Carbon Copy

Shoot the Left Ramp!

The other day, Tanker said he was craving pinball. I called Fat Cats to find out if they had some pinball machines. The guy told me he did, but that they call it Ice Ball. It didn't matter what it was called, as long as they had it, so after work on Thursday, we made our way to the neon palm trees of Fat Cats. Turns out Ice Ball isn't another name for pinball. It was skeeball, which just wouldn't cut it. We ended up at the movie theater where they had two pinball machines, one of which was out of order. After an hour and a half of shooting the left ramp, riding the Chicago Loop and dunking the dummy, we went to see Sweeny Todd. The first thing Tanker said after the movie - "All I could think about was shoot the left ramp!"

I was hooked, too, so Saturday morning we returned to the theater determined to learn every nook and cranny and hit all the jackpots. You might not think it, but pinball is intense. Look at this concentration, that furrowed brow...

I've been watching Friday Night Lights again (clear eyes, full hearts, can't lose!) and let me tell you, there is heartache in football. But pinball matches it - the way your heart sinks when you see that ball slip past your flippers or slide into that alley that conducts it straight into the pit. The thrill of getting millions of points off one ball! It's an emotional rollercoaster. At first, I was doing awesome! But as the hours (yes, hours) progressed, I got worse and worse and Tanker got better. Here are the scores:

The other pinball machine was working this time, so we decided to give it a chance. The theme: Pirates of the Caribbean. It was a lot fancier than the other machine. It had a deadman's chest that would open and flash red with a pulsating heartbeat and a ship with moving sails that you can sink. Pretty fancy.

But the biggest change is that the points were handed out like mad. Where we struggled to get between 4-6 million points on the Rollercoaster Tycoon, the points were flying like mad on Pirates. Bonuses of hundreds of thousands of points, millions scored on one ball. Not that it's easy. I mean, it's still a challenge. You have to defeat the Kracken, find a 100 crew men, and all sorts of stuff. Intense indeed. Still, check out this score:

Yeah, it's not mine.

Last night, every time I closed my eyes, all I could think about was shooting the left ramp.

Cutest Kids Ever!

Are you ready for pictures of the cutest kids ever?! Get ready to cooo and awww...

They are, obviously, undeniably cute separately, but put them together and their cuteness bowls you over.

Seriously, they are even cuter in person. Here are two videos of Claire from this morning:

Claire's all ready for her wedding day.

Listen closely to hear Claire singing the song from Cinderella - a dream is a wish your heart makes.

Merry Christmas!

Merry Christmas, everyone! It's been a delightful morning, other than my car getting stuck in the snow. But in the spirit of Christmas, some kind passers-by helped me out. Last night, I celebrated with my family. And on Sunday, I started the week off by visiting Temple Square with Mike and Amanda and Mike's brothers, Tom and Dave. The lights at Temple Square are my favorite part of Christmas in Salt Lake City. I thought I'd share them with you.

{Tom, Dave, and Mike}

{Amanda and me}

{Nativity scene from Japan}

{Nativity from an undetermined South American country}

Seattle: the final morning

On Sunday morning, we really only had time for brunch in the hotel's restaurant and a quick walk to the Elliott Bay Bookstore. Here are a few pictures from the walk:

The bookstore had a great selection of cards and paper products, in addition to books. I especially liked these cards:

In fact, I blogged about them over here. The funny thing is, we had just been talking about the names of various groups of animals after watching a contestant on Who Wants to Be a Millionaire miss that a group of crows is called a murder. I hadn't realized before all the different names. I wish I had gotten the string of ponies card, though.

And then back to the airport. I loved this painting on the window right by our gate. It reminded me of a Chagall. The owls are my favorite part.

I sat right on the wing, which limited my view. But I could still glimpse the mountains and the Great Salt Lake as we got closer to landing.

I got home in time to celebrate Izzy's birthday with the family. I can't believe that was just last week.

Seattle: Day 3

We were all set to do some shopping on Saturday. We wanted to walk around the Capitol Hill area of Seattle and visit some of the great shops that we saw as we drove by, but it was so cold and rainy and Basil was peacefully sleeping in his carseat, so we decided to go to one of the places I really wanted to see, the University of Washington.

The campus was so beautiful. As Tanker told me once, every building on campus looks like a cathedral. I've really got to get on my application for their Museum Studies program. If that's what I end up doing.

The rain was letting up, so we decided to head back downtown and see if we couldn't get back to shopping. Here are some pictures of Seattle from the car, again.

We decided to hit Pike's Place Market while the weather was reasonable, although it was still very cold and windy.

I loved the market: vegetable and fruit stands, cheese cases, flower stands. It reminded me of the subjects of Impressionist paintings... like these fish:

Or these oranges:

The crabs were trying to get out of their case, though. Not exactly a still life.

But I also really liked the architecture of the market, lots of brick and ducts and iron.

I'm really sad this next picture didn't turn out. While we were inside some of the stores, a clown with balloons cascading from his head and all over his back. I thought he was selling balloons, but he never approached anyone, or even looked approachable, and ended up sitting at this deli counter. I wanted him to have a shot of whiskey in his hands to complete the pathetic scene.

After browsing the market for a while, the weather drove us towards an indoor mall. These picketers were telling us to BUY MORE STUFF because it was all going to run out soon. I think they were being ironic.

Here's Basil all bundled up:

We decided to take the monorail to the Space Needle. Since it was such an overcast day and all of us had already been to the top of the Space Needle at one point in our lives, we skipped the elevator ride to the top and satisfied ourselves with taking pictures from the outside.

These figures reminded me of Peter Pan.

We wandered over to the Sci-Fi museum for a moment to take some photos with the sleek backdrop.

We took the monorail back into town and finished up our shopping at a few more stores, but all the Christmas lights were now on. It felt festive.

Even Santa joined in the fun at the carousel.

Seattle: Day 2

Kylie, Basil, and I went exploring on Friday morning. We didn't know exactly where we were going, but we saw a lot of interesting things along the way. I took pictures from the car.

We went through a couple of tunnels.

And under this bridge:

And over this one:

Which led us into one of the hip neighborhoods. Here's the thing we've discovered about Seattle, though - everyone thinks their neighborhood is the hip one. And I guess they're all right. This one had some funky buildings and Christmas decorations.

But what I loved most about being there was the water - all the harbors and ferries and shipping of large containers, but mostly the sailboats. I want to learn to sail.

We even ran into the Starbucks Headquarters. I find this building a little creepy, to be honest. I don't like the peeping woman. It's disconcerting.

Later, we met up with Kylie's husband and cousin, along with her cousin's little girl, a friend, and the friend's newborn, for lunch. There were seagulls everywhere, and, unlike in Salt Lake, it seemed fitting.

After lunch, we traveled to the Seattle Aquarium. Kylie took Basil inside because it was getting cold while I explored the waterfront and we waited for her cousin (et al) to arrive.

Then I joined Kylie and Basil inside and we waited some more. I felt kind of cool that the two of us found the aquarium so quickly while the Washington natives (albeit not from Seattle) got lost. I like being able to find my way around new towns.

I have A LOT of pictures from the aquarium, but I tried to narrow it down. These starfish were my favorite.

I thought the jellyfish would be my favorite because I'm always seeing amazing photos of iridescent jellyfish floating through aquariums. In this, the Seattle Aquarium fell short. There was just a ring of jellyfish that they tried to make glow with changing lights.

They did have an octopus, but apparently it was too busy digesting a starfish to move.

Luckily, the aquarium also had plenty of cardboard cutouts for pictures.

More fish:

They had fur seals swimming around so quickly that I could barely get a picture. I'm actually kind of pleased with how ghostly this one turned out.

Here's the fur seal on land:

I love that it looks so awkward and cumbersome on land and that it's so graceful in the water. They hardly seem the same creature.

Here's one of the friendly otters:

Some of the aquariums exhibits are viewed outside, so you get to see ferries and ships.

When we were all fished out, we stopped at possibly the best antique store I've ever been to, located just across the street. Generally it seems that "antique" stores either have a lot of junk or a lot of overpriced items, but this one had tons of things that I actually wanted to buy and if I ever mover to Seattle, I plan on getting several pieces of furniture from there. Not to mention some of these adorable teacups.

Or this rad bike:

We were parked at the foot of the hill that leads to Pike's Market and were tempted to hike up to it, but decided it was time to get home instead.

Babies have pretty demanding schedules and for some reason require a lot of sleep, so we spent the night playing Scrabulous. I made the mistake of teaching Kylie all my tricks and now she is winning all of our games.

Seattle: Day 1

So I'm pretty much really lucky. Well, it's a combination of luck and having really great friends, which I guess I'm lucky to have. So there's that. A couple of weeks ago, Kylie asked if I'd be interested in traveling with them to Seattle. It took me about two seconds to say yes. And then I remembered that I had to ask for time off. Once that was obtained, it was another definite yes again. Her husband's work is headquartered in the Emerald City and they were invited to attend some fancy, schmancy Christmas dinner party where babies weren't exactly expected. My role: I had the hard work of watching an adorable baby for about 3 hours on Thursday night. This meant that for the first time in my life, I got to order room service. I ordered the SoDo cheese steak, but even this blue collar dinner came on a silver (kind of) platter, complete with tiny ketchup and salt and pepper shakers.

Basil enjoyed playing with the lid.

And I enjoyed playing with him while watching 30 Rock on the fancy flat screen tv.

Life is tough sometimes. We stayed in Seattle until Sunday, so I'll be posting some more from our trip later.

one week, two weeks

I'm not ready for Christmas. At all. For some reason, I want to ignore it and pretend it's not coming this year. But inevitably, seven days from now, it will be here. Guess I should start doing some shopping.

Same thing goes for the new year.

This sounds really bah humbuggy, but it's not meant to be. I'm just struck this morning by how quickly time flies and sometimes I just want to hold onto it.

Photobooth (Again)

Breaking News!

Thieves and vandals abound in Salt Lake City!

It was just like any other morning. I woke up, laid in bed for about 20 minutes wishing I didn't have to go to work, finally dragged myself up to the shower, straightened my hair (which isn't like any regular morning), and ate breakfast. When I walked out to my car, I noticed glass all around it.

"Huh. That's strange." I thought. " I wonder where that came from?" Oh look. It's from my car.

And yes, there's glass all over the front seat.

Awesome. So I look around. The stereo is still there. All of my CDs were still there. The shoes I have in the front seat, my sweatshirt sprawled on the backseat (my car is a disaster lately), all there. I was baffled. It didn't look like it was broken into. Could it have been the wind? the cold? I called my mom. I called the insurance, and then I determined to clean up the glass and put some plastic over the window and go to work. But when started cleaning up the glass, I noticed the sole thing missing. My iTrip. Some punk kid(s). So I call the police and my insurance company, miss several hours of work, and at 3:30 today a glass shop is coming to replace the window. All for that little gadget.

Desert Winds are Strong but They're Not Strong Enough

My love for the Fiery Furnaces has been well-documented on this blog (see here, here, and yes, here). And I'm currently loving their new album, Widow City. I've been listening to it for the past week. Here are two of my favorite tracks:

My Egyptian Grammar

Restorative Beer

Ok, I can't resist posting this one, too:

Ex-Guru

p.s. Dear Mike, remember how you said you were going to listen to the next song I posted on here? I probably wouldn't start with these. You might not listen to anything else, and that would be a shame.

Trash Talk

I talked up my skillz A LOT this week. First, Izzy and I played some Monopoly on Tuesday night. I kept telling her that she might as well not even roll the dice because I would be winning. I kept the trash talk up while she mortgaged one property after another to continue buying properties, but after I landed on one of her railroads (she owned all four) for the 10th time in a row and then on Park Place with two houses, I knew the gig was up. My measly light blue monopoly just couldn't compete. I think it was the shortest game we have ever played.

I've also been trying to convince Tanker to go bowling with me. No particular reason except that I thought it would be fun. He wasn't as excited about the idea as I was, though, which I attributed to the fact that he knew I would beat him, even though he denied it. In fact, at one point he texted me to say that he was going to "bury me under a pile of X's." Pshaw right! So I threw a gutterball my first turn. Whatever. I turned it into a spare on my next one. He was starting to get nervous. Maybe he wouldn't win after all.

Ok. He won. But only by 1 point. Just 1 point.

Snow, Finally

It snowed on Saturday. Quite a lot. I wouldn't have dug my car out, but I promised Isabelle to watch Claire for a couple of hours while she studied for her board exam. And I had promised Claire that we would go to Jenn's for their traditional gingerbread house party. So I had to brave the roads, which really weren't that bad once I got out of the little side streets.

Jenn kept her family's gingerbread house tradition alive while we were at Purdue, as seen from last year's entry, so I knew what to expect. Claire and I had fun decorating. The bonus for me was that I didn't feel any pressure to make my gingerbread house cute or artistic. I could just say Claire wanted it that way. So we ended up with a very hod-podge kind of house that was delicious nonetheless.

{Notice that Claire's in her princess dress, as usual.}

But I also kept up a tradition this year. The one where it's clear that I should never be an engineer of any kind because apparently, I can't make a gingerbread house that won't collapse

(And I just want to point out that it was finals when I wrote the title of that post, which is why it's so overly dramatic.)

As soon as I got the house to the car, the walls caved in. Oh well. It just made it easier to eat.

I couldn't get over how beautiful everything was that night.

New Orleans Day 5: Houses, Cemeteries, and Gelato

If you're paying close attention, you will notice that there's no entry for Day 4 in New Orleans. That's because it was the kind of day you don't really blog about but that life is normally made of. We went to church, watched Bedknobs and Broomsticks, and I wrote down recipes. It was pouring rain. I kind of hoped I'd get flooded in and wouldn't be able to go home the next day. But when morning came, the sky was blue. It was still chilly, but Amanda, Peter, and I walked with Mike to Tulane's campus, just a few blocks away.

Then we walked across the street to Audubon Park and took a stroll.

On the walk home, I took lots of photos of the houses because they were so pretty and interesting.

Aww.. we even saw a cute kitty in the window at this house.

Here's a FEMA trailer.

Apparently this type of house is called a camel house because a second story creates a hump in the back. A lot of the houses here are very long, too. For example, Mike and Amanda have the longest hallway in the world.

One of the things I really wanted to see in New Orleans was a cemetery. Because I really like cemeteries and they have cool ones that are above ground. That's really all there is to it. I had wanted to return to that huge one we saw off the freeway, but we didn't know how to get there so Amanda took me to a small one next to their friends' house. It was sufficiently creepy.

For instance, some of the graves appeared to be empty.

Then we were going to go shopping on Magazine Street, which is full of fun shops and eateries.

But Peter was asleep in the back of the car, so we decided to drive around the Garden District and gape at the houses.

And we even saw the former home of Anne Rice.

For lunch, we returned to Magazine Street for poboys.

Since Peter was awake, we chose a block with fun-looking stores and antique shops and did some browsing. I think we chose a pretty good street. I liked these recycled lights that looked like jellyfish.

And this bright door on the street.

Basically, though, we were killing time until 2:30 when the most adorable gelato shop, Sucre, has a 2 for 1 sundae special.

I wish I had gotten a better picture of the whole shop, but these little letter-pressed coasters show the extent of detail they put in everything.

But the best part was definitely the gelato... mmm...

Unfortunately, my time had come to an end, though. I had to get to the airport and fly back home. The best part about visiting Mike and Amanda for Thanksgiving is knowing that I get to see them again in a couple of weeks for Christmas.

New Orleans Day 3: Oak Alley Plantation

Do you recognize this plantation? It's been in films and TV shows, ranging from Interview with a Vampire to Days of Our Lives, among others. It's ok if you don't. Not everyone caught The Long Hot Summer with Don Johnson and Cybill Shepherd in 1985. I know I didn't recognize it, but apparently it's the most famous plantation near New Orleans. Everyone told us it was the one to go to. So that was the plan for Saturday.

But first we needed some directions, so we stopped by Mike's office at Tulane to use the Internet. Here's what a mathematician's office looks like:

Notice the big chalkboard covering one and a half walls. I tried to do an impression of a mathematician, but it kind of failed when I asked how you draw that big E-looking thing. Amanda has her own ideas of what a mathematician does all day, too. But I think that Mike really just reads blogs all day because he showed me his Google Reader and I think it's got even more blogs than mine. At least he's got a great view.

Oak Alley was about an hour away, up the Mississippi River. We passed through the suburbs of New Orleans and passed the biggest cemetery I've ever seen and through a lot of sugarcane fields. It was actually quite lovely. And then we arrived and went on a tour of the house.

The best thing about the Oak Alley plantation house was the veranda. It wrapped around the whole house on both levels. I would've loved to spend a lazy afternoon on the veranda. I wonder if that's what Marlena Black did when they filmed Days of Our Lives there. Or maybe she was kidnapped by the diabolical Stefano DeMera and held hostage in one of the cellars of Oak Alley. The possibilities are endless on a soap opera. That's why I love them so much.

I liked the way the veranda looked from the inside, too.

Here's the famous alley of oaks, for which the plantation was named. There are fourteen on each side and they are about 300 years old!

After the tour, we wandered the grounds a little. The trees are huge!

Mike checked in with his dad to find out what was happening in the Utah v. BYU game.

He wasn't very happy with the progress of the game.

I had hoped that Oak Alley would have beautiful gardens like the plantations I visited in South Carolina, but it didn't. It would've been too cold to wander around for long anyway, though. So we headed back to New Orleans to find a place to eat and ended up at a pizza place, and in the spirit of adventure and being in a new city and trying new things, I even suggested that we order a pizza with mushrooms on it. No one else seemed to be as proud of myself as I was at this willingness to eat a fungus that I normally avoid. I really wanted to give mushrooms another chance since so many people like them. But they didn't impress me.

For dessert, we stopped by the Creole Creamery. Some kids there had just finished the Tchoupitoulas Challenge where you eat 8 huge scoops of ice cream covered in 8 different toppings, whipped cream, and cherries all by yourself. If you succeed, you get your name on a plaque in the creamery. Amanda and I really thought we could do it, but we settled for an ice cream cone.

I totally forgot to mention in my last post about how we watched football on Friday night. LSU was playing the Razorbacks of Arkansas, and of course we were rooting for the Razorbacks because a) LSU is Tulane's rival and b) the Razorbacks were the underdogs and we always root for the underdogs. All of our rooting paid off, too, because the Razorbacks won in triple overtime. I didn't know football could be so exciting. I give the credit to one of my new favorite shows, Friday Night Lights, for opening my eyes. (Isn't television amazing?!) So I didn't even mind when we went home that night and watched more football. But we weren't as lucky that day in our teams. Not only did Utah lose, but Kansas lost to Mizzou (seriously? they let them put that on their jerseys and everything). And the last we checked, Alabama was losing to Auburn. Although, on the brighter side, Texas lost to A&M.

That just may be the last time I talk so much about football on this blog. But you never know.