Frannie, Steve, Katherine, Evan and me decided that D-dorm was dead… on a Saturday at 10. So we went into town. First, we got into F-lot parking lot. We got to my car and found it covered by ice. Katherine and I tag-teamed with ice-scrapers only to get back into the car and find all the windows iced over instantly. After the second ice-scraping I started driving with my head out the window. Who needs to wait for ice to melt? Not I!
Finally the ice melts pretty soon after we leave the parking lot and we were well on our way to Olympia, driving to the sound of Joan Jett and her love of Rock n’ Roll. Pretty awesome if you ask me. But you aren’t, I’m telling you instead. By the time we get into Oly and park we’ve decided we want hot chocolate. We wind up at Plenty, the only place open at 10:30 on a Saturday night. We get in, sit down and pick over the drink and dessert menus. My god, the choices! The waiter is the high point of our adventure.
The waiter comes over after about 15 minutes and tells us that he’ll get us water then take our order. 15 minutes, two phone calls and one conversation with the bar tender later, he comes back with three waters. There are five of us. He takes our order without the pad and leaves to fetch the last two waters. The waiter forgets the menus. He comes back five minutes later and asked “So, wait, you (to Steve) ordered the vanilla malt shake, there was a cappacino shake and then you (to Frannie) ordered bread pudding, you want ice cream with that?” First off, there was no cappacino shake, second he didn’t ask anyone else what they ordered, thirdly he wrote down two out of five things and then left only to come back a third time to triple check. Still, didn’t remember to pick up the menus. He comes back another 15 minutes later with the metal cups with the extras from the shakes, sets them on the table and then knocks them over. By now we built a house… no a palace… out of the menus he forgot twice, hoping he would notice.
When he comes back with the actual shakes he leaves without the menus! On top of that, two of the milkshakes have chocolate in them, ones a mocha shake and the other is a chocoate malt. Agreeably, they're very different. He sets down the obviously vanilla one and then holds the two brown ones, staring at them with a very confused look on his face. He holds them up to the light, swirls them around a little, and the whole time Katherine's got a "what the fuck are you doing?" look on her face. He sets them down and says "Well, they're both brown and I can't remember which is which. This one's darker. I guess you'll have to figure it out." Katherine and Evan try smelling them, looking at them, and finally just drink some. They both picked the wrong one and switched. Finally the waitere (who we named Vinney because that just seemed to fit) comes with the rest of the drinks and Steve’s food, turns to leave and Katherine, too frustrated about the menus to let him escape again tells him that “It might be nice if we could get these out of the way,” complete with an eye twitch. We’re eating and trying to determine whether the waiter is the owner’s son or a member of the mob, because this guy could do nothing right! He had to be fire-proof. In the end he took forever to bring the checks, to pick them up and then to return them. It’s safe to say that he got no tip.
We left the land of Plenty and walked towards the boardwalk. We get there only to be head off by a hobo, aptly named You’re-going-to-hell-because-you-didn’t-give-me-a-dollar hobo. Lots of screaming on his part, and hustling on ours. We made it down the board walk to the tower but the gate was locked.
Instead of climbing on a tower covered by ice we went onto the dock, looked at the bridge lit up all purty-like and watched a school of tiny fish swim under the dock, a flash of silver piercing the dark water as their scales caught the light orange street-lamp. On the way back, everything looked like it was covered by diamonds. The sidewalks, grass and cars had a thin layer of frost. It was a perfect way to escape the monotony of D-dorm.
Everyone piles into my car and we head back to campus. It’s midnight and almost no one’s on the street. We turn off onto one of the secluded back roads that connect with F-lot and suddenly Katherine yells “That’s FREDDY! Pull over!” so I do and lo-and behold it IS Freddy, walking along the side of the road on his cell phone in a pair of shorts. It’s cold enough that the windows of my car are constantly in danger of freezing over. Freddy climbs into the trunk of the Subaru for the last ½ mile to the dorms, still on his phone. We slide our way from the lot to the dorm, Katherine carried her random piece of carpet she fished out of a construction dumpster next to where I parked in Oly. We decided that the carpet slice was evidence from a bloody crime scene, and since none of us smoke, no one had a lighter to burn the evidence. We had to take it back to the dorm and burn it in a trash can. We’ll see if anyone believes us.
Step 2: Now that we've got the basic facial expressions out of the way, we can move on to the area outside of your home known by some as "The Great Outdoors". Now, you can't just rush out into the cold air after sitting in front of the fire all day. First, some stretching and enhaling of the fresh scent of "outside" is in order.
Good.
This may be a confusing time. How do you know that a particular tree is indeed "the best". Make sure you change your mind at least twice, pace, grimace and don't be afraid to employ your "no face" that you practiced before you left. 
VERY good!
Keep looking...
No, not that one!
Yes, that's the one.
Step 4: Cut that sucker down...
Don't forget to have fun... after all, this is an essential part of the Christmas "spirit".
Step 5: Push it up onto the top of your vehicle.
Tie it down. Take it home. Untie it. Put it in a metal thingy that will hold water and let it live for a few more days... just long enough for you to unwrap the presents you'll shove under it.
Step 6: Then you DECORATE!
Viola! Your very own Christmas tree!
Posts
