My friends rule …

I, however, am still sick.

Despite spending much of the week on the couch (and offering up some pretty lackluster posts to show for it), I’m still not feeling 100%. I promise to be back next week with my same level of snark and general angst to which you’ve grown accustom, but today, I just want to reflect on how awesome my friends are. I’ve been home for the last month, and in that time, I’ve actually gotten to hang out and spend time with people in Seattle. It’s been amazing, and every time I decide I want to pack up and move someplace else, I think of my endearing group of stoners, entrepreneurs, and stoned entrepreneurs, and realize I could never leave.

For one, they seem to read this crazy blog of mine. Some of them regularly. Which is why my friend Vanessa immediately thought of me when she saw this:

This also came with a trading card that claims Apolo is 5'7". Maybe with skates on, kid.

I can’t really explain how glorious that is. In case you can’t tell from the photo, it’s a stick-on soul patch, so you can role-play and get freaky while pretending you’re Apolo Ohno. Or, uh, maybe it’s just a means of showing support for an Olympic athlete. Either way. Vanessa is on some important panel for Alaska Airlines, and they were handing these lovely things out, so she instantly grabbed one, knowing it would change my life forever. And oh, how it has. Thank you, V.

And then our lovely friend Will came into town for a few days, as he and Rand’s companies often work in partnership together, and they had a few things to address (like which of them has a more awesome wife. In all fairness, Will’s wife Heather is pretty cool, an established journalist, and kind of looks like Julianne Moore. I, obviously, am cool as well, have a blog read by upwards of 5 people a day, and have been told I bear a striking resemblance to Buddy Hackett. It’s a toss-up, I’d say). And after handing an obligatory bottle of scotch to my husband (note: everyone brings my husband scotch or cigars, which I am cool with, because I can pretend he’s Roger Sterling), Will gave me this:

"A Garfield book? No boy has ever given me literature before!"

He told me he thought it would be good inspiration (cue “Awwwwww” sound). It was really touching, and actually kind of inspiring. The photography is amazing, and makes me think I should branch out beyond taking pictures of cats and food while I travel. Maybe.

There’s also these nifty little doohickeys on everypage – they’re codes that you can scan to find the exact location on Google Maps of the place being mentioned in the book. If I wasn’t currently using the AMC Gremlin of mobile phones, I would be totally psyched about that feature. Thanks, Will!

Behold: nifty doohickey.

Of course, there were some gifts that had eff-all to do with travel, and I love them just the same. Last week, my friend Chrissy stopped by to drop off the gift she had made me:

At left, you can see the collage Chrissy made me for my last birthday, including a pic of the two of us in the corner (and Rand and I in the lower corner). She is awesome.

And this week, knowing I was sick, she came over with homemade soup and elderberry honey. I must have been an awesome person in a past life to have landed a friend like her. Either that, or maybe she was really awful in a past life, and is now stuck with me. Either way, I totally got a good deal of out it. I made her watch 30 Rock (which she had never seen) and she made me watch Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip. Both of us are reserving judgment for the sake of our friendship. But it was still awesome.

In short, being stuck at home hasn’t been all that bad. Hell, being sick hasn’t been all that bad, either. Fear not, though – I promise these feelings of good will and love shall pass by Monday, when I intend to be back to my old self, angry and ornery. And possibly wearing a soul patch.