Zoom Zoom!

I must say, I had an excellent year, and an excellent Christmas. The day after, even though I received many nice gifts from my loved ones, I bought myself a fancy-pants krimmis present. It's a velocity red 2010 Mazda 3 grand touring s - woo hoo!!! Never been used, although it was driven to the McMinnville dealership and back (hence the 215 miles on the odometer). It's got all the fancy bells and whistles, too! I've never bought a new car before, and I don't know if I ever will again, but the old Subie has been thinking about retirement for a while now so I figured I'd give her a break.

A Perfect Day

Hello, fair readers! Merry Christmas, and soon-to-be happy new year! Before I write about any holiday goings-on, you might recall that a couple of weeks ago I wrote a post that was labeled "The mooshiest post you'll ever see me write", or some such tag. Well, apologies to you, but today's post might just supersede my previous level of mush...so be forewarned!

You're probably wondering about what A Perfect Day includes. There are three main elements, which include but are not limited to:

1. Harry Potter
2. Getting engaged
3. An incredible Bela Fleck show

Surprising, huh? I would've never guessed that these three things would be the ingredients in my perfect day, but there you have them.

Last Thursday evening, Chris and I drove up to Seattle to enjoy a nice little getaway to commemorate the occasion of our first anniversary (our first date was Dec. 6, 2009). We checked in at the Hotel Monaco where Chris reserved a huge room complete with a two-person spa, which we took advantage of whilst sipping room-service ordered champagne. Fancy, huh? It was a nice way to end a day of work and driving up to the city; I highly recommend it!

On Friday, we enjoyed a delicious breakfast at Sazerac (banana's foster french toast...yummy...), then walked over to the downtown mall and hopped on the Monorail. We sped off to Seattle Center and headed over to the Pacific Science Center where Harry Potter: The Exhibition is making its last U.S. stop.

Riding the Monorail to Seattle Center

The Space Needle

Since we were there on a weekday, there weren't that many people - we were let right in, just the two of us, and sorted into Gryffindor house (surprise, surprise) right away (although the attendant said that he thought that Chris belonged in Hufflepuff and I might fit better in Ravenclaw...go figure). The exhibit was actually really cool, and well worth the money, I thought - tons of actual props and costumes that were used in all of the movies, along with an audio guide. It took us about 90 minutes to go through the whole thing, but a big Harry Potter fan could've easily spent half a day or longer in there...I just didn't want to torture Chris any longer than was necessary! And actually, even though Chris is not a huge fan, he did indulge me in watching all the movies, and I think he enjoyed the exhibit as well.

We weren't allowed to take photos, so this was grabbed off the website. But it gives you an idea of the sets they had - pretty cool, huh?

After the Harry Potter portion of our morning, we went to the butterfly garden at the science center and ate lunch in the food court. We got to listen to a middle school band perform some holiday songs - they were really good - and Chris introduced himself to the director after the show. We hopped back on the Monorail and returned downtown, back to our hotel.

Chris and me hitchin' a ride on a caterpillar...

Zebra longwing

We had dinner reservations and tickets to see Bela Fleck at Jazz Alley that evening, and we decided to get all fancied up for the show. As I was getting ready, Chris asked me a couple of times if I was nearly done, and I noticed that he was repeating the same song on his iPhone. Weird, huh? When I got out of the bathroom, Chris said he had something for me, a small token of his affection for me, and he pulled out a small box with a beautiful diamond/palladium ring. It took me a minute to realize what was going on, and even then, I wasn't sure until he said he would be the happiest man ever if I would marry him. My reply was that I would, of course, marry him...such a surprise! It turns out that the hotel was having their happy hour in the lobby so we went downstairs and got a couple of glasses of champagne, quietly celebrating our moment in the middle of a crowd of people who weren't in on the reason for our grins. We played a couple of rounds of Guitar Hero with Bailey (on vacation from Australia with his parents), then took a cab over to Jazz Alley.

Chris picked out this ring all by himself - it's quite gorgeous!

Our first photo together as an engaged couple :oP

Once we got to Jazz Alley, we ordered a nice bottle of wine along with dinner, which we consumed during the Bela Fleck show. He and the Flecktones played nearly their entire holiday album (Jingle all the Way), and it was a FANTASTIC show. Bela Fleck is an amazing banjo player, and along with the others (Futureman, Jeff Coffin, and Victor Wooten), the resulting music was fun, dynamic, and in some cases, unbelievable (e.g., the entire "12 days of Christmas", with each day sung in a different key and time). They were accompanied by Alash, a group of Tuvan throat singers, and were equally amazing. Really, it was one of the best shows I've seen in a long time.

Bela Fleck and the Flecktones, with Alash in the back.

A kindly older couple volunteered to drive us back to our hotel when they overheard us inquiring about calling a cab, which was a pleasant treat at the end of our night. We had to get back down to Vancouver the following morning, but it was a day in Seattle that I'm sure I will remember for a very long time. You can see more pictures of our trip by viewing the slideshow to the right, or by clicking here. I'm so lucky to have been able to share that day - a perfect day - with the man I love so much!

For those of you without a Facebook addiction problem:

Happy announcement made Friday from Seattle on Facebook:

More details to come soon!

Marci and Chris at Seattle Center, Dec. 10, 2010

Happy Anniversary, My Love!

Christopher, you are the BEST (and the worst), and I am so happy to have you in my life. I hope we share many more anniversaries in the years to come!

Marci and Chris, July 2010

Met my blog quota...

What up, peeps? You may have noticed that I've been "slacking" on the old blog posts recently. Well, I could give you a number of "reasons" or "excuses" for this such as:

1. I've been sick
2. I've been busy
3. It's none of your business

However, the real reason is that, according to my records, I've met my blog quota for the year. Yep, that's right - as of this writing, I'll have posted 34 blog entries, which far exceeds the 12 I had for the entirety of last year. So, I think I can just pat myself on the back, say I did a good job, and take an easy month and a half off until the new year begins. No?

Heh heh - I'm just kidding around. Actually, I *have* been sick, *have* been busy, and it's only your business if you want it to be. In the past month I moved into Chris' place, attempted (somewhat lamely) to unpack a few things, hosted my mom when she visited up here, and slogged through the majority of my days whilst sitting in front of a computer at work. This upcoming month shows no signs of slowing, either, with more relatives coming to visit for Thanksgiving, Chris and my one-year anniversary (yay!), and Christmas on the way. Whew! So with that, I'll leave you with just a few photos taken within the past couple of weeks:

Me and my brand-spankin' new niece, Nora Paige

Me and The Mommy

Me, Jesse, and Chris (the furry one - hee hee!)

That's it???

Happy Halloween, y'all! Because I've been super busy this month with moving and everything, I didn't have time to get a costume together or my residence decorated. And it's a real shame, because I had a great costume all designed - I was actually standing in JoAnn's with bolts of fabric in my arms, but I abandoned the plan last minute because I'm just too busy. So, you'll have to see my costume next year.

Anywhooooo...I did manage to slowly transform my office into a spooktacular spider lair during the month of October. My costume would've played into that. Yes, I was the only one at work who decorated their office...I don't care though! As far as I'm concerned, Halloween should be every month. Candy and costumes? It doesn't get much better than that in terms of holidays!

A Visit to the Pumpkin Patch with the Little Punks

A couple of weekends ago we took advantage of the fantastic fall weather (it was sunny!) and went out to the pumpkin patch on Sauvie Island. Chris had bought groupons for the Oregon-heart shaped corn "maize" (get it???) so we invited my brother and his family, and Chris' brother's family. We got there around 9:30 and the crowds started to quickly gather...we checked out the animal barn, the kids took a tractor ride out to the pumpkin patch to pick a few pumpkins, and then we did the short half of the maize. By noon there were a ton of people there - cars were lined up for about a mile just waiting to get on the bridge to Sauvie Island. I'm glad we got there early and got to hang out in relative low crowd-chaos! Considering my busy month, I'm just happy that I got to experience some sort of autumn-related festivities...ah, why can't Halloween be year-round?

Nothing says autumn romance like rusty farm equipment. And porta-potties.

Chris' brother, nephew, niece, and sister-in-law.

The newest member of the Koski family, Nora Paige. Just over a week old! She's hard core.

What a handsome family of four! And they're all smiling - oh wait, I think Nora just has gas...

Wait a minute - that's MY caramel apple!!!

Getting lost in the corn maize was quite the cornundrum! Get it? CORNundrum!!! Snort ha ha giggle snort!!! :oP

No, the *other* Vancouver!

Can you believe that Chris and I took *another* cruise? Well, we did, so believe it, folks! In fact, we took our second cruise on the very same ship we sailed to Alaska on, Holland America's Rotterdam. We got a fantastic deal to sail from Seattle to Vancouver, B.C. during the seasonal transition period (the ship changes their weekly trips from Alaska in the summer to Hawaii and warmer locations in the winter), so we got to spend one night on the ship and it cost about as much as a nice hotel room. Plus, we had three meals included, along with all the fun of hanging out on a cruise ship.

Friday, Sept. 17, we drove up to Seattle and spent the night with Chris' uncle Bruce and his two enthusiastic dogs, Bumper (shown at right with Chris) and Maddie. We wanted to get on the boat around noon, so the following day we only spent a few minutes allowing the dogs to burrow under our bedsheets (Bumper insisted, even though he is not as petite as he thinks he is) before we took off and parked the car at King Street Station. We took a cab to Pier 91 where we waited in several long lines to check in. Chris ran into an old high school classmate, whom we awkwardly passed in the line several times. What exactly is the protocol for that? We said hi, but is there any standard guidelines for what you should do each time you pass them in line? Do you have to make small talk at each intersection?

Anyway, our confusion and puzzlement were short-lived, because when we got to our check-in desk we discovered that we had been upgraded from a stinky standard D-category stateroom with just a little window on deck 2's main floor to a fabulous private A-category veranda suite with our own balcony all the way up on deck 6. Suck it, steerage! We don't wait in lines, and we don't spend our nights in steerage!

After we explored our room, we ran over to the dining room and caught lunch at the last second that they were still serving. We enjoyed a fantastic lunch of salmon, ziti, chocolate mousse cake and fruit tart - so, in addition to not waiting lines and spending our nights in steerage, we also don't eat on the lido deck at the infectious disease buffet! However, after lunch, we did enjoy drinks on the lido - mojitos and a sidecar - as Chris narrowly beat me at cribbage. And can you believe that they took photos for such a short cruise? Well, they did, so of course we had to go to the photo gallery to check out our prints.

After we had a loverly dinner in the dining room (yummy penne, eggplant cannelloni, toffee and apple strudel) with what appeared to be the cast of the Russian version of "Jersey Shore", we met up with the ship's photographer, Andreea, whom we had met on our first cruise. We'd been keeping in touch with her on facebook since our first cruise, so she was expecting to see us - we chatted over tea, and afterwards, she hooked us up with some of the photos of us that were at the photo gallery (wink wink!). It was nice to see a familiar face amongst a sea of so many strangers (except for Chris' high school class mate, of course, which was just a bit awkward).

On Sunday, disembarkation started bright and early (ok, it wasn't bright, since it was still pretty much dark outside). We ordered room service to arrive between 6:30 and 7:00 am, and at approximately 6:29 we got the knock on our door and the general PA announcement telling everyone to get off the boat according to their disembarkation group. Since we were in group 23 we at least had time to eat our breakfast, but we were off the boat with our packs on our backs by 7:30. Yawn! We had to go through Canadian customs, and were greeted by a smart-ass agent who cheerfully referred to us as being from "Vancouver Jr." I looked over at Chris and almost wanted to start chanting "fight! fight! fight! fight!" but since we were going to have to do a lot of walking, I thought it might be best to conserve our energy.

We had to take some sort of bus through the port terminal, and then we took a taxi to Stanley Park. We didn't really have a plan for the day, other than to "explore the great international city of Vancouver, B.C." Unfortunately, there's not much happening on Sunday at 7:30 in the morning, so Stanley Park was a good choice for us - we walked around the eastern side of the park as it started to rain, and then took a bunch of pictures at the totem pole display. After milling about for an acceptable amount of time, we walked back to the central part of the island to the Vancouver Aquarium, which is actually a pretty cool place. In addition to the standard fish exhibits, they also had a large section dedicated to the marine life of that area, a tropical rainforest section (with bats, a sloth, and tortoises), and a 4D movie about ocean life. Plus they had sea otters, particularly one named Milo. He really liked to eat!

After the aquarium, we took another taxi to the west side of the city, near English Bay, and shared fish and chips at the Boathouse - yum! We reluctantly strapped our heavy backpacks on (even though what we really wanted to do was take a nap) and started walking southeast through the very colorful Davies neighborhood. We jogged east through Robson, then southerly to Chinatown, where we spent some time walking through the Dr. Sun Yat-Sen Classical Chinese Garden. Incidentally, I discovered that mastering the Chinese yo-yo is a whole lot harder than it looks, and that it is quite possible to bash yourself in unfortunate places with either/both the yoyo part or the sticks. I'm not sure I'm going to try *that* again.

After that, we walked west to the train station, where there were more very long lines and no upgrades available to business class. But that was actually ok, because once we were on our train, we found our seats to be quite roomy and nice - not at all like traveling on an airplane! Although the drinks were just as spendy - I enjoyed two rather large white Russians (courtesy of Christopher), a couple of episodes of The Office (season 6) on Chris' laptop, and a nice nap after watching the sunset as we traveled back down to Seattle. I was briefly disturbed by a customs agent who came on at the boarder crossing - he asked us what we had purchased during our time in Canada, and my response was to look at the food wrappers on our fold-out trays and tell him "you're lookin' at it." Grumpy when I get woken up from a good nap, duh!!!

We were back in Seattle by 10:30 pm, and since we had parked the car right at the train station, we were back on the road in short order. We drove down to Portland, and were in bed by 1:30 am. It was a busy trip and a long weekend, but we had a really great time seeing fancy new international places. You can check out more pictures in the slideshow at right, or by clicking here. Whew!

A Loverly Weekend in Waldport

I know it's getting to be a little late, but I wanted to tell you about the splendid weekend that Chris and I had together in the beginning of September. My friend Julie, from grad school, invited us to her wedding so we took the opportunity to make a weekend of it and enjoy another little town on the Oregon coast.

Saturday, September 4, we wished Abbey a very happy first birthday (ok, Jesse only grudgingly wished her a happy birthday, but he got some wet food out of the deal so he wasn't entirely unhappy about it) and headed west. We drove through Newburg, Dundee, and Newport, reminiscing about the excellent times we had there during previous long weekends and spring break. Ahhh, the memories! We arrived at the Cliff House B&B in Waldport and found it most remarkable...a fantastic view of the ocean and bay, along with friendly dogs and an incredible assortment of lace doilies covering most horizontal surfaces. Chris reserved the suite for us, which included vaulted ceilings, a private balcony overlooking the ocean, and a ginormous bathroom (complete with hot tub) that had mirrors covering EVERY surface except for the toilet seat cover. You might not believe it, but there are some angles that you might not prefer to view yourself from, and I discovered several of them that weekend!

We ate dinner at the Drift Inn in Yachats, under a ceiling of decorative umbrellas while listening to the modern Hawaiian-polka fusion stylings of two men armed with a Casio keyboard and a microphone. After dinner we went back to the B&B and practiced our putting skills (yes, for real, not a metaphor) while the sun set over the ocean. But that's where I'll stop for now...

On Sunday, Chris and I enjoyed an amazing breakfast (cooked by Sharon, the prioprietress of the Cliff House) consisting of smoked salmon quiche and home-fries, home-made muffins and scones. In the early afternoon we drove east out to Tidewater Falls Resort where Julie and Perry had their wedding - it looked like many people camped, and that the party had been going for at least a couple of days. I met up with several other friends from grad school whom I hadn't seen in many years, including Jill, Audrey, and Andie, who came with her partner Rob. He cracked our shit up, and definitely sufficed for the evening's entertainment in my book. And, if I can say so, I think that he became Chris' new idol of sorts. Even Julie's old dog Metzli was there - skulking in her familiar border collie way that I recognized from Colorado. The wedding was a simple and beautiful ceremony that took place under paper lanterns and a mirrored disco ball (I would expect nothing less), and was followed by hula hooping (how does Jill manage to defy gravity in such a nonchalant kind of way???), salmon, and wine wine wine by the bonfire. Congrats, Julie and Perry - we had an awesome time at your wedding!











Monday was Labor Day, so we had the day off. We enjoyed another delicious Cliff House breakfast, this time of cheese blintzes and more baked goods (at 8:30 sharp! don't be late!). After packing up and waiting until the last possible moment to leave (there might have been another quick soak in the hot tub), we said our goodbyes and commenced our drive north. We stopped for lunch at Pelican Brew Pub on Cape Kiwanda, sharing fish tacos and humongous onion rings by the sea.

For an added bonus to our trip, as we drove north we stopped in Tillamook and toured the World Famous Tillamook Cheese Factory! I milked a plastic cow, and Chris bought me a magnet that said "Easy Rider".











Which I guess just about sums up my role as the passenger on our weekend adventure!