Our hotel room smells like Play-Doh
Dec. 22nd, 2006 12:55 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
fenchurchAnd no, I'm not kidding. I have no idea what this room scent is supposed to be... vanilla? At any rate, it smells exactly like Play-Doh, which is not necessarily unpleasant.
We didn't get out on the road until after 3:00pm... there was just so much still to do before we could head out and, even more importantly, Snoqualmie Pass was bad enough that they were requiring chains this morning. By the time we reached the pass it was bare and wet... not bad at all, but there was definitely a LOT of snow in the mountains (a far cry from last winter? The winter before that? Where they had no ski season at all).
We were just heading down toward Yakima when my mom called to let us know that ODOT was closing I-84 not far from LaGrande due to extreme ice on the roads, which meant our goal for the night (getting as far as Pendleton) went right out the window. We're staying the night on the Washington side of the Columbia River in the Tri-Cities, essentially dodging winter storms... trying to dash through between them. On the major plus side, the hotel gets Northwest Cable News!!! It's the one thing I miss about not having cable (since it's not carried on any of the satellite networks).
Oh! While on the way out of town, we had one of those moments that pushes the limits of probability! Our friends M & R are among the 30,000 or so households still without power since last week's storm. We've been really worried about them, even though we'd gotten word that they were holding out okay (not only is their power out, but so is their phone -- to talk to them, we have to call their home phone and listen to whatever update they've recorded, leave a message and the next time they're out where there's a cell signal, they can call back). They were also pretty much trapped in their neighborhood for a bit because of all of the downed trees (for those who know they area, they live outside of Duvall).
Well, we'd decided to swing by the outlet stores in North Bend since we were right there and we'd heard on the news that they finally had electricity again (they've lost a LOT of money being closed this last week, since it's normally their busiest). We found a really good spot, not far from the main store we wanted to look at... and as I was getting out of the car, I saw a family walking out toward us... and the little girl looked incredibly familiar. I was just trying to figure out who she resembled when the rest of the family came into focus: It was M along with her other children! They were walking out to their car, two down from ours, to drop off some stuff they'd picked up... but the timing was incredible! And we were only two parking spots away from each other!!
I was so happy to see them... and I feel so relieved to know they're doing okay, if getting a bit tired of the conditions they're dealing with. They've got a generator, but it has its limits. The area around their place had finally gotten cleared enough that they were able to leave for a bit, so they'd gone shopping (although M wasn't sure she'd be able to easily get back to her house when they were done).
The funny thing is that M and I do this a lot... We almost never see each other (we generally just chat online), but we've run into each other completely by accident five times in the last seven years when we happen to park near each other in random parking lots all over the area. We've even joked a few times that if we actively tried to meet up somewhere, we'd probably completely miss each other.
Still, today's meet up was the sort of thing that gets the Twilight Zone music playing in the back of my brain.
After we got checked in to the hotel, we grabbed a quick bite to eat at the local Olive Garden and then drove to a nearby theater to catch a showing of "Eragon."
Um.
I feel like I spent an hour and a half watching bad fanfic being acted out on the big screen. Some of it was laugh out loud bad... and I think we had more fun whispering sarcastic comments to each other (thankfully there weren't many people in the theater, so there was no one sitting close enough to overhear us). I'd heard it was derivative, but that was practically plagiarism... and it wasn't helped by the not-so-stellar acting, the horrible pacing and editing, the mediocre special effects, the laughable costumes and sets, and the hideously clunky dialogue. Don't get me wrong, it was an enjoyable way to spend an hour and a half in a town we hadn't been planning to stay in... but the MSTing really was half the fun. Okay, maybe 3/4.
We didn't get out on the road until after 3:00pm... there was just so much still to do before we could head out and, even more importantly, Snoqualmie Pass was bad enough that they were requiring chains this morning. By the time we reached the pass it was bare and wet... not bad at all, but there was definitely a LOT of snow in the mountains (a far cry from last winter? The winter before that? Where they had no ski season at all).
We were just heading down toward Yakima when my mom called to let us know that ODOT was closing I-84 not far from LaGrande due to extreme ice on the roads, which meant our goal for the night (getting as far as Pendleton) went right out the window. We're staying the night on the Washington side of the Columbia River in the Tri-Cities, essentially dodging winter storms... trying to dash through between them. On the major plus side, the hotel gets Northwest Cable News!!! It's the one thing I miss about not having cable (since it's not carried on any of the satellite networks).
Oh! While on the way out of town, we had one of those moments that pushes the limits of probability! Our friends M & R are among the 30,000 or so households still without power since last week's storm. We've been really worried about them, even though we'd gotten word that they were holding out okay (not only is their power out, but so is their phone -- to talk to them, we have to call their home phone and listen to whatever update they've recorded, leave a message and the next time they're out where there's a cell signal, they can call back). They were also pretty much trapped in their neighborhood for a bit because of all of the downed trees (for those who know they area, they live outside of Duvall).
Well, we'd decided to swing by the outlet stores in North Bend since we were right there and we'd heard on the news that they finally had electricity again (they've lost a LOT of money being closed this last week, since it's normally their busiest). We found a really good spot, not far from the main store we wanted to look at... and as I was getting out of the car, I saw a family walking out toward us... and the little girl looked incredibly familiar. I was just trying to figure out who she resembled when the rest of the family came into focus: It was M along with her other children! They were walking out to their car, two down from ours, to drop off some stuff they'd picked up... but the timing was incredible! And we were only two parking spots away from each other!!
I was so happy to see them... and I feel so relieved to know they're doing okay, if getting a bit tired of the conditions they're dealing with. They've got a generator, but it has its limits. The area around their place had finally gotten cleared enough that they were able to leave for a bit, so they'd gone shopping (although M wasn't sure she'd be able to easily get back to her house when they were done).
The funny thing is that M and I do this a lot... We almost never see each other (we generally just chat online), but we've run into each other completely by accident five times in the last seven years when we happen to park near each other in random parking lots all over the area. We've even joked a few times that if we actively tried to meet up somewhere, we'd probably completely miss each other.
Still, today's meet up was the sort of thing that gets the Twilight Zone music playing in the back of my brain.
After we got checked in to the hotel, we grabbed a quick bite to eat at the local Olive Garden and then drove to a nearby theater to catch a showing of "Eragon."
Um.
I feel like I spent an hour and a half watching bad fanfic being acted out on the big screen. Some of it was laugh out loud bad... and I think we had more fun whispering sarcastic comments to each other (thankfully there weren't many people in the theater, so there was no one sitting close enough to overhear us). I'd heard it was derivative, but that was practically plagiarism... and it wasn't helped by the not-so-stellar acting, the horrible pacing and editing, the mediocre special effects, the laughable costumes and sets, and the hideously clunky dialogue. Don't get me wrong, it was an enjoyable way to spend an hour and a half in a town we hadn't been planning to stay in... but the MSTing really was half the fun. Okay, maybe 3/4.
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no subject
Date: 2006-12-22 11:09 am (UTC)Stay safe!
no subject
Date: 2006-12-22 01:41 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-12-22 02:11 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-12-22 02:28 pm (UTC)As for Eragon, I guess I will wait till it comes to DVD. I read the book, which was very derivative, but then what would you expect from a teenage writer. I hoped that the movie might be decent. I wonder why a movie was never made of McCaffrey's White Dragon? IMO it has the best plot and characters of her Dragonriders of Pern trilogy.
no subject
Date: 2006-12-22 04:16 pm (UTC)Lots of love,
tenel
no subject
Date: 2006-12-22 04:34 pm (UTC)Glad your trip is going OK - hope the weather remains co-operative in the right places along your route.
no subject
Date: 2006-12-22 05:51 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-12-22 06:46 pm (UTC)I think I may avoid it carefully.
no subject
Date: 2006-12-22 09:48 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-12-23 06:00 am (UTC)