Be happy without robots

So jenny is my new hero.

It all started with a tee shirt-- it's got a little bat on it. So I ask her what's up with the bat and she says she's way into caving so I ask her to take me sometime and, literally years later, she does.

There's a cave in simi valley, but you're not technically supposed to be there. It sits back behind a bunch of houses and is literally somebody's back yard, so we bring these really durable trash bags to clean it up. "We" is jenny, one of her friends, one of his friends, and me. So I get there in my brand new headlamp and knee pads and there are these two guys I've never seen before hanging out in a parking lot in simi valley. Oh yeah, and a film crew. From bollywood.

Jenny shows up and off we go. It's a short, pleasant scramble up a hill to this pile of rocks with grafitti all over them and all of a sudden jenny declares "it's all about how small a space you can fit through" and slithers into a crack. We're sitting there looking at each other and her head pops back up-- "try not to step on the caterpillar."

It's amazing how fast you get used to things. The first step down was weird (RIP fuzzy little caterpillar; I swear he was like that when I found him), the first crack was murder-- all I could think of was don't think about the tons of rock about to smush you, don't think about the tons of rock about to smush you. You can barely fit yourself through these things, let alone two people so we can't really see each other. All I can see is jenny's foot or a little bit of pant leg from one of the guys and the swinging cool light of the headlamps. I can't for the life of me figure out where these so-called openings are, so I'm just following the foot. This goes on for an hour.

We reach a "room." At this point, anyplace where you can actually sit down feels huge and this place is massive-- you could've put a queen-size bed in there and still had room to get around it-- and there are beer cans and candle wax and graffitti everywhere, including an open invitation to a "cave party" spray painted on the wall. I'm about to think that it sounds pretty dangerous to go into this kind of place with a bunch of people you don't know when I realize that I can't remember which of the two guys is josh. (Ever have one of thos moments?)

Another hour and we're out, another half hour and we're at this C&W bar at the foot of the hill eating fried pickles and I can't shut up about when are we going again...

A couple weeks later, jenny's having a party at her house with a whole bunch of people I've never seen before and she pulls out a bunch of paper and pens and we're playing this game where you write a sentance, then hand the paper to the next person , who tries to draw what you wrote, folds the paper to hide the writing but not the drawing and hands the paper to the next person who writes what the sentance might be based on the drawing. We can't draw for @#$! so the sentances spiral out of control pretty fast. My favorite one starts out with "Open a bottle of wine to celebrate" and moves through "People fleeing carnivorous cookware" to "Be happy without robots."

So, like I say, jenny is my new hero.