Cum On Feel The Illinois

I recently took a break from work, relaying message between my feuding sister and mother, Top Chef marathons, and the general hustle and bustle of life to visit an ol’ friend from high school in Chicago. It was hot and I sweated… and that pretty much sums the week up.

Because I’ve spent the last 15 years of my life listening to people not from the Northwest make snide comments about how much it rains here, I’d like to take this time to say I would take 300 overcast, rainy, grey, drizzly days a year over 95 degree, 95% humidity summer days and below 0 cold winter nights any day.

In all the years I’ve lived in Washington, I’ve never once experienced back sweat, or felt like I had to take three showers in one day just to feel clean, or could physically pick up the air and put it in my pocket. I was in that sauna of a city Chicago for six days and have never sweated so much – it wasn’t even that bad in Brooklyn last summer. I don’t understand the appeal of living in any climate region that goes from one extreme to the next. That’s why I love Washington and the Northwest – it’s temperate (and therefore, tolerable).

Either than the ludicis heat, I had a grand ol’ time. Ryen and I went everywhere – the Navy Pier (where we caught an afternoon Cirque Shanghai show), Grant Park, the Art Institute of Chicago, the Adler Planetarium, the Shredd Aquarium, the Lincoln Park Zoo, Magnificent Mile, and more! Chicago struck me as a truly American city – every where you looked it was baseball, apple pie, hot dogs, red, white, blue and Jesus. And that’s not an insult – oh no – I’m just saying it was just very different from the other major American cities I’ve visited, which always seemed far more worldly and a little detached from the Motherland, as if they were too cool for America. Hmph.

Alas, it is nice to be back in grey, overcast Bellingham. I think despite my romantic fantasies about how much fun it would be to live in a big city, I’m really a college town kind of gal. I hate that I never really appreciated Bellingham quite like I should until my final year at WWU. It really is a remarkably quaint city – a “City of Subdued Excitement,” if you will. I expect Corvallis will grow on me after some time and I will consider myself very lucky to have not one but two places to call home…

Oh, Craigslist…

Today I spent the better half of my desk shift browsing Craigslist (so trust me you don’t want to know what I did with the other four hours).  I like Craigslist (and garage sales..and reality television) mostly because I’m a voyeur and I want to see what kind of shit people have laying around in their homes.

I also really love the “Wanted” section, where people ask or plead for certain items they need and/or want.  And usually they are very silly requests – diapers, flea medicine, squirrel traps, etc.  Today I found a woman who needs a “Latex or spandex catsuit” and is willing to pay “good money for it.”  Unfortunately, the listing did not give an explanations for why any woman living in Bellingham, Washington would need a spandex catsuit, but you can trust that I’ve thought of a few plausible reasons in my head. 

Then I found this:

“Smoking Shouldn’t Mean You Can’t Find Love.  We have a brand new Dating Site for Smokers Only. Our first 1000 new members receive a free Lifetime Membership with our compliments. ”  

Now while this dating service seems pretty generous, I’d like to point out the average “lifetime” for a smoker is probably a good 30 years less than the average non-smoker’s and I bet you they are betting on that, too. 

Other great listings today include a woman selling a mink fur cape (Is that anything like a catsuit? No?) and an individual selling the latest issue of Entertainment Weekly to the “best offer.’  I know if I wanted a magazine that was currently on newstands literally everywhere, I would go online to Craigslist first in hopes some charitable person has already finished reading it and is willing to part with it for a few good dollars. 

Honorable mention goes to this lister: “Selling freshly picked blueberries at $2.50 a pound. Minimum order 10 pounds.”  Something tells me by the time I get to that last pound these blueberries won’t be so freshly anything anymore…

The Graduate

Well, well, well – where have I been for the last week, missy? Working on my senior project presentation on the history of american popular music, of course, you horse! And now it is over and now I can officially say: “I graduated from Western Washington University” instead of “Well, I will graduate from Western Washington University pending satisfactory completion of a senior project presentation.” The first is so much more concise to say and does not prompt my mother to sigh loudly and adgitatedly and find (as much) fault with me.

Overall, I think the presentation went well. No one fell asleep – or at least, no one snored loudly and was obvious about the fact they fell asleep. My project supervisor and favorite professor nodded many times during the presentations at things I said, which I am courageously deciding to interpret as a good thing not a “nodding-off-to-sleep” thing. Anyways, I tend to think the worst of everything I do and I’m giving this project a solid D+, so I’m expecting rave reviews tomorrow in the New York Times and Post. Unfortunately I subscribe to neither of these publications so I guess I will never know.

Quite unceremoniously, after four years of hard work and toil, I have to work tonight and cannot go out and celebrate (which is synonomous for “drink like you won’t be going out drinking tomorrow”). But I will be ordering a falafel from the Pita Pit and maybe I will get to watch television, my forbidden fruit since I started this senior project presentation thing a week ago (yes, that’s right – I completed a year-long presentation in a week and I am being awarded a college diploma for all my half-assed efforts!) . A little Scott Baio is 45 and Single is all the reward I need after such a hellish week of research, scouring music libraries, and trying to figure out how to pronounce “timbre.”

Sicko

Aly, Nick and I went to see Sicko this evening, the latest documentary by Michael Moore on the health care system in the United States. First of all, I can’t say I was too shocked by the testimonials he included from health care victims – I myself have been duped and doped by my health insurance (a $400 bill for an “non pre-approved” ambulance ride, $200 for a pregnancy test during a visit to the E.R. for a sprained ankle, prescribed various medicines I was later told were unnecessary for my condition, etc.) and could relate perhaps all too well to their frustrations and the appeals process that are a winding road to absolutely nowhere.

However, I really did enjoy Michael Moore’s film. I know, I know – he can be charged as a bit of a sensationalist at times, but if it inspires people to act, than let ‘er rip, Moore! At least someone has the chutzpah to attempt to put single-pay health care back on the political and social agenda instead of allowing themselves to keep sedated by the mass media’s (who just so happen to be, purely coincidentally I’m sure, funded by the pharmaceutical industry) opinions on health care. Halfway through the film I silently vowed to myself I would move to the United Kingdom (where they laugh and/or scoff at the idea of paying a hospital bill), France (cheap childcare and paid vacations, anyone?) and even Cuba after graduate school. But then it occurred to me that the purpose of the film was not to persuade American’s to desert their country for any other industrial nation who can provide better health care for less – but rather I believe Sicko merely compared different country’s system to show Americans why universal health care is worth fighting for.

After the movie, in the bathroom, I heard several women talking between stalls about moving to Canada and I thought Michael Moore was absolutely right when he said in the movie that Americans have been manipulated into being afraid to fight or protest the government because everything we have is on a precarious string. We are kept afraid and fearful that if we step out of line and make a mistake we will lose our jobs and our families, and that’s why we are more willing to accept poor wages, zero benefits, profits-over-people health care systems, and lies. Because we don’t know how to defend ourselves and we have been told time and time again that we are powerless. So it was far easier for these women in the bathroom to make the choice to uproot their families and lives to move to another country in hopes of attaining better health care than it was for them to write a letter to their Representatives and hit the pavement to convince others there is nothing to fear about socialized health care… and admittedly, I’m a little afraid that was my initial rational decision about how to solve the problem, too. Well, at least I know who the real sicko is now – but it will take a lot more than designer perscription pills to cure apathy.

Fair Winds + Following Seas

Friday was my father’s retirement ceremony from the United States Navy after 27 years of service. When I received my invitation to the ceremony, I was expecting a small get-together with cake, maybe a card passed around the naval base, and that perhaps his crew all chipped in a few bucks to get him a quasi-fancy watch. Instead, he was the guest of honor for a two-hour ceremony complete with speeches, a personal letter from President George W. Bush (somewhat exciting even if you’re into that kind of thing), a shadowbox of his many awards and medals, and a lot of pomp and circumstance. Perhaps most meaningful, at the end of the ceremony my father requested permission to “go to shore” for the last time from his captain and walked (with his family in tow) down the plank through a line of uniformed sailors saluting him. Even my father, normally an automaton, teared up.

My father and I are not exactly close – he was not around for most of my childhood and I see him on average two or three times a year – but I can’t say I am not proud of his accomplishments. While we don’t always see eye-to-eye (I : Yellow Submarine as My Father: Nuclear Submarine), I know my father enlisted in the Navy to escape poverty and make a better life for himself and our family (even if it didn’t work out as such). He put in 27 years of hard work and sacrifice and rose to the ranks of Chief of Boat, which is the highest position an enlisted sailor can ever hope for. For that, I am extremely proud.

It’s funny, but during the ceremony my father gave a speech and in front of an audience of 200 uniformed sailors said things I’ve never heard him say to his own family. He thanked my mother (whom he divorced after having an affair with his current wife when I was 6 years old) for raising us alone and acknowledged the great deal of sacrifice she had to make to do so (“I know you didn’t ask for it, that you didn’t always want to do it, and that it wasn’t easy…but thank you”). It was pretty touching. He also mentioned a few times about how he joined the Navy to earn the respect of his father (whom I have never met but from what I understand is a pretty hard man to please) and how he joined the Navy to escape working in the sawmills and coal mines of rural Pennsylvania. Very rarely does my father speak of his childhood and hearing about how he was raised helped me better understand and sympathize with the man he is today.

No doubt about it, my father is a great man – but a complicated and challenging man, too. I might not always understand him and I might never forgive him, but I will always love him. And with that, I toast my father and his long career in the Navy: May you always have fair winds and following seas.

Harry Potter & The Order of the Phoenix

Let’s get this out of the way first: it is intolerably hot over here. Like, 95 degrees. In Western Washington. What the heck, State?

And let’s get this out of the way while we are here, too: Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix (the movie) stinks. That’s harsh – visually and artistically, it was pretty good. But if you’re a book purist like myself, you will most likely find many things about it that are quite frankly stinky.

I made a short list here:

- No mention of Neville in the prophecy! That is an insult above all else!

- No mention of Hermoine, Ron and Malfoy becoming prefects

- No mention of Ron becoming a seeker for the Quidditch team or Harry, Fred and George being banned from playing for the year

- In fact, no mention of Quidditch at all!

- Sirius Black was avada kedavra’d, not simply stunned / hexed a la the book, into The Veil, by Bellatrix (therefore the book makes it ambiguous whether Sirius can return whereas the movie makes it certain he cannot)

- Grawp was cutesy and playful, not vicious and scary (though I did like how Ron was quick to protect Hermoine when he grabbed her)
- The Weasley Twins left after setting off fireworks, not creating a bog swamp in Hogwarts
- They did not explain who Tonks and Kingsley were or even clarify that Ms. Figgs was a squib

- The dementors were not cloaked like the previous movies and never was it revealed that Umbridge sent the dementors to Pivet Drive

- It was never said that Percy turned against the family and was loyal to the Ministry of Magic (he kind of was just there at the end with the Minister)

- The movie did not explain what happened to Arthur Weasley – it kind of just happened and then the next we see him they are celebrating Christmas

- The movie failed to explain what the Order of the Phoenix was and its purpose

- No mention of Kreacher’s role in the ending

- They did not show Regulus on The Black Family Tree…

- Cho Chang did not rat out Dumbledore’s Army and Harry and Cho didn’t date because she did that but because she was still mourning Cedric

- Why was Sirius avada kevada’d into The Veil?  In the book he was merely hexed, therefore making his return plausible… This choice by the director goes beyond a simply irritating decision – it ratifies the entire story!

- The significance of the prophecy or why Voldemort needed it so badly was completely skipped over…

So while I liked the Umbridge character (hem hem) and thought it was artistically well done, I am overall very disappointed in what they left out / omited from the book. I felt that because they spent no time explaining new characters and plot developments that the movie was for the book fans, but then they made odd changes that would not satisfy even the most casual of fans. But I still recommend you see it because Ron has magically become very handsome and the Dumbledore-Voldemort sparring at the end is not to be missed on the big screen…!

Urge to Concierge

I am currently sitting at the coordinates of 48°45′1″N 122°28′30″W, working the front desk of Edens Hall. It takes a great deal of imagination and patience to sit in one place for eight hours. Occasionally I might see one or two guests, requesting new linens for their rooms or asking very random questions, from how to place a call to Sierra Leone (true story, we have a gentleman here for an environmental conservation conference from East Africa) to how old the elm tree outside the hall is (Old.). I feel like a concierge most days, but explaining to guests what an ethernet cord is or where they can get ice cream at 10 p.m. at night in a college town sure beats sitting in solitary confinement for eight hours.

For the other 7 hours of my day without any human interaction, I browse Wikipedia (like you don’t know how to get there), scour the Internets for interesting blogs, preview tracks for my radio show on Sunday mornings, and no matter what, avoid making any progress whatsoever on my senior project presentation (which is 17 days away and counting!).

After my marathon desk shift, I am going with Nicholai to JCPenney to buy 500 count Egyptian cotton sheets (because my income is just that disposable). Or more accurately, because I have a gift card from Christmas and they are having a huge sale on bedding this weekend. It wasn’t until only recently I discovered the importance of having nice sheets (thanks W Hotel NYC!) – for the last four years I’ve just bought the cheapest Twin-XL sheets I could find at Target (the horror!). But now I know: it’s 500 count or nothing. I can live in the smallest studio apartment in the history of New York City, but if my bedding is soft and smooth, I will still feel like I am living in luxury.

I was told to do my research before “investing” in a good sheet set. And what did I find out? The best sheets are between 300 – 500 count thread (anything more is prone to pilling and tearing) and made of Egyptian or Pima fabrics. You can prevent pilling by washing the sheets alone using a shorter wash cycle and to not over-dry the sheets, removing them from the dryer as soon as possible. Viola! So fresh and so clean-clean!