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.