I just got home from playing soccer with my old Seattle team, Red Alert.  We played out at Nathan Hale HS on their "synthetic turf" field, which is a very interesting surface, kind of grass-like, but definitely fake, with lots of little rubber chunks.  Heather came to play with us also, and brought a whole bunch of turf shoes for me to choose from, since I don’t have my own pair anymore.  It was like I was at a shoe store, with boxes everywhere… 🙂

Anyway – the game was so SO much fun!  I haven’t played soccer in so long, but I was still able to pretty much keep up and I think I played pretty well too.  And Heather did great (as always!).  I love playing with her out on the field.  It just feels right.  It started raining in the last few minutes of the game and it turned into a total downpour for about 5 minutes.  Everyone got totally soaked through to the skin, then it died down a little right as the game ended. I’ve been home for almost an hour now and my clothes (now hanging up to dry) and hair are still soaking wet!

I’m so glad I’ve stayed in touch with this team – and so glad I started playing with them in the first place.  That was all the way back in freshman year at SPU when I was working in the Admissions Department with Kathy… I wore some "soccer clothes" to work one day and she asked if I played, and if I was interested in playing with her team.  And so it goes.

Hopefully I’ll be able to make it to the three games that will happen while I’m in Seattle – and hopefully there really will be three games – and no byes or forfeits or weird schedule changes.  I sure miss playing while I’m in St. Louis, maybe I’ll try to find a team out there again now that my schedule might allow for it better.

This is my new waffle maker.  Isn’t it just the most awesome thing ever!?!  It is very classy looking (with the red and the silver…) and very well made.  The little hunny-bee on the top lights up while it’s cooking your waffle, then it shuts off when it’s time for you to eat.  It works really well and the cool thing is I can make a batch of batter and use it for a few days in a row – now I will have happy breakfasts on my way to the NICU in Seattle.

And look at the cool waffles it makes!!!!

I also got a Pooh toaster that makes the faces of Pooh Bear and Tigger on your toast.  It matches the waffle maker (red and silver), and it plays the Winnie the Pooh song when your toast pops up!  I love it!!  And if you know me, and know how I can get really excited about things like this, then you can imagine how I was smiling and jumping around the room when I opened the boxes. 🙂

Nature vs. Nurture.  These kind of debates go on all the time about so many different aspects of life.  It’s all very interesting, but a conversation I had the other day brought up what I think is probably the most interesting nature vs. nurture question I’ve contemplated.

It seems that the human race as a whole looks down on the taking of human life and in fact has a very difficult time with that particular act.  Is this something that is encoded into us before we were ever born, or is it something we have somehow learned?

The conversation got started with a discussion about how the visual cortex in the brain is unable to distinguish between real happenings and images (such as TV and movies).  Think about it for a minute… when you go to a scary movie, you cover/close your eyes or jump or catch your breath when the scary things happen.  Why?  You know you’re in a movie theatre, you know it isn’t real, but you jump anyway.  It’s because our eyes take in the scene and our brains process the images, but there’s still some lag time between what we see and how we think about what we see.  After we jump, we know it was silly, that it’s not real… but for that split second our brain didn’t know that and we were reacting (and possibly protecting ourselves).  But if we sit through the same scary movie a few times, we know what’s coming and can train ourselves not to jump.  And if we sit through enough different scary movies we can train ourselves not to jump at all… but that can also carry over into reality, where we may not "jump" (or react) when we should.  That’s the whole idea behind the disgruntled parents who don’t want kids playing violent video games, because they will get desensitized and no longer have a healthy "respect" for weapons, violence, death, etc.

Next the conversation turned to how the military actually uses interactive video "games" for training soldiers for combat.  They complete all these different "levels" where they attempt to "neutralize the enemy" and it’s thought that if they do that enough, then when the time comes for them to shoot someone in a real combat situation, it will be easier since they have been desensitized.

So that led to the question… why do we need to be desensitized?  Because humans (on the whole) feel that ending a human life is very distasteful.  Why?  Because "society" teaches us that?  But who taught society?  And what about "uncivilized" groups of people – they don’t go around killing people willy-nilly either.  Nor do we have a history of "we used to kill each other for no reason, then we decided it wasn’t good so we stopped".  There’s nothing like that.  It seems that all humans have such respect for life and there’s no clear point where we "learned" that, so it must just be part of who we are.

It also seems to be part of the animal kingdom as a whole.  Yes, animals will kill each other, but it’s never a random act.  It’s for food, or protection, or sometimes as the result of an illness – but not just for sport, not just because.  Just like humans.  When we do take a human life, it is for a reason (protection of the species, ending suffering, etc).  I am not here to argue if those reasons are just or right or valid – I’m just here to point out the fact that society has established the need to have a reason, to somehow explain why this distasteful act is allowed to happen.

Of course you can bring God / faith / religion into the conversation and it is obviously clear where ingrained values such as this stem from… but from a purely "scientific" point of view this is a very interesting question to contemplate.  One that made me think quite a bit.  I like that.

This past weekend was truly outstanding.  When compared to other weekends I’ve had, this one stands out among one of the best I can remember.  That is exactly why I want to write about all the details, so that when I have another fantastic weekend and I think it’s the best ever, I’l be able to look back and remember this weekend with justice.

It all started Friday afternoon when I picked A.J. up at the Portland train station.  I guess it all really started when A.J. got on the train in Seattle, since I received e-mails and text messages from him (and Rainbow Bear) throughout the day.  I do have to say that unexpected text messages to my phone in the middle of the day put a big smile on my face. 🙂  And so back to the weekend… we drove over to NW 23rd St ("Nob Hill" area) to wander a little bit.  This area had been recommended to me by another med student at OHSU as a place to walk and shop and eat – a little bit of everything stretched along this particular street.  And so wander we did… we saw restaurants and shoe stores (with funky Dansko’s – I might have to get a pair) and other random and eclectic shops.

After we had walked up and down and browsed the interesting shops, we headed a bit out of town to the Fry’s down in Wilsonville – we needed a memory card for the camera.  Rainbow Bear was along for this trip, and we know better than to go anywhere with him without adequate photo storage equipment.  Wandering through Fry’s certainly is an experience, and we ended up purchasing more than just the "film" we needed.  Significant among the purchases was an impulse buy at the counter of a "Surfer Dude" mini-kite.  More about that in a bit.

Dinner at Red Robin was followed by a drive back to Camas where we snuggled up with some late night snacks and watched "I’ll Be There" on A.J.’s new multimedia center laptop.  That was just great – the laptop, the movie, being in person with A.J. again and being able to watch movies and laugh and talk together… all of it was comfortable and happy and fun.

The next morning (after a good sleeping in), we packed ourselves up and headed out for a day at the coast.  We took Highway 6 out towards Tillamook and had a great time chatting and singing along with the radio (or music off the computer when the stations got scratchy).  We’ve also got this new GPS system that shows you where you are at all times and can give directions and all sorts of other cool things – so we just watched that as we drove for a while too.  I love maps.. and maps that constantly change to show the updated "You Are Here" just intrigue me.  Finally, the "You Are Here" arrived in Tillamook and we stopped off at the famous Tillamook Cheese Factory for a self-guided tour, some cheese samples, and a bit of ice cream.  We tried some Tillamook flavors not available in stores (White Licorice, Wild Mountain Blackberry) and some old favorites (Rocky Road, Chocolate Peanut Butter).  We have some great pictures (all of which can be seen over at Rainbow Bear’s website).  We bought some cheese curds (squeaky, cheesey deliciousness!) and were on our way up the coast.

Highway 101 delivered it’s senic route with abundance as we came out from behind Tillamook Bay and actually hit the ocean coastline.  There were lots of lookouts and senic viewpoints… and seeing the ocean expand out before us was such a wonderful sight.  I don’t remember exactly when the last time was that I was really out on the coast… the ocean is so big.  It is something that I will never tire of, and another reason I know this is the part of the world where I need to live.  Well, here or Australia, I guess. 🙂  We stopped off at Cannon Beach and took out our Surfer Dude mini-kite and another mini backpack kite we already had and we were up and flying in no time at all.  I think out of all the kites on the beach that day, our little surfer got the most attention.  (Again, visit RainbowBear.com for pictures)  Flying kites at the beach had to be one of the high points of the weekend.  It was such pure, simple fun.  So easy, so carefree. 

When we packed up the kites, it was still fairly early so we continued on up the coast to Seaside.  I had read that their annual Beach Volleyball Tournament was going on this weekend, and really didn’t know what to expect there.  Except that I knew there were no available hotel rooms, so there had to be a LOT of people in town.  Before we hit the Seaside beach, we happened upon their outlet shopping center where we browsed a lot and purchased a little (a pair of work pants for me).  Then on to the beach… which was just crazy with people.  We showed up right as the mens finals were getting underway, and it just so happened one pair was American and the other was Canadian.  So we had a little patriotic rivalry that was definitely egged on by the colorful commentators.  Watching these games was so much more fun than I had ever imagined they might be.  It was so much fun to watch regular people playing volleyball (as opposed to professionals).  It all seems more pure, more for the love of the game – and a lot more light-hearted.  The commentators poked fun at the players, the ref, themselves, people in the crowd – it was just fun.  I laughed and danced and found myself cheering for great plays.  This was definitely another high point of the weekend.  🙂 The Canadians ended up winning, and afterward we wandered off down the promenade to find some dinner.  The Pig ‘n Pancake had an appealing menu, so we stopped in and had some fish-n-chips and vegetable fettucini before heading back in to Portland and our room at the Waterfront Marriott.  We were greeted at the front desk by Carson – who later hooked me up with a toothbrush and toothpaste since I had forgotten mine.  We had a nice river-view room (that was also right next to the elevator).

The next morning we set out in the other direction to find a nice waterfall hike in the Columbia River Gorge.  I had spent the previous week researching the hikes in this area (specifically the waterfall hikes) and, I tell you, there are SO MANY to choose from!  I decided we would start off at Multnomah Falls, since it is the second highest continuously flowing waterfall in the US (second to… I don’t know really, maybe Niagra?).  It’s a big tourist spot, and you can basically see the falls from the parking area… so that was a quick ooh and ahh before we were ready to move on.  We hiked the back trail from Multnomah over to Wahkeena Falls (another that can be seen from the road) and then proceeded onward and upward to see Fairy Falls.  That was about enough hiking for one morning (we gained quite a bit of elevation and my legs were screaming!) so we headed back to the car and off in search of lunch.

Lunch was found, as the consumer fairies would have it, at another outlet shopping center. 🙂  We of course wandered this one as well, and found another bargin pair of pants for me (now I’m all set for work pants in my new size) and also some treasures at the christian outlet store.  Treasures like a big huggable Larry, a new VeggieTales DVD (performed in the rhyming style of the flibber-o-loo story, one of my favorites!!), and a new christian music sampler.  After the retail therapy starts, it’s difficult to stop it, so we headed back down to Fry’s to pick up another one of the cool mini-kites (this one is a guy on a bike).  We also played Dance, Dance at the demo station in the store and found some converters to hook our Dance, Dance pads to the Xbox so we can use this new dancing game A.J. found for us.  I’m excited to try that out when we get back to St. Louis.

Finally it was time to head back into town to check in at Hotel Lucia.  We were greeted at our car by Thom, who walkie-talkied our check-in info to the front desk and remote-controlled open the front doors for us on our way in.  This hotel is just classy and cool and fun… all sorts of adjectives.  Rather than try to explain too much, just go look at the photos on Rainbow Bear’s site (and check out hotellucia.com).  When we walked into our hotel room, there was soft mood music drifting out from the radio in the corner.  I think that was the part that really sealed the deal for me, this was no ordinary hotel experience.  The bed was so comfy (a nice pillow-top mattress) and the pillows were perfectly soft and supportive… though if you don’t think so then order up a new firmness from the "pillow menu".  I ordered up a body pillow just to say I used the "pillow menu".  How cool.

We spent the evening browsing (and buying) at Powell’s Bookstore followed by a meandering dinner that started off with yellow curry at a yummy little Thai restaurant (Scorpio Thai? I don’t remember) and finished at the Portland City Grill.  This was a phenomenal experience, 30 floors up in one of the downtown bank buildings.  They have a great happy hour with a wide range of appetizer selections for only $2-$5 each (with hearty portions).  A.J. and I shared the ceasar salad and vegeterian yakisoba noodles, then we capped it all off with the signature cookies and ice cream dessert.  "Signature" because they bring you the cookies hot out of the oven, still gooey and melting in your mouth.  Oh, it was so good!  This is a place I would definitely go back to – the view was amazing, the ambiance was comfortable and entertaining with a live pianoman, and the food was delicious.

The next morning we had breakfast delivered (more yummy – food is so much fun!) and before you know it I had to leave for work.  And just like that the weekend was brought to a close. 

I love memories.  The experiences are the best part, but the memories sure are great.  It’s things like this blog that let me remember the details.  Without the details, all of my exeriences start mushing together and it gets easy to forget about everything I’ve done.

These are some pictures from my Fantastic Weekend (see above entry for details)

One of the views from the Portland City Grill

Me and the Hotel Lucia chessboard in the lobby

Me by candlelight at the Portland City Grill