sunday is laura's birthday.

i won't be here sunday so i'll mention it now. me and laura go way back and i'm gonna tell the story of how we met, mostly because we seem to rehash it every other month or so, and it'd be nice to have around for posterity and stuff. so anyways, a few years ago i used to work at a camp, back when i spent summers in texas, i was on the rec staff, which was always the busiest group at this camp, busier than the counselors and probably even the kids. we were the first ones up and the last to bed every night, mostly because we were in charge of all the games and stuff like that. one of the things i got hoodwinked into doing was sitting outside the cafeteria selling t-shirts.

i was bored out of my mind, sitting there, selling t-shirts, and it was then that laura showed up with some friends and kept me company and made the afternoon passable, more than passable actually, enjoyable. so you know how it is when camp's over, you sign everyone's t-shirt and you'll probly never see them again, and that's pretty much the way it was. the next year, i had a job at 7-11, so i didn't get to work at camp again, but it wasn't that far outta town, and i had friends that were on staff still, so i went to visit that same week the next year and saw her and her pals who rescued my afternoon the year before, which was totally unexpected. they wanted me to sign their shirts, but weren't gonna get em til the next day, by which time i'd be gone, ostensibly to work on another intellectually challenging project for the good folks at 7-11, and those were the days when i carried a camera around in my car, so i said how's about we take a picture instead, you can give me your addresses and i'll send it to you. so that's what we did, and when i sent laura the picture, she wrote back, and then i wrote back, and then she wrote back, and then i wrote back, well you probably get it by now.

that was three years ago, and being a pack rat like i am, i have a lil box with letters from her in it. there's like twenty of em in there, that's really cool, because in all that time, i've not really written real-life snail-mail letters to anyone else, and whenever i did write people back and forth before, none of them lasted that long. i've only seen her like a handful of times since then, but i really feel like she's one of the best friends i have.

happy birthday laura.

feeling: fabulous
thinking of: laura, airport fun today
music: "i'm ok, you're ok" MxPx