Friends in other places.

This weekend I'm flying to Tucson, Arizona to visit my friend Jeff. I first met Jeff about ten years ago at an animal rights protest in Seattle and we have managed to stay in touch ever since. Jeff stood by me as I blocked the entrance to a fur pelt auction, yelled at a cop for hurting me while I was being arrested at Saks Fifth Avenue, encouraged me to dye my hair green when we were snowed in Seattle for a week when we were supposed to be camping, made me cry while pushing me around on a merry-go-round in Gas Works Park, played his guitar and sang R.E.M. songs in my living room with his friend Ian, drank pints of beer and discussed the "amber" qualities of Portland music, walked through Forest Park with me, eaten at many of the vegan friendly restaurants in Seattle, canoed through Lake Washington laughing at all of the Canadian Geese that mooned us and best of all Jeff and I have spent hours and hours talking. He is perhaps one of the only people I know that can talk as much as me and in as much detail about sometimes seemingly meaningless things. If Linklater was to remake the movie Slacker, Jeff and I would be perfectly cast as the college students who are sitting in the pub discussing the behavior of Smurfs! So, I'm flying to see him (and his charming girlfriend, Heather and adorable dog, Maxine) in Tucson before he graduates with a Phd in Sociology and moves to yet another place to accept a kick ass research position.