Fulfillment

I've been here for a while now, and finally I'm having my urban-intellectual-pseudo-hipster experience. I strapped my shiny new 19-pound fixed-gear to my feet and negotiated the downtown traffic to Java Jungle, the hip indie coffeeshop right on the river. Got my coffee from the obligatory impossibly beautiful 20-something barista and opened my laptop to get some work done. Outside, there are homeless philosophers, skaters, dog-walking high-rise dwellers, and local teenagers taking advantage of the indian summer to get in some rapid-swimming. This is what I've been missing since I left Madison.

Mostly what I'm missing lately is M, of course, since she's been away at law school at UNLV for weeks. I went to visit her in Vegas, and can report that UNLV is UNLoveLy. As is all of Vegas. Why would anyone put a city in the burning red sand and insist that electricity and water be dragged out there? M is somehow surviving without a car, but I don't know how. Looking at a map, you think, "of course we could walk to the cinema; it's only three blocks." But the blocks in Las Vegas are a good twelve miles long. We had to forgo the film and turn back to avoid our bones blanching in the desert sun under the unblinking eyes of the detritus of the Nevada gaming industry.

She's coming home for the weekend, though, and we'll have a fabulous time. We're currently considering the adoption of a lovely little puppy man. Big step, but the dog stars seem to be aligning. We're getting him for free, he's trained, he's the perfect size for the condo, we've been jonesing for a pet, and I, for one, much prefer a dog to our other option, another nosferatu cat like the one M had. He's currently going by Lou, but we may be slightly adapting that to Lucifer or ditching it entirely and retraining him to answer to Iago. I've always wanted a dog named Iago. Currently also he has a stupid poodle haircut, but we're going to get him looking more like a normal dog so the other kids don't mock him and pelt him wth rocks and garbage.

Of all the things to blog after weeks and weeks...

The thing that pulls me out into the blogosphere again is not all the news and info about the new state (the West is very strange indeed) or the new job (magnificent) or the various adventures M and I have had recently. Nor is it the admonishment of my similarly lackadaisically-blogging friend over at GASMETER, who also recently updated and now spurs me forth with righteous indignation at my slacking.

No, it was this bit of weirdness that arrived UPS, that needs to be shared with the world. M and I got a package containing four Williams Sonoma juice glasses (not weird), a greeting from our friends in Ripon who sent them to us (not weird), and a card that read as follows (I reproduce this diplomatically):

MAY YOUR SEX LIFE BE
LUSCIOUSLY ENHANCED
WITH THIS SPECIAL CREAMER....
VALIDA & LEJLA

I would like to take this opportunity to stress that

1. We do not know anyone named Valida or Lejla.
2. We do not, in fact, know any Finnish lesbians. Okay, M does, but it was a long time ago and she was tipsy.
3. The box contained NO CREAMER of any kind, special or not.
4. Williams Sonoma does not, so far as I know, sell any creamers designed lusciously to enhance their users' sex lives. They sell things like garlic presses and spatulae.
   
5. This is not the kind of joke played by these particular friends.
6. The card was, in fact, printed by Williams Sonoma.

The only thing I can figure is Faeries.

I think that I will keep this card forever, as it will be karmically tasteless to dispose of it. I might, though, include it without explanation in a wedding present to someone else someday. The legacy of Valida and Lejla should live on.