I JUST DELETED MY ENTIRE POST.

there were LOTS OF PEOPLE IN BALLARD YESTERDAY. that, in concert with the 40th anniversary of the moon landing, made for me a bit janky. ballard is usually a place for bums and hipsters who push their over-ratioed fixies and/or brokendown '81 schwinn varsities who have ablsolutely no time for me, but yesterday i saw mainstream, untattooed people in shorts that WEREN'T CUTOFF, TOO-SMALL JEANS and t-shirts that WEREN'T MADE FROM THE DUMPSTER OUT BEHIND JOANN FABRIC. i din't know what to do. i tried a salmon sandwich (righteous) and a jones root beer soda (satisfying) but i couldn't settle down. as we were closing the shop, a BAND OF SIX MARAUDING HIPSTERS showed up and asked to use our bike pump. i was worried that so much ink in one place would create a black hole that would SWALLOW OUR ENTIRE BLOCK. on one hand, i guess that would've been okay; i'd be gone and could give up this PRETENSE OF ACTUALLY LIKING PEOPLE. i was so jittery i started craving a pretentious belgian ale or, failing that, a richatlously hip PBR. finally, i rode over and locked my bike on the gate behind king's hardware (no pipe fittings of any kind--where do these people come up with their pub names?) and went into the old town ale house, sat by the window and preceded to DRINK LIKE A FISH. that din't make the people go away, but at least i no longer cared.

in other news, while out hiking in the crystal lakes drainage i saw 1) people and 2) ALIENS THAT DISGUISED THEMSELVES AS BLUE BUTTERFLIES. the were stealing our water DIRECTLY FROM THE DIRT. when i attempted to roust the imposters, they formed a threatening blue cloud and began advancing on me. normally i'd dismiss this "alien" talk as paranoia, but since THEY WERE THREATENING ME INSTEAD OF SOMEONE ELSE and the only place i've seen these blue "butterflies" is in that same drainage doing precisely the same thing they were doing friday, it HAS to be true. i'm not sure how to combat these threats, since concrete obviously doesn't stop them and they can shift shapes and create MINIATURE BLUE DEATH CLOUDS, but if nothing else, we need to guard our water supply LIKE IT'S THE HINDENBURG.