| THIS IS A READ-ONLY ARCHIVE FROM THE SORABJI.COM MESSAGE BOARDS (1995-2016). |
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This is what we did: We arrived in Seattle on Saturday night. We parked near the Space Needle and walked to the Belltown area, ate dinner at some place whose name I can't remember, walked all around, went to sleep. Sunday: Went to the museum of glass in Tacoma (my brother's an apprentice glassblower), went to Snoqualmie Falls because of the Twin Peaks connection, had dinner in Seattle's Chinatown, walked around some more, came back. Monday: Went to Mount St. Helens -- AWEsome. Arrived in Portland at night, ate dinner with my friend Clare and her roommate (they work in Salem, live in Woodburn), went to Powell's bookstore (dude....I could so live there), walked around the city, came back. My brother bought a collection of David Sedaris CDs (14 hours of him and his sister Amy reading from his books)...that kept us entertained during the rest of the trip. Tuesday: Walked around Portland in the morning, went to the Historical Society, went to Silver Falls in the afternoon and hiked, drove to Roseburg and stayed there in the evening. It was...interesting. Wednesday: Went to Crater Lake in the morning -- amazing! Freezing! Drove through the Redwood forest to Arcata, CA. Stayed there for the night night, went to the beach. Thursday: Drove 600 miles from Arcata through Reno to Tonopah, NV. What's in Tonopah? Nothing. What is in NV besides Reno and Las Vegas? NOTHING. NO-THING. Oh, I think Tonopah is known to have the only MacDonalds in the non-Reno, non-LV rest of the state. Another disappointment: there was a full moon. I had been looking forward to seeing all the billions of stars that I never see here because of the city lights. Dammit. Friday: Went to Rhyolite (a ghost town) and Death Valley. It was about 100 degrees down there, and it was really neat to see stretches of desert in which there was no life, not even the hardscrabble sage or cactus. Got to Las Vegas around 3, and then the family reunion commenced. My family rocks, flat-out. It is full of talented, kind, gorgeous people. When my aunt emails me the digital photos she took, I'll try to post them to a photo album like Patrick's baby pictures. Listen to this about my great-uncle John (he was the first permanent internist in Las Vegas and saw a lot of celebrities as patients)....one day he was visiting Paul Anka and saw the sheet music to a new song Paul was writing, and he recommended that Paul send it to Frank Sinatra. Paul agreed. The song was "My Way." Is that not cool or what? Remember the "hunting for Bambi" video business a few months ago? My uncle Jim is the one who shut them down. I thought that was cool, too. My cousin Michaela got married in July (she's only 21!), and I was happy her husband was at the reunion and got to see how great our family is. I was also happy my grandfather got up and told stories...he's got a phenomenal memory and he's really funny. It's amazing...he can remember what people wore on a particular day in 1929 and things like that. He told the story of how his brother Joe was kidnapped by the Black Hand in 1912, and how my great-grandmother haggled his ransom down to $600. Their cousin Frank had also been kidnapped around that time (and was tortured, and never recovered mentally), and when he was returned to the family, my great-grandfather the baker cleared out the bread in his store window and put Frank in there on a chair so that all the neighbors could see that he was home and wave at him. Hee! The reunion was held in a ballroom at the Hilton, and next door was a wedding or something, and their music was loud and obnoxiously interfering with our communion. A cousin at the microphone made a comment about it, and an old man's voice called out, "Hey, we're a room full of Sicilians. I'm sure we can make them an offer they can't refuse." Awwwwww, the love. I am so tired now. Soooo tiiiiirreed. |
This was unintentional. |
that sounds like an awesome trip, though. big families are so much fun! (so much crazy too, and sometimes annoying, but usually fun as well.) yours sounds great. |
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I was also thinking of getting a degree in pastoral counseling, but my family has half-persuaded me to do that later in life when I have more experience. I know Seattle University has a program in pastoral counseling, and Gonzaga must have something, too. Actually, Notre Dame has a really attractive Irish Studies institute that's part of their History department. (Seamus Deane is there, for one thing.) I requested an application for that program yesterday. One hitch is that to get an MA in European History, you need to be proficient in two languages, one of which must be French or German. I've asked my friend who attends the school to investigate whether that's true for the Irish Studies program, as I fail to see the connection between those languages and the course of study. (They do offer an exchange program with the University of Galway to learn Irish.) |
Irish and Gaelic are motherfuckers of a language to learn. They make German look like Spanish. |
All I remember is how to say "How are you?" "I'm fine, how are you?" but damned if I know how to spell it. |
Tha gu math, tapadh leibh. Ciamar a tha sibh fein? Sem, you might like this page -- it's got audio samples of the six Celtic languages. |
ah. sounds like fun. |
Here's a breif grammar of Basque, or Euskara as they call it |
How strong is the relation between the Welsh and the Basques? The connection would have had to have split a while ago for their languages to be unrelated, is this right? (I wonder if "would have had to have" would give someone learning English a headache?) |
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spider, do you know how they test proficiencies in order to determine whether you're elligible to apply for the MA program? |
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nuff said. |
You'd better visit us the next time, OR ELSE. |
If you go to Gonzaga, I could visit you and my little sister at the same time. You wouldn't want to know my little sister though. She's scary. Agatha. Will you be in Portland this weekend? |
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Plus, my mom, uncle, and grandfather know German, so I'll have some help. |
(Ya know why? It's because I'm too shy to speak. At our family reunion were two cousins from Sicily, and my brother did most of the talking to them....I would only pipe up [quietly] to correct his grammar.) |
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"clear? what is the colour clear?" "It's, uhm, no colour, there is no colour, it's...CLEAR." "No colour?" "Yeah, no colour, but also not white either. Like glass or water or a Ziplock bag." |
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Feh. I want to go to the Scrap Store. What are their hours, do you know? |
Work is going to be interesting these next few weeks. Starting in November, I'm a two store girl, half my time at my home store on interstate, the other half at the yuppie "northwest best" downtown. I don't want to leave interstate, but the general population of my new store is cuter. |