2004-07-29 - 8:52 p.m.

i'm posting from rural washington state while visiting with my genetic forebears. i talked them into taking me to 'spiderman 2' this evening because i simply can't take another hour of television. they are apparently also throwing in dinner at the best mexican place on the peninsula. my grandmother is sitting with me and knitting a scarf out of furry blue yarn.

my parents are pretty cool considering they are very conservative born again christians from orange county, california. they've recently retired to the olympic peninsula and i'm struck by how much it resembles the orange county where i grew up. today's south orange county is really just the outer urban sprawl spillover from los angeles, despite being more than 60 miles from the city center. there's a cyber cafe in every strip mall and a multiplex at every interchange. but when i was a teenager we would drive 20 miles to the movies, and the only coffee we had access to was at denny's. long hot afternoons were spent running the dogs in the scorched grass hillsides or bodysurfing at some remote and semi-secret cove. those days are likely gone forever. hence my parents' third-age relocation. you would not believe how many other southern californians have also relocated here.

clallam county is at the tip of the olympic peninsula looking straight out at vancouver island. today we got on a ferry and brunched in victoria, bc. my grandmother is in her 80s and isn't especially mobile, so my dad hired a tour in a model T. the napoleonic native victorian who drove us around was so flamboyantly gay i half expected him to lisp. he charmed my parents anyway so i kept my adolescent giggles to myself.

i have had fresh wild salmon at almost every meal since i've been here. my mom says she is going to check me for gills before i leave for seattle.