Holiday Luau

Last weekend we attended Open Door's Hawaiian-themed holiday party. While I usually am so exhausted from clinic days and work that my idea of a good time on a weekend night is not being on call and hanging out in yoga pants with a book and my electric blanket, I did enjoy our night "out." There were drinks and good finger foods, music, Hawaiian dancing, a photobooth, and even...  limbo. Here are some (mostly iPhone) photos from the evening.

 The Drs.Vu

 

Kelly dressed up as a luau pig-on-a-spit for the costume contest

 

Kelly and Ana, the prenatal clinic's rockstar

These girls were amazing dancers!

K, David, Jenny, Maddie, and Join

Ana, Beth, and me

What would a party be without LIMBO?!

Sheri coordinates

I loved watching this two-ish-year-old duck under the bar

 

Kelvin rocks the limbo bar!

 (Thanks to Lori who took these far better action photos)

The photobooth! (NPS silliness)

Mele Kalikimaka!

Let it Snow (in CA)!!

I live in California, which automatically evokes images of sunny days and warm beaches. I actually live in far northern coastal California, which actually has cool and rainy weather year-round with temperatures rarely exceeding 60 degrees, so it's hardly the balmy paradise you might picture.
Temperate as we are, we rarely have temps below 30 degrees; however, this past week, it was very different! We had not turned on our central heat but at one point last week during the middle of the day, it was 42 degrees in our house (and now the heat is on).

Some weather maps posted on Business Insider (posted by Steve) show that, while we're not close to contending with the midwest, it was just as cold, or even colder last week here on December 6th, "Ice Friday," than in parts of the East Coast and Northeast.

 

  

Here was our Friday night forecast

 

While having lived on the East Coast and the Polar North of Minnesota, I've definitely had my share of snowstorms, snow-shoveling, etc. However, in California, threats or actualities of snow bring much excitement (even to me, now as a resident), as evidenced by this photo, shared by Karen from the 'Only in Humboldt' site:

Here's actual snow my car on Saturday morning!

Here is a shot of the scene on Friday at Willow Creek, about 35 miles east of us.

And here is the first-video-ever taken from my phone (I'm surprised the effort was successful), when Saturday morning, I looked out out window to see flakes falling. The flurry lasted less than 15 min and nothing stuck, but it was worth posting as I'm not sure I'll ever see this again here (many people with whom I talked on Friday stated that in all their years/[decades] in Arcata, they had never seen it actually snow).

While it's sunny right now without snow on the forecast, it's 28 degrees, so we'll be wearing lots of layers outside today (unless we stay home this morning and watch Detroit/Philly duke it out in football in a blizzard)! I don't think we can hope for a White Christmas, but this was pretty special!

Egg-less McMuffin

On a quick trip through a McDonald's breakfast lane on the East Coast last week (because we had coupons), Kelvin and I decided to try some Egg White Delight McMuffins.  This turned out to be quite problematic because of the apparent complexity of our order. It went something like this...

K (to the drive-through order box thingie): I'd like to order two Egg White McMufffins.
May I have one without cheese, and one with cheese, please?
McD lady: Got it. Can you please check the screen?
[which read: Egg White Delight McMuffin, NO EGG, Egg White Delight McMuffin]
K (who doesn't like added cheese on things, or cheese in general, for that matter): The screen says NO EGG. I want Egg. I just don't want cheese.
Me (under my breath, and generally trusting of others): Don't worry, honey. I think they'll get it right. I'm sure you're not the first person to order an Egg McMuffin without cheese.
K (mistrustful of most others): No, I don't think they'll get it right. That screen says NO EGG.
(To the drive-through box/lady): You're sure you got it, right? One McMuffin without cheese. One with cheese.
McD lady: I got it. Please proceed to the window for payment.

After getting our goods, I opened up the bag. As much as I hate to admit that my faith in drive-through lady was not warranted, guess who was right...

I unwrapped one "Eggwhite Delight McMuffin" to check its contents. It did have cheese and ham, but lacked the egg white.

I thought they may have just forgotten the egg white on the one sandwich, but perhaps got the second sandwich right (including egg whites but without cheese).

Nope.

"I can taste and see the cheese. See!" said Kelvin.

Boo.

I guess that an Egg White Delight McMuffin, holding the egg white, is as common an order as cheese-less one.

my childhood in four boxes

While at "home" last week/weekend, one of my tasks was to go through a few boxes of my childhood "stuff." I think I had already whittled my belongings down to these few boxes back in 2002 or so when my parents moved to Denmark, but now that I'm a "grown-up," I was asked to sort further, deciding what needed to be saved, what was going to Salvation Army, and what went to the dumpster.

(Dad labeled this box!)

I always feel quite wistful when I go home to McLean. I struggled quite a bit emotionally and was really insecure during my middle and high school years and feel that I'm quite a different person now than I was.... 15 years ago (boy, that makes me feel old).  Going through the boxes, with mementos from college, high school, middle school (which was spent in Kathmandu, Nepal), and even elementary school (in Bangkok, Thailand as well as McLean), made me quite nostalgic.

I think I must have done a pretty darn good job of weeding out unimportant stuff the first time as I had a really hard time getting rid of anything more, and felt pretty strongly that most of the boxes' contents were worth saving.  I found pins, good luck charms, travel trinkets, stickers, stamps, letters, cards, scrapbooks, journals, and photos... all which remind me of my treasured past and important people in it, all of whom have shaped who I am today.

I brought some goodies back "home" to California. A few more items (journals, etc) remain at my parents' house to be schlepped on another trip.  I decided to photograph a few things I found on my trip down memory lane...

Me and the sis, around ?1988-1989

 

(from 3-5th grade)

from a summer at Camp Lake Hubert in MN

I was obsessed with these "Best Friends" necklaces back in the day...

Sand dollars, which I loved

I was quite the sticker- (and stamp-) collector!

Check out these hilarious journal entries, from when I was about 9

I was extremely proud of this fourth grade Country project

RIP, Toccata (my first real dog)

 

My senior year tennis team went all the way to States!

(with Alice, Leah, and Emily)

The girls (Lauren, Jordan, Ayumi, Anna) in a hair dyeing escapade, circa 2000

My admission letter to the Univ. of Richmond, where I spent a great four years being a Spider!

So many memories...

Gettysburg

 

As mentioned in the last post, we don't get "home" to Virginia very much and when we do have time here, it's limited. Kelvin, however, always impressed by the proximity of eastern states, often  suggests that we do some day-trips crossing state lines... and so this trip, instead of shopping on Black Friday, we did something much more interesting and headed past Maryland to Gettysburg, Pennsylvania which is only about an hour and a half from my parents' home in McLean. 

Although I am definitely drawn to "social-injustice" history and appreciate books and movies set in the Civil War era, I didn't know that much about all the military intricacies of the three-day battle at Gettysburg and we definitely both learned a lot visiting the national military park in what is the 150th anniversary year of the pivotal battle.

We started with viewing a short film, A New Birth of Freedom (narrated by Morgan Freeman) and then gaped at the 1880's Cyclorama (a circular painting) by Frenchman Paul Philippoteaux called The Battle of Gettysburg which, at 377 feet in diameter and 42 feet high, is a truly amazing sight.

Philippoteaux painted himself into the painting here as the man with the sword

This fallen soldier has Lincoln's face

Good ol' Abe!

The Visitors' Center had a very nicely done and new museum with many Civil War Relics and informational and multimedia exhibits.

K with Confederate [left] and Union [right] uniforms

 

Generals Meade (left, Union) and Lee (right, Confederate) who led the armies at Gettysburg

Kelvin and I just watched 12 Years a Slave (well-acted, powerful, and well done) and it's so hard to believe that the evils of last century actually existed...

 

Slave (red) and free (green) states

We went on a private two-hour driving tour of the battlefields and monuments with a very enthusiastic history buff, Ed, who relocated from his native (and first secessionist) state South Carolina so that he could teach this rich history to visitors like us.

Many original buildings (with cannonball and bulletholes in them) still stand in the town of Gettysburg.

The Carrie Sheads House

There are hundreds of memorials throughout the battlegrounds, most erected in the 1890s. While most are either Confederate or Union tributes, this was a combined monument with an eternal flame.

Cannon (with a range of a mile!)

(I think this hexagonal cannon had a range of about 5 miles!)

 (Pep does PA!)

More cannons...

Virginia Memorial (one of the largest), with Robert E. Lee at the top

 Confederate General James Longstreet

(Massive) Pennsylvania Monument

Pep and me atop Little Round Top, a hill where the Union defense helped turn the tides of the battle

 

Little Round Top view 

 

 Soldiers' or Gettysburg National Cemetary is where more than 3500 Union soldiers are buried, and where, on November 19, 1963, President Abraham Lincoln delivered his famous Gettysburg Address.

Lincoln's speech was actually the post-script to a 2-hour speech by Massachussetts politician Edward Everett but was far more profound and influential.

Eerily, on the 100the Anniversary of Lincoln's Gettysburg Address in 1963, President John F. Kennedy was asked to visit the site, but declined, instead heading to (and getting assassinated in) Dallas (to read about some other eerie Lincoln- Kennedy coincidences, go here).

"... that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain -- that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom -- and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth." 

We highly recommend a day trip to Gettysburg if you're ever in the area!