Strange Conversations

I bought a bag of potato chips for a mid-morning snack. I offered some to Connie. "I'm sure they taste good, but not for a nice Jewish girl," she replied. Then she added, "At least, I don't think so..." She turned the bag over and began reading the long list of ingredients. Not being as informed about Kosher diets as maybe I should be, I was curious what the objection might be. Then I learned that I'd accidentally bought "cheddar & bacon flavored" chips. We decided that there wasn't any actual pork in it, but since she's a stricter Jew than I am a vegetarian, I ate the chips alone.

Later in the morning, Connie found a story in the newspaper about the discovery of a 4,000 year old mummy. The story began with the words "Polish and Egyptian archaeologists have unearthed..." Connie commented that she didn't know what a "polish archaeologist" is. I replied, "Maybe that's 'Polish archaeologist.'" - "Oh yeah, that would make sense."

Phillip and I toasted the new year at home with the three sugar gliders last night. We humans had a New Year's dinner of baked cod (with orange and basil), rice (with vinegar), tomatoes, and Cristalino rose brut. That's not very vegetarian, I know, but I had a craving for fish.

This morning, we drove across the bridge to The Redmond Town Center to use the Borders gift certificates we got as Christmas presents from Dave & Marji. I bought another remastered Bob Dylan CD - this time, Blonde on Blonde. I had to convince Phillip that my choice was not because he gave me the wrong CD. (The truth is, I do think The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan is a better album.)

The Redmond Town Center is an interesting shopping center. It's designed to look like a small city - with the stores arranged into "blocks," with "sidewalks" and "streets" criss-crossing them. It even has "on street" parking (without parking meters, of course) in addition to the parking garages. I'm not sure how I feel about that. It kind of bothers me that it was built next door to the real town center of Redmond. It will take a while to sort out my feelings about this "city shopping without the hassels of going to the city" approach.

On our way back, we stopped into Whole Foods for some fun grocery shopping. I bought, among other things, a bag of yerba maté. I wasn't thinking about my New Year's resolution when I bought it, but Phillip convinced me that yerba maté can be considered a teasan. (Acutally, I'm not entirely sure what defines a teasan.)

So, since I had a cup of yerba maté this afternoon, and it is 2004, that's one tea (or teasan) down, 24 to go.

Sometime last weekend, I set aside East Of Eden and started reading The Fellowship Of The Ring. It's been years since I last read any part the trilogy. I'm about 100 pages into the book. There is a lot of the story that I'd forgotten.

The Peter Jackson films are, of course, very different from the books. That was no surprise. (In the book, for instance, decades go by between Bilbo's birthday party and Frodo leaving The Shire - in the film, it's a matter of hours.) I don't see this as a bad thing. It's simply a matter of one medium translated into another. Films have a practical time constraint that books do not. Films can show grandeur in a way that books cannot. The way I see it, the Peter Jackson films are a faithful telling of the story - but they are not intended to be a direct reading of the books. Events were transposed, side stories were eliminated, but the overall story is the same.

At lunch today, I came up with what I think is a good analogy for this: It's like painting a picture of a mountain. There is no way that a two-dimensional canvas can completely recreate a mountain - but it can present an accurate representation of a mountain. This doesn't not mean that painting a picture of a mountain is a bad thing.

It's like something from a Wishmaster sequel. Phillip wished for snow, and we got it this morning. The problem was that it wasn't enough to keep us from getting to work, but it was icy enough to prevent him from driving to work on a day that he had a parking pass and will be leaving work early. (I really don't want to risk sliding a fender into a mailbox before our Prius reaches its first birthday.)

Walking in a winter wonderland...

Here's another thing that Phillip and I differ on: Snow. Phillip loves the stuff. He's upset that Portland is getting it all this morning. I can take it or leave it. I've had too many bad snow experiences to truly love it. (However, it was the story I wrote about getting to work in the snow that gained me an invitation to Writers' Group, and that's a good thing.) Personally, I love days like today, when it's crispy cold, I'm bundled up in a thick sweater and coat, the sun is shining bright, and there isn't a cloud in the sky. The view from this side of campus is amazing. The houses clinging to the north side of Capitol Hill are vivid in detail, and beyond them, the snowy peaks of The Olympics look like they're right next door. (That's where I like the snow to be.)

Why did the alarm wake me up this morning? Is it a workday? I've convinced myself that it's Monday morning, but it still doesn't feel like it - it doesn't feel like any day in particular. It just feels disorienting. The past few days are a blur. What have I been doing? Was there anything I should have done, but didn't? Did the kids have playtime last night?

Whatever happened to Bob Dylan? Did he burn out, or did he go out of style?

I'm sitting here listening to the remastered CD of the twenty-year-old The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan (a Christmas gift from Phillip). This is a masterpiece of an album. It's hard to imagine these days someone producing such popular (at the time) music that conveys such complex emotions, with such a variety of emotions, with such beautiful simplicity - just a guy with a guitar and harmonica in front of a microphone.

"How many ears must one man have / Before he can hear people cry?"