‘Silence’ (Interrupted) | Cowiche Cutter & Frosty Lemons | Plus, ‘The Creator’ at Orion Cinema in Yakima, WA
My first few weeks in Wapato, Washington, featuring: a Martin Scorsese marathon, my religious awakening, a power outage, getting turned away at the inn, and a confrontation-filled epilogue.
0. My hometown (a short prologue)1
It’s been three weeks since I finished work on a Monday afternoon, loaded up the car with my most important belongings (my clothes and two cast iron pans), said farewell to my niece and nephew, and made the three and a half hour drive on I-90 west from Spokane to Wapato—our new home until just before Christmas. When Cassidy decided that she wanted to start travel nursing, we planned to keep the first assignment in Washington so that we could give this experiment a low-stress trial run. If we love it, we can go somewhere more exotic in January for her next contract; if it’s a terrible disaster and we hate it, we can easily head back to Spokane for the holidays and regroup. As we were planning, we had grand ideas of moving to Seattle and trying out city life, or if not Seattle, then nearby Tacoma, or perhaps even down south in Vancouver, Washington, just a short drive away from Portland. Somewhere exciting, that was for sure, with countless movie theaters at our disposal. Since we were talking about major cities, I even allowed myself to fantasize that I might have the luxurious opportunity to see something like ‘The Killer’ or ‘Maestro’ during their limited theatrical releases instead of waiting to watch them on Netflix like usual. But I was just a sweet, naive summer child then. As these things tend to go, the best job offer Cass received was for a 25-bed hospital in a town with a population of 4,551 and exactly zero movie theaters in city limits. I certainly won’t be seeing any limited release titles now, and my movie-going habits in general will be severely limited. How glamorous.
I was less than enthusiastic that our relocation plans had to shift from Seattle (the Emerald City!) to Wapato (a place that also exists). But for all that Wapato lacks in cinemas, it does still have its charms—more privacy, more space, easy access to local wineries. We were also fortunate to find a fantastic place for us to live2 that has a large kitchen and an in-unit washer/dryer. What more could a young man want? We occupy the guest house on an expansive farm with beautiful views of the sprawling fields of grape vines that stretch out around us for miles in every direction. The young couple who own the property and live in the main house are excessively lovely people who regularly bring us over farm-fresh eggs from their chickens, fresh-baked banana bread, and bell peppers and tomatoes from their garden. My greatest pleasure in life is to eat a homegrown tomato, and so I am happy to live here, movie theaters be damned. I have accepted that this is our new way of life: we are farmers now. We live off the land and use oil lanterns instead of electricity. We will die of hay fever at the age of 29 and leave behind our 14 children to raise themselves. It isn’t much—but it’s honest work if you can get it.
I’m burying the lede, though. The best thing about Wapato is that it’s only a 25-minute drive from Yakima, my birthplace, and all three (!) of its glorious movie theaters. While folks my age typically only know about Yakima because its where Carly’s grandpa wanted to take her to live in that one episode of iCarly, I’m proud to call it my hometown. In fact, the past several generations of Lovins men were born here3 and I have a large extended family that still resides in the Valley: all three of my surviving grandparents, plus various aunts, uncles, cousins, children of cousins, dogs of cousins, and children of dogs of cousins. I’m very close with my family, and I’m looking forward to spending more time with them than I have in…ever. I was only three years old when my parents packed us up to head for brighter pastures in Fort Collins, Colorado, the first of several times we would relocate throughout my childhood. Leaving Yakima was probably the hardest. About three weeks after we left, one of my cousins sent me a letter in the mail that said:
“I miss you Kota. You’ve been far away for so long. When will be able to come back home for a sleepover?”
It’s been so long since then, but even now, reading that breaks my heart a little. When you’re a child, the grownups tell you what home is, and that makes sense. It’s a tiny white house with blue shutters that has a patio out back you can eat jell-o on with your cousins, and you feel like the world is small enough for you to swim in without goggles on. Then, those same adults tell you that where home is can change, and, well, that’s a lot harder to make sense of. Now, they say, home isn’t back there anymore; it’s this new, strange place without cousins and without jell-o and without anyone you recognize at all, and suddenly the world doesn’t feel so small after all. It feels like a place you’ll never belong in.
The nomadic life is all too familiar to me: so far in my 25 years, I’ve lived in Washington, Colorado, Pennsylvania, Washington (again), Massachusetts, Washington (a third time), Arizona, Washington (okay, we get it), and now, a different place in Washington (I don’t know how to hear any more about living in Washington). I still have that letter that my cousin sent me all those years ago where she asked me, “When will you be able to come back home?” It’s been over 21 years, but I finally get to. Now, Cass and I go to family dinners twice a week, regularly stop by my grandparents to play cards over lunch, and have my cousins over to cook and drink wine while we watch the sunset. It’s wonderful. Wapato wasn’t my ideal spot to spend our first 13 weeks of traveling—but things do have a way of turning out the way they oughta be.
(As a card carrying member of the “‘Eurovision’ is actually a great movie” club, I am obligated to admit that I listened to Husavik several times while writing this post and it always makes me emotion. So does Jaja Ding Dong, in its own way.)
1. Blame it on my parents
As a person, I have a lot of issues, and you can trace most of them back to my parents. Here are three of the most egregious mistakes they made:
My mother was a swimmer in college. I—famously her direct offspring—am 6’6” and I wear roughly size 16 shoes, depending on the brand. In the scientific community, those are known as “monster feet.” And yet, my parents never forced me to join the swim team, or even spoke to me all that enthusiastically about potentially giving it a try. With my gangly arms, God-given flippers, and unusually keen flight response, I could have swum so fast. I could have been a fish out there. I could have won multiple Olympic medals and I could be living a life of divine luxury. Instead, I toil away at a remote job where I hunch over a computer all day and slowly morph into Sméagol. Let’s categorize this parental error as a “Catastrophic Lack of Ambition For Our Only Son.”
My dad is an avid hunter, and often took me with him on his excursions as I was growing up. When I was eight or nine, Dad planned a trip for us and enrolled me in a hunter’s safety class so I could get my license. For the first time ever, I would also be carrying a gun out in the fields, trying to shoot some birds. The night before our big hunt, Dad asked to read together before bed, something we hadn’t ever done before. He read me a short story called 'Walking Out' by David Quammen, in which a father takes his young son on a hunting trip. How appropriate! And how sweet of my own father to share this with me! Except for, in that story, the son accidentally shoots his father and drags him back to town eight miles in the snow while he slowly bleeds out and dies. My dad was not reading this story to me as any sort of lesson on firearm safety, but because he genuinely believed it would be a beautiful opportunity for father/son bonding ahead of our outing. He misread that situation. I did not end up carrying my gun on our hunting trip the next day and I am currently a vegetarian. Let’s categorize this one as “Likely The Most Traumatic Thing A Parent Could Do To Their Child.”
And finally, my parents—and especially my mom—have never cared very much about the movies or going to see them. I have been to a theater with my mom exactly two times: in December 2003 to see ‘Elf’ and in November 2019 to see ‘Jojo Rabbit.’ My dad likes movies a bit more than that, but generally prefers television and football. And since my parents didn’t care about movies, they didn’t take me to the movies all that much, and so I never knew that I was missing out on something I would love. Cause/effect. Let’s categorize this one as “That One Gif Where Kermit Is Flailing His Arms.”
That last bullet is the most relevant to us, and I bring it up to justify how few of the “classic” movies I’ve seen. You can blame it on my parents. I didn’t start watching movies with any regularity until I was about 20 years old—that was during the halcyon days of MoviePass when I paid $9.99 a month for a small, rectangular piece of red plastic, a key that unlocked the door to any cinema in the country—so I’ve only had a few years to catch up on the backlog. Since those days, in the five or so years since then, I’ve typically watched around 400 movies a year; usually, 150 of those are new releases, which leaves me with about 250 movies to play around with, either by rewatching something I love or by seeking out something I’ve never seen before. That’s a lot of movies, to be sure, but there’s still only so much I can manage to watch in a given year. Since 2017, I’ve seen basically everything that’s come out and has any sort of cultural footprint, but before then…not so much. It’s a little daunting to consider the body of historically significant movies I have yet to see, and I worry that I sound like a fraud when talking about film because of the sheer number of important things I’ve never watched. But on the bright side, all that this really means is that I have a lifetime ahead of me to keep uncovering wonderful old gems for myself, and that’s an exciting thought.
To help fill in my gaps, I like to assign myself little programs to watch through throughout the year, and I keep track of my progress in a well-manicured spreadsheet on my computer. I do this because I am a psycho, like the titular psycho from ‘Psycho.’ I try to keep their focus varied, and so far in 2023, I’ve finished 17 programs. To name a few: the filmographies of Christopher Nolan, Nicole Holofcener, and Park Chan-wook; the Magic Mike, John Wick, and Mission: Impossible franchises; and a 1970s sci-fi binge. It’s a fun way to work through the backlogs of movies I want to experience, and it gives me something to look forward to each night. For example, my little sister and I watched through all of the Purge movies this August, and while I didn’t think any of them were good, it was a blast to have five summer nights in a row where we knew exactly what we were going to turn on with dinner and a drink to pass the next few hours away.
One of my most glaring blindspots is the work of Martin Scorsese, but with ‘Killers of the Flower Moon’ coming out in late October, I started a program in August to work through his (very expansive) feature film catalog beforehand. Marty is a great use case for why I enjoy giving myself projects like this:
He’s directed a ton of movies, and if I didn’t do a concentrated push to watch everything he’s made in the span of a few months, it would probably take me another 20+ years to be even reasonably caught up. Now, I’ll have seen almost all of them, and I’ll be able to continually revisit my favorites until I am killed by a mobster and stuffed into the trunk of a car.
A lot of his movies are either too long (i.e. ‘Goodfellas’ or ‘Casino’) or too thorny (i.e. ‘Raging Bull’ or ‘Taxi Driver’) for me to randomly decide I’m in the mood for them after a long day at work. When I’m doing a program, I intentionally make the time for the longer films and I have the opportunity to plan when I’ll be in the best headspace for something like ‘Taxi Driver.’
It makes me more adventurous with my film watching habits, and I end up checking out things that I would never have watched on my own (i.e. ‘Kundun’ or ‘Who’s That Knocking at My Door’).
When ‘Killers of the Flower Moon’ finally rolls around at the end of the month, I’ll have new insight on Scorsese as a filmmaker and more context around how the movie fits into his full body of work, which will enrich my experience of the film.
Perhaps I’ll write about a few of my favorite Scorsese’s once I’ve finished the program, but for this post, I want to focus on the evening that I turned on ‘Silence,’ his 2016 film about Jesuit priests who travel to Japan as missionaries in the 17th century. I’d been putting it off because I don’t generally find films about religion to be my cup of tea and it’s 161 minutes long, but I was getting down to the end of Scorsese’s filmography and running out of alternatives (throwing on ‘The Last Temptation of Christ’ didn’t sound any more fun). Additionally, Cassidy works night shifts at the hospital, so I’m left with a lot of idle evenings alone at our house. I spend that time the same way that most normal people would: by watching three hour religious epics from the brilliant mind of an 80 year old Italian-American guy who used to do a ton of cocaine.
I don’t have strong feelings about ‘Silence’—and this Substack is not a place for film criticism, but for celebrating the experience of watching movies—but it was certainly stunning to look at, bursting with impactful performances, and offered a thoughtful, complicated rumination about faith, devotion, and the balance between what we owe to God versus what we owe to others. I likely won’t revisit it for a long time, and since I watched it at home instead of at a movie theater, it isn’t the kind of experience I’ll typically write about here. But the twisty, almost Odyssean Monday evening I had watching it left me with no other choice. The hand of God moves me, and I follow where it leads.
For all of the blame I lay at parents’ feet, one thing I do appreciate is that they never forced any kind of religion on us kids. My mom was raised Roman Catholic, but I’ve never so much as been to a Sunday church service. The only circumstances that have ever even lead to me setting foot in a church at all are weddings, funerals, my sister’s dance recitals, and middle school AAU basketball practices. In ‘Silence,’ Andrew Garfield’s Jesuit missionary character, Rodrigue, is experiencing God in a very different way than 6th grade Dakota did when he was practicing his dribbling in the dirty basement of a local Baptist church. Rodrigue is devout in his belief that religion can save people—whether they actually need to be saved or not is of secondary concern to him—and is, dare I say, a bit too committed to spreading the Lord’s sweet, juicy message. On his journey, his arrogance grows until he ultimately facies himself a comparable beacon of virtue to Jesus himself: a martyr, destined to be killed for his beliefs before he could even consider apostatizing. I watched this unfold in my new living room in Wapato, and felt myself growing more and more alienated by Rodrigue’s behavior. How could someone be so hypocritical? How could someone justify all of this death in God’s own name? Hell, how could someone still remain faithful in God after witnessing so much suffering in and against his name?
What happened next, I can’t explain, but it was as if God himself was watching me, and sought to punish me for the blasphemous wanderings of my mind. At the precise moment in the film where Rodrigue has finally accepted that he needs to apostatize to save innocent lives…my power went out, and I was plunged into darkness (literally and metaphorically). After learning that we’d be without electricity for another eight or so hours, my dreams of finishing ‘Silence’ were tabled for the time being. And since I wanted to eat dinner and had no electricity to cook, and since Cass was at work until late, and since it was already dark out and I didn’t want to sit and twiddle my thumbs in a cold, pitch black room for the next eight hours, I decided to venture out and get my first taste of a Yakima movie theater. Little did I know, this was just the beginning of my own epic spiritual quest—one that would lead me deep into the pits of Hell itself (Downtown Yakima).
2. The restroom is for paying customers only
For all that I love about Spokane, one thing it’s sorely lacking is an Alamo Drafthouse-esque theater where you can have specialty craft cocktails delivered directly to your seat (food, too, but I have my priorities straight). At the Magic Lantern, you can buy cider or wine at the front desk, but as a cocktail connoisseur, I love the idea of going to a movie and ordering a blue drink that is just okay, costs $15, and is named something stupid like Avatar: The Way of Tonic Water. To me, this is the height of luxury. The exact moment I came of age is when, while living in Arizona, I saw ‘Parasite’ at an Alamo Drafthouse and had a blood orange cider brought to my seat. When I lived there again for a few months in 2022, I’d regularly do this at Harkins Camelview at Fashion Square in Scottsdale, most notably when I saw a double feature of ‘Marry Me’ and ‘Drive My Car’ while drinking a delicious pink concoction that had strawberry vodka and champagne in it. Much like Winston in New Girl, I like a fruity drink. I am who I am.
Yakima has two large multiplexes, but neither of them is an AMC where I can use my A-List credits; they’re also both dirty and offer limited screening options. But in the heart of Downtown, there’s the three-screen Orion Theater and, wouldn’t you know it, they'll deliver a cocktail to your seat with just the push of a button. With Cass gone and the power out, I figured it would be a perfect time to give Orion a try. They had a 6:15 showing of ‘The Equalizer 3,’ the third film in a franchise I have never watched a single minute of, but with hours to kill and the allure of a cocktail beckoning me, what else was a boy to do?
The traffic from Wapato to Yakima was bad that evening, and the way my GPS took me was, to put it kindly, the scenic route. By the time I parked and raced in to buy a ticket, it was 6:19; being used to Spokane’s AMC, where they show a minimum of 20 minutes of previews prior to every showing, I didn’t anticipate any issues with purchasing my ticket a few minutes after the listed start time. It seemed to me that, logically, they would want to take my hard earned $18 no matter how late I showed up, be it five minutes or five days. Instead, I was met with utter contempt for even considering it would be possible for me to set foot in that theater. A short scene for you:
Me: Hey, how’s your night? I’ll do one for the 6:15 ‘Equalizer,’ please.
Orion Cinema Employee: It’s too late. I won’t sell you a ticket.
Me: Wait, it’s too late? Are you still showing previews or has it already started?
OCE: We’re showing previews. But it would be too distracting for you to walk in now.
Me: How many people are in there? Is it a full crowd?
OCE: There’s two others already in there. I don’t want you to be a distraction for them.
Me: I’m sorry, would that be a distraction? I’d walk in quietly. I’ll even order my drink out here so that nobody has to come in and be disruptive taking my order.
OCE: Anyone who walks in and isn’t a server is distraction.
Me: What if one of the people in the movie gets up and goes to the bathroom during it and then comes back in? Do you stop them? Is that a distraction?
OCE: I’m not going to sell you a ticket.
Me: Okay, well, thank you. I’ll come back another time then. Before I go, is there a restroom here I could use?
OCE: The bathroom is for paying customers only. And since you haven’t paid, you can’t use it.
Me: Have a great night.
And just like that, ‘Silence’ finally connected with me. I understood that Rodrigue wasn’t arrogant, hypocritical, or self-flagellating—he was right. He was justified. And so was I. Rodrigue was Jesus, and I was both Mary and Joseph: turned away from the inn by the guy at Orion4 Cinemas in my most desperate hour, denied my God-given right to watch ‘The Equalizer 3’ in the comfort of a theater, forced to give birth to my son (this substack) in a cold, dank barn. All I wanted was to give them $18 for a ticket and $15 for a drink called a Frosty Lemons that sounded delicious—$33, before tax or tip!—but they refused to let me in. It was religious persecution. My newfound belief in my cause was unwavering. I made a vow at that moment that I would never apostatize (which in this context means “go pee”). I swore to hold my holy urine in my bladder forever. In the name of God. Amen.
3. After hours
I walked the streets of Downtown Yakima with only the Lord to guide me, desperate for any place that could offer a warm bed, a hot meal, a hearty ale. But God was testing me, and Spokane had spoiled me: it’s not a huge city by any means, but its Downtown has no shortage of options for things to do on any night of the week. There were always open cocktail bars and restaurants to dip in for a drink, sports bars to watch the Mariners, and the AMC right in the center of town to cap the night with a movie. Downtown Yakima is significantly less bustling. On Monday nights, there is only one restaurant that is open and operating. Everything else—even the sports bar, which one would think would be showing Monday Night Football, a sporting event I don’t care about but still prefer to doing nothing—is closed. I even tried google searching “Things to do in Downtown Yakima,” but as we all know, the internet is outside of God’s domain. Every place that was recommended online was either closed (a vast majority of them), didn’t exist (a wine tasting room that was supposedly open, but when I walked the six blocks to the listed address, it was less of a “winery" and more of an “abandoned alley”), or was actually not in Yakima, but across the country in New York (a concert hall that I’m confused how the blogger thought was in Central Washington instead of New York City).
My spiritual journey unfolded in front of me exactly as it had in ‘Silence.’ Just as Rodrigue traversed the islands of Japan to spread the word of God and to search for Liam Neeson, I wandered a six-block radius in Yakima to search for any place that would save me from boredom. Just as Rodrigue was turned away from villages out of fear that his presence would put them in danger, I was met with bolted doors and dark windows. And just as Rodrigue was tortured for his beliefs, a lady almost hit me with her car in the parking lot of a gas station (undoubtedly another religiously-fueled act of violence). But I knew that all of it was God testing me to prove my faith, and so I persisted.
With literally no other options, I waltzed into the Cowiche Canyon Kitchen and Ice House Bar, a modern restaurant that I had been avoiding because of their limited vegetarian menu. But they met every criteria I needed at that moment: they were open and they had cocktails. So I grabbed a table, ordered a side of $5 bread and a drink, and watched an illegal stream of the Seattle Mariners on my work computer (again, very Biblical of me). I really had my heart set on the Frosty Lemons at Orion, and unfortunately, Cowiche Canyon didn’t have anything similar. At the recommendation of the waiter, I ordered their house special, called the Cowiche Cutter. It had gin, muddled fresh mint leaves, pressed lemon and grapefruit juice, aperol, and a float of Top-Cutter. It sounded delicious, refreshing, and tart—the perfect antidote for my exhausting evening—and even though I didn’t know what Top-Cutter was, I assumed I’d probably like it.
Unfortunately, the first sip of the Cowiche Cutter broke the illusion, and I instantly recoiled. As it turns out, Top-Cutter is a local IPA, and the float on top of the cocktail permeated throughout the drink, completely overpowering the spirit and citrus with a bitter, hoppy taste. I dislike most beer, but IPAs are the worst of the bunch, their mere existence as profane as any of the Seven Deadly Sins. I was disgusted that they would serve something so sacrilegious to an obviously pious man like me—I was wearing my Friar Robes, for Gosh’s Sake! I quickly took out my pocket Bible to identify a line of scripture I could quote at my waiter that mentioned IPAs being sinful, but I couldn’t find anything at all. In fact, I was stunned to learn that the Bible doesn’t even mention IPAs. I felt…abandoned. I had persevered through every test God had thrown my way that evening, but now, in my most desperate hour, he abandoned me? What had I done to deserve this? How was this my lot in life? My faith, once so strong, was shattered. I was a broken man. And I did the one thing I had sworn that I would never do: I calmly stood up, walked to the restroom, and went pee. I had apostatized, right there in Cowiche Canyon Kitchen and Ice House Bar, for all of Downtown Yakima to see.
It hit me then that I wasn’t living in Scorsese’s ‘Silence,’ but in ‘After Hours.’ The night had thrown everything it could at me to keep me away: the power outage, the denial at the movies, the closed restaurants, the abandoned alley, the sickening IPA. It was a twisting, labyrinthian journey across Yakima—the City That Never Sleeps (Except for Monday Nights). I was lured in by beautiful sirens (cocktails), hunted by demons (the lady who almost hit me with her car), tested by the cruel Fates. But against all odds, with everything stacked against me, I survived. Only ten or so minutes later, the power company contacted me and let me know that our electricity was back on, ahead of schedule. It was time to drive back to Wapato, to see Cass and tell her about my adventures, to settle into our new home. I packed my laptop, ate the last bite of bread, and finished off the last sip of my Cowiche Cutter—it was $14, after all, and I’m not made of money. With one last gag at the horrible taste of IPA, I headed for the door and back into the Yakima night.
4. Back to the Orion (The Epilogue)
A few weeks after the events of the ‘Silence’ night, Cass and I decided to make another pilgrimage into Yakima to test out the Orion Cinema. Despite the persecution I faced during my first visit, I was optimistic this time around: having renounced my religion, they no longer had any reason to reject me, plus we made sure to arrive plenty early to avoid being told we’d be “distractions.” Cass is a big sci-fi fan, so we went to watch ‘The Creator’ despite the mixed reactions. Our hopes weren’t high, but there are much worse ways to spend a Thursday evening than watching a visually arresting and ambitious (if not always successful) genre film. And more importantly, I’d finally get my grimy paws on one of those Frosty Lemons.
Well wouldn’t you know it, the moment that we walked into the theater and got in line, the theater attendant (thankfully a different person than my enemy from last time) informed the ten or so of us waiting to buy a ticket that their system had just crashed. They’d only be able to take cash payments. We needed $36 to make it work, but after emptying our wallets, all Cass and I could muster was a measly $16. Our dreams were shattered…until a mysterious young man with a long beard and grimy clothes (was it Jesus?) popped his own wallet open to reveal what I would estimate to be around $500 in twenties. He sponsored the last $20 we need for our tickets, and in return, we bought him a drink. An eye for an eye.
I would love to heap praise on ‘The Creator,’ but the truth is that I have nothing to say about it. Not because it wasn’t a provocative film, but because we spent the first 100 or so minutes of the runtime with the two rudest people I’ve ever experienced at the movies. They almost unendingly spoke at full volume about completely inane things going on in their lives—signing leases, buying weed, and so on and so forth—and ignored my mean looks and the pointed clearings of my throat. The only time they’d shut up was when the girl was fully straddling the boy so they could make out. All in all, it was a disturbing and distracting experience. By the time I finally got up and asked the theater attendant for assistance, most of the movie had flown over our heads. After being scolded, the two rude patrons left immediately—but thankfully, it wasn’t the last we’d see of them. Not five minutes later, the girl returned for a curtain call; she had apparently lost her keys, so, naturally, she returned to the theater and searched for them while talking on the phone and shining her flashlight around. Outstanding and respectful theater etiquette, and quite likely the work of Satan himself.
As for the Frosty Lemons? It was delicious. And despite my first two subpar experiences there, you can bet I’ll be back at the Orion in no time at all for another night with a cocktail and a movie.
Substack only allows you to put footnotes in the body of a post, but this one is about the title. I’m still tinkering around with how I’ll title these, but I’m leaning towards this convention of: ‘Movie Title’ at the Place I Watched It | Cocktail Name. Hopefully this conveys the most information possible about each post’s topic in the fewest number of words.
The house we’re living in is the first and only spot we checked in on; somehow, it was available for all 13 weeks we needed it. The folks who own it were nice enough to let Cassidy and I stay for a test night at the start of September, just to make sure it would work for our needs. That night, we grabbed pizza from a spot down the road called Hoptown, and Christened our new space with a lovely double feature of ‘Hugo’ and ‘The Shape of Water.’
I will likely bring an end to this tremendous legacy and be the final Lovins boy from Yakima, not only because I exclusively plan on having daughters (boys are icky, whereas I am good and clean), but because if I end up settled down enough in Yakima that I am having children here, something has gone horribly wrong about my life.
“Orion” is a term listed in the Bible at least three times according to my research on the worldwide web, so even more evidence connecting me to the plight of God’s faithful little soldiers. It sure makes you think…