulled up and saw the word "Vacancy" hanging vertically from the end of the resort's sign. "Yay!" we cheered. But I was suspicious. "Now we'll get up there and find out they just forgot to change the sign," I remarked pessimistically.

We drove up a hill past rustic cabins and finally found the reception in a large log building at the crest. We entered and waited for the couple ahead of us to finish checking in. "Hi," the slightly spacey receptionist smiled. She was appropriately dressed for the holiday in a blue shirt and white trousers with red strands of crepe paper strung jauntily through the belt loops.
"We were just driving by and saw that your sign said you had vacancy," Andy said.
"Ahh, no, we never change that sign. It's a pain in the butt," she said, dismissing our last hopes of finding a bed for the night with a wave of her hand. "We're all full."
We disappointedly thanked her and started to turn away, but our crestfallen faces pulled on her heartstrings. She quickly craned her neck in the direction of the bar to make sure no-one was within earshot.

"C'mere," she whispered, leaning conspiratorially over the counter. We drew closer, intrigued by this secret she was about to relate to us. "The deal was," she confided in a low voice, "if someone came late, I could give away our last room. It's set aside for maintenance problems in the other rooms. I'm done at 9. Check in Copper Harbor. If you don't find anything, come back at ten to 9. If it's still available I'll give you the room."
We were stunned and grateful at the prospect of sleeping comfortably that night. She answered our stammered thanks with the explanation for her action: "You just looked so sad."
No longer. We drove back down the hill towards town, laughing incredulously about how our luck had changed. Rather than doomed, the day now seemed charmed. It reminded me of my experience at Anfield when I arrived without a ticket. The Keweenaw Mountain Lodge receptionist was my female, American Tony.

Having sacrificed lunch to work on finding a room, we finally conceded to our rumbling stomachs and stopped to eat. In the course of some conversation we'd tried to strike up with our bored-looking waitress, we learned about a fireworks display that would be happening later. She let us in on what seemed to be another Copper Harbor confidentiality when she said, "The finale's supposed to be twice as long this year." The woman running the register confirmed her story when Andy told her we'd heard about the fireworks. "Biggest in the UP," she said, somehow conveying pride and tedium simultaneously. Whether or not we would be able to stay for this pyrotechnic spectacular all depended on our rather shaky room deal coming through.

We're All About Each Other

My blog disappeared for while before this recent flurry of activity. For a long time I simply didn't know what to write. While I was, and still am, having an adventure, it was of a wholly different sort than those I usually include in my posts. In fact, it largely runs counter to those I usually include in my posts. Rather than cultivating my independence, it's been an adventure in allowing myself to become more dependent on anyone than I've been in a long time. In balancing wanderlust and continuity. And in being honest with my writing. Sharing this particular adventure in this forum involves deviating from my usual style and persona. That makes it harder for me. But I'm going to do it anyway, because the subject is important.

The adventure is being in love. I'm in love with Andy Ford. I've mentioned him in the blog before, but he's not yet received a proper introduction. We met at a Guerrilla Blue show in January. Jackie told me she was going to see her friend Nick Williams' band play at Big V's and urged me to come along. I did, and found myself in the dankest, sleaziest dive bar I'd ever entered. I already wrote about the craziness that ensued that evening in my The Twin Cities Music/Crazy Scene post. But I skipped over the most significant part of the evening. As we watched the band's set, I felt an uncomfortably vague sense of recognition. "The violin player looks really familiar," I commented to Jackie. "I think he might have been in some of my poli sci classes or something."

Jackie will likely tease me about this forever, but I decided to explore this suspicion when Andy came over to chat with us later that night. "I feel like I know you from somewhere," I said, unwittingly dusting off and offering the oldest pick-up line in history (I still maintain that I was being sincere). "I know, I feel the same way," Andy answered, thankfully making my clumsy stab at conversation plausible. We soon eliminated every possible way our paths could have crossed prior to that night, and moved on to the present and the future. I was still a recent repat, so I was talking about coming home and how I thought it should feel like home. What initially sparked my interest was Andy's response to this comment. "Oh, I don't think it should," he contradicted. This rare understanding of my situation caught my attention. As did his intention to go teach English in France.

We actually worked up the nerve to go on a date about a month later. After that, our relationship unfolded, I think, very quickly. But it also unfolded very naturally, with both of us seeming to mutually agree on the direction it should take without any prior arrangement or discussion. Anything that I'd been hesitant to say because I thought it was too soon proved to be a voiced reflection of something Andy was already thinking. The best example of this occurred a few months ago. I noticed I'd been silently adding "I love you" in my head whenever we said goodbye to each other, and I decided it was time to say it aloud. The first time I did, however, it was met with what seemed like an interminable and excruciating silence. My stomach dropped, and my heart started banging from anxiety rather than anticipation. When he finally returned what may have been the most significant thing I've ever said, I cried, "Why did you hesitate?!?" He explained, "I just wanted to save the moment. Because I was soooo happy you said it."

Now that we've taken that step, and many others, it's hard to believe our relationship was ever so fragile that saying something at the wrong time could have broken it. But it did start out that way. When I was perplexed about how to handle a relationship I was trying to start in England, my good friend Raf wrote to me, "New relationships are soap bubbles. Any input can and usually does pop them." Luckily Andy and I were able to avoid such fateful input. This is actually miraculous, considering all the mishaps that happened on our second date. The night was so disastrous that we were completely unable to accomplish the planned event of the evening, which was ice skating. Instead, we got lost multiple times, hit a keypad box of some sort while reversing out of an uncooperative parking ramp, lost the Subaru in a different ramp for at least 15 minutes, and struggled with a couple unexpectedly locked doors. But we survived, and even enjoyed, all that. Now it would take something very significant to rupture the bubble in which I've been living since February.

This is because of how unabashedly happy I am to be with Andy and how fortunate I feel to have met him. This is where words start to fail. Being unable to describe something in print is very odd for me, since text is usually where I am best able to say exactly what I mean. But there aren't words enough to sum up how I feel. In this instance, a glance, an expression, a vocal inflection impart so much more than anything I can type. Basically, everything seems to have a greater significance. Cooking. Driving. Sitting in silence. Going to sleep and waking up. No matter where we are or what's going on, we simply take great joy in being together. At first I worried that being in a relationship would hamper my future plans as a nomadic expat. But now I know that Andy will only encourage my adventures and enhance the wonder I see in the world.

It turns out my two types of adventures are not as disparate as I'd thought.

A Synonym for Guerrilla Blue

Dating a member of a band has turned me into a groupie by default. I have attended all but one Guerrilla Blue show since they starting playing live again in April. This stunning attendance record includes accompanying the band on a road trip to the Synonym Toast Festival in Wisconsin this past Friday. Technically my function was to poke Andy in the ribs periodically to keep him from falling asleep behind the wheel. But I've also enjoyed watching the band evolve over the past few months, and playing a festival seemed like an exciting new venture for the band that I wanted to witness.

When I hear 'festival,' I picture something on the order of Glastonbury, SxSW or Lollapalooza. I wasn't expecting the Synonym Toast festival to be quite of that size and caliber, but assumed it would be at least similar to the Hennepin Avenue Block Party. A winding drive down Wisconsin's desolate and difficult-to-locate County Road F should have tipped me off to the reality of the situation, but it wasn't until we arrived at the destination that I realised my expectations had been extremely lofty.

"Yay, New Auburn!" Andy exclaimed as a campground sign came into view. We'd repeatedly lost and found the route and Nick Williams with the aid of Google maps, Mapquest and frequent mobile conferences. We pulled into the parking lot of a bar to regroup before going to the actual site of the festival--or so we thought.
"This can't be it," I said.
"What's the address?" Andy asked. The address on the Google map matched that of the street sign right in front of us.
"This is it," Andy said, laughing incredulously.
"Where's Williams, then?" I protested. As if on cue, Nick's Chevy Impala appeared from behind the bar and pulled past us. I could see the expression of disbelief on Wingate's face as Paul's Dodge followed the Chevy. I began laughing hysterically. The Synonym Toast Festival was a dive bar in Middle-of-Nowhere Wisconsin.

The group of us walked in to find an open, high-ceilinged room with long tables arranged in a cafeteria design. A small group of people crowded around the bar, which occupied one end of the hall. They seemed to be locals who convened at this spot nightly. The conversation indicated that everyone felt very comfortable around each other. Just after walking in, I heard one of the younger men crow, "I've got one on my penis!" I've still no idea what he had on his penis, which is a shame. A row of mounted deer heads stared glassily at the stage from the wall behind the bar, guaranteeing at least some form of attentive audience for the band.

After the lads and I had hauled the equipment in from the various vehicles, Andy and I struck up a conversation with one of the locals smoking at the bar. He was a younger man dressed in shorts, a Boston Red Sox baseball cap and a button-down short-sleeved shirt over a wife beater. He spoke passionately about how well a sit-down restaurant would do in the area. The town was overrun with bars and bar food, he explained, and a place offering good, fresh food was sorely wanting. His talk of the Southern-style Waffle House, along with the slight Southern drawl that carried through his passionate discourse, prompted me to doubtfully ask if he was from the area. He answered that he had grown up there but had worked at various restaurants in the South for several years.

"You have a little bit of a drawl," I pointed out.
"Y'know, everyone here thinks I sound like I'm from the South," he said. "When I'm in the South everyone thinks I sound like I'm from the North. I remember when I went down there, the first thing someone said to me was, 'Hey, d'yeeew know y'ave an ac-cehhhnt?' I was like, 'Excuse me?'" he laughed. "No matter where I go, I sound like I'm from somewhere else."
I could identify with that completely. In Ireland, everyone thought I sounded American. But when I came back to America, everyone thought I sounded Irish.


It was now growing late, and the audience was tiring of watching the first band set up. One particularly sodden person slipped behind the bar and activated the tornado siren that outfitted the rafters above. He then set about furiously clanging a massive bell, creating optimum noise conditions. Andy and I went to join the rest of the band at one of the long tables in the middle of the room. After waiting a while longer, the underaged, long-haired group burst into what seemed to be an emo version of Pink Floyd's "Time." From there, they continued on with a string of various covers. Perhaps the ear-bleeding volume of the music drew my attention to the sound guy. I nudged Andy and nodded over to where he was reassuringly using his cell phone to light the various controls on the soundboard.

Finally Guerrilla Blue was up. I talked to Paul while the rest of the band hauled their equipment onto the stage. He summed up the feeling of the bar pretty well when he said, "I feel like I'm in a bar in Tennessee decorated like a cabin in Wisconsin." One glance at the skates, skis and hornet nests decorating the rafters confirmed this description. Such surroundings created great potential for disorientation. But Guerrilla Blue still played an incredible set. All the members of the group delivered a high-energy performance from the first notes of "Fluorescent Fuzz." In fact, the strange setting seemed to be a spawning ground for innovation. Nick Williams felt inspired early on to accentuate the dueling mandolin and guitar solos on "Sometime After Midnight" by shuffling back and forth between Andy and Wingate while playing a driving bass riff.


Aside from a few occasional dancers, the audience largely stayed clumped at the opposite end of the room from the band. That's where the bar was. But they reacted well to the music, yelling, clapping and setting off the tornado siren. A few women in leis came up to dance and called up to Andy between songs.
"I like your guitar!" one of them cried.
"It's a mini guitar," Paul informed her.
"Like a ukulele!" she exclaimed.
Andy smiled and explained, "It's a mandolin."
"Oooh, a mandolin," she repeated.
"A ukulele," her friend scoffed, mocking the woman's instrument confusion.


The energy continued to build throughout the night, becoming particularly palpable on "Kobe." I'd appointed myself band photographer for the evening, and I desperately wished my point-and-shoot were more adequate in low-light situations. I wanted to capture the intensity with which everyone was playing, but I largely captured blurs. I gave up before the band launched into "Taken." It was the last song on the set list, despite my hopeful penning of "DNC" beneath it on a few of the copies. Paul and Andy left the stage for a bit in order to leave more of the spotlight to Wingate, Williams and Wiersma. They headed towards the back of the room and had a few words with Chris, the organiser of the festival. He asked, "You're doing one more song, right?" That left them no other choice but to play "DNC." The change from trippy maudlin' to 60s beach beats and back went without a hitch. After the last verse, Paul again abandoned the stage to the instrumentalists. But this time Todd stepped out from behind the drums and followed. Williams then played one last riff and unplugged, leaving the song to finish with just violin and guitar.

While Synonym Toast was no Bonnaroo, the gentlemen of Guerrilla Blue treated it as though it was. The band's cohesive performance definitely set a precedent for the festival to become more well-known in the future. The excitement of the show kept Andy and me alert all the way back down County Road F and WI-29, but couldn't compensate for the lack of sleep and the increasingly wee hours of the morning. I'm happy to say I fulfilled my assigned duty of keeping Andy awake, and passably driving his manual Subaru Forester when he stubbornly started nodding off and swerving. And though the venue was not a milestone in itself, I had a great time watching what I think was a milestone performance.

North Shore, Part III: Hoist and Derrick

Sunday morning began with a deliciously trans-fatty breakfast of shrimp and cheese omelettes and Cinnamon Grands. This left us happy but uncomfortably full on the drive to Split Rock Lighthouse. We arrived just in time to take in an informative and hilariously awful film about the site. I shook with frequent and silent laughter from the very first shot of our bespectacled, bow-tied narrator. "Name's Tinkham," he announced in a condescending, businesslike manner. "Ralph Tinkham." Ralph taught us all about the lighthouse its lens from France that turns on liquid mercury. He was not so forthcoming about the hoist and derrick used to haul supplies from the water up to the lighthouse construction site. "I won't tell you how we got the derrick up here," he smiled smugly.

After the dreadful movie ended, we went to see the site of the hoist and derrick for ourselves. We were unable to shed any more light on how the equipment had arrived at its former station, so we descended a long flight of stairs that led to the shore. The large, loose rocks that made up the beach provided a spectacular view of the lighthouse. Despite the fact that the site is designed to direct visitors down to the area, it felt very isolated. We climbed out to the edge of the beach and sat soaking up the spray from the lake until we realised how late in the afternoon it was. We were determined to make it to Gooseberry Falls before heading home, but the glinting of the lighthouse itself deterred us. I hadn't realised that visitors could go inside. We chatted to a person in uniform there before climbing the spiral staircase up to the shiny rotating lens.


I finally tired of looking at the gears displayed in a glass cabinet below the light, and we made the short journey to Gooseberry Falls. These falls were quite a bit busier and, seemingly, more tourist-friendly than the Tettegouche High Falls. You could walk across the stone in the riverbed and come close enough to put your hand in the rushing water. I wasn't quite as impressed with these falls, since I hadn't become lost in the process of finding them. It seemed a little too easy. And we were both craving a second slice of Rustic Inn pie. So we left after following the clearly defined trail around the falls.


We rather embarrassingly had the same waitress who had served us the previous afternoon. This time she was unfazed by my request for apple cherry pie, and I didn't have to wonder over her insistence upon the use of the 'and' conjunction. I'm now convinced that the best way to leave the North Shore is with the taste of pie lingering in your mouth. I was certainly content on the drive back to the Cities. It took far longer than we expected due to deer, mist and the languor of the employees at DQ. I was exhausted when we finally made it back, but I was also very refreshed. This may have had something to do with being around so many waterfalls. But my expat side had reemerged as a result of exploring so many new places, and that was the most pleasing aspect of all.

North Shore, Part II: Lost Like A Cyclist in Dublin

Contentedly stuffed with pie, Andy and I retrieved the car from across the street and drove down Highway 61. The original destination we'd had in mind was Palisade Head, but the drive was so scenic that we decided to bypass it in favour of the more distant Tettegouche State Park. Andy went into the ranger station to buy a permit and asked what we should do whilst in the park. The ranger on duty suggested a brief 0.7 mile hike to the High Falls.

We covered this distance slowly, stopping frequently to indulge our inner photographers. We'd had the good fortune to be sheltered in the car during the afternoon's sole bout of rain, and the sun soon made an appearance from behind the falsely foreboding clouds. Other hikers seem to have been deterred by the brief shower, however. We had the trail to ourselves, with the exception of a lone running man who startled us by bursting from a side path.

As we walked, evidence of the recent rain emerged in the form of expansive and frequent patches of mud. Likely because my trainers had grown uncomfortably soggy, I began to question the distance we'd travelled before Andy did. "I feel like we've gone farther than 0.7 miles," I ventured.
"No," he countered cheerfully. "It just seems like it because we've been stopping a lot to take pictures."
We continued on, and continued to take pictures. We kept confusing the sound of the wind with the sound of rushing water and expected to find a waterfall around every next bend as a result.

Instead we stumbled upon a sign for Nipisiquit Lake. We consulted our map (which previously had been of no help whatsoever) and discovered that we were significantly off course. We'd missed a turn somewhere, but where? We couldn't remember coming upon an intersecting path where we would have had the option to alter our route. While we were still lost in thought about our navigational error, Andy glanced up into a birch tree and noticed a mushroom growing high amongst its sparse limbs. "Fungus! You WAAAAAY up there!" he exclaimed, adopting his best gangsta tone and swagger (which weren't good). "WORD!"

Being doubled over with laughter helped me to forget about my wet feet and simultaneously cleared my memory. "Wait...do you think we were supposed to turn where that guy came running out of the woods?" I asked. That indeed proved to be the case. When we arrived back at the spot where we'd encountered Running Man, we found that the turnoff for High Falls was clearly and un-missably marked. I blame the distraction of Running Man coupled with how enraptured we were with the trail.

The route to the High Falls was significantly less muddy than Mystery Route. And it was significantly shorter. We reached the falls in what to us seemed to be record speed. We lingered long enough to rest our feet and take a few pictures, then started to hike back. We were hoping to catch the sunset from Palisade Head. As we reached the top of the staircase that ascended from the falls, we came across another hiker. We talked for a bit about the muddy condition of the trails. "I knew I shouldn't have worn my work shoes," she lamented. Glancing down, I saw that her feet were tied into a pair of New Balance trainers. What a great job she must have. We encountered her again in the parking lot and learned that she volunteers for the Superior Hiking Trail, driving five hours from Bemidji to do so. "Husband thinks I'm crazy," she quipped. "He can stay home."

We parted ways with our fellow hiker and embarked on the harrowing drive up to Palisade Head. The road was narrow, with tree limbs and other various forms of plant life encroaching on the black strip of tar that slashed through them. The steep incline and tight turns added to the sense of exploration we'd been enjoying throughout the day. This dissipated slightly when we found the parking lot and a couple busily steaming up the windows of their car there. We paid them little mind and managed to regain our sense of adventure by climbing as close to the sheer drop down to Lake Superior as we dared. The view of the rapidly shifting water was vertigo-inducing. And the deep crevices in the dark, slate gray rock, while not brandishing the power of freezing, pounding water, were intimidating in their own way.

Finally we turned away from the water and started exploring a little ways inland. We quickly came upon an area where white clumps of something were scattered all around. "That looks like deer hair," Andy mused, picking up a piece of it. The fibrous appearance of the cluster made me argue that it was a plant spore--a bigger, thicker dandelion puff. "You're probably right," Andy conceded. But his agreement didn't last long. After taking a few more steps he stopped and in a hushed, urgent voice told me to "Look over there...but look slowly."

Contrary to his instructions, my head snapped in the indicated direction to see a headless skeleton next to a strangely tidy pile of hide. After absorbing the initial shock, we climbed onto a higher rock for a better vantage point. From this angle we could see an intact deer leg poking out from under the hair pile. The circumstances of the deer's death seemed a little dodgy and made us both uneasy. We didn't linger long into the dusk. We found the other couple, oblivious to the carcass nearby, still parked in the lot when we went back to the car.

Perhaps it was the lingering memory of the skeleton, but the drive back out to Highway 61 seemed even more perilous than the trip in. Actually, my discomfort can probably be attributed to my realisation that what I'd assumed to be a one-way was actually meant to be a dual carriageway. But we made it back to the cabin without incident and relaxed over a steak dinner and some Newcastles. We still had one more day of exploring (and all the attendant becoming lost and finding dead things) ahead of us.

North Shore, Part I: The Pre-Adventure Adventure

With all the overwhelming inappropriateness that had been going on at work, I definitely needed a holiday. So Andy and I took a break from temping and broken transmissions and spent a weekend exploring nature in the North Shore. I've somehow managed to live most of my life in Minnesota without ever seeing Lake Superior, so a visit there was long overdue. We left promptly after work ended on Friday, and I felt considerably better after putting some miles between us and the cities. A clear, moonlit night greeted us when we reached Duluth and the start of Highway 61 around 10 PM. A wide patch of the lake reflected the moonlight with unbelievable brightness, creating some spectacular scenery as we drove the rest of the way to Two Harbo(u)rs.

We explored the surreal lighting further once we arrived at the cabin we'd reserved for the weekend. Only a short flight of hewn log stairs separated our dock from the lake. The light spilling into the shallow pools trapped in the craters on the rocky shore formed a beautiful and completely indescribable scene. It seemed as though it had been artificially created. I couldn't help feeling as though I was walking on the moon. Andy and I spent some time trying to capture the scene, but the images we composed are only a faint approximation of the lustrous scene.

The next morning was very lazy. It was our obligation to check in with Jerry, the person with whom we'd made our reservation over the phone, that finally coaxed us out of the cabin. No-one answered our knock at the main office, but a sign on the door directed us to cabin 9. Jerry motioned us in through the window as he finished up a phone conversation. We choked on the overbearing haze of stale Winston smoke that pervaded the cabin as we entered and waited for him to hang up. When he did, he explained that he'd been chatting to a woman who'd "supposedly" been his friend for years. "But now she thinks I'm an asshole for not keeping in better contact," he growled.

He seemed to set the matter aside quickly enough, and he led us out into the fresh air and back to the main office. He chatted as he attempted to run the credit card reader, telling us that he'd lived in California before coming back to help a friend with the cabins. He'd thought it was temporary. But, as he explained, "I got stuck here." Despite his gruff demeanour, I can't imagine he was actually bothered by the pristine setting. Just before we left, Andy mentioned that we were planning to visit the renowned Betty's Pies for lunch. "Is that a good place to go, do you think?" he asked. "Enh, it's OK," Jerry shrugged. "The place across the street is better, though."

Indeed, the Rustic Inn was all that Jerry had succinctly said it was. I was immediately impressed by the enormous jalapeno that garnished the toothpick spear barely keeping my turkey cranberry sandwich assembled. And the taste lived up to the expectation set by this daring condiment. Andy and I had both decided to take advantage of the lunch special because it included a slice of pie. We pored over the varieties carved into a wooden menu board as we finished our entrees, carefully considering our options. Suddenly we overheard a waitress reciting additional possibilities to a nearby table. Andy was taken with the prospect of cherry peach pie, and he inquired about it when our server returned to take our dessert order.

"Well," she replied thoughtfully, "I know we have cherry and peach, but I don't know if we have cherry peach." I shot Andy a baffled look. Surely cherry and peach was the same thing as cherry peach? Luckily Krystal assured us that they did, in fact, have the latter. It didn't occur to me until embarrassingly later in the day what she'd meant by emphasizing the conjunction. She knew they had cherry pie, and she knew they had peach pie, but she didn't know if they had cherry peach pie. Sadly, figuring this out caused the statement to lose much of the humour I'd found in it.

While we slowly ate these amazingly delicious specimens of pie, it started to rain quite heavily. A brief electrical interruption accompanied the downpour. When the lights blinked off, we immediately grew concerned for the huge quantities of ice cream they must have on hand for a la mode orders. What would happen if it all melted? In addition to the sticky puddles of ice cream coating the floors, there would be a tragic increase in the number of naked pie slices. Fortunately that disastrous outcome didn't occur. The power, including the stereo system, was immediately restored. "Is the Titanic music our cue to leave?" Andy asked. It was.

Temp Nostalgia

My job at Tax Place has come and gone. I must admit that I didn't realise how good I'd had it. They fed me free lunch every Tuesday and Thursday, my coworkers were appreciative of the work M and I did for them, and they generally just let us be and didn't treat us like we were five-year-olds. But the value of these small luxuries didn't become fully apparent until I started my new temp assignment.

Something about being a temp seems to make all of your coworkers assume that you are absolutely stupid beyond hope. My supervisor at Class Action Place demonstrated this on my first day when he was explaining how to affix adhesive labels onto forms. He not only instructed me as to where I should place these specific labels, but also how to apply them. "You just peel it off, stick it on, and give it a little press," he revealed. I let this comment slide, barely refraining from making some snarky remark about how my preschool education had sufficiently prepared me to handle stickers. Another woman felt the need to tell me how to file a form. "Make sure to put it between the one that goes before it and the one that goes after it," she said.

The superfluousness of these instructions lessened as my coworkers discovered that I was capable of opening envelopes, labeling, filing and even scanning. But this victory over insulting explanations soon lost its lustre. I arrived at work one morning to discover that people from another department had infiltrated the Temp Annex. Previously we three temps had been surrounded by empty desks. Filling these spaces would not necessarily have been a bad thing. But they were filled with some of the most obnoxious people I've ever encountered. None of the Temp Force ever determined what these people do, aside from talking excessively and excessively loudly.

The topics of the endless stream of conversation range from the Bible verses with which they intend to decorate their new cubicles to the laying on of hands to late periods to pregnancy, delivery and epidurals. Recently, a woman who feared she might be pregnant began to confide in a woman who is already pregnant. I unfortunately overheard them discussing each of the early signs of pregnancy they'd experienced. I even more unfortunately overheard one of them utter the word 'discharge' in the context of that discussion. To make matters even worse, such conversations are conducted in the droning voice of the pregnant woman, who too liberally sprinkles her speech with "Yaa knooooow," and the horrendous grammar of the might-be-pregnant woman, who favours phrases like, "Why you ain't in here?"

It quickly became apparent that no solace would be provided by this team's supervisor, who sits amongst them. In fact, he is a large part of the problem. Thankfully, he avoids talking about biology. Instead, he shares the tricks he's learned in Excel whilst managing the spreadsheets of films that he likes to keep in his spare time. When he's not boasting heartily about his love of films, his band (a cross between Tool and some other metal band), or any other subject on which he considers himself to be an authority (which doesn't exclude much), he speaks in an exaggerated stage whisper. When he's not whispering, he hisses along to the heavy metal beats playing in his headphones.

The object lesson in his pomposity occurred a few weeks ago. He sneezed, and said something in Latin to excuse himself. He then sneezed a second time and uttered a different Latin word. I know it was Latin because he then cried, "Whoa, that's a lot of Latin for one day." To me, this is very similar to saying gesundheit and then remarking, "Whoa, that's a lot of German for one day!" The others around me must have felt the same way because no-one responded. After a second of what must have been excruciating ego-crushing silence, he repeated, "I said, that's a lot of Latin for one day!"

My assignment was due to end just when I thought I couldn't take much more. I saw my supervisor in the hall as I was heading out to lunch on my rather joyous last day. "Don't forget 2 o'clock," he reminded me.
"What's at 2 o'clock?" I asked.
"The big processing meeting," he replied, looking confused as to why I hadn't informed myself about this important event.
"Oh. I don't have email, so I didn't know about it," I replied. "And it's our last day anyway. Do you even want us to come?"
"What?!?" he cried. "No, it's not. It better not be!"
I told him that Staffing Place had told us 9 June was our last day, and I hadn't heard that the assignment had been extended. He resolved to talk to the other supervisor and try to fix the debacle.

I went to the meeting after lunch. The other two temps, who'd already decided not to come back even if an extension was offered, didn't. My supervisor left the meeting to fetch them, and they eventually slunk in late. At the end of the meeting, my supervisor said, "I just found out at 2 o'clock that the temps won't be coming back tomorrow." There was general uproar amongst all the overworked people present. "They've accepted other assignments," he said, with resignation in his voice. "They weren't extended and their assignment's done." I had been looking forward to having a week or so off to write and just enjoy being rid of my coworkers. But I'd learnt from one of the other temps that morning that Staffing Place didn't have much else to offer. So I cracked under the pressure at the meeting and agreed to continue there until 3 July (if not longer).

To make matters worse, I was now the only person from my department sitting amongst the obnoxious members of the infiltrating department. I thought this might be too much to bear. Fortunately my supervisor bailed me out. "We're not going to leave you sitting over here all by yourself," she said, stopping by my desk the next afternoon. "Starting tomorrow, you can sit over where P. used to be." My escape from Temp Annex did not come soon enough, however. I was there to hear the woman concerned about being pregnant reveal that she was definitely not expecting. "It came last night!" she exclaimed joyfully.

While I can still hear Latin Sneezer ranting about films from time to time, my new area is blissfully quiet and relatively normal. It makes the job a little better. It's certainly good enough to be my source of income until I leave for Australia. But I can't help waxing nostalgic about Tax Place occasionally. I will always have my memories...and traces of toner in my lungs.