On the elasticity of time

Mmmm good visit. It was over too soon, but we filled it with so much that the weekend actually seemed longer by the end than we expected it to be. Definitely a positive thing, but talk about messing with your body clock (and never mind the jet lag)!

There were several new things to see. First, the latest addition to our living/dining area:


This is an original scroll painting that a good friend of mine brought back after she visited China last year. We took it to the local frame store (the same one that provided something fun for one of our other decorating projects back in January) and had it mounted in a shadow box. This is the first piece of large-scale original art we've ever owned, so it was exciting to have it finally ready for proper display. Apparently, D had to borrow a coworker (and the coworker's truck) to get the painting back to our place and up on the wall. Now our space really is starting to look like a home and not a temporary residence!

Next, the birthday project, as I mentioned in an earlier post. Back when we were getting the painting mounted, we also ordered a frame to use for a jewelry board, which D offered to help make as a gift to me. The frame I chose arrived last week, so we went shopping for fabric to cover the foam insert that goes inside. (The idea is to stick sturdy pins into the board so you can hang necklaces, bracelets, etc., on them instead of having everything get tangled in a jewelry box.) We found a wonderful store that specializes in material for home decorating and quilting, so the fabrics were really luxe and just the thing to use as a background for displaying pretty baubles. There were so many options at such good prices (especially what we pulled from the scrap pile) that we ended up picking out several swatches. So now the jewelry board has its own wardrobe:


The fabric currently in the frame is brocade and the other samples are dupioni silk, the majority of which were D's finds. I think D was almost having more fun than I was digging through the offerings -- it's the artist in him that I love.

There were new things to taste as well over the weekend. D and I hadn't had Indian food for a long time, so after he picked me up from the airport on Friday, we went out for lunch at a place D discovered not far from his office. To my delight, it seems that most curries are not a problem for my new diet (have to watch the rice and naan, though).

In our own kitchen, we tested out a cornish hen recipe on Saturday and a Hungarian goulash on Sunday; both were excellent. They also require significant cooking time! The hen has to be slow roasted and the goulash requires a lot of simmering. Maybe this is why we felt like we had a longer weekend than we'd anticipated -- watched pots and all that. But we were certainly never bored, so it was a good sort of time stretch.

There were some old things I got to revisit on this trip too, several of which I hadn't seen in years. I flew on United this time because I had a voucher I had to use -- it was from last March's flight fiasco -- so that meant connecting through a completely different terminal in O'Hare. When I was little, my family did most of its traveling on United, and often this required us to use the underground passage to get from one concourse to another. If you've ever been through this tunnel, you'll recognize it now:


I used to love the rainbow of neon lights zipping along the ceiling with the moving walkways below (I thought those were as much fun as the rides at Disney World). Going through the passage this time was a reminder of that. In Seattle, too, I got a little nostalgia jolt -- I landed at a gate that requires you to take an underground train to get to the main airport building. I had completely forgotten that I had been there before until I saw the waiting area. Something about the floor tile pattern (strange, I know) and the dim lighting dredged up the memory: my family had come through this part of the airport en route to Vancouver when I was thirteen. Funny to look back and see myself then, a kid with no idea she'd be returning to Seattle years later, married and hoping to settle there for a long time.

All this because of a travel voucher ...

My return trip didn't evoke such old memories, but it did have a surprise for me and D when we stepped outside this morning: snow. We knew it was in the forecast, but it wasn't supposed to arrive until Monday evening. So the blanket of white on our mountain was a bit unexpected (though certainly not unfamiliar to me this winter on campus). I guess you might call this an old experience in a new context? It's the first time I got to see a fresh snowfall there, and with the lightly coated branches of the trees arching over the back roads we took to the airport, it was quite lovely. I thought I was sick of frozen precipitation -- enough to believe I didn't want to see it anywhere at any time for the remainder of the winter -- but I guess I was wrong.


So anyway, I'm safely back in my other place of residence. It's after 11 p.m. in Seattle, which means it's way past my bedtime here. If only I could make the next few hours of sleep feel like more than they'll be ...