Friends Heidi and Kevin had their annual White Elephant Gift party and Matt came home with a toilet paper air gun.
He took to it right away.
It was satisfying having wads of wet toilet paper hit the fence, or recycling bins.
Huzzah for dumb present fun. (The present was an actual gift from one of the party goer’s mother.)
Thanks to passes from excellent Youth Services Librarian Danielle, Matt and I got a free trip to the Roseway Theater. It was our first time visiting.
I really enjoyed this single-screen theater. It felt very much like people had wandered in from the neighborhood.
And holy cow the stained glass! There was this, with the theater name.
And then four panels featuring movie studios.
I recommend checking out the Roseway Theater yourself.
Because it happens near Halloween, there’s a costume contest on the Saturday night of our square dancing event. It’s fun to see what people come up with.
Jim and Eileen had great fun dressing up as a gangster and a moll.
Tiffany and Rebecca’s costumes showed off their great gams.
And Tara and Leslie’s turn as Mormon Missionaries won a prize.
I volunteered for the After Hours event at the Hollywood Library this year. This year’s theme: Stranger Things
There were a lot of themed activities (which I didn’t get because I haven’t watched the series, but which Matt assures me were on point) and the usual After Hours things.
This included pizza delivered and exclaiming over costumes.
Plus button making, and this waffle station.
And everyone’s favorite: the running and screaming tag game that happens after the library closes.
As usual, it was a fun night at the Hollywood Library.
Among the things in Matt’s mother’s storage space: a framed poster of the crew team at Matt’s college.
There he is in all his glory.
The inspiring words on the poster say: The dictionary is the only place where success comes before work. —Vince Lombardi
Thanks to work paying for our tickets, we got to see Mr. Coates talk about his new book the Water Dancer. There was also supposedly a copy of the book we could all read, but I never saw it.
I’ll track it down, though. I enjoy his writing.
I last wrote about this broken locker in April and you can see that the sign has been upgraded and caution tape has been added.
Will the locker ever be fixed? It remains to be seen.
Little Free Libraries abound in Portland. But this was a unique find!
My walking companion and I decided the “you’re on camera” sticker wasn’t really a real thing. We saw no cameras.
The note says:
Hi! Take a minifigure and leave a minifigure that someone else would like. [Illegible] a note in the little log if you want. Have fun!
Post-beach walk, we headed into Arcata’s downtown area. First we stopped for a cupcake.
Downtown is bustling and includes enough bookstores that I could take a picture of two at once. The one on the left, (Northtown Books) plus the light blue building with the red awnings in the middle of the picture. (Tin Can Mailman)
I hung out in the square while Matt job spotted.
Then we took a walk and found a head in a hole.
We used Google Maps for directions on this trip and every time we entered our hotel address in Eureka, Maps always first suggested the same address, but in Arcadia. So we went to find it. It turned out to not actually exist, so I’m not sure what Google Maps was thinking. The closest thing to it was this barber shop.
And then it was time for the Finnish Country Spas and Tubs which was a thing Sara had alerted us about and which I was looking forward to.
Here’s the front entrance. Inside is a small coffee shop.
Through the back door of the coffee shop is this lovely oasis which leads to little cabins with hot tubs or saunas.
Here was our changing room and tub.
The design is very efficient. At your appointment time, you change in the changing room, then soak. When you are done, you go into a different changing room which allows you to change while the tub is being cleaned and reset for the next guest.
It was very relaxing and if I lived in Arcata, I would probably make time for this spa often.
It turns out Eureka has an escape room and you can go there at nine in the morning. We did so!
The owner said that for the early morning slots, he mostly got tourists doing one last thing before they got out of town.
It was just the two of us, which was nice, as doing escape rooms with strangers is awkward. We escaped, and I enjoyed the variety of puzzles. The clues given came at just the right time.
We also happened upon the Wooden Sculpture Garden of Romano Gabriel, which is kept safe inside in a building downtown.
There was a lot to look at.
And I got my fortune told!
Dispatch from six months later: I do not believe I have yet received a letter that has changed the course of my life. Also, I think I’m hardwired already to avoid the flatterers. And I do wonder if I had played again, as the fortune teller commands me to do, would the next fortune have contradicted this one?
