Who knows what evil lurks in the hearts of men?

The Shadow knows.

So James had a hankerin' to watch the old 1994 version of The Shadow (not that there's a new version or anything).  Anyway, while I was watching, I found myself oddly attracted to the Shadow.  Not hot young Alec Baldwin, but his masked counterpart.  Then the resemblance hit me...

It's the noses.  :)  Also, deep green eyes.  I feel pretty lucky to still be smitten with my man after four years, and look forward to being smitten for years to come.

Anyway, it was a pretty good movie if you're not looking to take it too seriously.  

Last Saturday, James and I drove up to Seattle to visit our favorite Seattlites, Holly and Nathan. We woke up early-ish (hey, it's my day off, let's be realistic!) and got fancy pastries and hot chocolate from a posh little bakery in Hillsdale, and then drove up to our hotel in Bellinham, across the bridge from Seattle proper. After setting in, we met up with H&N at their apartment to carpool to the Seattle Art Museum, where there was an Edward Hopper exhibit that James was keen on seeing.

My only experience with Edward Hopper was the classic Nighthawks, which sadly wasn't in the exhibit, but I was touched by the melancholic works of the Norman Rockwell contemporary. My favorite was The Automat.

Nighthawks

The Automat

After seeing Hopper's work, we decided to get our admission money's worth and check our the rest of the museum. There were some fascinating Native American artifacts, notably Tlingit Indians, of which Holly is a quarter member. I didn't used to get drawn into Native American stuff, but after our trip to Alaska, I finally feel like I can see the intent of the totem art and appreciate its beauty and majesty. Also, we saw some masks made with human hair! Freaky. :)

I wish I'd thought to write down the names and artists of my favorite non-Hopper works of art, but I just allowed myself to get drawn into the experience without concern for the future impact. I'll admit, it made for a better experience, if not a better blog. Fortunately for me, google came to the rescue!

I loved this Lin Onus painting called Gathering Storm. You can't see the detail in this pic, but the detail of layering is beautiful and it boggles my mind.

Gathering Storm, by Lin Onus

This sculpture is called Mann und Maus, by a we-can-assume-German artist Katharina Fritsch. Not only did the stark black-vs-white imagery captivate me, but the thing is like 7 1/2 feet tall!

Mann und Maus, by Katharina Fritsch

So, after breakfast in a swanky bakery and all afternoon in a museum, we were all cultured up for the main event: Monster Truck Show!! This was the initial reason for visiting, as H&N were totally excited and we were willing to suspend our hoity-toity Portland standards for an evening. We started to Redneck-down by going to an awesome BBQ joint where they serve a ridiculous amount of meat and sides on an inverted garbage can lid, "family style" (don't ask who's family, for I surely don't know). There were at least half a dozen kinds of sauce to slather on the food, but I was content with those cooked on them, downing my share of brisket and ribs, steering clear of the corn-on-the-cob (braces) and chicken (this is BBQ - mammals only!). By this time, our party had doubled thanks to the company of Holly's two cousins, Nathan's co-worker and their long-time friend John, so it was a fun party. Since dinner took longer than expected (they mean slow roasted), the girls took off to leave the boys to handle the check so we could pick our tickets up from Will Call. Where does one go for a Monster Truc Show in Seattle? One doesn't - one goes to Tacoma! Of course, being a good friends, I won't even mention how Holly got the girl's car totally lost in Tacoma. At least we still got there before the boys.

In retrospect, it was a lot of fun. There were these buggy races, and of course the fabulous antics of Grave Digger and his cronies. There was a wonderfully helpful (if somewhat toothless - I am not exaggerating) fellow sitting in front of us who explained things like when the announcer yells "WHAT TIME IS IT??!" we're supposed to reply "FREESTYLE!!!" and not "Um...9:30?" as I was tempted to do. Three things that surprised me that I later realized shouldn't have: (1) it was cold, which was probably because they had to keep the heated-but-carbon-monoxide-heavy air circulating with the clean-but-cold January air from outside, (2) it was loud (which got me to thinking: why is it whenever we visit Seattle I lose a little bit of my hearing?), and (3) it was fun! Just let that mob-mentality seep into your subconscious and let the inner redneck out! What time is it? FREESTYLE!!!

After the show, I was tempted to find a late-night Winchell's or something, afraid to swing back into my normal lifestyle too quickly by finding an upscale establishment for dessert. We found a bar not too far from the Tacoma Dome that served dessert and let us sit in the closed restaurant area for the benefit of Holly's not-quite-21-year-old cousins. It was a good compromise, and we arrived back at our hotel in smooth transition. Ah, back to insular yuppie DINK lifestyle!

All in all, had a great time!

Housekeeping

Cleaned the toilets today. Should it bother me that the sight of a white and shining toilet tugs at my brain in the same way as a blank canvas: the niggling feeling that it's missing something?

I suppose if nothing else, I guess this is a stark testament to my stellar housekeeping instincts.

Ennui

Ugh, sometimes I really hate hormones.  After over three years of regulated hormonal levels, I'd forgotten what a roller coaster "the cycle" could be.  Let's face it: I'm not the most steady person with regulation, much less hormonally free-styling.  So I've been up, down, hot, cold, and everything in between, for the last four weeks.  And now it's officially PMS week, and I can feel it.  I've picked a fight with James, nearly wrecked the car, and caught myself in self-destructive thinking more times than I can count in the last few days.  The only consolation is that I'm a teensy bit more self-aware of the impact hormones play on my emotions than I was four years ago.  Back then, if I was feeling moody, I would just lash out without thinking about whether the instigator was really worthy of my energy or if the hormones were making me blow an innocuous situation out of proportion.  Drove James crazy.  Over the last few days, I've felt crummy and have lashed out a few times, but was usually able to catch myself at least understanding the cause-and-effect nature of hormones vs. Kristina (vs. the world).

Perhaps "ennui" is the wrong term, but it sounds so fancy, as if using a French term makes it classier to be moody.  Perhaps I should stick to good ol' American "despondence" or "melancholic." 

Do you know why they call it PMS?  Because "Mad Cow Disease" was already taken.

Oh, and in case you're putting 2 and 2 together (you clever mathematician!) we're not trying to get pregnant just yet, so put back that layette set, pack up the booties.  All in good time, all in good time...

Winter Wonderland

I haven't posted in a while.  It isn't for lack of time or events to write about; I've just been lazy and neglectful.  Guilty.  In penance, I should most likely write a fabulous post, full of detailed stories and colorful pictures.  We'll see what you get:

Snow.  It started snowing last Sunday morning.  I was almost to work at seven when I saw the first flakes drifting down to the earth.  I parked in one of the covered lots and made my way to my assigned floor, throwing myself into the flurry of activity that is the first few hours of any day on a hospital floor.  Get report, look up more information in the computer, prioritize patient care, touch base with the CNA, pick up my first patient's medications from the med room, see each patient (while trying not to be side tracked too much by each patient's needs before I can get in and see the other people, but still remember their needs for follow-up), give out medications, follow up on pain medications, re-medicating if necessary, paging the doctor for any concerns, coordinating with the various other disciplines and auxiliary services of the hospital for the day's care, so on and so forth.  Hopefully, by ten, I can sit down and try to remember everything that happened so I can document it in the computer.  In any case, at some point during this chaotic whirlwind of activity, I noticed that the whole campus had become blanketed in snow.  James called to tell me that they'd cancelled church that morning, and every room I went in seemed to have the news playing, going into great detail about the weather conditions.  Although getting home was a bit of a drama, I managed it.  I then shrugged off this whole snow thing, chalking this up to Portland's annual winter scare - all bluff and bluster.  I would bus into work tomorrow and then things would be back to wet as usual.

Perhaps I should explain my pre-conceived notions of snow.  Growing up in Texas meant that it snowed once, maybe twice, each winter - usually in January or February.  The whole metroplex would shut down for a few days while it thawed, turned to ice, and then melted away.  Now, when I say it snowed once, I mean one snow fall, not one week or one period of snow fall.  Once the snow ceased to fall from the sky, that was your quota for the year.  What you saw was what you got, until it melted.  Upon moving to Portland, with its wetter-but-otherwise-similarily-temperate-winters, I was never forced to change my opinions.  Of course as children, we made the most of our snow days, being young, resilient, and liberated from school.  It's very different when you work at a hospital and still have to go in to work on a snow day.  At least the hospital was warm and I could stay indoors for twelve hours at a stretch.  In any case, imagine my surprise when I awoke Wednesday morning to find, not wet streets and drizzling rain, but another white blanket of snow.  Huh.

Since Wednesday, there has been at least a light snowfall each day.  I thought things might be calming down as of yesterday, had James not told me of the weather report: lots of snow this weekend.  Woke up to a fresh dusting this morning and thought about just staying in the house all day, but James wanted to adventure, so out we went.  (Now, that's not to imply that James forced me out of the house . . . he bribed me with promises of Grand Central Bakery breakfast and hot chocolate.)  So we bundled up and thought for a brief moment about walking the 1.6 miles to Multnomah Village, but somewhere between our door and the end of the parking lot, we decided to just try and drive the car.  After several futile, and probably comical to any observers  watching from a warm window, attempts to get our car up a slight hill and onto the main road, we opted instead to break out the snow chains rather than either walk or retreat back to our apartment.  We got the chains on and that's all I'm going to say about that wonderful experience.  We went to breakfast, then made several stops for some last minute Christmas shopping, got something for lunch, and made our way home.  Throughout the day, a steady stream of dry, powdery snow drifted down into our eyes and onto our car.  Every time we drove to another destination, we had to both brush the car off and scrape the windows (as heating up the interior melted the snow and re-froze before we got back to the car).  

I don't intend for this to sound as if I've been complaining all week long.  Several times while coming home, I've found myself giggling with glee at the opportunity to catch snowflakes on my tongue, or falling up to my knees in drifted snow.  If it wasn't so cold and wet afterwards, snow would be really fun.  As it is, my toes are thawing, the heater is on, and I'm happy for a warm cat in my lap as we watch the snow continuing to fall onto our long-dead herb garden on the back porch.

So, there you go.  A lovely post about the snow.  Oh, and you wanted pictures, too...

Winter Wonderland

One of our munchkin neighbors, bundled up for the snow.

Fluff post

*Grab the nearest book.

*Open the book to page 56.

*Find the fifth sentence.

*Post the text of the sentence in your journal along with these instructions.

*Don't dig for your favorite book, the cool book, or the intellectual one: pick the CLOSEST.

"So he sat down on the stone in the middle of the stream, and sang another verse of his song, while he wondered what to do."

Any guesses as to what the first book I grabbed was?

Hallowe'en Adventures

Mom and I took Oscar to the Pumpkin Patch on Sauvie's Island yesterday.  He had a lot of fun climbing the giant hay stack and looking at the animals in the barn.  Then we got some local produce and had a bite to eat, by which point we were all tuckered out!  What fun!

A couple of pumpkin-heads.

Oscar emerges victorious from the tunnels under the haystack.

Lots of fun with "up" and "down".

They look like Uncle Jared's chickens, but one goes "cock-a-doodle-doo!"

Playing sure makes a kid hungry.  

When will Aunt Kristina get back with that food?!

Meanwhile, in the Work-a-day world...

James had a lot of fun with his co-workers today.  I'll let the picture speak for itself.  (And before you make any snotty "there's no green Wiggle!" comment, just remember that we don't have kids and assembled the costumes with very little research.  Then we were too lazy to go out and buy a purple shirt.)

The Wiggles: Jeff, Greg, Murray, and Anthony

The Wiggles 2: James, Patrick, Juan Diego, and Jon

Their cheerful, harmonized singing is what gets them through the day with a smile.