White Christmas!!

For years, I've lived in such a climate that the chances of seeing snow fall on Christmas Day are almost impossible. I recall one year that it snowed in Texas in mid December, but had all melted by the 25th. Last year it snowed right after the new year (on the second day of school, in fact, which considerably increased my new school anxiety), but in all my memory, I cannot ever recall seeing snow on the ground, much less fall from the sky, on Christmas.

It snowed today.

Squee! We woke up relatively later than usual to full stockings and gifts huddling happily around the base of our diminutive tree. James loves surprises and was happy with the things I got him. I, who dislike surprises and gave James a list weeks ago, was pleasantly surprised to be pleasantly surprised by a few gifts that he took a gamble in getting me without consulting me first. :) And Hamlet was ecstatic with his live catnip plant but has yet to figure out that the birdfeeder on the back porch was a gift to amuse him when the birds find it (he can't get out, so the birds are safe).

I had just finished hanging the birdfeeder and James was working on installing our new 42" plasma TV (a combination new job/Christmas gift to ourselves) when we looked out the window and saw big white snowflakes falling from the sky. It was a White Christmas! Not only did it snow, but it stuck to the ground on our back porch and covered our car! But the best miracle is that is stopped short of making the roads hazardous to drive, so we could go see a movie, which happened in the form of Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street. Although not necessarily an uplifting Christmas movie by any stretch of the imagination, it was a fabulous specimen of the artistic cinema, and Johnny Depp is a fabulous as ever.

So we left the theater with our minds turned to food, but all of our tried-and-true restaurants between the theater and home were closed for the holiday (the nerve!). So we took a gamble and went to a Thai place that we had often passed on our way to another Thai place (that mailed out coupons on occasion, but was closed). Thai Rose turned out to be a wonderful place, with clean bathrooms and good, affordable food, a winning combination.

Now if only the Blazers win against Seattle, this Christmas will be perfect.
Well, perfect for James. It's already perfect for me.

Baking Madness

So, each year since James and I have been together (except for the year we flew to Texas for Christmas) we've made something edible and yummy for Christmas presents. My theory is that if a gift is edible, it doesn't obligate the reciever to reciprocate, but is also adequate as a return gift in the event that the reciever does indeed present a gift. Safe. The year we were engaged, we made fudge. We had to stick to the marshmallow cream type, because the one attempt I made at the authentic version ended up more like thick frosting than anything solid. Last year it was truffles. Except for a minor meltdown when I spilled chocolate all over the kitchen rug, it was a success.

This year was bread. I waited until after our Class Cookie Party and made lemon-cranberry-walnut bread, pumpkin-gingerbread, eggnog bread, apple-cinnamon-oat bread, and lemon-poppyseed tea bread in mini loaves for gifts to family and friends, as well as two loaves of German stollen bread (like fruitcake) for Christmas Eve breakfast. We turned one of the loaves (the one I subsitituted the fruitcake mixture for raisins, cranberries and walnuts) into yummy bread pudding for Christmas morning breakfast.

But the piece de resistance was the Buche de Noel, a chocolate jellyroll frosted to resemble a Yule Log, complete with rosemary garnish and merengue mushrooms. I was so impressed with myself that I had James ask our photography-savvy neighbor Will over to take some "food porn" pictures of it, posted below. We took the cake to my parent's Christmas Eve gathering, and I felt appropriately lauded on my pastry chef aptitude. And it tasted good, too! A pound of butter in the frosting alone will do that, in my experience.




So I think I'm baked out for the year. No more pastry work until 2008.

Busy season!

On spacers:

So I'm getting braces in the near future to complete the orthodontia my parents started when I was in gradeschool. Because of the almost-twenty-year hiatus, I get to have four teeth pulled before the application of the hardware, but more on that later. The event that has eclipsed my entire weekend has been the SPACERS that I was instructed to put between my teeth prior to getting other teeth pulled. For those of you fortunate enough to be happy with the teeth you grew naturally, I shall explain. Spacers (at least my generation of spacers, James had a different kind as a kid) are llittle plastic donuts that sit between your molars and your molar and pre-molar, to make room for the caps that will later serve as anchors for the braces. They seem so small, but have managed to become a source of almost-invisible torture for the last three days. It hurts to chew, it hurts to sit and hold my teeth slightly apart, it hurts to press my teeth together (although I think I'm clenching at night due to the new sensation), and I find myself relying on carefully doled out half tablets of Vicodin left over from a dimly remembered back spasm. I keep thinking to myself, "this, too, shall pass...probably about the time I get four teeth pulled out of my head and really have an excuse for Vicodin...and then I get braces put on and tightened every 4-6 weeks...well, at least I'll lose some weight since I can only eat applesauce painlessly, which is fat free..." And I exaggerate. I can also eat ice cream and pancakes painlessly, which are not fat free. And due to the super-busy social nature of this last weekend, I have suffered the pain of firmer foods for the gustatory pleasure they impart. Viva la Vicodin!

Speaking of the busy weekend...

This is the first December that James hasn't worked at the hotel, and therefore the first December that he has weekends off. So of course, we've managed to fill every second of every day that he has off this Christmas Season with stuff to do. This last weekend was the epitome of busy Christmas weekends:

Birthday Party #1:
We started by planning and coordinating a surprise 60th birthday party for Dad on Friday night. We all met at the Italian restaurant near their house, complete with balloons and a joint gift of a fancy saw/drill that Dustin claims is "the best" from all of the local kids (didn't have time or energy to pull the Texas kids in on the deal). Dad was delighted, especially when the roaming accordian player (oh yes, that kind of Italian restaurant!) played him Happy Birthday in English and Italian, as well as several other Italian songs and The Beatles "When I'm Sixty-Four." Mom fed Oscar a whole scoop of ice cream and he went ape-crazy with the sugar high.

Shopping, shopping, shopping:
Saturday morning, James cleaned the house while I did some errands, including getting the oil changed in the car and the final stuff for our Sunday School Christmas Cookie Party (more on that later). I had just enough time to run downtown to Powell's book store (Non-Portlanders: a must-see when you visit, wonderful place) to get an EKG textbook for next term and mom's Christmas present (tsk-tsk, no peeking!), but underestimated the meter time, so I had to run to get to my car before the approaching meter-man got there (I could see him coming!). And I tripped and did a face plant right there on the sidewalk. I also scraped the corners of my two books, which is sad because they don't heal as well as I do. But I didn't get a parking ticket!!

Christmas Party #1:
So we decided to throw an end-of-the-year Cookie Party for our 5-6 year-old Sunday School kids, since they'll be getting a new teacher next year, and we'll be getting new kids (they look so young!). All five showed up and good-natured chaos ensued. With myself at the rolling-pin-helm, we rolled out the sugar cookie dough, cut shapes, put slightly misshapen/finger-smudged cookies on trays and baked them. Then out came the frosting, in seven toothpaste-tube-like vessels, and the real fun began. I manned the kitchen at this point, keeping up the blank cookie demand, and James helped direct the artistic side at the table. Soon everyone had enough cookies to share with their family, after eating some on the way. Since we still had 45 minutes of our two hour window before parents came back, we pulled out the glitter and glue sticks and make Christmas Cards and a big glitter mess, but it was fun. We rounded off the party with more cookies for some and a game of Uno for others. They're great kids, and James and I will miss having them in our class.

Birthday Party #2:
We got the glitter and cookie crumbs vacuumed up. This was the last straw for poor Hamlet, who had already put up with a morning vacuuming pre-party and then five curious children, and we had to spend several minutes reassuring him that the house was once more safe for kitty-kind. After a short rest, we made our way over to Aubrey's house for Oscar's 1st birthday party. We came, we ate, we sang, and we left. It was a short jaunt to show familial support and love, but we reallllllly wanted to see the Christmas Revels, which James's friend Nathan was assistant director of this year.

Christmas Performance #2 (after last weekend's Coats concert)
So we dashed downtown and met Nathan outside the buiding. He directed us to the floor manager ("Attacus, in the banana-yellow jacket") who scored us primo seats on the aisle, row G. Apparently, the Christmas Revels is an organized production put on in several cities across the country, which revives the music and Christmas/Winter Solstice tratitions of the Middle Ages. Just like last year, when Nathan was in a starring role, the performance was wonderful. There was singing, audience participation and singing, beautiful dancing, and a plot, which is apparently unique to Portland's Christmas Revels. We got to sing along to a few songs, including one famililar song, the 12 Days of Christmas, in which James was invited to act out the role of "Seven Swans a Swimming." We went home exhausted, but filled with Christmas cheer.

Christmas Party #2:
Sunday morning dawned and we relaxed for the first half of the day, watching the Steelers lose to the Jacksonville Jaguars (much to James's dismay), and planning our lesson for Sunday School (The Golden Rule). Then we got dressed up and made an appearance at James's work Christmas Party. I got to meet his boss, his boss's boss, and their wives, as well as some of his coworkers and eat some scrumptious food (I even braved the crunchy chips because the dip was so tasty). We dashed out before people started getting drunk (now I'll never know) to make it to church on time. The lesson was a success, and we went home to change for...

Birthday Party #3:
yet another family gathering, this time the re-scheduled celebration of Jared's graduation/birthday (he had the flu for the original time slot). There was plenty of fruit and cheescake to satisfy my aching teeth (and aching belly), and lots of good conversation and socialization. Jared felt very celebrated. James and I got him a Bar Mitzvah card (when else will we ever be able to give one of those?) and mom's card sand "Kung Fu Fighting," much to Oscar's fascination.

After a weekend like that, I have to admit that I love Christmas time, but I can really only hadle it once a year!

It's beginning to feel a lot like Christmas

So I've been a Grinch this year. Every commercial I saw, every window advertisement, and every radio blip about "get him/her the Perfect Gift this Holiday Season..." sent me off on a muttering tirade about greedy, over-commercialized, consumer whores, trade deficit, crap from China, etc, etc, etc.

I was getting cranky.

Then James took me Christmas tree shopping. We were planning on repeating our cone-shaped rosemary bush from last year (which sadly died before we got it out to the back porch, but we still left the withered corpse out there until late spring), but then we saw some 3-4' nobles that were oh so cute, cheaper, and smelled like Christmas! I got all Christmas-giddy, and now we have a little mini-tree in our front room. Like I told James after we decorated our diminuitive tree,

Now it feels like Christmas!

Then, last week, James treated me to one of my presents early, in the form of a Christmas Coats concert!!! The Coats are a local (Seattle) a cappela band, and I am oh so fond of them (www.thecoats.net), so I was practially gushing when James surprised me by kidnapping me (he had to warn me so I could study around the interruption) down to Salem for the concert. They always put on such a great show, and I got their latest Christmas album to remember it. As I sat gushing in my seat (row L), I told James

Now it feels like Christmas!

So after finals are done (this week!), we're hosting our Primary class in a cookie party to celebrate, since many of them will be moving on to the next age group. We'll decorate sugar cookies, play games, and listen to Christmas tunes. Ah what fun! More on that after the event, but

It's beginning to feel a lot like Christmas!

James's Post

Apostrophes have often been a mystery to me. I've been married to James for two and a half years now, and I just learned where to put the apostrophe when something belongs to him, with a little help from Jack Lynch. He has a pretty helpful website at http://andromeda.rutgers.edu/~jlynch/Writing/a.html#apostrophe.

So here's what I learned about James and apostrophes:

...There's also the opposite case: when a singular noun ends in s. That's a little trickier. Most style guides prefer s's: James's house. Plain old s-apostrophe (as in James' house) is common in journalism, but most other publishers prefer James's. It's a matter of house style... [Entry revised 14 Sept. 2004, with a tiny correction on 21 Oct. 2004; revised again 12 Jan. 2005.]

And in the interest of the APA:
Lynch, J. (May 9, 2007). Apostrophe. In Guide to grammar and style. Retrieved November 28, 2007, from http://andromeda.rutgers.edu/~jlynch/Writing/a.html#apostrophe.

So, because James's mother is an English teacher, I shall change my wicked ways and give him the seemingly superfluous "s" when things are his. We both try very hard to please our mother-in-laws.

The rest of the trip

So, the Saturday after Thanksgiving, we hired some friends to shoot our family. Our long-time friends just started a photography business and my father-in-law paid them to take pictures of us all. In spite of some logistical and some motivational hiccups, we did manage to get all Lee Ritzman descendents in the same place at the same time, many of them actually smiling. I'll post some pictures when our photographer friends are done editing them.

Afterwards, anyone not completely sick of Family Time were treated to a fun mini-train ride and lunch at a local Mexican place by the family patriarch.














We decided to stay with Matt and Julie for our last night in the San Francisco area, so we could hang out with them and their two cool kids, Kallan and Josie. We played Settlers of Cattan, ate Thai food, and Kallan and I took pictures with the camera on my laptop, making full use of the Effects features.

Franksgiving

So the Ritzman family has long since given up on laying claim to traditional holidays for family gatherings, capitulating to the more established and structured families of their children’s spouses. For the last two years, we have driven down to San Francisco to celebrate Thanksgiving on Friday, since everyone already had plans with their in-laws for The Day. After two years, we figure we can call it an official tradition, meriting a name and an assumption that it will happen next year. Thus was born Franksgiving.

We left Portland before the crack of dawn (which happens later and later these days, so it's not too surprising that we beat it) and met James' parents in Albany, where we piled into the back of their minivan with James' brother Mark and several large Christmas presents for the grandkids. The drive down was fairly uneventful except for a near death experience involving an SUV and a semi-truck, and we arrived in San Francisco before sunset.

A side note: I refer to all places around the San Francisco Bay Area as "San Francisco" because I honestly have no idea where I am most of the time I am down there.

Thanksgiving dinner consisted of a potato bar at James' sister Emilyann's house, after playing with her three highly energetic children, which made a wonderful dinner for us road-weary travelers.

We stayed at a hotel that night, which was n-i-c-e. Visiting family is all well and good, but sometimes you just need a place (possibly one with an in-room spa) that you can call your own space to feel like you've actually had "a vacation." We still felt this way when the fire alarm woke us all up at 8am and we had to evacuate the building. It's a good thing I wasn't wearing bright orange "doctor operation" pajamas, or the whole situation might have been embarrassing. Ok, maybe I was. At least it was warm enough for a November morning.

Since Franksgiving Feast wasn't to happen until 4pm, and some indiscreet smoker decided that we were waking up at 8am, we decided to go visit the Winchester Mystery House down the road a bit. It's a mansion built by Sara Winchester, the heir to the Winchester rifle fortune, who built this crazy house to appease the spirits of those killed by the rifle of her husband's family. Interesting house, but the most bizarre thing there must have been our tour guide. A rather flamboyant man in his fifties/sixties from Boston, he just thought he was hi-larious. We thought he was hilarious, too, but not because of his obscure jokes. James bought me two pairs of earrings as souvenirs, since I didn't have anything to that point to remind me of our many excursions to San Francisco.

We came by Emilyann's house early in the afternoon and set up the tables with festive paper plates and our fabulous centerpieces (James and I made them). Then we got to play with the kids and in-laws. James helped our nephew NayNay and niece Kallan make foam princess castles and gingerbread houses (*sigh* respectively) from kits that Emilyann got at Michaels. Julie, Mark and I played Settlers of Catan, with Tycho helping Julie roll the dice and acting as banker. We played again the next night with Matt, Julie, James and myself, and we think we like it enough to get it for our collection of rarely-used board games taking up space in our closet.

Then we feasted. All the traditional players were there, including the Ritzman traditional cranberry fluff and about six different kinds of rolls. Also, there was a fabulous dish of baked root vegetables, including BEETS and PARSNIPS! Fabulous. the kids sat at the long table with the adults and all had a good time. We finished our game of Settlers over pumpkin pie and ice cream, cleaned up, and went back to our hotel for another night of "our own space" luxury.

No-More-Guilt Quilt

So my mother-in-law has been quilting since James can remember. She goes to conventions, teaches classes, and fills their house with quilts in various stages of completion. Some have themes, some have hidden pictures or puzzles, some are simple while others are busy and full of life. James has a quilt that his mother made him as a boy with applique trains, cars, planes and other boy-centric machines that now graces our front room for cold weather. It's a twin size, which is perfect for curling up in front of the TV. In fact, all of the quilts James' mother made for him up to his marriage to me were twin sized. She called them Guilt Quilts, meant to encourage single occupancy until she made the Wedding Quilt. With four children established in happy, functional marriages (and one to go) it must be working on some level.

New skills, new stuff

Today was my third day of Med-Surg clinicals. Through a fluke of my planned patient going into the ICU last night, I was assigned the same patient that I had last week, meaning that I already knew a lot about her. My preceptor nurse was great, allowing me to hang IV meds and flush lines on some of her other patients. I also got to give my patient a Sub-Q (subcutaneous) injection and change her IV line to a saline lock. I also got to watch a COLONOSCOPY! So cool to watch, and the endoscopy nurse was great about explaining her job both before and during the procedure.

Nursing students get excited about the strangest things.

We went down to Newport last weekend to see James' parents and watch a play put on by the local theater group. James' father is pretty involved in the group and designed most of the set for this play, "Sweet Charity." It was enjoyable and they had a live orchestra, which put it head and shoulders above their rendition of "The Music Man." One of the co-directors is a professional dancer, so the dance scenes were fantastic.

Also on this trip, James and I were presented with our Wedding Quilt (2 1/2 years after the actual ceremony) by James' wizard seamstress of a mother. It's beautiful in blues and a swirl/leaf pattern, and it matches our bedside tables and dresser beautifully.




We also got two gifts from James' uncle, both souveniers from his (Uncle Vern's) mission in Brazil in the 1960s, delivered via James' parents. The first is a gorgeous painting of Brazil, and the second is a fancy nut bowl. Maybe we'll fill it with...Brazil nuts.

Or maybe not, as I'm not too fond of them. :)

Gainfully Employed

The long version:
So James has been working at this posh hotel in downtown Portland since a few weeks after we got married (in Spring 2005). He quickly was promoted from Personal Concierge to Front Desk Supervisor and, although the tips and fringe benefits are great (we've eaten at some fancy restaurants that we never would have been able to afford without the complimentary gift certificates), he has pretty much hated his job for about two years now. He applied for some other job, mostly in professional office settings, but with most of his job history reading "hotel and mission to Brazil," he didn't get any nibbles. Great for the self esteem and continuing to work at the hotel just kept the punches coming.

Fast forward to Summer 2007. He read about a company that needed a Spanish or Portuguese speaker for an international manufacturing company. Since he's been studying International Studies, Business and Economics for the last three years, and would just pee his pants to have this job, he put in his application. They interviewed him, were impressed, made good noises, and never called back. He called them periodically throughout the next month, and they gave him something that to me looked a lot like The Run Around. In the end, they told him that the position had been eliminated, but "if we get anything else, we'll call you." Yeah, right.

At the same time as all this is going on, a Sales position opens up at the hotel. Thinking to at least advance in the industry where he has experience, James puts his name in for the job. They interview, seem impressed, sound promising, and hire externally. Their reasoning? "James, you have so much potential for great things that we know you'll probably leave us eventually for bigger and better things anyway. So we're hiring someone who will stick around." Sigh.

Ok, now fast forward to October, 2007. The hotel finally recognizes James's great work ethic and determination and offer him a promotion, titled "Facilities Coordinator." The pay isn't much greater, but the experience will open doors to greater things, so he starts to get excited about it. They want an answer by Monday.

Thursday evening, he gets an email from . . . guess who? The international company! They have an urgent to fill position, at almost twice his current salary, with an overwhelming benefit package, and they want HIM!

Hmm . . . tough decision. His boss at the hotel was disappointed, but says if the affordable health benefits, travel to Europe and South America, tuition reimbursement, and business casual atmosphere ever get stifling or blase, he always has a place at the hotel.

James and Hamlet

James is sitting on the blue chair, trying to surf the internet. He checks his email, looks up recent sports scores, maybe a little Wikiwandering. Hamlet is stalking around the chair, looking for the moment to usurp the laptop and cuddle in James's lap. It's impossible to have a large Maine Coon in your lap at the same time as a laptop, especially one with a big, bushy tail that just wants to wave distractingly in front of your screen (perched precariously on your knees). And so, in a way that makes me think James will be a great dad one day, when Hamlet approaches him in the chair, he puts down the laptop and lets the cat blissfully knead his stomach. What a guy.

Hamlet is a kneader. If given the chance, he'll knead your stomach until it's numb, always with a slightly vacuous expression on his little face. He goes into his kneading trance and won't meet your eyes. He was de-clawed by his previous owners (we got him from a shelter), and we think this may have something to do with the kneading fetish.