Mumbling Madly

We, the three of us, Gina, Sammy and myself were CRAZY over Christmas. So crazy in fact that my parent’s made up a “Not Before 6am” Rule. There were years when Sammy never slept…he merely waited by the clock and watched the time tick away. Now, as adults, you get groggy Christmas mornings like this one:

Even though it’s more chilled out, we still love Christmas.

Here I am dutifully writing down who gave who what present, (for thank-you notes, btw, not a tally). This used to be my Mom’s job, but this year she had it off.

Most unusual gift? Probably the little fur coat made for a wine bottle…a wine cozy so to speak. (My Merlot is wearing the little number right now).

Gina flipping the paged of the HUGE Asian art book she received.

Classic picture of our cat taking up tons of space on Christmas morning.

Ryan, Angela, Mara, Gina, Sam and Chris at a Chinese restaurant in Portland the day after Christmas.

Gina and Mara pose before their vegan Chinese dishes arrive.

Ryan modeling his jacket at Urban Outfitters. (I love U.O. so much it hurts, it’s like they take every style I’ve ever admired and pair it with lace or denim and than–tragically–add twenty extra dollars so I can’t buy it. Damn those Capitalists!)

Ryan and Chris.

Sam waiting for his Starbucks coffee. (I hated to go there, but I had one of those dumb gift cards and I didn’t want it to go to waste!)

This guy in line with us at Starbucks was wearing chaps…Josh had to get a picture. No matter how many times the flash bounced off his saggy jeans, he never turned around…but I know he secretly knew we were taking pictures of his butt.

My Dad bought me an entire set of plush muppet toys for Christmas. My brother captured this special moment with me and Beaker. (Check out his expression!) Later my siblings and their friends destroyed my muppets’ chastity by putting them in all sorts of dirty positions…I guess it was inevitable.

This is Kimberly and I drinking gin and tonics in my parent’s kitchen. Kimberly and I met four years ago in Seattle when we both were slaves at Starbucks. She’s currently getting her master’s in Arts Administration at the U of O in Eugene, Oregon.

This is Kimberly and longtime BF, Justin, who also dabbles in the arts–but mostly on the technical side. Here they are looking at the fantastic book: Bad Hair.

This is Mariah, Sammy’s GF (of two years now!) If you look close you can see that she’s sporting a custom made Johnny Depp bracelet from my jewelry line. Ah, Johnny Depp, my number one seller.

This is a classic dinner at my parent’s house. We’re all crammed together because the tree was in the way. In fact, the tree had the biggest table setting at dinner. From left to right, you see Mariah, Justin (who looks exhausted), Kimberly (I have no idea why she looks so sour, that’s not typical for her), ME (obviously thrilled with whatever Kimberly is talking about), and Josh (who looks like he’s still hungry). Oh…and the tree on the far right.

Is the Stanley Hotel really haunted? Some of you Steven King fans might be familiar with this historic building. Back in the 70’s King spent four months holed up on the fourth floor enduring the hotel’s many haunts and resident ghosts. The inspiration for The Shining came directly from his experience at The Stanley in Estes Park. Later the TV series based on The Shining was filmed there and people still talk about the ghosts that haunt the old joint. Rumor has it, you can still hear children playing in the hallways and piano music coming from the Music Room.
As a graduation present, I took Josh there for their New Year’s Eve bash. I’m not a big fan of ghosts and other scary stuff, but the history attached to this beautiful hotel was too good to pass up.
In truth, there is something definitely wierd about this hotel…for one thing it was covered with a thin layer of static electricity. Josh and I shocked each other everytime we came into contact. Out sheets buzzed at night, the carpets sparked, and the banisters zapped us continually.
And of course we had to traipse up to the infamous fourth floor:

Ok, it was pretty damn scary. See that creepy couch way down there? You can practically imagine a ghost sitting on it in the middle of the night. We explored and found a set of spooky, practially vertical set of stairs that led to the bell tower. The whole place seemed to hum with a strange electricity. Of course the dark, ominous, lighting didn’t really help either. The hotel was very busy, so there was a lot of general noise…but the fourth floor was totally silent. I think it’s just a bunch of single rooms, therefore they were fairly vacant. (”New Year’s Eve is really a couple’s holiday,” a friend of mine once bemoaned).

So is the Stanley haunted? Well, sure…there is certainly something eerie going on. Or maybe it’s because it’s just so old. There are very few buildings around these days with squeaky floor boards, ancient wall-papered hollow walls, and a genuine lack of the usual hum drum of spanking new hotels. OK, so the narrow walls of this old hotel pissed me off when the guy next door blasted Dick Clark until 1am; I had an extremely restless, sleepless night…I kept drifting off and than letting the ghost stories of the hotel get to me. No ghost was going to get caught standing over me in my sleep! So I devised this plan that I had to have my ears covered by a sheet…this would protect me from any wandering spirits. You can imagine what a conundrum this put me in. (Hey, I was delerious and sleep-deprived, what can I say?) The bed was so old, that Josh and I both sort of rolled into the center. And the room was so hot! Even though we accidentally left a window open I was burning up all night. Around 4am the wind started roaring into our room, shaking the building right down to its foundation. So is the Stanely haunted? Yes…and someone was out to mess with me last night.

We propped our digi-cam up and took a pic of us in The Music Room all decked out in our finery.

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The theme was black and white (but don’t tell that to the woman wearing the sequined torqouise gown!) I took certain liberties and went with black and silver. The best part was finding an excuse to wear my rhinestone headband.

Because it was a party there had to be numerous ice sculptures. Because it was The Stanley Hotel, there had to be a Redrum reference. In this case: Redrum Punch…although there really was very little rum in it.

Another big-ass ice sculpture. (And yes, another photo of myself).

Standing on the large wrap around porch enduring the bright sunlight without sunglasses.

The woman who use to be the “lady of the house” at the Stanley Hotel owned this piano. It has been told that on occasion people can still hear mysterious piano music coming from The Music Room in the middle of the night.

The (haunted?) Music Room and Mara.