Friday, October 10, 2008

Tacoma


(May 20-21)

My cousin of yore picked me up in Seattle. This was incredibly nice of him, because I only asked him if I could stay there like the night before, and also because I didn't know that he actually lived in Tacoma, at least an hour's drive away from where my train pulled in. So while I was originally planning on roaming the streets of Seattle and getting all "with" the groovy culture there, I ended up staying with my cousin in a less exciting place - his apartment.

Brian, my cousin, is in the Navy, and was on leave because his wife was ready to pop Kid #2 and having complications. Little did I know that she was one week away giving birth.

Brian and I caught up in the car - it was eerie to be doing so with Demetrius in a car seat, his two year old kid, because last time I saw Brian he wasn't even married. (Demetrius is surely the product of too much faith placed in a baby book.) I asked him about the Navy and stuff, and about marriage.


Basically, he told me to not get married quick because it can occasionally be a pain in the aft.

There really wasn't anything exciting in Tacoma. That's probably why it's taken me 43 months to get around to writing this blog entry. Honestly, we just sat around and watched TV with Brian's pregnant wife, Stephanie, and her friend, Stephanie. Demetrius would take our dishes to the kitchen for us, when he wasn't intentionally hitting himself in the face for amusement.

We watched Jeepers Creepers 2, American Idol, some soap opera, Hell's Kitchen, some other stuff...it was really mind-numbing, and in a very cramped apartment. Another problem was that they had a dog, which they kept inside. That's a recipe.

You know, for disaster.

I barely made my train the next day, but I definitely did make it. I was excited to finally be heading home. It was very weird when I began to hear where people were from, to hear a (503) area code again. People mentioned being from these familiar places such as "Hillsboro," "Beaverton," and "Bangladesh." A couple of Indian guys sat behind me and talked really loudly on their cell phones.

Oh, so we're not allowed to smoke on these trains, right? They catch somebody smoking in the bathroom (I don't know how they do this - frankly I'm kind of disturbed) and so they make an announcement reiterating that if anybody's caught smoking the bathroom, they'll kick 'em off the train at the next stop with police escort. So five minutes later, somebody else decides to smoke in the bathroom, and he's caught, and gets kicked off the train. Good work, son.

I made it home with my red backpack and all, ready to finally live in one place and have someone, like a Mom or something, give me food every day. And thus, my trip ended.

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