Category: personal

A couple of weeks ago, we decided to have a sort of non-denominational holiday get together, sent the invitations, and THEN I decided that we should have some sort of a theme. So we thought, why not do it Cuban style? Except that neither of us has cooked Cuban dishes in a long, long time, and now I’m getting a little stressed.
Tons of stuff to do still. To wit:
Drinks: Got the lime juice and the rum for the mojitos and the cuba libres. Got the guava and mango juices. Still need to see if we can find Materva (type of Cuban soda). Will need to ask someone to get vodka and other drinks. In general, I don’t like worrying about booze, as neither of us drinks. But the 40 people coming tomorrow do.
Hors d’Oeuvres: Did the groceries this week. Making the picadillo and empanadas tonight. If enough time, prepare the plantain chips tonight also. Tomorrow: make the cuban sandwiches, prepare crackers with fancy topping, prepare the croquetas; fry the yuca.
Dessert: Still need to order flan. Might be too late now. Might have to skip. Have some Moroccan honeyed confections, but they would clash with the theme. Panic about dessert. Scrap it?
Also still need to clean, decorate, and take a nap before people come.

We spent Thanksgiving weekend with the family, stuffing ourselves with turkey, playing board games, going to the forest, going to the movies, sleeping, lounging, etc. The drive back to Los Angeles, was pretty slow, as we hit pockets of traffic, especially around Magic Mountain.
All in all, we drove about 2,800 miles, ate lots of indulgent foods, walked quite a few miles, spent way too much money, and had lots of fun. But it still feels good to to be back home.

On Monday we drove all the way from Seattle to Ashland. We made very few stops along the way, and got to Ashland at about 5. We walked to Bloomsbury Books and looked around. I found the complete stories of Flannery O’Connor in one volume, so I bought it. I started reading it that same night. She’s probably one of my favorite short story writers–she observes all her characters with the same merciless eye.
Tuesday was another full day of driving, from Ashland, Oregon to Santa Rosa, California. We took only one detour, and that was to Mount Shasta, which was amazing this time of year. It was again a very sunny, warm day, but there was snow still. We took a short hike on the snow, and then ate lunch on a log. The birds kept swooping down trying to steal our food, so we had to finish quickly.
We arrived at my sister’s house around 6 pm, and spent the evening playing with the kids.

This was probably the most enjoyable day we had in Seattle. We took a walking tour of Pioneer Square, starting with a ride on the trolley. The Seahawks were playing, so a lot of people were riding the trolley with us, heading towards the stadium. We started by walking up to Smith Tower, where we rode an antique Otis elevator to the Chinese Room and Observation Deck. When it was built, Smith Tower was the tallest building outside of New York. Now it is still an imposing skyscraper, which houses a variety of businesses and law firms. The Chinese Room is so called because at the time that the building was going up, the Empress of China offered to decorate one floor. Unfortunately all that remains of the original decor is the impressive wood ceilings and a few chairs (one of which was being used by the guy who sold us the tickets–I felt like saying: dude, you’re sitting on an antique! Get up and get a regular chair!) The observation deck is completely cased in to prevent people from jumping off, but there are plenty of big enough openings to take good pictures. It was a very sunny day, as were the other days we were in Seattle, amazingly enough.
After Smith Tower, we took the underground tour, which takes you on a walk through the old streets of Seattle (where Seattle used to be before the great fire of 1889.) Because the good city folks saw no reason to halt the rebuilding while they were deciding on city streets, the whole town was rebuilt on the same level, and then new streets and sidewalks were then added (at a raised level). So the building owners had to take that into account, and create two entrances, one for post-1889, and one for later. Once the new streets and sidewalks were put in (which took years) building owners simply moved their entrances one floor up and condemned all the doors and windows on the level below.
The tour is largely based on a book called “Sons of the Profits”, which at the time it came out was banned by the Seattle School District, making it of course an instant bestseller. Our guide was very funny. He had us step under skylights (which on the regular street level look just like clear glass squares) and yell “Help!”. None of the pedestrians heard us. He said even when they do hear you they don’t think of looking down.
Later we met with our friends and had dinner and dessert in the Capitol Hill area.

On Saturday we hung out with two of our friends who were in town. We read. We played chess. And then at night we went to see the Seattle Symphony at Benaroya Hall. I was quite impressed. They performed two pieces by Sibelius and one by Brahms, and they were fabulous. For whatever reason, the name Benaroya sounds Moroccan to me, but Jack Benaroya probably traces his ancestry somewhere else.

We rode the Monorail to the Experience the Music Project today. When we got there we discovered that the price of admission was $20 per person. A bit stiff for a museum, but it was sort of an all-day experience, so it was worth it. They gave us walkmen, and we could point the device at any artifact in the exhibits and hear more about it. There were also lots of songs you could listen to, of course, and you could bookmark them. Unfortunately, it doesn’t mean you can then buy a CD made of the MP3s you bookmarked, so I’m not sure why they provided the feature. The Jimi Hendrix exhibit was particularly impressive, as was the interactive exhibit on the top floor, where you could learn to play instruments. I found out that I was more of a drums sort of a girl and that I sucked at the piano. We also tried our hand at vocals (“Smells like teen spirit”). Yes, we were awful.
By the time we finished, it was already getting dark so we hurried over to get dinner before catching the latest James Bond in the downtown area.