In the car together, we drove over a hill in Wallingford and caught sight of a beautiful downtown Seattle at twilight.

“Do you know what ‘twilight’ means, Karlee?” I asked.

“Yes. It’s a movie. Oh! And a book,” she replied.

“Did you know it’s also the time of day between the sun being up and being down, like right now?”

“Nope!”

I asked her what was new. “Well, Hannah Montana is moving back to her hometown, and the Jonas brothers are over.”

“Why are they over?” I asked.

“Because Kevin got married.”

“Why does that mean it’s over?”

“I don’t know. It just is.” She paused. “Hannah Montana is moving, the Jonas brothers are over, and that’s really all I know about what’s new in the world.”

We decided to make pizza and have root beer. On the way to the store for root beer we enjoyed the fact that saying something over and over again makes it sound ridiculous. By the time we got to the store, it had been settled that we were playing a game where once in the store, we could only communicate by saying “root beer”. This was all pretty harmless until we got to the checkout line.

“How are you this afternoon?”
“Root beer.” Karlee greeted him.
“Sorry?” The poor clerk looked confused.
“Root beer!”
He smiled politely, scanned our root beer purchase, and turned to me. “Do you have a Safeway card this evening, ma’m?”
I smiled back, nodded, and replied, “Root beer.”
At that point it all clicked and he chuckled to himself, then actually started playing along with us. It was hilarious. After our transaction we bid him “Root beer!” and he waved and wished us farewell with “Root beer!” in return.

She cracks me up. Karlee and I have been pals since she was seven and I’m so glad we are friends.

It’s a great feeling getting to teach her things… tonight I taught her more about how to sew as we’re working on a dress together, I taught her that “twilight” is not just a movie about vampires, and that there’s an older version of “Alice in Wonderland” that Disney made as a cartoon, what a right angle is and the difference between squared and cubic measurements, how to draw a 3D box, and what a “flanking bonus” is. She probably didn’t need that last one, but hey… when a kid asks you what your shirt means, you can’t just say “because”.

BarCamp is an ad-hoc gathering born from the desire for people to share and learn in an open environment. It is an intense event with discussions, demos, and interaction from attendees. It is an international network of user generated non-traditional social conferences— open, participatory workshop-events, whose content is provided by participants — often focusing on early-stage web applications, and related open source technologies, social protocols, and open data formats. Oh and super fun!! REGISTER HERE (free!)

Follow @barcampseattle on Twitter and use #bcs09 in your tweets.

Sat Jun 13, 10am-5pm and Sun Jun 14 10am-1pm
(Also there’s a Friday night cocktail party at Office Nomads featuring Tara Hunt… in fact, here’s a more detailed breakdown of the schedule and parties)

Adobe Conference Center
801 North 34th Street
Seattle, WA 98103

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.

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.

Later on Saturday, I spent time with the girls at Gasworks Park for Elise’s bachelorette and went to a spa with Melissa for her birthday, so it was a very relaxing day. Saturday night Danielle and I went to the Ladytron concert, which was a blast, albeit a bit smelly in the mosh pit. I got some great pictures, so it was worth enduring. :-)

Sunday was our once-a-month family day, during which my nuclear family hangs out together. I always look forward to this, and Sunday was no exception. We enjoyed lunch at my place and a beautiful day at Woodland Park Zoo, but mostly we just enjoyed each other’s company.

Sunday night the usual crew and I went swing dancing, and the DJ was playing some rockabilly stuff that was rather jumping. Kevin dropped in as well and proved to be a really fun swing lead. But, we all had to get up early, for the next morning the crew and I (plus Bryan and Dustin) went hiking. We tried the Snow Lake trail off exit 52 on I-90 for a while, but as it was named appropriately we soon found things to be very, very cold and wet. We abandoned that trail and took the Rattlesnake Ledge trail – one of my favourites – and went further on it than I have before. Rattlesnake has some absolutely stunning views. I have to mention that the entire weekend had nothing but beautiful weather.

Weekends like this just make you love life. I feel really lucky.

Oh, and this is not related to last weekend, but I’m really excited about it, so it’s going in the blog anyway: I just got a call from Big Brothers/Big Sisters. It looks like they have matched me with a “little”; I’m really excited. I’ll be meeting her and her mother on the 10th. She’s 7 years old, and I’ve been told very bright and friendly. I’ve know what it’s like to be a real-life big sister, but Harmony is only a year and a half younger than me. We’re so close in age, it’s great – we’re best friends. But I’m a little nervous about how to be a mentor and friend to one so much younger than me. My excitement outweighs my nervousness though, I’m really looking forward to meeting and getting to know her.