If I tried to cram my weekend into a nutshell, the pressure would inevitably cause an explosion and multiple fatalities...

Adella Celebrates Her 28th year by buying a motorcycle
and learning how to fly... 

Note, I say birthday weekend...My actual birthday was on Wednesday (August 18th for future notice, and oh yes I do have an amazon wish-list ahem ahem), but I abstained from allowing this to be my birthday in any more than the most nominal sense.

 It was far from celebratory, although admittedly "active." In addition to being my last week of full class and last week of full externship (almost all down with one mediation to go), I had agreed to take on some substitute work for my ex-co(give me time I'll think of more modifying prefixes... pseudo-? semi-?)-intern, Eric. He has this gig that involves trolling the clerk's office at the courthouse and picking up on recently filed complaints, taking their info and then entering it into a westlaw database for "pre-dockets" - riveting I assure you.

Actually it was pretty interesting, largely for getting a sense for the kinds of cases that go through trial court on a regular basis. About half were debt collection/landlord tenant/taxes and of the remainder most are auto accidents - people seriously stop driving so badly, it's embarrassing), and for the variety of ways different attorneys approach writing these chimerical "complaints." My favorite were the auto-PI cases that named both an individual defendant (et. ux. of course) and - just to cover all bases - John Does 1-100. It's a civ pro thing. I think, but I wouldn't necessarily call these "well-pleaded" in the civ pro style. Anyways, the internet part of this equation had been giving me troubles what with my continued back-and-forths to B'ham. By Wednes/Birthday I was seriously behind and Eric was calling me going "uh... you're doing this job right?" I was also leading a training at the interlocal that day and my students were exactly the engaged and inquisitive kind you want ... ordinarily... when you don't have to be somewhere RIGHT NOW. So I rushed from one job to the the next and from the courthouse to the college, fully missing dinner and being in a right tizzy by the time class let out at what was far closer to 8 than the scheduled 7:30 we're supposed to get out at.

Not the ultimate birthday day, so it all fell to this weekend and the weekend rather rose to the occasion, doing some flips and arials along the way.

Andrew bought me a lovely pair of earrings that I have been wearing pretty much ever since. One had an admittedly distressing foray into the recesses of my - prepare to cringe - toilet, but fortunately, it fell short of vanishing and there's nothing a little bleach can't cure (ok, maybe bleach is not the best cure for "dry eyes" but otherwise). Better earrings than my cell phone, which I am still shocked has yet to happen to me.

On Friday we finished up our various work type things, had a nice Indian dinner and then headed up to the Blue Moon for their milonga. I have to admit that my tango has fallen into a certain area of desuetude that becomes self-reinforcing at this point. I have been missing dances and so on often enough that my muscle strength and general skill has dwindled just enough to be noticeable. It is one of those things that could pick back up with a good weekend or two tango blitz, but getting over the horror of stumbling through things that ordinarily would be chocolate silk chiffon pie for me on my game adds to the general business and brokeness that brought me to this place initially. Bellingham tango feels a little "safer" maybe because it's free for me or because it's where I learned or because since I taught there the image of me as a good dancer overwhelms most evidence to the contrary... Did some leading, some following and the appreciable amount of gabbing that one expects. Anyways, perhaps not the kick in the ass I need to get back on the floors here, but nice to see lots of people and show off my handsome boyfriend to a few more members of the B'ham community.

Saturday my mom got herself a haircut and Pam (her best friend) and I went with her. Hers is adorable. Pam's was already short and mine is blessedly less deadly. The stylist was more of a technician than an artiste, so it's not one of those styles that really takes my face and my texture into account enough to get anything other than the dreaded thick-hair triangle (for 12 bucks a pop, there was not that post cut style to check out what might happen if my hair weren't wet), but if I were to ever style it, it would be pretty adorable and of course it is always so much healthier now. We went from there to the most extravagent of birthday lunches - at the Old Country Buffet, because I have a previously extrapolated upon sick fascination for this particular style of Americana meals (and the do have a pretty awesome salad bar).

I had pre-ordained that the big event of my birthday would be attending the MOTOCROSS(!!) at the Lynden Fair. I choose this about a month ago, because I had already decided that the Lynden Fair had been my traditional birthday activity since I was a young lass (you know around the time my mamma done tol' me that men were worrisome things who'd leave me to sing the blues in the night... give or take a year), and because I'd never seen Motocross and this was the FMX (freestyle - where they ride off ramps into the sky and do insanely dangerous things before - hopefully - landing and not breaking every bone in their bodies). Before that we saw The Other Guys, which is pretty funny and really just having the movie experience seems like a treat to me these days given my general law school movie drought. But the Fair.

First, I found myself: or at least an ink drawing of me from an old photo shoot I did with Dan B in my first year of law school.

There were also jugglers, wildlife, the usual insanely greasy food and then MOTOCROSS FMX!!! Which I could not accurately describe, except to say super cool and about half of the riders were just coming off serious injuries, including one of the announcers who should have been riding but had gotten off easily and just broken his thumb. So here are a few more photos:

Anyways, Sunday was more low key. Brought my bike back with me from Bellingham and Andrew changed out seats and did other labors of love on it (oh I'll double your entendre, baby) and set me loose. I'm just at the cusp of finishing family law now, and still commuting back and forth between here and Bellingham fairly frequently, but my "summer break" is almost officially upon me.