that is the text message I got from Matt Rainwaters the other day, and it brings me copious amounts of joy.   I called him, of course, and here is the story:

When I was moving out of Santa Barbara Matt was so kind as to help me pack up a moving truck and send me on my way.  Before I left I gave him all of my old photo supplies- boxes of paper, bags of negative sleeves, boxes of film, old chemicals…basically everything that I had left over from 3 years at photo college.  He was teaching at a high school in LA at the time and I told him to give everything he didn’t want for himself to his students.  So he did a half ass sort through and decided to give a bag of random photo stuff to one of his better students.  She came in to school the day after and said “Mr. Rainwater, um, was this meant for me?” as she held out an eighth of weed.  I guess I had put it somewhere in that bag and then forgotten about it, in typical stoner fashion.  Fortunately the girl just returned the weed and never said another word about it.  That was in 2005.  Then last week Matt received a package in the mail.  He had left a few boxes of stuff in his mother’s closet in LA when he moved to Austin.  She had gone through and packed up the stuff she thought was worth sending and shipped it his way.  Included in the package were a bunch of naked pictures I had taken on myself for a school project, stashed away in an empty paper box. Matt thought it was pretty much the greatest thing ever and could not wait to tell me about it.  I feel like a bit of a dumb pervert.

Nothing happened yesterday.  I was in faculty meetings all day and then went to yoga last night.  Kara and Nick are moving out today- I CAN’T WAIT!!!!!!!!!

Lou and I had Julia and Cory over for a little birthday celebration for Cory (who turned something age last week). I wanted to celebrate with him a little- he is always there for me when I have a birthday/party/breakup/etc. Jules had a super stressful week with the stock market disaster. I don’t really understand what she does for work and she’s probably explained it to me at least three times, so at this point I have to just pretend. Which is fine, I’m good at pretending. I admitted to Julia that I have been reading about the depression (specifically: recipes such as potato/spinach and onion stew) and she said that she’s been asking her mom “What did Gramma do during the depression, you know, for food and stuff?”. Apparently Julia now has a good plan for stale bread- bread pudding. All of this led to probably an hour of depression talk- mostly hilarious- with Lou insisting that we have a “Depression Party”. (Other ideas include 1.turning the backyard into “Shanty Town” 2. Running a brothel out of our shed 3. Eating Cory’s dog for Thanksgiving (since he is brown and just about the right size for a Depression era Thanksgiving). Back to the party: Julia is going to wear rags and show up with a family of goats. I am kind of looking forward to it. I don’t know how Bean feels about goats though. We also decided on our Halloween costumes. *OH!, Before I forget- Julia’s company cancelled their Christmas party this week, due to the stock market/bank situation. Personally, I think that’s fantastic. But Julia asked her manager: “David Charles (the CEO) is canceling CHRISTMAS?!” I don’t think it went over well.

OK, back to Halloween costumes- I am going to be Michelle Obama. Lou is going to be Barrack. Julia=Sarah Palin and Cory is going to be John McCain. It’s perfect. Except I don’t know how to make myself brown. I have a month to figure it out though.