Still on the Edge in Sumas

Yow...weirdness continues. I called Sumas City Hall today just to be sure that the latest rescheduled pre-trial date (for Thursday the 27th) was indeed delayed as it should have been, since again we don't have lab results back yet from the State. (My 6 pill sojourn into controlled substances continues.) I'd stopped in at the lawyer's office on Monday to sign some more of the continuence waivers, anticipating countless more weeks of limbo. Evidently they need a fresh signature every time a court date is delayed.

Anyway, today the city clerk told me that the lab results came in after all, and she'd already faxed them to my attorney! About 70 days after my arrest. So I called over there an hour ago, and got some tasty hints from his secretary, but nothing official. He was out and naturally hasn't informed me what's up. All this on the heels of my leaving for an extended Seattle visit. Anyway, the secretary said something about negotiating a settlement with the prosecutor, so I take that as a good sign.

But I'm still not sure if I'll be in Seattle on Thursday for work, or right here in Sumas in front of a judge. Then, barring jail, on the weekend the fabu Radical Faerie longhouse gathering (the car is already packed!).

Otherwise life is pretty fun. Yesterday Mark and I went to a book reading by Sherman Alexie which was quite fun, Sherman can dish it out equally to both liberal white urbanites and the local Lummi indians, who apparently have criticized him in the past for not being Indian enough (or something like that). Smart and funny man. He wrote Smoke Signals and The Business of Fancy Dancing, a personal fave...rent the video if you missed it. Delicious.

Also I've come to fully appreciate the 400W inverter that Roy gave me last year. Connect it to the 12 volt battery in your car (or retired school bus) and you can plug in regular 120 volt appliances (like a random orbit sander for instance). The bus is still in storage but I've been doing some prep work on the paint before turning it over to the fabricator I found in Bellingham--the guy that's going to put a roof rack on top. I sanded the entire roof and painted three coats of white where the rack will go. Also I found a metal shop to cut me some aluminum panels to block out some of the windows.

So painfully slow, but progress none the less.