Give Me a Break!

And boy, have I had quite the break! It's only Thursday, but I've been having so much fun packed into such a short time that I don't know which end is up. I'll try to make this something of a Reader's Digest post, but don't hold your breath.

Thursday: I my last final that afternoon, and went to a piano concert at the University of Idaho that night. It was given by two of the professors there, a husband and wife team, the Mauchley Duo. They were incredible. Fantastic technique, expression, everything. It was the best $3 I'd ever spent. They had two pianos at first for four-hand pieces, and, from where I sat, I was able to watch Mrs. M's hands more easily during the first part, but I switched sides during the Intermission so I could watch him, too. She was a nice lady, smiled when she stood, but was all business when she sat on the bench. Her husband, on the other hand, looked like a seventy-year-old Groucho Marx, and played like Chico would have if he'd been to the conservatory. He had Chico-like elements all throughout the night. He grinned, did lots of bouncing (sometimes an entire inch off the bench!), and every now and then, his left leg would kick out to the side. They played selections from Bach, Rachmaninoff, Bizet, Bolcom, Stravinsky, Piazzolla, and Brubeck. The best piece by far, though, was the one they played with two professors from Washington State University twenty minutes away, Jeff and Karen Savage, another husband and wife team. Mrs. Savage was a tall, slender Asian lady with beautiful expression, and Mr. Savage reminded me very much of Robert Ferrars from Emma Thompson's rendition of Sense and Sensibility. Each couple took a piano, and they played an arrangement by Camille Chevillard for eight hands of Wagner's Ride of the Walkyries. It was one of the most incredible things I've ever heard. Music really affects me, and I can get into it, but never before had anything moved me so much. I swear I almost passed out or had a heart attack. Three quarters through the piece, I suddenly realized I was on the edge of my seat, leaning forward with every muscle tense, face flushed and burning, eyes as wide as they go, rapid, shallow breathing, and my heart pounding so hard it probably nearly broke my sternum. I forced myself back into my seat and tried to breathe and relax, telling myself that if I passed out now, I'd miss everything else, too. It was unbelievable. I would love to learn a part, but I think it's probably out of my league. At the end of the night, their encore piece was "The Rag" from Brubeck's Points on Jazz. Maggie, I don't care if it takes us fifty years, we're learning that! So fun!

Friday: Because I didn't have any finals, this was technically my first day of break. That evening, I attended a baked potato party at Hilary's (my 'twin'), where all the guests brought a topping to share. I brought bacon. We had quite the spread by the time everyone was there. Some people brought weird stuff, just because they could. Mary came with the pickled cactus, which I unfortunately didn't get a chance to try, and Chris brought oats, because he could. Hilary loaned me a shirt that matched hers, only in different colors, and freaked out her little brother. Even her mom thought we look really similar. Anyway, we talked and laughed while eating, then played games. We played Apples to Apples, and Telephone Pictionary.
Telephone Pictionary is one of my favorite party games. Everyone has a sheet of paper and a pen, and everyone starts by writing a sentence at the top of their page. Then, the papers are passed to the next person, and now everyone has to draw a picture of whatever their new sentence says. Once you draw your picture, you fold the paper so the original sentence is hidden, pass it on, and now look at your new picture and write what you think the original sentence was. Then, you fold the picture back, pass it on, and look at your new sentence and draw a picture for it. You keep going until the pages are filled completely, and then see the progressive degeneration of the original idea. It's quite fun! Once 10:30 rolled around, though, we were kicked out of Hilary's house, so some of us took the party to Mary's house. She invited several girls to spend the night with her, so they were already headed in that direction. Some of the guys tagged along for a little while, too. So from 10:30-12:00, I was at Mary's with Hilary, Jordan, Tara, and Deanna, and Matt, Chris, Ethan, Daniel, and Nathan hung around for a bit. We plugged in iPods and listened to a random assortment of music, and had an impromptu 'dance party,' in which we all made fools of ourselves. I can't dance unless some guy holds my hands and pushes me around, so I was hopeless. I head-banged for about ten seconds and badly pulled a muscle in my neck, and felt really dorky and lame. We did the Macarena at one point, and I learned it a little differently, so I quickly got out of sync. We had fun, though. I left at Midnight, but it was really fun to hang out with them. Since they're all Freshmen, I hadn't had a chance to get to know any of them.

Saturday: After partying all night, you'd think I'd sleep in. Nope! Saturday a group from my class went to Bishop's Orchard in Washington, a few hours North of Moscow, to pick apples. We met at Chantelle's at 8:30, and it was cold! Her sprinklers had been on during the night, and so her sidewalk was covered in ice. As I walked up, I saw the ice, and thought, "Is that ice? No, that can't be ice. There isn't ice anywhere else. But it looks like--Ahh! Yup. It's ice." I slipped and fell smack on my backside.
Once we got to the orchard (or vineyard, as one guy said, because he didn't realize that different plots of fruit have different names), we got a community box for applesauce, apple muffins, and whatever other apple goodies we wanted to make afterward. You're allowed to eat as many apples as you want while picking. Unfortunately, there was a frost the night before, so the apples were literally frozen. I picked a Cortland, bit it, and froze my teeth. It thawed eventually, and was very good. So I got a few pounds, since all apples were $0.25/lb. The best part was making cider. They had old fashioned cider presses, and we all brought our own jugs, and payed $4/gal. It was so much fun, and so good! Legally, they had to instill in us a fear of all things unpasteurized, but some of us didn't pasteurize when we got home. There's still a half gallon left in the refrigerator, and I'm not dead yet.
After picking and pressing, we headed back to Chantelle's, where we baked everything. We also ordered pizzas from Pizza Perfection, a place that makes these HUGE pizzas. We had more than twenty people, so about $5 each bought us four pizzas that had 2.5 to 3 foot diameters, and no that is not an exaggeration. If you stretched them out, we had about 12' of pizza, and we ate it all, along with apple muffins, apple sauce, and apple cider. After I got home that afternoon, Ashley and I went to JoAnn Fabrics with Mrs. Frazier, then we girls went to dinner at Mary's house. Her host family was gone all weekend, which is why we were able to stay late at her house that night, and why she wanted company now. When we got there, we found her other dinner guests had canceled, so Ashley and I volunteered to run across the street and round up Chris and Daniel to help us eat. They gladly came, and they had Seth with them, so the six of us had a very nice dinner, and later, Tara, Kristy, and Kelly joined us for dessert.

Sunday: Church and RESTING. Ashley and I watched White Christmas that night. Love that movie!

Monday: Mrs. Frazier, Ashley, and I made our day trip to Coeur d'Alene, which was beautiful. It's a resort town, so it's well maintained, and also a little pricey. We stopped at the Olive Oil Company which has these great blends of oil with other flavors infused. For example, olive oil with blood oranges. Sampling is encouraged, and we tried lots of flavors, and wound up buying a bottle of a dipping oil/balsamic vinegar blend with the orange infusion. It's really nice!
Then we spent a few hours poking around in this enormous antique shop, and I found two of my favorite OLD Hardy Boys books for extremely reasonable prices (meaning I spend about $15 for both, when sometimes you can't find one for less than $20 if you're lucky). I also got an incredibly fantastic deal on another item. I was glancing over a shelf, when suddenly my eyes fell on a particular glass bottle with a familiar top. I stopped short and thought, "Oh my gosh! That's a Lampe Berger!" I looked at the price tag. The item description was "Cute scent bottle" and the price was $4.95. I couldn't believe it. New, the cheap ones go for $60. I said to myself, "These people have NO idea what this is! Or is there a catch?" I inspected it, and realized the snuffer cap was fused to the stone, probably because the previous owner had idiotically put the cap on before blowing out the flame. I was so mad. I twisted and turned, but couldn't get the top off. Since it was pointless, I put it back and walked away, all of two steps, before stopping again. I knew I'd always wonder if it was really stuck, or if I hadn't tried hard enough. I went back, picked it up again, and accidentally pushed the top of the cap, which was more than enough leverage to pop it off. I'd been straining and struggling and expending energy in the wrong direction, and it had never been stuck at all. But there was a problem. It had no wick and stone fixture. I put it back again, and pondered if such a thing could be replaced. I thought about it the rest of the time we were there, then decided to buy it anyway. I figured that if I were wrong and it could not be fixed, I'd lose about $5. If I was right, though, I'd have a fully functional Lampe Berger for $40 at the most, which is still less than $60. So I bought it, and we left.
For lunch, we went to a place called Fisherman's Market and Grill, located on Kathleen Avenue. It was delicious! I had the Mahi Mahi, Mrs. Frazier had the Halibut, and Ashley had the Salmon, and we all got different tartar sauces to share. The meals came with fries and a coleslaw salad, too. Although rather inexpensive (the Halibut meal was most expensive at $10), it was very good, and reasonably large portions. The atmosphere was casual, but clean and well kept. We enjoyed it very much. On the map, we noticed that Kathleen winds down the road, then turns into Margaret, so we had to get pictures, since Margaret and I were roommates last year. There wasn't a sign that had both names on it at once, but we got pictures of our signs.
After lunch, we walked around the floating boardwalk on the lake (Lake Coeur d'Alene is gigantic; it has a golf green on it, that we unfortunately didn't get to see), took lots of pictures, and tried not to freeze. We looked around in the Leather shop, went into the shop that sells huckleberry based products and bought a chocolate bar with huckleberry filling. That was tasty! Then we went into the All Things Irish shop, where I bought a set of thank you cards with a claddaugh on the front. While there, two reporters from the Couer d'Alene Press photographed and interviewed Ashley and me for a story on the economy. None of our comments made it into the article, but our picture did. It was very exciting! I was going to give you a link, but their website doesn't let you look into their archives unless you pay, and even then, you don't get pictures, so you'll just have to trust me. It was disconcerting at first to be photographed, since I was looking at the bookmarks, hoping they'd have a Doolan one for once, and heard a camera noise, and saw a man standing three feet away with a huge camera pointed at my face. I think I must have given him some kind of "ExCUSE me?" look, because he told me who he was and what he was doing in pretty short order. After we left that store, we saw some kind of scarecrow display across the street, made by a bunch of kids for some project, so we looked at them, then hit the road.
Once home, I found a message from Hilary asking me to spend the night at her house, and to be there in a few hours, since she had orchestra practice. So while I waited, I looked up the information on Lampe Berger, and found I could indeed order a wick and stone for anywhere from $3-$15, depending on the company I choose. I also found a recipe to make your own scent, which they don't recommend, since it supposedly ruins the stone. The lady with the recipe said she buys in bulk from the $3 suppliers, makes her oil for considerably less, and maybe goes through stones a little faster, but not significantly. So I'll think about that. But I also went to Lampe Berger's main site, looked up the model I bought, and found that, for $4.95, I got a lamp whose suggested retail is $110.00. It's criminal! But I'm not guilty. In fact, I view it as God giving me a nice little gift, and I'm very grateful. Here's a picture of mine, Athéna, only mine has a gold top: http://www.lampeberger.us/the-products/lamp/1-the-must-have-collection/athena-black,3243
After doing my research, I went to Hilary's, after grabbing some cookies to share. When I arrived, Kelly and Kristy were already there, and Claire and Deanna were right behind me. We stayed up for a long time talking about medicine, the medical field, and things like that with Mrs. M, while eating brownies and cookies, and Hilary had me make a fire, since she says she's no good at it. So I was appointed pyro for the night, and it was my job to keep it going all night, since we were sleeping in the basement. So after we went downstairs, we talked, drank hot chocolate, watched figure skating clips, since we all wanted to go soon, and had a great time. I managed to keep the fire lit all night, waking up when my brain said, "Hey, it's not popping anymore!" and didn't burn the house down. Burnt my hand a little, though. Once I had to use the Aim Flame to start some kindling again, and thought that maybe I shouldn't put it back on the wooden mantle, in case it was hot. A good thought. Thought promptly stopped at that point, and I grabbed the end of the barrel to test for heat. Thought resumed in the form of, "Golly you're stupid at 3:00 AM!" As you may infer, the answer was yes, it was hot.

Tuesday: We dozed until the dog came down. He's a year-old chocolate lab named Kai, and his preferred method of waking people seems to be finding those who hate dog kisses and licking their faces. There were successive squeals and yells as he made the rounds. Hilary slept through it all. We locked Kai in the spare bedroom while we recovered, and, instead of howling like we expected, he just sat there. He sprang for the door when we opened it to check on him. We let him out after we were all ready to deal with him. We had pancakes, eggs, bacon, and sausage for breakfast, and it was very good. We cleaned up everything, packed up, and started hitting the road, since we all had stuff to do. I went to take care of Mary, and we played piano and sang a bunch, then I went back home, and Ashley, Mrs. Frazier, and I watched Fievel Goes West. I forgot how much I love that movie! We all laughed so hard, and, since I was knitting at the same time, I almost gave new meaning to the term 'stitches in my side.' Over the Summer, I saw it in CVS for a cheap price, along with its prequel, and some dopey 'mature' part of me said it was fun for little kids, or something dumb like that. But when it was actually in the movie cabinet, within reach, the true maturity returned and I was "old enough again for fairytales." I'd watch it again right now.

Wednesday: I went to the ice rink at 6:45 AM for an open skate session. Claire and Deanna were already there, and we waited for someone to come open the doors. And waited. And waited. Hilary, Chris, and James showed up, and we waited. And waited. At 7:15, we decided to go to Bucer's Coffeeshop instead of standing out in the rain for something that wasn't going to happen. We were all disappointed, but had fun playing card games at Bucer's for two hours. Then I came back home, wrote a bunch of letters, took care of a few other random things, and relaxed. That night, we watched Love's Unending Legacy, the 5th in a series that Ashley introduced us to last year. We forgot that we'd ended with that one last year, so we had a good refresher, and the next one should come through Netflix pretty soon. There are two more we have to see before we finish the series.

And that's all for now. I can't tell you how today went, since it's not over yet, so I'll probably write more in a few days. It should take that long just to read this.