Visit from a friend

Christine & I with Dr. Kataria August '10 @ the Laughter Yoga Conference

Since I've had a little friendship theme going on here: One of my best friends, Christine, was in town for two weeks, visiting from New Hampshire. She moved back home to NH a year and half ago after being unemployed in Portland for a year. I have missed her dearly. She is much more of a social butterfly than I and so had a cram-packed schedule during her two week visit. I had lunch with her, breakfast another day, went to church several times with her at Unity and luckily got to see her numerous times before she headed out this last Monday. We had a few people over, in her honor, for a potluck at our house this past Friday. Mostly folks from our 2009 Mazamas BCEP (Basic Climbing Education Program) group, which is where we became such good friends.* The hold outs at the end of the potluck ended up at a bar due to Chris' allergies to my cat. :P But we had a fun time watching Chris and Tiff sing Karaoke. Dan and I even had Jello shots! I haven't had one since college. They were actually designer Jello shots that one of the employees was selling to raise money. Their dodge-ball team is going to nationals! I had strawberry champagne (so much lower alcohol than most) and Dan's was margarita. Here are a few more photos:

Dan, Darin & Christine

Tiffany, Justin and me

On Saturday night I went out dancing with Chris and a few of her friends. We were going to Dixie's down town and ended up standing in line for what seemed like forever. I felt like an extra on Entourage standing in line for some really awesome club in LA, except not. One of Chris' friends was already in the packed place and got her wrist stamp and came out to chat while we waited in line. When we finally got to the door they would not let her back in, said she had to stand in line - again! The line was freaking down the block (and I'm not sure why as the reviews for this place online were bad and the people standing in line where all 21 or bridesmaids parties, not my pick of places to go in Portland). At this point we simply left and took our money somewhere else. We ended up walking almost 10 blocks to Candy's, at which point it began to rain! But there was no line and no cover, free coat check and free candy (Of course!). We had a good time and I thought I'd post some pictures since I so rarely get dressed up for a night of dancing! Plus it's been ages since you've seen an outfit post. Enjoy!

Shirt & pants - Loft, shoes - thrift

The flower is actually a dual clip/pin so you can wear it in your hair or on your clothes.

Chris dancing it up at Candy's

* Chris and I have an awesome story. She was one of my founding Awakenings Laughter Club members back in October 2008. She had heard about Laughter Yoga from an online Unity church service. So we laughed together and then she stopped coming 'cause the club is so damn early! (7:10 am) Meanwhile we had become Facebook friends and she jumped at the chance to attend the Telluride Film Festival at PSU with myself and some friends, where we discovered that we had both applied for the Mazamas BCEP class. I had gotten in and she was on a wait list. Turns out she made it off the wait list and out of 250 students and 21 groups she was assigned to my group of 12 students! The rest is history. We became good friends, I trained her in Laughter Yoga and now she is leading Laughter Yoga at Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center in NH!