Super Bowl, Super Belly

My cupboard is loaded with gigantic bags of chips. Pita chips, potato chips, tortilla chips. My fridge is dominated by super-huge tubs of dips. Hummus, salsa, guacamole. There's a 3-pound block of cream cheese in there. 3 pounds of cream cheese. What the...

This Sunday is, of course, Super Bowl Sunday. (It is also, according to an article on NPR, National Porn Sunday, which isn't nearly as exxxciting as it sounds: hundreds of churches across the nation will be showing a video of current and former NFL players speaking out about how pornography has disrupted their lives. Seems there's a porn epidemic in this country: according to Craig Gross, whose sermon will be part of the video, "The statistics say that 48 percent of Christian families are dealing with the issue of pornography in their home. I would say the other 52 percent are just unaware of it being an issue in their house." That means every one of you Christians reading this has an issue with pornography!! But I digress.) The Green Bay Packers will meet (and hopefully defeat) the Pittsburgh Steelers in Dallas, and Alex and I are hosting a gathering here in Seattle, as he will be unable to step away from the computer, and it's no fun to watch the Super Bowl alone. Especially when it's the biggest day of the work year! When he lived in Vegas, he'd always go to some big VIP party hosted by one of the casinos. But last year in Jersey, Alex watched it solo, and while I felt bad for him, I didn't feel bad enough to sit by his side, oh no. I headed to Astoria to watch the Saints and the Colts with a group of people who don't really like football, but do love to shout about it one day a year. (I think the highlight for all of us was that Betty White Snickers commercial. Pure advertising genius.) This year, we're gonna bring the people to Alex. Which means, party food! Which means, Costco membership!

I headed out the other day to do some shopping, and I figured I might as well stop by and see if a Costco membership might make sense for me. After all, we're not only hosting a gathering, which requires massive amounts of chips and salami (at least, that's what I tossed into my cart), but we are soon moving to a new apartment, and for the first time since we left W 110th St back in 2008, the apartment we're moving into will not be furnished. There will be no dishes, no linens, no pots and pans and cleaning supplies and all the other stuff we've been provided with over the past few years. That means there's a lot of shopping coming my way. And I figure, why not do some of it in bulk? I mean, 36 rolls of toilet paper may be overkill for a household of 2, but it's one less thing to think about over the next however-many-months it takes to go through. (If there are trees in the lobby of our new home, you can expect to see them TP'd come Mischief Night.) Okay, most likely, I won't have a whole lot of use for bulk shopping in the years to come. But as I perused Costco's never-ending aisles, I found myself wondering: is a 15-piece bakeware set enough? Or should I go for the 22-piece set, for only 20 dollars more? I do like to bake, and maybe I'd do more of it if I had more cookie sheets. And how about that food processor! I've always wanted one, and this 18-pound bag of onions would have so much more usefulness if I could puree half of it. A gym on a door? I don't even know what that means, but the man on the packaging is totally ripped, and I'm sure there will be a door in my new home. Oooh, a gun safe... I don't have any rifles, but that price seems too good to pass up, there must be something I can store in there. If not, I can buy something at Costco! And, wow, there's a whole section of books and DVDs and bean bag chairs and...

By the time I made it to the food aisles, I was worn out. Which made those huge bags of lil' smokies and 3-pound tubs of mozzarella balls so easy to choose. After all, they were giving out samples! I ate my weight in samples, of mini muffins and rice chips and madras lentils and tabasco cheese (I'm not making that flavor up), and it was only my adherence to a no-red-meat-or-the-other-white-meat policy that kept me from sampling the beef empanadas and the pork nuggets and the salami wraps and the beefy cheese balls. Standing in the check-out line, my stomach was doing back flips, not the happy kind that give me a giggly roller-coaster dizziness, but the kind that make me wish I wasn't a 20-mile drive from my apartment.

This Super Bowl gathering is gonna rock! You know why? Cuz I'm gonna wraps bricks of cream cheese in crescent roll dough and bake it til golden! I'm gonna serve mini chicken snausages on toothpicks! I'm gonna make a dozen little pizzas! And serve tall boys of PBR! (I'm told that's what the kids like to drink these days.) And come Monday morning, I'm gonna be wishing that I had shopped in a non-bulk store, because I'm most likely gonna be looking at a fridge full of food that should only be consumed while watching a football game. Ugh. So, guess what? You're invited to my place for brunch on Monday! I'm gonna be serving cream cheese on potato chips and pepperoni with hummus and salami-wrapped almonds and cream cheese on other stuff and...

My room with a view

Back in July, when Alex first walked into the apartment we are now calling "home", the first thing he noticed, the thing that made him say, "I'LL TAKE IT!" before seeing anything else, was the view. The front door opens into an open space bordered by a wall of floor-to-ceiling windows looking south at the Seattle skyline. Here's what a looksie:

That wall of windows, which continues into the bedroom, is my favorite thing about this apartment. And there is a lot to love here! The kitchen with the stove on the center island, the giant showers with good water pressure, the open feel of the place, the king-sized bed (we're renting the place furnished), the decor (which is reminiscent of a suite at, say, the Wynn Casino)...it is by far the nicest place we've ever lived together.

And, sadly, our time here is coming to an end. It's time for us, once again, to make the move to a new place to call home. And so, it's time that I shared some pictures with you! Here's a brief tour:

The living room and the entry to the bedroom, which is where my grandmother's dressing table sits in a perfect nook by the windows.

What does a sober lady do with a full-sized bar? Why, she adorns it with pictures of all her friends and family who live in other spots in the country!

Alex's favorite building, as seen from our roof-deck (that's his mom next to him).

The roof-deck comes equipped with hot ladies!

Our "fireplace" (there's no actual fire; it's more of a mild heat-box with some flame-like lights it displays). The mantel has been home to our She-ra memorial (though it is now home to a TV, in preparation for our Super Bowl gathering this weekend).

Our dining room, where people can't help but smile!

Inside Alex's office, where the people can't help but cheer!

Mt. Rainier, or "The Big Guy", as seen this morning from my living room (he only comes out on clear days, and today is all blue sky and sunshine).

Yes, this has been a lovely home for us. I am sad to say goodbye to it. We're on the hunt for another room with a view, because frankly, once you've lived with a view, there's no going back. (I'm told the same applies for living by the water, a theory I would love to test out.) The one thing that is making this move a little less heartbreaking is the reality that the view is in the process of being destroyed. Construction has been happening for 2 months on what will be a 17-story apartment building directly across the street. My view is currently marred by a giant yellow crane:

I am SO glad it wasn't my job to put that thing together, nor to be the guy who has to climb up there every morning and spend all day 17 stories above ground with nothing but a lunch sack and a glass jar. Ugh.

So, we'll go find another view. A better view! A view that will stay put for as long as we shall call our next place "home". We're thinking 2 years. Then, we're hoping to find a home that has a bit more permanence to it. Frankly, we're tired of moving.
One last look at our view, panorama-style, before the Giant Yellow Crane moved in:

PC to Mac

I'm writing this from my new laptop, a teeny tiny little thing known as the MacBook Air. I am excited about it, but also a bit intimidated. I'm not a computer person. I know more than my mother, perhaps, but less than your average American 3-year-old. I use the computer for email, I use it to read NPR articles, I use it to search out auditions. I use it to write, to keep my resume updated, to store my music and my photos. I use it as a DVD player and a CD player. And that's about it. For the things I do, I know my way around a computer.

At least, I did. And then I got a Mac.

Understand, I am excited about all the fun little toys on my teeny weeny MacBook Air. Things like GarageBand and iMovie and Photo Booth. And I'm told that Macs are very user friendly. But I must say, in the 3 days that I've had this thing out of the box, I've barely looked at it. When I have, I have found myself getting frustrated and discouraged. It's like learning a new language! There are so many things one can do on this 2 pound, 1/2-inch-thick piece of super-strength aluminum. But it took me minutes just to figure out how to click on something. Sigh. I feel like my grandparents, who, when we bought them a new VCR and told them they could watch tapes on it, broke the thing by shoving in cassette tapes and not understanding why they wouldn't play. I've watched numerous tutorials, trying to learn how to use 1 or 2 or 3 or even 4 fingers on the touchpad to do a variety of magical maneuvers, or how to record my voice and then lay down fun little drum tracks on top of it. But with all the tutorials, I feel like I've only grown stupider. Or more stupid. Crap, I don't even know how to speak proper English anymore.

Regardless of my frustrations, I am determined to fall in love with my new laptop. And I think I will. It's so darned cute! And it's far more powerful than all of Alex's computers put together!! (Maybe not, he has A LOT of computers, but this teeny bit of technology is certainly way cooler than his ancient 2010 desktop.) It's kind of similar to the Sexy Beast Camaro: when I first saw the Beast pull into our garage, I found it ridiculous. When I first sat in the driver's seat, I found it intimidating. But once I had him on the street, I never wanted to stop driving. I've talked to lots of Mac users, and every one has said that Macs are the way to go. I've made the first step this morning, by choosing to use my Mac over my Gateway laptop to write this post. The Gateway is sitting right next to the Mac, and the two are like apples and watermelons: I can fit 4 of these Macs into my Gateway laptop case. I do love my Gateway, with her shiny candy-apple red skin and 17-inch screen (I use it for all of my DVD viewing). And she won't be far away, just making the move to Alex's travel case (the man is attempting to be as mobile as possible during the non-football-season months), so I can always visit. But I am going to attempt to make the switch, completely, from PC to Mac.

Any advice is welcome!

A Poem

A homeless man wrote me a poem, based on my name. The writing is somewhat illegible (he was writing on a torn sheet of paper using his hand as a writing surface) so here's what I can make out:

Mountain of dream falters in an
Embrace to the cosmic green grass of turtles in these
Glad moments to reach a faster price from an open sky that leaves not the flowers are out in a garden of stone

I had been walk-jogging to get to an appointment, my headphones in my ears, when he stopped me. Or rather, when he said something to me and I made the choice not to ignore him but to stop. I was only planning on giving him a moment to spare-change me, and I wasn't really planning on giving him anything. I didn't even turn off my iPod, I just took the earbud out of my left ear and said "What?" and he said something about 30 seconds and I told him I was running late and didn't have time and he said something about 30 seconds again and then there was a piece of paper in his hand and a pen in the other and he was looking at me, waiting, and I was confused and said "What?" again and he said "Your name, what's your name?" and I said "Meg, M-E-G" and he began to draw my name, at which point I realized that he was a real person who was really talking to me, and I could either walk away, or I could listen. I decided to invest myself in this moment. I mean, I stopped for this man without even turning off my music, why did I bother to stop if I had no intention of listening to him?

How often do I find myself speaking of the sad state of our world, where everyone is so glued to their media machines that they rarely allow themselves to experience a moment in its fullness? And here I was, standing in front of a homeless man without listening to him speak to me. Why did I stop? But I did stop. And after a few moments, I even listened. And then, here was a man writing a poem for me on the side of a road. I admit, I felt annoyed at myself for stopping, because I was running late and I pass homeless people every single day without stopping so why did I stop for this guy right now? I don't know why I stopped. But I'm glad I did. Because for a few minutes, I got to experience life as it was happening. I got to see a man, who has clearly been on the streets for some time, but who clearly had a life before the streets, I got to see this man write a stream-of-consciousness flow, and I got to see this man as A Man, not as Someone to Avoid, not as Another Sad Story. I got to connect with another human being in a very immediate way. And we humans, we humans are connecting less and less with one another, we humans are texting and IMing and Tweeting one another, rather than talking and listening and BEING with one another. We human beings aren't so good at being together. We go to dinner with a group of friends and then update our facebook statuses to let everyone know that we are at dinner with a group of friends. Why not just BE at that dinner? It's like we're always afraid of missing something, always concerned that if we don't answer that text or email or IM right this very moment, we will lose something that we will never get back. Everything must happen NOW, which means that in the now, we aren't very present.

I have many thoughts about the state of interpersonal communication in our 21st century world, but I'll not dive into that any further here.

The other night, a homeless man wrote me a poem. I do not claim that he wrote me a poem of great literary worth, I do not claim to even understand what it means, in a literary sense. The poem serves more as a reminder of how many surprises Life has for us, if we just take the time to experience Life as it happens. I stood on a street corner as a stranger wrote me a poem. After he finished it, I asked him to read it aloud to me. When he was done, he looked at me and said, "That's deep." And I agree. Connecting with a stranger, that's deep. Recognizing that first impressions are only impressions and not fact, that's deep. Making eye contact and sharing language, that's deep. When he handed over my poem, he smiled. And I asked him if this corner was a regular spot for him. He said he walks this avenue every day. I said I'd keep my eyes open for him. He said we should get a drink. I told him I don't drink. He said we could just drink water. I told him I hoped to see him again. And he said, "I think you really mean that." And I did. I do. That homeless man, that stranger, has made an impression on me. And it's only because I made a choice not to ignore him.

I only wish I had asked his name.

No-snow Day

Last night, I went walking in a winter wonderland. Which is unusual for Seattle. Though it seems to be less and less so. 2 years ago, there were multiple snowstorms here. Last year saw snow as well. And last night was the 2nd night of snow this winter. In the 5 years that I previously lived in Seattle, I never saw snow stick on the city streets. Never. I did see a few flurries, mostly when I was north of the city somewhere. And let me tell you, people here go crazy in the snow. Literally bat-shit crazy. Alex likes to tell the story of the time he was driving to work (he used to work at the Royal Casino in Everett, about 20 miles north of Seattle), and there were flurries that began to stick a bit on Interstate 5. He had to be extra careful as he drove to avoid the cars driving backwards on the road. Backwards. For real!! It's like the people saw the snow sticking and lost their ability to think straight, all they could think was, "I must get off this death-trap of a road immediately and I just passed an exit off of the highway and so I'm gonna put this car in reverse and make my way back to it HELP ME JESUS!" I never witnessed the backwards driving, but I saw plenty of cars on the side of the road with hazards flashing and looks of panic on the faces of those in the drivers' seats. This place simply doesn't do snow. Which is kinda bizarre, considering how close Seattle is to the mountains and ski resorts. Drive 30 minutes east and you need snow chains! But the fact remains: the city of Seattle and its inhabitants do not do snow. There are no plows, no salt trucks. The city is built on a big hill, and the roads get quite slick. Even a chance of snow will cause people to cancel their plans. (Years ago, when I was singing with Seattle Women in Blues, we had a Saturday night show in Pioneer Square get canceled due to "a chance of snow". They closed the bar at 4pm. Our 3-hour gig was supposed to begin at 9pm. By 2am, not a single flake of snow had fallen. Needless to say, I had some unpleasant things to say about this city full of "snow dummies".)

And so, I was pleased last night that my 6pm class (I'm teacher-in-training in an intro acting class--and I'm SO EXCITED!!) did not get canceled due to "a chance of snow". And even at 7:30, when the snow began to fall, we kept on working. By 8:45, when the snow was sitting an inch deep on car-tops and covering the city streets, we decided it was best to end class an hour early to let people make their way home through the winter madness. Fortunately for me, the class is only a 10-minute walk from my apartment (fortunate, as there is no way the Sexy Beast Camaro was gonna be moving up any hills, since all that horsepower does nothing but cause a massive fish-tail on slick surfaces), and I do love to walk in falling snow (unless we're talking blizzard-like conditions, with biting winds sending razor-edged snowflakes to attack my sweet cheeks). It was beautiful. Very few cars on the road, and most of the bars had smokers standing outside smiling at the weather. (I heard one guy say, "Dude, this snow makes me feel stoned." Oh, you funny Seattle-ites.) By the time I got to my building, I was covered in big, wet flakes. Alex and I sat by the windows, by the roar of our fake fire, and stared out at the whiteness. Much of the city was lost behind the snow, and the streets below were a pattern of tire tracks and footprints. It was beautiful.

By 6am, it was a slushy mess. It is now a grey, rainy day, and the only traces of snow are dripping off of rooftops. The construction crew is working down below, though most of their machinery is sitting silent in slushy mud. There's some hammering going on, platform building, but most of the crew is sitting inside their trucks drinking hot beverages, waiting for...I don't know what. It's a mess out there. Nothing winter-wonderland about it. A good day to stay tucked indoors next to a fake fire. I do plan on heading out later, because Alex has the day off (he actually has 2 days off, his first 2 days off since sometime last spring and I'm so very excited!!) and he is desperate to get away from his computers and out of the apartment. I think we can make it to a movie theatre. Maybe see a double-feature. As long as I'm with Alex, I'll be happy to stomp through the slush to go wherever he might like to go. Though, it would have been so much better to take a walk through the snow.

Pre-dawn musings

2011, thus far, has been a year of early rising for me. I can't sleep past 7am, and most days I'm awake by 5 or 6, no matter what time I go to bed at night. Fortunately (I must find the positives), I don't have any place to be most days, so it's not like I'm exhausted at the start of a 9-hour shift or a day of classes. No, I just wake up in the darkness and wonder what to do with myself until day breaks and the city wakes up. Fortunately (again, thinking positively), there is a construction project across the street that gets rolling by 6am each day. The heavy, noise-making machinery doesn't start until 7, but there is an hour of darkness in which men in headlight-beaming hard hats wander through the muck and do whatever it is they do. I don't know what it is: looks to me like there are men staring very intently at walls. Specific spots on walls. For minutes at a time. I look down from my 11th floor perch to the hollowed-out pit that reaches, I'd guess, about 3 stories into the earth (maybe "stories" isn't the correct term, but I'm not good at guessing measurements, and my guess of 30 feet could be off by 20 feet or so, therefore I will put my measurement-guess into building terms that make sense in my brain), and I wonder, what are those men staring at? What do they see in the edges of that foundation wall? It's a mystery to me. Construction as a whole is a mystery to me. Here I am, living in this super-modern building with an open design plan which exposes the pipes and supports and concrete ceiling, and I think to myself, how the hell does concrete stay raised over my head? There are thousands of pounds worth of concrete above me, and it's all just hanging out there, as if it's SUPPOSED to be there. And I know, man has used stone and other heavy materials to roof buildings for many centuries, and most buildings (if built properly) will withstand the tests of time (and hopefully, in this city, the tests of earthquakes). I know that there are all kinds of formulas to prove that gravity is offset by force and pressure and that living in a well-constructed concrete high-rise is safer in some ways than living in a wood-built ranch house. I know this, intellectually. But I can't wrap my head around it. I look at the work happening in the pit below me, I think of that pit someday turning into a 17-story building (which is gonna completely alter the current view from this apartment, not in a welcomed way), and I feel a little unsettled. It doesn't seem possible. This concrete that rests above my head, it doesn't seem possible that it should simply hang out there. The city that I stare at, the thousands of floors of office space and residential units, none of it makes sense to me. And I am a true urbanite, I love living in a city and marveling at the man-made wonder of it all. I marvel at it much more than I question it's ability to exist. But during these pitch-dark pre-dawns of my 2011, when I have little more to do than watch and wonder, I find myself mystified by all of the mechanical truths humans have learned, all of the formulas and theorems solved. My head has never been a place where such things thrived. Theorems come to my head to take a nap. Yes, I can learn stuff like that. I guess I just don't want to. It's not like I'm scared by all of the things I don't understand; rather, I walk these streets with a certain amount of faith that all those mechanical things I don't understand are well-understood by others, and those others are responsible for putting those things into action. Those others are standing below wearing headlights on their hard hats and staring at walls, understanding some truths in those walls that I never will.

These are the thoughts I have when waking up too often in the pre-dawn dark. Thank goodness I have other people to observe during these hours. Imagine what I'd be thinking if I didn't....

Huh-huh-huh-WHY-eeeeeee

There is no doubt about it: 2010 ended with a thud. A thud like a hammer hitting a head. A thud with whopping results. 2010 as a whole was....well, it was a hard year. I can't say it was a BAD year, not really. It had some really really good parts! But even the good stuff, almost all of it, was HARD. Financially, it was a good year. But almost every penny we made was coated in chaos and confusion. Theatrically, it was a...really, I can't call it a good year. I did some work that I am VERY proud of, but if nobody sees good work, does it even exist? 2010 was a year of change, and change is always challenging, even change that is sought after (like our move to Seattle). Yes, the overall feeling of 2010 was THIS IS REALLY HARD. And to have it end in the way it did, with our fuzzy daughter getting sick and Alex canceling his trip home for Christmas and me canceling my trip to Florida and then She-ra dying on Christmas Eve (worst Christmas ever) and then me getting stuck in a blizzard so I couldn't mourn with Alex til almost a week after she died...yeah, 2010 ended with a hammer-to-the-head kind of thud. When New Year's Eve rolled around, there was no part of me that was feeling celebratory, no part of me that wanted to share the event with the rest of the world. Fortunately, Alex and I had a good friend staying with us for the weekend, and while he was very understanding of our melancholy (this friend was She-ra's first father, before he abandoned her to go party it up in Europe for a few months), his being here forced Alex and I to unwrap ourselves from our misery long enough to find moments of laughter. And as the countdown to 2011 began, we 3 made our way downstairs to watch the fireworks off of the Space Needle (and as we're only 2 blocks from said Needle, we had the best view in town), and I felt happy to be with the people. Happy to feel that celebratory energy, even if it wasn't emanating from me. Happy to feel a part of something much bigger than myself. My friend Caro was telling me how a friend of hers likes New Year's Eve so much because "at midnite, it's like everybody's birthday, all at the same time." I like that. And I get it. It is the one moment each year when we all can celebrate the same thing with the same personal connection to it. I let myself shout out HAPPY NEW YEAR and whoop and cheer at the stunning display in the sky before me (and laugh aloud each time the guy behind us shouted out TIMES SQUARE AIN'T GOT NOTHING ON THE NEEDLE) and when the grande finale was complete and the sky was shrouded in smoke, I was happy to head back inside and call the night complete.

Yeah, I am done with 2010. I am ready to embrace 2011. And in order to fully embrace it, Alex and I sat down yesterday and purchased plane tickets to Hawaii. Wooooo hooooooo!! One of Alex's partners rented a house on Kauai for a month and has invited his friends to come and hang out with him. This seems to be the way we do Hawaii: have a friend with a house and get invited to stay, so the only expenses are airfare, food, and fun! We went to Maui in 2008 at the invite of one of my Columbia classmates (which was one of the best vacations EVER!!) and we are both so excited to head back to the tropics. I know that, for you east coasters, Hawaii is too far away to beat out the Caribbean islands for a tropical getaway. And having finally explored the Caribbean, I agree that it makes no sense to travel 12 hours for beauty that can easily be paralleled in only 4 hours. But as long as I'm on the west coast, I plan on exploring the beauty of Hawaii whenever possible. Which means, I need to make a lot of friends who have homes on the islands. I'll add that to my New Year's Resolutions. Though, my resolutions are pretty weighty already, so perhaps I'll work on that in 2012.

And so, 2011 is shaping up to be a good year. 4 days into it, the sun has shone bright and clear in Seattle (the grey is supposed to roll back in tonite). I am excited about the possibilities that lie ahead for me. I feel almost like I've been in hibernation, and I am ready to wake up!!! I feel like change is a-brewing, once again, and yes, change is always challenging, but I don't fear it, I seek it. I am ready to move forward into this new year and whatever opportunities await. And, knowing that there will be a week of sunshine in March, I can battle through whatever grey may come my way until then.

Here's wishing you sunshine and free lodgings in 2011!!