I spent a super fun afternoon with lovely friend Shannon, who is in town visiting family for early holiday celebrations. This visit, we decided to spend time out in Snoqualmie Valley checking out some of our old haunts. Both of us worked at Etienne Aigner (which is no longer) at the outlet mall in high school, so we decided to start there. After a yucky lunch at the mall coffee shop, followed by a gross coffee at the Rocky Mountain Chocolate Factory, we did a quick lap around the mall, speedily perusing a few stores of interest. I forced us to go into the newish Coach outlet, because I thought it so funny to see a Coach store in North Bend. I kept saying, "Coach! In North Bend!" in disbelief. After that, we zipped by good ol' Mount Si high school where I did a slow drive by loop through the parking lot so we could survey the scene. Peering through the windows near the gym, I noticed that they now have a real schmancy fitness center while we had a dim, dusty rundown weight room. Hmph. Times have changed. Next, we sped up to Snoqualmie Falls which I've mentioned before is a favorite of mine. I always feel a deep sense of peace and beauty while there, and today was no different.

Except, since we were pretty much the only people on the observation deck on a Tuesday afternoon, we decided this was an opportune moment to get a twin picture. A woman came along and offered to take a couple for us, so we let her, but those turned out dark. We then proceeded with our original self photo plan, and things veered off into the bizarre and very entertaining. Each picture went like this: We'd turn on our picture faces, smile winningly, and Shannon would click the button. We'd immediately turn the camera around to view the image, and every photo was incredibly blurry. Every time. Yet, when Shannon would take a pic of the falls alone, it resulted in a crystal clear image. Us + Falls = Blurry. Falls alone = beautiful shot. We repeated this cycle several times with the same results, making comments like, "OK, here we go" or "This time it should work." Yeah. Well. No. We wondered if we were joined by a ghost on the deck who was determined to thwart our attempts. We wondered if condensation on the lens fogged things up. We wondered and we wondered, and then we started to giggle. By try five or six, I was laughing so hard that I was crouched down on the floor, doubled over, leaning on the railing for support while I giggled helplessly. We then had to spend some time getting it together before we could try again. Finally, we gave up, but, in the end, with no good pic in sight, it just felt really good to laugh that hard with Shannon. I made her promise to send me the series of photos, because I know they will always make me smile. They were just so us.

We ended our day walking through Gillman Village in Issaquah, and then enjoyed a delicious dinner (finally!) at a vegetarian Indian restaurant, filling our time with the usual good conversation. All in all, it was a wonderful day.