Firewallender // Cassie Wallender

I had a truly crazy weekend and I’m still a little weak in the knees from it all.  A good chunk of the limping though is from getting kicked by a gal in sharp heels at the Century Ballroom on Sunday night.  Swing is definitely a contact sport, and Lindy Hop is no exception.  As much as I love swing though, I’m pleasantly shocked to say it got majorly trumped by The Seattle Anti-Freeze this weekend: I’m sure you’ve heard of pub crawls, but we did a pub run.  An epic 8k pub run to seven bars with a ton of people.  Epic.

Things are going really well with the Big Brothers Big Sisters volunteering.  My “Little” is really fun to hang out with, she’s very smart and full of energy.  It’s also encouraging me to go on some fun little adventures.  For example, on Saturday we’re helping to restore a creek in Juanita while learning about the environment.

Also, on a bit of an overdue whim I’ve decided that over Independence Day I’ll be headed to hot, hot Arizona to visit my dear friend Connie. That’s fewer than two weeks away! It will be great just to have some quality one on one time like the good old days, but as a bonus we also have some fun plans: we’re going to the July 4th Tempe Town Festival, and then we’re going camping in the Grand Canyon. Camping in the Grand Canyon - how awesome is that?   Pretty awesome.  I am super excited for camping with Connie. I miss her.

Wow… I had a simply amazing weekend. Usually I don’t like to write “here’s everything I did” type posts, but this deserves some documentation. Friday night, I hit up a bit of Camp Jitterbug (billed as “The Awesomest Lindy Hop Event Ever!”) for some swing dancing with my friend Shane - they had the first heat of the Jack & Jill Lindy Hop contest, which was so much fun to watch, plus plenty of room to dance in as it was at the UW Hub Ballroom.

Saturday morning I sort of randomly went canoeing with Kevin, a fellow BrightKite beta user who I ran into last week at Indy. I had a great time and have never seen more turtles, check this out:

Crazy, eh? I love exploring the area via canoe, in fact I think the highlight of our morning paddling adventure was attempting to find a way through the reeds. It was pretty hilarious, especially when the going got tough and we nearly tried walking across some not-so-stable marshy “land” that turned out to be not so much “land” as a floating mass of vegetation.

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