Forks or Bust

Because pronunciation doesn't translate to the written word, I'm giving my roommate Kara and my friend Kara special blog nicknames. The roommate will hereafter be referred to as Nurse Kara, and the friend will be K-Dub (her last name begins with a W, and she said people frequently call her this).

So this Thursday K-Dub, Amy, and I took a little road trip to the Olympic peninsula. Our destination was Forks, Washington, the setting for the Twilight series (and the rainiest town in the U.S.). For those who don't know what Twilight is, I'm referring to Stephanie Meyer's quartet of books describing the angst-filled romance between a teenage human and a vampire...of which K-Dub and I are fans. We planned to visit all the places mentioned in the books, including the beach at La Push, where the Quileute tribe lives. We were on the road by 6:30 am, anticipating a total drive time of 8 hours. Things were pretty foggy for the first few hours, but the sky was blue and we could tell it was going to be a clear day. 

The drive there included the usual road trip shenanigans...the highlight being K-Dub's and my incredibly thorough verbal recounting of the plots of all four books in the Twilight series for Amy (who hasn't read them and now says she never needs to). Also a magical gas station/market where we stopped for a potty break and provisions, which I now want to move into. There was a flat screen tv in the bathroom! It was the nicest gas station I have ever chanced upon while road tripping. A clean and well-lit Shell station will never satisfy me again. 

There was some truly beautiful scenery on our drive that we didn't get to spend much time enjoying, so we decided we are going back to visit the Hoh Rainforest (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hoh_rainforest) in the future. 

Our excitement mounted as we neared Forks. What we found when we arrived...was a bit anticlimactic. A typical small town in a lot of ways, but with signs on almost all the local businesses that said things like "Twilighters welcome here", "Try Bella's berry smoothie", "Team Edward", "Stay in the Edward and Bella Suite." We stopped at the high school to take some pictures, then decided we really didn't feel the need to try and find other landmarks from the books. 

We found a store called Dazzled By Twilight on the main strip and decided to check it out. Inside was a Twilight fan's dream. Tons and tons of merchandise devoted solely to Twilight. We picked up a few souvenirs and talked to the people who run the store and who were thrilled to have us there. We found out later that one of the women who works there actually moved herself and her family to Forks after reading the books. And that the citizens of Forks love their newfound fame, and are trying to get some of the stars of the movie to come out. Amy, K-Dub, and I concurred that this is not likely to happen.

Having significantly boosted the local economy, and all becoming slightly depressed by the small town desperation in the air (and total lack of vampires)...we decided to head to our next destination. First Beach at La Push, where the Quileute tribe resides. The beach itself was seriously beautiful (although it would have been nicer if it was 20 degrees warmer and sunny), but the poverty was sobering. We decided that the Quileutes should open a Twilight-themed casino. If they built it, people would come. 

We ate our overpriced bag lunches from Forks, then spent some time playing on the beach and taking pictures. There was one island about 200 feet from the shore that had a giant cave entrance in it's side, and I decided that if I ever go back to La Push when it's warm, I'm exploring it. We met a youth pastor from Colorado who is bringing a bunch of students for a mission trip in June. He was very nice and took our picture for us, but we found it difficult not to laugh at his extreme use of Christian phrases. 

The trip home seemed kind of never-ending, but it was a good day overall. Fun was had, and I can now say that I've been to Forks. And I can also say with confidence to any Twilight fans out there that can't make this trip in one day...save your vacation days for something else. If I mysteriously disappear in the next few days, it's probably because the Forks Chamber of Commerce sent a team of assassins after me.

The lovely Lake Crescent. Kind of made me wish I had a canoe, and could spend the day paddling around it. Also made me think of my brother Jon, as the surface of the lake is probably ideal for wake-boarding.

Note the excitement level of our faces.

See how the excitement has waned. We were kind of glad all the blinds were closed, so the students of Forks High couldn't see us being geeky.

Me and Amy and a giant tree. Hopefully after our trip to the Hoh rainforest we will have pictures of ourselves and giant living trees. Although it was cool to see signs telling us when the last harvest was (1984), when the current trees were planted (1994), and when they would be harvested (2036).
Practicing my cool vampire face. We got free teeth in Forks that provided lots of entertainment. But we all agreed that sucking the spit out of them afterwards is gross. Funny how I didn't seem to mind when I was a kid.

I told Amy that this picture makes her look like a homeless person who's about to lead a revolution. 
My mom would not have liked this beach, but it was fun to climb on the piles of driftwood. That island in the background is the one with the cave. In addition to exploring the cave, I think it would be fun to climb to the top of the island.

Me being King of the stump. K-Dub's expression in this picture is awesome. I zoomed in and showed it to her, and her exact words were "I look like Smeagol!"

This picture sort of makes me wish that I had brown eyes, too.

If I mysteriously disappear in the next few days, it's probably because the Forks Chamber of Commerce sent a team of assassins after me

Snippets of Seattle

Last week as I was leaving work, a mildly suspicious looking but very articulate woman approached me and said, "excuse me, ma'am, do you have a quarter?" My response was awkward, for several reasons. First, because I am so used to saying "Sorry, I don't" to every crazy person on the street who asks if I have a (insert increment of money/bus pass here). Secondly, because I keep a change purse full of quarters in my locker at work and was trying to remember if I had any in my wallet. I was close enough to the hospital that I would have felt comfortable digging into my bag to find a quarter to give this woman. So I responded kind of slowly and awkwardly, "sorry, I don't have one on me right now." Almost before I got the words out the woman hissed, "LIAR" and walked away. 

There is a special man at my bus stop every morning. He is probably in his late 50's-early 60's, is fairly overweight, and has coke-bottle glasses and a grayish/brown mustache. Every day he is dressed all in black, with a long black trench coat and one of those ski hats that covers your head but has a hole for your face. He has several black utility belt/fanny pack-ish articles strapped across his waist/back/chest. He walks with a black cane. I imagine several different scenarios for him: 

-he believes he is The Guardian of The Realm, who must hold back the forces of darkness

-he is a retired spy who has never acclimated to normal life

-the cane is just a prop and he is really some sort of vigilante/ninja who fights crime in the city at night

-he read somewhere that black is slimming and over-accessorizes because he's insecure

There's a new man in my life. We met last weekend. Isn't he beautiful? Conrad Xavier (Xavi).

We had such a good time together...lots of cuddling.

Here's Irene with some 'movie star' eyes. Beautiful baby niece AKA Droolygums McGee, who's probably cutting teeth based on the amount of time she spent gnawing on things this weekend.

Here's the Boomer-razzi and his well-trained minions. I would estimate the total number of pictures taken in the I house that weekend to be somewhere around 2 million.

The Chronicles of Rachel Continue

Sorry that it's been so long since my last post. To bring you all up to the present...

- The city began the Great Thaw on Christmas Eve. It took a couple of days for everything to melt completely, and all the buses to get back to normal. I had to walk 10 blocks up an enormous hill to the hospital, which caused me to wonder if one's heart can explode within one's chest. I should probably work out more...

- Christmas Day was pretty low-key, but good. I woke up and opened my presents from my family, then skyped with them and watched them open their presents from me. Then my friend Keri (who I work with and is also a transplant from the midwest) came over and we ate lots of food and watched Christmas movies all day.

A picture of my Christmas tree taken on Christmas with my new camera. And one sliver of my face.

- For New Year's Eve, my roommate Kara (pronounced Care-uh) and I went to a party that my friends (via my friend Amy), Kara (pronounced Car-uh) and Jon were having. Fun times were had, and the night seemed to fly by. It always felt like an eternity to reach midnight when I was younger...but we didn't even have time for the 3rd round of the Name Game. 

My roommate, Kara, and I getting ready to go to the party. It only took me 10 minutes of trying to figure out how to set the timer on my camera :)

Kara (the friend), and I, post-midnight. I kept the electric-blue noisemaker as a souvenir. 

It's weird how 'the holidays' are different when you don't get a solid month off from responsibilities. With my job, I'm lucky to even have the actual holiday itself off. It made things more stressful, but also more meaningful, if that makes sense. 

Lately I've mostly been working and hibernating. Everything is gray and rainy all the time, and that makes being snuggled in bed exponentially better. Work continues to drain my mental reserves. There are only five weeks left of our orientation, and we are now expected to 'do it all' (within reason...if it's a huge case we've never seen before or a persnickity doctor who has strange preferences, then we still have help). I'm trying to strike a balance between work and the rest of life, but right now it's kind of hard to do.

I had a dream the other night that included several top-notch dream components: flying, the beach, and a celebrity. In my dream, I was flying (only a couple of feet above the water) along the coast. The water was clear and a vivid turquoise color (like I've only ever seen in pictures), the sand was yellow (like in west africa), and the sky was deep blue (like in seattle on a sunny day). And Jamie Lee Curtis was flying a few feet in front of me. It didn't make sense or have much of a plot... I wasn't trying to go anywhere or flee from anyone, just flying because I could. I woke up smiling. 

My new hat from Target. I find that hats shaped like this one are the best for keeping my glasses dry on days when it's not raining hard enough for an umbrella...which happens a lot.

Madness

Recently (yesterday), you may have seen a news video of a bus hanging over the highway in Seattle.  Thankfully, I was not on that bus. However, I am quite annoyed with the state of things in this city right now. 

For some reason (I've heard several different explanations: it doesn't snow enough here to be worth the cost, salt runs into the Sound and harms the environment, there isn't enough money in the city budget...), Seattle is completely ill-equipped to deal with frozen water falling from the sky. Therefore, the 1.5 inches of snow we got on Thursday just stayed where it fell, was driven and walked on until it became a nice slick sheet of ice, then froze even more solidly overnight. The very steep hills are unmanageable (and the roads are closed, although people ignore that)...there is no getting up or down them by foot or by car without risking bodily injury. Coincidentally, the major hospitals in the area are all at the top of a giant hill. 

A very nice woman that I work with who lives nearby gave me a ride to and from work yesterday, otherwise I don't know how I would have gotten there. Her car has four wheel drive, but even so we averaged 22 mph and passed many, MANY abandoned cars on our way up the hill. We arrived to hear that 16 people had called-in 'sick' (being state employees we are legally not allowed to call in and say we can't get there because of weather), several of my fellow employees had spent the night at the hospital, and one guy fell on the ice when he was walking down the hill after work the night before. He had a splint on one hand, and when I asked what happened, he lifted up his phone to show me a picture of his hand...with his pinky finger bent at a 90 degree angle!!! That image is going to be seared into my brain forever.

So, now I'm trapped in my apartment until the temperature gets above freezing and this stuff melts off the roads and sidewalks. And it's supposed to sleet/snow again on Sunday :( All I want for Christmas is for that NOT to happen. If things get really bad, I will just call in 'sick' next week. I'm not going to risk my life to get to work. 

Please call and/or send me amusing internet videos to keep me entertained...my roommate just left for Portland for the holidays and I am going to go stir crazy.

Toboggans in the snow...

Recently there's been a lot of excitement about the weather. The threats of Cold and Snow have been looming for the last week. My roommate assured me that they always make a big deal about the possibility of snow here, and that it usually doesn't pan out. Lo and behold, it snowed! Only a little bit (and hardly any of it stuck to the roads since it's been so warm), but right now it is 28 degrees and it snowed and it's a BIG DEAL. It's supposed to stay below freezing for the next week, and the local newspeople can barely contain the excitement in their voices. I'm sure they are hoping for hazardous road conditions, accidents, and various other weather-related catastrophes. 

So yesterday I was planning to go to my church's Christmas concert, and I called Amy's friend Kara to see if she and her husband would be interested in joining me (they live about 50 minutes south of the city). Kara said that she was actually going to call me and see if I wanted to come to a concert downtown that she had two extra tickets to (she and a friend from work had been given 4 tickets for free from a client). I said yes, and invited my friend Wendy from work. Amy is back in Chicago for a few weeks for break, otherwise she would have been there, too :( 

It was the annual Winter Warmth concert, by 103.7 The Mountain, at the Paramount Theater downtown (www.theparamount.com).  The lineup included Matt Nathanson, Ingrid Michaelson, Augustana, and The Pretenders. All of them sounded familiar to me except the Pretenders. Sorry if that makes anybody feel old. The crowd was probably 75% middle-aged (and up) people. You could totally tell who was there for which artist. Matt Nathanson was great...he came out onstage with only an acoustic guitar. He was funny and a talented performer. Ingrid Michaelson was also impressive. A beautiful voice (although I've realized that I tend to like male voices just a little bit better than female ones), and some really moving lyrics. She was also funny, and seemed like somebody authentic that you could chat with in a bookstore or something. Augustana was...well they made me feel old. First of all, I don't think males need to wear jeans that tight, ever. Secondly, the lead singer appeared to be doing his best impression of Captain Jack Sparrow meets Michael Jackson. On several occasions he would let go of his guitar mid-song to wave his hands spastically around in the air (like out of control spirit fingers). I wondered if this was normal behavior for him, but Kara had seen them in concert before and verified that he was in fact "coked out of his mind." Pretty sad what 'success' can lead to. When the Pretenders finally came on, the old people went nuts. It was quite funny to see them all bobbing around, throwing the 'rock&roll' hand into the air, and singing along. I kept waiting for a song I recognized, but one never came. So we left before their set was over. I felt the judgmental looks of the middle-aged people around us, but chose not to feel guilty about the year of my birth. It's not my fault that I'm young, people. 

When we left the concert, the flurries had turned into genuine flakes. I walked 8 blocks through the city, about 10 feet behind Eyeball guy who was popping his eyeball out with a plastic spoon every time people approached going the opposite direction. Mostly people ignored him, which says a lot about this city. "I live in Seattle. I am completely unfazed by a stranger walking up to me on the street at 11 o'clock at night and popping his eyeball out." By the time I got to my bus stop, the flakes were HUGE (seriously the biggest I've ever seen). It was beautiful. Eyeball guy (of course he was getting on the same bus as me), turns to me and says, "Isn't it weird how when your hands get really cold they get all retarded? Like they don't work right...they're retarded." I nodded politely and then looked away when he popped his eyeball out at me. I almost offered him my gloves, but they were bright purple and I didn't want to offend him. In retrospect, he probably wouldn't have minded.

Christmastime means laughter...

When I returned to my apartment after Thanksgiving, this is the first thing I saw upon opening the door:

Bewildered by such hideousness and a bit startled, I stepped closer...

And felt the coal-black eyes of the sock reindeer peering into my very soul.

Thank goodness it was just a joke. I was worried that Kara and I had very different taste in Christmas decorations, and I couldn't think of anything positive to say that wouldn't be an outright lie. Of course, now we've decided to keep him up because he's grown on us, and we like to observe the varying reactions of our guests. They can be quite entertaining.

Yesterday I did a little Christmas shopping, and then decorated the apartment:

Found the perfect little tree at Target.

Here it is in the light.

And a garland for the 'kitchen.' 

It's very wonderful and Christmas-y feeling. I cannot wait to have the lights off and the tree on and sit by the fire drinking eggnog and listening to carols. I've already bought the eggnog...

I'm in love with a girl

And her name is Irene / AKA Sparky / AKA my Baby Niece (no longer tiny). I took these pictures while I was holding Irene in one arm and my camera in the other. She thought that my camera was the best and most interesting toy ever...which made it easy to get some cute close-ups.

So my trip home for Thanksgiving was pretty great, but a little too short. Thursday was a daze of turkey and family and dogs and the baby...I only managed about 2 1/2 hours of sleep during the red-eye flight (which, to be fair, was only 3 hours long), then a 30 minute nap on the second flight. Planning a trip around the thought that "I'll just sleep on the plane, it'll be fine," is a terrible idea.

A good chunk of Friday was spent at Jeff and Amie's place, putting together furniture from Ikea (which everyone knows I love to do). Then in the afternoon/evening all the family from Chicago who came to town for the baby shower came over to my parents' for pizza. Porca Fuera was played, and a fun time was had by all. 

Saturday was Amie's baby shower,which was really fun in spite of the fact that I did not win the celebrity baby names game. I left me wondering what kind of shower I could convince someone to throw me without getting married or having a baby. Perhaps a "6 month anniversary in Seattle" shower, or a "finished with orientation" shower, or a "becoming an aunt for the 2nd time" shower. Just so you know, if anybody wants to run with any of these ideas, they totally can.

My flight home on Sunday morning was slightly delayed due to the beautiful winter wonderland that I awoke to. They had to de-ice all the planes (how necessary is this, MGW?), and for some reason they can't do it until everyone is crammed onto the plane like overstuffed livestock. I was all the way in the back, surrounded by a sea of whiny kids (one of whom insisted on kicking my chair about every 2 minutes for the entire 4-hour flight). I felt sort of like one of those cranky, kid-hating people by the time I got to Seattle. Funny, considering the way this post began.

Anyway, coming home (to Seattle) did feel like 'coming home' which was kind of unexpected. I guess home is where your stuff is :) It was great to see my family, friends, and dog...but it's good to be back, too.