Plussing your day with the meandering musings and spitting opinions of Greg Clapp, a self-important but mostly harmless liberal wienie who likes to opine vainly about topics that no one really cares about much but him, but hey he’s got a blog, so he rambles on about them anyway even though he’s certain no one is paying much attention except maybe his mom and a couple of well-wishers and assorted nutters.
Happy New Year, everyone! I hope 2008 treated you well, or that you at least found the silver lining in a tumultuous year. You can’t say 2008 was boring, that’s for sure! The pundits will lament and the economists wring their hands, but the past year was by far one of the most interesting I’ve experienced. In fact, it was a damn good year…I’ve got a keen eye for silver linings.
Here’s some of the highlights, or lowlights, as the case may be…
I enjoyed my first full year of home ownership. The fact that I’m underwater with the value of my home is currently irrelevant because I plan to live here until well after the market recovers.
I went to Disneyland on my birthday for the very first time, and have never seen so much rain in my life! But I also got to help Paul record WTTM:24, the smash hit Disney fan podcast show.
My former employer, the formerly high-flying Washington Mutual, ceased to exist, and most of my former co-workers in Seattle are in the process of being laid off. Thankfully I quit and sold my stock right before the share price took its last big dive into the toilet.
The economy collapsed…or, rather, is in the process of a painful correction. But since I live within my means, and have a healthy savings account instead of piles of bling, it’s been a gentle ride.
Our country had the longest, nastiest, most expensive presidential campaign in memory. It was also the most riveting, interesting and surprising presidential campaigns in memory, and it produced this country’s first non-caucasian president in a landslide election, and gave the Republican party a long-overdue spanking. Wheeeeee!
Justin’s grandmother passed away, and he had to spend a lot of time in Spokane, which disrupted our lives and some of the things we’d planned for the summer and fall. But it brought his small family together for the first time in many years, and I got to spend Thanksgiving with them in Spokane.
Portland got socked with the biggest snow storm in forty years (or more by some accounts). It forced us to cancel our big Christmas party, and shut down the city for nearly two weeks before Christmas, which further depressed the local economy but forced people to celebrate the holiday more humbly and less commercially. Spoiled kids having to go without? Awesome.
And best of all, I celebrated my ten year anniversary with Justin and went to Las Vegas for the very first time to commemoriate the occasion. This one’s all silver lining!
With the stage thusly set, we head into the new year. The world seems eager to put 2008 behind itself, to close the door on what many are calling the worst year ever. But if 2009’s anything like the past year, we’re in for a fun, interesting ride!
Just when it looked like we’d get a reprieve from the storms that shut down Portland the week before Christmas, we got another burst of snow. Like a cold, wet slap in the face, the skies opened with a dump of huge, sticky flakes on Christmas Day, as we gathered with a few friends for some holiday lasagne at our place. The snow fell so thickly, we felt like we were living in a snow globe. It was beautiful, but by then, we’d had enough.
But the snow didn’t last long, and by the next day, a serious melt had begun. The storm, named by the television news “Arctic Blast 2008,” was at its end, but it made for an interesting holiday and a beautiful, white Christmas.
The snow and freezing temperatures continue for the second week, and there’s no end in sight. Temps aren’t expected to get above freezing until after Christmas, with on and off snow and freezing rain showers. This long, long snow day is getting old.
In the next day or two, we’re going to have to hike out to the supermarket, though I have no boots. Never thought I’d need ‘em. So I’m going to swallow my pride and wrap my shoes in grocery bags and hope Fred Meyer still has boots in my size for the talk home. Nor do we have chains, and I’m sure all the hardware stores in town are out of stock. So we’re not going anywhere quick, in spite of cabin fever.
I’m sure my friend Mike, who just endured a real Northeastern ice storm, will laugh when he reads this, but this is my first ice storm, albeit a mild one. This is Portland, for heaven’s sake.
Nothing’s moving out there, except for the neighbor with the 4wd monster truck. Even the neighbor with the snowblower gave up. Our cars are frozen shut–we can’t even get into the trunk to see if we’ve got chains (never needed them, not sure if they’re in there). The freezing rain continues to fall with a distinctive clatter as it hits the crust of ice that lies over a bed of powdery snow.
But we’ve got plenty of food an liquor, and a couple of movies to watch. The heat’s been running practically nonstop to combat the sub-freezing temperatures, but least we’ve still got…no, I’m not even going to finish that thought.
Last night was supposed to be our big, fabulous “Ugly Christmas Sweater Christmas Party,” but due to inclement weather, we had to cancel. I mean, really inclement weather. We’ve had days of snow, and yesterday it fell and blew all day long, in drifts of fine, dry powder. Twelve-inch drifts may not seem like a lot, but in Portland, it is. So we canceled our party, and told our friends to stay home and be safe.
Here’s what the weather looked like all day long…
And here’s what the party would have looked like (imagine several jolly people in the photo, all wearing ugly Christmas sweaters)…
To celebrate our 10th anniversary, Justin and I went to Las Vegas and stayed at the Flamingo. The Flamingo’s one of the old-school resorts in the middle of the action on the Strip. It’s surrounded by both old and new resorts like Caesar’s Palace, Bally’s, Paris, the Bellagio and the Venice. Right next door are some of the older casinios like Bill’s and Casino Royale. And just a short walk down the street are the Mirage and Treasure Island. It was a perfect location, close to most everything, and the off-season rates were great.
Thanks to our friend Tairy, we got to see a show called Ice, which is an acrobatics and ice show from Russia. It was an amazing show, sort of a low-budget Cirque on ice. The performers were gorgeous and talented and the music and effects were fabulous. Donny and Marie were also playing the week we were there, at the Flamingo, but Justin vetoed that one. It would have been fun, but probably not worth the $85 for tickets.
I’d never been to Vegas before, for more than lunch and to fill up on gas, so this was a grand adventure for me. I’d also never done more gambling than dropping a $20 into a slot machine, and was determined to work up my nerve to spend some time at the tables, however short that time may be before the money ran out.
This is the very first photo of us together, on a camping trip in 1999.
Today, December 8, Justin and I celebrated our tencennial. We met for the first time exactly 3,653 days ago (count includes 3 leap days) in front of a long-gone Seattle establishment called Sit and Spin, a cafe/laundromat in the Belltown neighborhood. The place was closed for remodeling that night, so we walked a couple blocks to the Two Bells Tavern, and there we sat for a couple hours, drinking coffee and talking long into the night. Not sure if it was the spark between us or the caffeine, I was awake for hours that night, having just met the man I would share my life with.
After ten years, we’re still as much in love as we were that first year. Though time changes and mellows relationships, it makes the good ones stronger and better in ways the newlywed might never imagine. Justin in the light of my life, my one true love, and I am greatly looking forward to spending the rest of my life with him.
Riverfront Park in Spokane is the former site of Expo ‘74. Though I was only four, I have foggy memories of it from the short time my family lived there. I remember the pavilion with its white canopy. The canopy was sold off years ago, but the skeleton remains. And I can remember the gondola over the falls and being absolutely terrified and thrilled. The water was much higher that year–it seemed like the water was right below us and that we were bathed in mist.
Instead of our annual bacchanal, Justin and I spent a family Thanksgiving in Spokane with his mom and sister. His grandmother passed away a couple weeks ago, so it was a special time for the family, and a good one. It was the first time in many years that the three of them had gathered for the holiday. It was also motivation to clean, clear out decades of grandma’s clutter, and create a fresh start for the family.
I rented a car and drove up on Wednesday and returned on Sunday. It’s a six hour drive through some dreadfully dreary countryside. So I had the weekend to poop around Spokane with Justin, see his old haunts and homes, and meet some of his friends. We wandered around the skywalks downtown, saw a movie, rode the gondola over Spokane Falls, explored the newly restored Davenport Hotel, and had a really fun time. And we got snow all day on Friday. It was beautiful!
