the early bird special

Sunday night Kim invited me to Heron's fish-painting party at The Center for Wooden Boats. Fish painting, which I didn't know about before, is a Japanese tradition by which fish patterns are transferred to paper or textile with, well, a fish and paint. The evening started when Kim and I met at three different grocery stores looking for likely appearing fish. We finally settled on some gutted trout and two bottles of sake and headed down to the lake. There were several people there who were not only very nice, but also suspiciously good at making fish prints. I was very jealous of their red and coral and teal colored tilapia outlines on deep navy swathes of cotton. I, on the other hand, named my fish "glitter fish" and ruined a perfectly good t-shirt.

Also, line of the night;
Person one whose name I don't remember: "Who the hell thought of putting paint on a fish?"
Person two: "Someone who thought, 'Man, hippies are going to love this.'"