Ahh! Camp NaNoWriMo is being overtaken by LIFE!

The Fourth of July was fun, but it was my first time at the Seattle fireworks display, so I was really blown away by how many people were there. I felt like a little character in a Where’s Waldo picture. What was infinitely more fun was the roadtrip up to dear old Bellingham I took the next day. After catching up on some revisions for an agent, my new friend Brittany and I piled into her car and headed north. I met Brittany once at a tea party about five months ago, and since then we’ve been meaning to hang out. I guess taking an impromptu roadtrip counts as getting to know someone!

We stayed with a friend of hers who was a professional chef, and he made us the most wonderful food during the two days that we stayed there. Eggs Benidict for breakfast, spaghetti for dinner, fruit-compote on angel cake for dessert…he also made the best PB&J sandwiches I’d ever had, but that might just be because I ate them at the top of a 2,000 foot hike in the woods just south of Bellingham!

I found out during this trip that Brittany is another one of those girls like me. I’m not sure exactly what I mean, but I’ve recently been discovering that there are other people who get excited like I do, who have priorities like mine, and who seem to struggle with the same questions that the rest of the population feels are so easily answered. All the time I spent with her, I kept thinking that I need to write a book about girls like us, because when I was a teenager I was certain I was some sort of freak of nature. It wasn’t until college/post-college when I found “my people” that I started to really connect with others who felt like me.

Anyways, as great as it is to meet someone who makes you feel like that, it is even better to introduce them to one of your favorite towns! I lived in Bellingham for one brief year after high school, and that was certainly not long enough. I want to move back there. I spent so much time in Fairhaven at my favorite used bookstore, Eclipse, and Village Books, too. We stopped by Tony’s coffee, and I got a rose-lavender Italian cream soda (only in Bellingham!) Papa’s Sweets is still going strong, the thrift stores are full of colorful wonderfulness, and Sehome is always a brief, beautiful walk, even when the forest is too rich with foliage to see down-town from the top of the watchtower.

Something I love about Bellingham is how everyone there seems to show up to go to the university, and then just decides not to leave. It is a big city in a small county, and it deserves its name of “The City of Subdued Excitement.” From all the wildfires in Whatcom County, there was a lot of smoke in the air and gave the sky and bay a real crazy haze…the views weren’t so great from Boulevard Park and Oyster Dome, but the sunsets were so bright an orange through the pollution that I really couldn’t be upset.

I haven’t written in a few days, except for my journal, but seeing as how I did sell a story and get revisions off last week, so I feel all right about everything I’m doing.