Sunday, March 30, 2003
The trees were still bare, the hints of new green leaves were no more impressive than the many years of moss that grew on the trunks. Still, it was a warm day and as we walked, the warmth on my face and the sweet clear air in Olympia gave me fuzzies in my belly. Flowers were beginning to bloom, and among the blurry, verdant landscape, spots of color popped like fireworks.
It would be easy to juxtapose a day like this with the war in Iraq, and because it's early in the morning and I'm feeling lazy, I will. I don't think the weather is half as nice in Iraq as it is here. It's very dry over there, and while you'd get plenty of sun, you'd get sunburned and your lips would chap if you failed to use very thick, SPF 30 lip gloss. There's almost nothing green over there, and everythign seems to be covered in yellow dust. I'm willing to bet that it does not smell like new flowers.
Elaine and I walked the town for about an hour, then had lunch at The Spar. The Spar was armored in dark wood, and covered in sepia toned photos to prove that they were a historic meeting place for the city's fedora-ed gentlemen. Although on this day, they were filled with small, purple and pink children sipping over-sized and over-priced milkshakes. Elaine and I both had milkshakes of our own, and fighting the natural capacity of our stomachs, we managed to finish them. We felt like good Americans.
