Talk Talk

It's Friday night, and here I am, sitting in front of the computer. Because I am BEAT. Huh. Who knew having house guests for weeks while also preparing for my first ever music history lecture at Europe Through the Back Door could be so exhausting and wonderful at the same time?

I was a little concerned about the lecture. What with being preoccupied with Ryan and company (after all, the guy was having open heart surgery, no small ordeal), I wondered if I hadn't put enough time into preparing my talk.

"I've never given a speech for a full hour! What if I don't have enough material?"

"What if someone asks me some semi-obscure question I don't know the answer to, like, 'When was Chopin born?' or 'What's the plot for Rigoletto?'"

"Was it really a good idea not to actually give a practice talk out loud? Can I really just stand up there and expect to wing it, just going off a brief outline?"

As it turns out, I could have talked for well over an hour, no one asked any obscure questions (or cared about any dates or opera plots), and I think I only looked at my outline once during the entire class. It's true: when you're passionate about a subject, getting to share that passion with a room full of strangers is actually quite exhilarating.

Now I'm already scheduled to give a talk about the Basque region in early August. Do I have a passion for pintxos, the Guggenheim, and beautiful beaches? Hmm... yeah, I think I can pull it off.

Life and How to Live It

It's been awhile. I'm back home, and have spent the past week back at work and dealing with my brother-in-law Ryan's open heart surgery. Last Wednesday he went in to receive a heart valve, and Michael, Ryan's wife, Lyndsay, and his mother-in-law, Devra, spent their days with him at the hospital, while I provided everyone with late dinners when they came back home each evening. Ryan was discharged from the hospital yesterday evening and is doing wonderfully, and Lyndsay and Devra are on their way back to Las Vegas, so we're moving on to a new stage in this process, and looking forward to a few more friends moving in with us for the summer soon.

In the meantime, I'm trying to prepare for my first class at Europe Through the Back Door this Thursday. Titled "Europe's Musical History Tour", it's free and open to the public. Sorry to shill for myself, but you can find more information online at: http://www.ricksteves.com/news/classes/class_menu.htm (Really, more than anything I think I need prayer that the class will go well - I've felt so distracted lately that I haven't done as much prep work as I would like.)

And that's about it for now. I've come to realize that even though I haven't been overwhelmingly busy since coming back home, just taking care of guests and having a loved one's surgery on the mind (even if it did go well) can wear one out a little bit. I still haven't gotten to look at my Europe photos! Soon, I promise. Well, after next weekend (yep, I'm busy till then). Watch for the new, photo-enhanced Europe blog posts to come!

Gettin' Hitched, Vegas-Style

Michael and I are back from our brief trip to Vegas for his brother Ryan's wedding. It was a whirlwind of hot pink, glitter, too little time with friends and family, Cirque du Soleil, late breakfasts, and toasts - with or without the sparkling wine.

While I have, in fact, worn a hot pink dress as a bridesmaid, I never thought I would get to see Michael subjected to this color in tux form. Pink checked satin peeked above the lapels of all the groomsmen, complete with matching ascots. Katelynn, our niece, was perhaps more thrilled at the prospect of pink. She and her younger sister, Lindsey, walked down the aisle in white dresses with pink polka dots, strewing pink petals from the intensely hot pink baskets their mom, Nicole, had decorated for them. After a practice run half an hour before the ceremony (and I'm not sure whose idea it was for the practice run, but I have the feeling it was a decision made without adult input), they had their petal placement down pat.

Ryan's bride, Lyndsay, glowed in a beautiful white gown, but still gave a nod to Las Vegas style with her show-stopping make-up. She looked stunning, and everyone else had a fun time trying on different looks for the photo booth that had been rented for the reception.

Weddings are always a special time, and at their heart, all weddings are celebrations of family and love, a chance to see friends and family together who otherwise may have never met, but who all share a common joy in seeing the couple make a public commitment to each other (and, in this very special case, a public commitment on Ryan's part to be a father to Lyndsay's son Kenny, as well as her husband). Best wishes for a lifetime together, Ryan and Lyndsay!

Leaving For Las Vegas

Although we will be gone a mere four days, packing always feels like an ordeal. Where's a matching pair of black trouser socks? What happened to Michael's travel sized shaving cream? Do we have enough change for bus fare to the airport? And why do I do this the night before we leave?

I ought to be something of an expert on packing, I suppose. And I am, in fact, pretty good at the packing light thing. That, naturally, makes me cringe when I see Michael loading up with game console cables and controllers and bachelor party gag gifts. Are we really going to be able to carry on all this junk? But this is the difference between packing for travel and packing for an event such as a brother-in-law's wedding. As Michael is the best man, he's been plotting the bachelor party for weeks and, being the perfectionist that he is, this means accumulating plenty of potential entertainment in the form of movies, games, and gags to fill up the evening - this after he has already planned a trip to a hookah bar and comedy club. I did convince him we should purchase the wedding gift in Las Vegas, however. Precious little that we would want to offer to the happy couple would fit neatly in a Rick Steves' suitcase along with our weekend wardrobe.

It will be a relief to be on the plane tomorrow, leaving the daily grind behind for a few days, heading for a celebration. Of course, just finishing up with the packing will make me feel a lot better, too. Speaking of which... I guess I'd better get packing!

Leaving Las Vegas

In about three hours or so, we'll be leaving Las Vegas, and I have yet to set foot inside a casino. I must be just about the only person to visit Vegas who can honestly say that. The truth is, casinos have never really interested me, although it would be something to see the spectacle that is the Strip. There will be other times for that, but the main purpose of this brief trip was to visit Michael's brother, Ryan, and his fiancee and future step-son, so we mainly stayed close to home.

Not that staying home can't produce the unexpected - I was standing in the middle of a Barnes & Noble yesterday, taking care of some last minute Christmas shopping for our southwestern relations, when I heard a voice exclaim, "Ruth Haggard?!" OK, so my name used to be Ruth Hagglund, not Haggard, but this was close enough to make me look up and take notice. I found myself staring across a display at a woman who, I realized after a second or two of sheer blankness, was a former high school classmate of mine.

"Kelly?" I said, thanking God that I remembered her name. I have been thrown for a loop several times in the past when meeting people from an earlier stage in my life unexpectedly. It's a little embarrassing.

"Yeah!" was the response. And I got to hear the brief synopsis of what had transpired in her life since high school, as well as a few other people who had been with me from kindergarten through graduation. None were part of my little circle of friends (I wasn't one of the popular people, but in a small town, you still know everyone), but it was still exciting to hear what they are up to, and, from the sound of it, to know that they are doing well. This is the first news I've heard of just about any of my classmates in years, and to think it would happen in a bookstore in northwest Las Vegas!

Besides catching up with old schoolmates, yesterday also introduced me to two wonders of the modern world: Guitar Hero and Lee's Discount Liquors. After an initial struggle getting used to the game, I now rock the bass as a Guitar Hero goddess, alongside Michael or Ryan on the guitar. Michael is now convinced we need our own Guitar Hero game at home, and while I can't say I don't like the idea, I'm not eager to spend the money quite yet.

One thing that cannot be brought home, however, is Lee's Discount Liquors. I laughed when Michael told me the name of this "Costco of Beers", as he put it. Red Neck, much? But this is Vegas, and Nevada has possibly the loosest liquor laws in the nation, although I'm not sure that they can beat the drive-thru daiquiri stands of Louisiana.

Red neck name or not, Lee's is pretty cool if you're into any kind of semi-obscure alcohols; they sell everything, and are certainly not limited to beer, which takes up only a small portion of the massive store. But beer is why we went, so that Michael and I could exclaim over the many Belgians, wheat beers, and other imports both familiar and unknown. We took home a variety to try: the one and only quadrupel ale in the store, a Belgian trippel, a six pack of Flying Dog's In Heat Wheat, which Michael was ecstatic to find, apple lambic, and blueberry oat beer (yeah, that's right - blueberry oat beer; I'd never heard of such a thing, either).

Of course, we did not drink all these beers last night! We saved the In Heat Wheat for later. We drank the Belgians, discovering that the La Chouffe Trippel was an IPA and intensely hoppy, not something Michael or I have really developed a taste for. The Urthel Samaranth Quadrium, my first quadrupel, was so rich and heady (this beer is 11% alcohol!), that I couldn't stay awake for long after finishing my glass. As for the blueberry oat beer, Ryan loved it, but I had a couple of sips and am still not sure what to think of such an odd mix of flavors.

So in the end, I did get to experience one Vegas institution, although I'm not sure that tasting "specialty" beers at home is a very Vegas thing to do. It actually sounds more like a Seattle thing, where, in truth, we could probably find all of these beers at a shop such as Bottleworks. But Bottleworks wouldn't sell about fifty varieties of vodka and cognac for $1400.00 per bottle alongside the beer, and therein lies the real Vegas difference.

Off Into the Sunset

It is a strange thing to be driving in a snow storm one night, then spend the following morning driving down a clear freeway with the air conditioner on. On Saturday night, as the snow that had begun early that morning continued to fall, my brother, Sam, drove Michael and I to the Portland Airport to catch our flight to Phoenix. Sam, dad, Michael and I piled into Sam's two-door Toyota Echo, and neither Michael nor I felt we were off to a great start when Sam began skidding left and right as we made our way slowly down the hill.

"I have to let up on the breaks in order to steer the car," Sam explained. Ah. I feel so much better now.

Thankfully, getting down from the hill seemed to be the worst of it. Sam got us to the airport in a mere two and a half hours (only about an hour longer than usual), and never once resorted to putting chains on the Echo. He is a braver soul than I, but perhaps the fact that I trusted his driving is indicative of my own bravery (or foolishness, I'm not sure which). Although, as Sam himself stated, he trusts his driving without chains in the snow more than most people's driving with chains, and I think he has a point.

We were fortunate, too, to catch the last flight to leave the Portland Airport that night. After about a half hour delay to de-ice and prepare the plane, we were on our way, leaving the snow flurries far behind. Driving in the car on our way to Michael's dad's church in Scottsdale this morning, it was disorienting to be surrounded by vast stretches of dry, mud-brown earth dotted with endless adobe houses. My skin, already uncomfortably dry from the severe winter weather we've been having in the Northwest, felt even more parched.

Our stay in Arizona was brief, however, and this afternoon we were on the road again, driving Michael's dad's old Rav4 to Las Vegas, the home of Michael's brother, Ryan. As we drove, the desert landscape changed from sagebrush and saguaros to Joshua trees, looking for all the world like the spindly, spiky flora of a Dr. Seuss tale. I half expected to see some desert relation to the Sneeches peer out from behind a branch.

As we drew nearer to the Nevada border, the sun painted the wispy clouds to the west in glorious, glowing oranges and pinks. The dull brown of the daytime landscape disappeared in the sunset, so different from the whites and greys that were all that had been visible on the road to us only 24 hours before. And I count myself incredibly lucky to have been able to experience both.