I just talked with my grandmother and aunt and they were telling me all the latest news of the family. By far the most shocking was that one of my cousins had the great idea of dousing snowballs with gasoline and lighting them for use in a snowball fight! What could POSSIBLY go wrong?! I guess he hadn't learned anything from, let me see--EVERY SINGLE COYOTE AND ROADRUNNER CARTOON! Was there EVER a time when Coyote used gasoline in one of his schemes that it didn't completely backfire? Well, in a case of life imitating art, my cousin got hit in the face with one of the flaming snowballs--isn't that shocking? I can't believe that kids having a snowball fight would aim for someone's FACE! What's the world coming to? Anyway, he got pretty seriously burnt--enough so that he almost had to be flown to the burn center in Salt Lake! While reeling from the tragedy, I said I couldn't imagine how he would have even gotten the IDEA to do that, let alone actually implement it, to which my grandmother replied, "and with the price of gas these days!" I had to admit, I hadn't thought of that aspect of the situation.

Note: the above story is just one example of my family's propensity to share stories about our own accidents, foibles, and misstatements--in fact my grandmother collected a whole book full of them, titled "Perks and Quirks." Since it was finished in 1995, she's gathered enough for a volume 2. We like to trot out our embarassing stories about each other and show them off like treasured trophies at every family get-together. It's great! (And gives you a little glimpse into how my cold, shriveled, three-sizes-too-small heart works.)

Margaret and I have been dragging now for two days--paying the high price of going out on the town into the wee hours with only caffeine and other stimulants holiday cheer to fuel us. Friday night was Margaret's work party AND our friend Ber's birthday blow-out. The work party was an evening-attire event, so we couldn't wear the Portland uniform of polar fleece and jeans. Actually, Margaret had been looking forward to dressing up for the event--she even bought a VERY full petticoat that made her dress flow out so far that she'd have looked right at home waltzing into Twelve Oaks for a cotillion (doesn't even the SOUND of that word sound presumptuous?) and given Scarlett O'Hara a run for her money. Margaret's dress didn't go to the floor like an antebellum hoop skirt would have--she was daring and showed a little ankle, so I guess you could call her Starlet O'Hara. Unlike Scarlett, however, Margaret had to get into a compact car and had a hard time buckling her seat belt, or even seeing over the mound of dress. We decided to make a cameo at the birthday get-together before heading over to the work party and boy did Margaret get the attention of the lounge! Most of the looks were of admiration although more than a few looked like Anastasia and Drusella sizing up Cinderella--I had to keep a watchful eye to make sure none of them ran up to Margaret and tried to rip her dress to shreds--her fairy godmother wouldn't have come to her rescue after the falling out they had in Barcelona--but that's another story. One thing, though, that was completely ridiculous, was the bouncer at the door of the lounge. Obviously a slave to procedure, he dutifully checked our ID's and after confirming we were over 21, asked for our inside wrist to stamp. Well, Margaret had on long gloves and she asked if that was really necessary. He said it was, so she had to peel off a glove so he could stamp her wrist, after which she rolled the glove back on--not to be seen again without considerable effort. Can you imagine some glamorous 1940's movie scene where a sultry woman in long gloves, holding one of those long cigarette holder thingys, ambles up to the bar to order some glamorous drink and the bartender asks her to roll up her glove to make sure she's over 21? Anyway, after making the cameo, we made our way up to the work party. I had to laugh when we came in the door--three little girls were near the entrance sitting around the Christmas tree and when they saw Margaret, they stared, mouths agape, at that dress, and didn't stop until we were in the ballroom. I guess little girls are always suckers for princesses. I didn't rate a second glance--I was just Beast, accompanying Belle.

After the party, we called Ber and--surprise (ok, NOT a surprise--she's IRISH)--they were STILL at that lounge! They were heading over to a late-night restaurant, so we joined them and ate again. (The place was a cajun-style restaurant and Ber ordered 'gator bites!' Yes, actual ALLIGATOR--and you know what? It DID taste like chicken--(albeit chicken that had known the taste of human flesh--but chicken nonetheless). After we had lingered over our food for a while, someone in the group mentioned a bar nearby where we could end the evening. We decided why not--it was only ONE THIRTY IN THE FRICKIN' MORNING (maybe being sober clouded my perception of how good an idea it was, but that didn't stop me from going--I'm always game to see drunk people make fools of themselves and be the only one to remember it.) As soon as we entered the bar, Margaret was met with an entire room full of Anastasias and Drusellas--it was a total dive bar and everyone but us was wearing the obligatory polar fleece, stocking cap, and jeans required by Portland law. It was great--the evening was enjoyable, despite coming at a cost of stumbling home at 3 in the morning and having to wake up the next day to go to TWO MORE PARTIES. Ugh, I'm ready for the holidays to be over already--there's only so much that caffeine can do and I'm pushing it to its limits. Maybe what I should ask for from Santa is my college ability to live off pizza, Diet Coke, and three hours of sleep.

It has been FREEZING here in Portland for the past few days. Yesterday when I came into the office it was 38 degrees, but with the wind and humidity, it was closer to the freezing point of nitrogen! I told the receptionist that I felt like the Inuit guy in that movie "The Fast Runner" who had to run across the Arctic tundra naked for several hours to escape some guys who were trying to kill him. I think I'd rather be killed than have to endure THAT--imagine the shrinkage!!! I was cold just WATCHING the movie--and after getting to work yesterday (nursing a large Diet Coke, which had NOTHING to do with how cold I felt) I knew EXACTLY how that Inuit guy felt (even with my L.L. Bean Northwoods Spruce Thinsulate Reversible Gore-Tex lined Extreme Adirondack Explorer Parka with removeable boiled Polarfleece vest and integrated iPod control system)! I can't believe that 38 degrees feels so cold to me now! I lived in frickin' NORWAY and I'm complaining about THIS?!? Norwegians SUNBATHE in weather like this!

Speaking of Norwegian winters, I remember a Mission Myth (they're like Urban Myths, only more spiritual, and therefore TRUE) about a pair of Finnish missionaries who were out proseletizing on bikes and one forgot his hat. Well, their area was quite hilly, and they came to a hill that they both rushed down, and afterward, the hatless missionary complained of a splitting and debilitating headache. His companion rushed him to the hospital, (that should have been a clue that the story was fake--I had companions who would have told me that that was a sign from the Lord that I wasn't working hard enough and if I got busy, the pain would go away) where the doctor said that the hatless missionary only had at most a half hour to live and that there was nothing they could do to help him BECAUSE PART OF HIS BRAIN HAD FROZE!!!! Walking around in Norway, we were all sure that this story was absolutely true, because you haven't seen cold until you've experienced below zero temperatures on days when the sun never comes up and you're just walking around because no one wants to let you in their door because they'll have to listen to a church message. It wasn't until I got back to BYU and talked with other Scandinavian missionaries that I found out that the Finns heard the same story, only it happened in Sweden, the Icelandic missionaries heard it was the Norwegians, and the Swedes heard it was the Icelanders. Nowadays, the only brain freezes I have come the old fashioned way--with a Slurpee.

My brother is in town for a work training so he's been staying with us while he's here. When he first arrived in Portland, I was still at work, so he just took the train to my office, dropped off his things, then went shopping at the mall near here. The Lloyd Center is a pretty big mall, and it has always seemed very suburban and tame; I usually just go over there to see a movie or to eat at the food court. Okay, strike that last sentence--while I was writing it I remembered one time Margaret and I went to see that Mormon movie "Charley," the classic Mormon story of bad girl meets Mormon boy, discovers error of her ways, becomes Mormon, gets married, has a baby, gets cancer, and dies--it was the feel-good hit in Provo when it was released. Anyway, there were only 5 other people in the theatre to see the movie (as you can tell, the heart of Portland isn't the bastion of Mormon population that it once was--they've all moved out to the suburbs where the Costcos are). As we were sitting down, a girl ripped a length of toilet paper off some that she had and offered it to Margaret. She declined, but the girl insisted, saying that we'd need it. To be nice, Margaret took it, and halfway through the movie, when Charley is struggling with chemotherapy and doesn't even have the strength to lift her own baby out of its crib we're trying to hide the fact that we REALLY need that tissue, but don't want the girl who gave it to us to see us using it. Okay, that was just a long intro for the part that illustrates my point about the seedy underbelly of this mall that one rarely sees. During a lull in the movie, and since I'd probably drunk a large Diet Coke and was about to burst, I got up to go to the bathroom. As I rounded the corner to the little foyer area between the theatre and the main hallway, I saw a girl giving a guy oral sex!!! (And they say that romance is dead.) They stopped as soon as they saw me, and were gone by the time I came back--I guess they had figured that there wouldn't be anyone seeing some Mormon movie and that they were safe. I wonder if anything like that happened when the film was screened in Salt Lake? Nah, the closest thing would probably be someone trying to foist off a Book of Mormon onto a movie-goer who they had found out wasn't Mormon while they were in the foyer.

Well, to continue--despite the preceding story--the Lloyd Mall is GENERALLY safe and tame, but my brother, who was dressed in a Carhart barn coat, had a fitted stocking cap on, and has a goatee, walked through the mall and got several offers to buy jewelry and other items that were clearly stolen from the stores! I guess he looked questionable enough to the theives to think that he would be interested. Can you believe that? People JUDGING OTHERS just by the way they LOOK! I am SHOCKED! He said he was pretty confident that it was real gold jewelry, too, since they still had the pricetags on! That NEVER happens to me! I guess I look too innocent to attract them--that, or I look like the kind of person who would turn them in. Either way, I'm stuck with having to pay retail and I HATE that!

I have a site tracker link on this blog to count how many people visit it, you know--for the ego trip. It also shows the domain that the visitor is accessing the internet from. It doesn't show me a particular person, but it does show me the internet provider or company. It does my heart good to see all the visitors from Utah--I'm constantly amazed that this blog makes it through the Zion Censorship Grid© which works hard to keep good Mormons on the straight and narrow by preventing them from visit porn sites, sierraclub.org, and the Democratic Party website. Anyway, this morning when I was looking at my stats, I noticed that I had a hit from the domain llbean.com! I have a friend who just moved to Maine, and wondered if she had gotten a job there. I clicked for more details and discovered that someone at L.L. Bean had done a blog search for the keyword "L.L. Bean" and came up with my entry on the crazy color names they use! Yikes--I'm being tracked by The Man (Corporate Edition). I'm just glad I didn't say anything disparaging about them--I'm assuming they're down with it, since I didn't have a cease and desist order in my email. Phew! Although if you read an entry in a couple of days about how cold it is in Portland right now and I don't know how I could survive without the unsurpassed warming features of my L.L. Bean Northwoods Spruce Thinsulate Reversible Gore-Tex lined Extreme Adirondack Explorer Parka with removeable boiled Polarfleece vest and integrated iPod control system you'll know that it's a part of my plea bargain--and you'll know that because I'd NEVER wear anything in Northwoods Spruce--it makes me look pale.

Every year when we go to Utah for Christmas, I try to get together with a group of cool Norwegian returned missionaries that I knew while I was there. (I say "cool" to denote that they are pretty laid back, don't sugarcoat their mission experience, and make constant jokes like, "I haven't [insert questionable activity here] since we were in Norway!") Usually we go to the Olive Garden--nice predictable Olive Garden. That gets a little old (although the bottomless pop and breadsticks are a great selling point--I wonder if they get mad if you went in and just pretended you were lingering over the menu, filling up on the free stuff; maybe I'll have to give that a try sometime). Anyway, as a joke, I mentioned to one of my friends that I was thinking of going to a microbrewery because it would be a much closer fit to our group. When he said that he would join us sinners, I took it as a challenge to find a place that was just enough on the edge to be fun, but still vanilla enough not to scare away some of them with more churchy standards. Coincidentally, the New York Times a couple of weeks back featured Salt Lake in their travel section and listed some cool night spots. One of them caught my eye, just because of their clever name: The Tavernacle. That would have been perfect--until I just visited their website; it's just a dueling piano bar that serves alcohol. D'oh! Back to the drawing board. Any suggestions out there of a place that has a seedy reputation but in reality just makes the patrons FEEL like they're being rebels, without really rebelling? What is the happy medium between Elmer's Pancake House and Hooters?

Speaking of rebels, I remember when I was in college, I had a teacher's assistant that thought I was going to hell in a handbasket. One morning, he called me around 10 am and I was pretty groggy, having gotten in from visiting the hot springs around 4 or 5 that morning. When I mentioned this, his response was, "I don't even want to know." I got a little rush out of thinking that someone thought I was a rebel--and without having to even bother with the effort of being rebellious--I mean WHO'S got the energy these days? Well, a couple of weeks later, a friend and I decided to see what kind of response we could get out of the people in my apartment complex if we were to be seen drinking beer in the hot tub that was in the middle of the courtyard (I know, tame or even a non-issue anywhere outside Happy Valley, Utah, but this was the school that only sells caffeine-free Coke and CHEESE CURDS at football games!). We went down to the grocery store to buy a 6-pack of Coors Cutter (the fake beer). Carrying the 6-pack to the checkout, who should we run into but the same teacher's assistant. He took one look at what I was carrying (and I don't think he looked closely enough to see that it wasn't what he thought it was) and said, "I don't even want to know." How simple was THAT--two innocent relatively tame acts got me labeled as an alcoholic carouser that had no business being at BYU when there were thousands of pure, wholesome angels who would kill to be there (but only kill if God commanded them, which happens surprisingly often in the scriptures and in some cults). Anyway, when we got back to the hot tub, we opened a couple of the Cutters (which were AWFUL--but we endured them, hoping to not be seen as the poseurs that we were) and sure enough, several people walked by, saw the brown bottles, and took it upon themselves to lecture us. I guess we were doing a community service, giving all those people practice at giving self-righteous diatribes to the fallen among them. And I was getting much-needed practice at completely ignoring them.

Yesterday Margaret and I went downtown Christmas shopping. Actually, that was just an excuse to visit Santaland at the Meier & Frank store downtown. We had never heard about it, but there was an article in the paper about this being the last year that the Santaland monorail will be running. Nice that we don't hear about it from the PR from the store but from a newspaper article about it's demise! Evidently the monorail has been running since the 1950's every year from Thanksgiving to Christmas. We went up and saw it and it didn't disappoint! It looked like something from an old Flash Gordon show, with retro-futuristic styling. The train ran around the outside edge of Santaland, where there were an assortment of elves working, etc., and Santa in the middle. It looked like a ton of fun for the kids to ride in it, waving at their parents below. Unfortunately, the train has a strict height policy and both Margaret and I were about three feet too tall to be able to ride! Man, midgets must have it MADE!

We did content ourselves to look at all of the crazy colors that you could get your fake Christmas tree in. They had the standard white, aluminum, and pink, but have you ever seen a chartreuse, beige, burgundy, or sky blue fake Christmas tree? The chartreuse one took the cake--they even had a matching wreath made out of chartreuse FEATHERS! Geesh! Nothing says the birth of Christ like a painfully matching Christmas tree that coordinates with the chartreuse curtains, sofa, and Fifi, the chartreuse-dyed toy poodle. I'm more of a traditionalist--give me an English manor decked out with evergreens, holly, Christmas trees, Dickens' carolers and enough servants to host a grand Yule ball over a burgundy-colored plastic Christmas tree any day! What can I say--I'm old-fashioned.

Last night, Margaret and I rented The Interpreter. We had to go to the video store anyway, since I had to take my video game back--and before I had a chance to complete it! How disappointing! (Although in my haste to finish it before the game was due back, I had a marathon play session yesterday afternoon, and now my hands are a little sore! I haven't had "Atari Thumb" since we had an Atari 2600 and played it compulsively--Damn you, Pac-Man, for my current suseptibility to carpal tunnel syndrome! It used to be so bad that we couldn't hold onto the joystick with our fingers--we had to use the crook between our thumb and forefinger to move it, and after a while, even THAT started to hurt! After that, when I was reading about British children being forced to work in factories and mines, I KNEW how painful their problems were!) Anyway, when we sat down to watch it, one of the previews was for the currently playing movie Pride & Prejudice. Margaret had been wanting to see it since it came out. (It is one of her favorite books and she claims that she doesn't know anyone who doesn't love it. I reminded her of a friend she lent it to who is a single mother of two teenage boys and struggles to make ends meet. SHE didn't like it--I guess reading about the trials and tribulations of the British upper class didn't interest her for some reason.) Anyway, upon seeing the preview, she told me how disappointed she was that I hadn't taken her to see that yet. I hopped up to check the movie times and found a theatre (that was NOT nearby) where it was starting in 20 minutes! I came in and told her to get her shoes on, we were going to go see it RIGHT NOW! She obliged and we got to the theatre in plenty of time to even see some of the coming attractions! I guess we have to enjoy that level of spontaneity now, since when we have kids someday, I'm sure we wouldn't be able to do that! I know people who have to plan three hours in advance just to go to the grocery store.

As it turned out, the movie was brain candy--sweet and fluffy, and you know exactly what was going to happen, but you still enjoy yourself. (Although Margaret said it was a little cheesy--so I maybe a more apt term than brain candy would be a brain cheeto?)

We recently got our Holiday L. L. Bean catalog and I love looking through it just to make fun of the completely non-descriptive color names that they use. What color is Mist, actually? It sounds like some shade of blue, but the deadly mist that was released from Chernobyl was probably fluorescent green. There are millions of colors of flowers, how can they call one of their options Petal? Or Seedling? Or Tarragon? Cement seems a little descriptive, but doesn’t lend itself to a light jacket--perhaps it's available only on their heavy parkas. I would love to be able to work for them to think up cool color names that don't really mean anything. Why say Mustard when you could order a Shit-brindle fleece pullover? Why be content with just a Black coat, when you could order it in Evil, that deepest of all the blacks? If you're interested in a gray long-sleeve shirt, consider a dress shirt in a delightful shade of Melancholy. All the peace activists this season are wearing vests in the soothing shade of Bruise. Man, this is too easy! And once I've proven myself with fabric color name development, maybe I could move on to paint colors.

Speaking of paint colors, when Margaret and I were redoing our bedroom, we knew we wanted a shade of blue for the walls. Being designers, we're used to being able to exert absolute control over the colors we work with, and the limits that paint imposed was very frustrating. Utah Sky was too constricting. Cobalt Ice was too cold. Depression was too gray. After buying half a dozen shades of blue samples, we still hadn't found any that we liked. Sitting in the room, Margaret finally found the blue she wanted on the stripe of a pillow that was in the room. We took the pillow in to Home Depot and they scanned the color and were able to mix that exact shade. Now we have a bedroom with walls the exact shade of blue that we want--I call it Anal Retentive Periwinkle. Looking back, we felt kind of ridiculous walking around with the pillow in Home Depot, but I felt better after I read an article about a woman bringing in a HAIRBALL that her cat had thrown up to be color matched! I can't imagine having my living room walls painted in the pleasing shade of Indigestible.

This morning, Margaret was singing the theme song to CSI, The Who's "Who are You." She said it was to prepare us to watch the show tonight. Well, I started singing along, too, and then said, "You know, why is that their theme song? All their water is trucked in and they don't even have any rivers or streams near them." Margaret looked totally bewildered and asked what I was talking about. I tried to explain that there wasn't any cool water in Las Vegas, and that choosing that song as the show's theme song didn't make any sense. She was completely at a loss by this point and asked me what I was talking about. I said, "You know, the song goes, 'cooooool water, ooo ooo, ooo ooo." She busted up laughing, as it turns out the lyrics are "Whooooo are you? Who who, who who?" Oops! I hate when I do that.

That reminds me of when I was little, my brother and I would often fight over song lyrics, with the understanding that whoever was able to shout the lyric the loudest was the winner. My favorite was the old Mazola corn oil commercials that had the Indian woman singing the praises of the power of maize. The theme song had the line, "Mazo-ola CORN goodness." Well, one of us (and I don't remember now which) thought it was CORN goodness and the other thought it was FOR goodness. Everytime that commercial would come on, he and I would scream at the top of our lungs what we thought was the correct lyric. I'm sure that our parents thought we were completely crazy, their two kids calmly watching tv with them in the evening, then all of a sudden scream out a random word during a commercial. Another was the Mary Poppins song, "Feed the Birds." It has a line in it that one of us would sing, "feed the birds, TOPPINS again," and the other would sing, "feed the birds, POPPINS again." It turned out neither of us was right, the correct lyrics are "feed the birds TUPPENCE a bag." Although you could forgive us, because as 8-year-olds, we had no idea what a tuppence was, in fact most American adults don't know what one is. Anyway, we would always be shouting out our preferred version, and I can remember one time, my dad secretly recorded us fight-singing our own version. We were so humiliated that we stopped doing it after that. Well, I haven't grown up much since then, but I learned my lesson when I was 8 and will refrain from screaming out "cool water" tonight while watching CSI!