A Washington Peeps show

O, the cheap gimmicks a venerable institution must stoop to.

Most likely in the name of community outreach (i.e., to attract readers), The Washington Post, that newspaper that once brought a president down, the bastion of journalism famed in book and cinema, the former home of that iron lady Katherine Graham, sponsors an annual Peeps contest. The newspaper invites submissions from the public (its readers, residents of the Washington, D.C., area) to design and construct a diorama, a scene using Peeps, those marshmallow Easter candies made in the shapes of chicks and bunnies.

For the last couple of weeks, Sarah and I have been following a group on Facebook that supports of one of the entries and the person/people who created the “Washington National Peepthedral” scene full of a choir and a procession, complete with a miter-wearing bishop Peep and the Darth Vader gargoyle that really does exist at the cathedral.

The 36 finalists are on display for the first part of this week at the Post’s offices, and at lunch today, Sarah and I walked over there to view them. They are allowing the public to vote on its favorite as well.

The scenes are fun, clever and creative. Many did what I knew had to be done for a winning entry – pick a current event from the news or pop culture and create a Peep scene around it - and so there are several scenes from our big February snow storms (the enormous snowball fight in Dupont Circle) and a snowy scene from the Olympics. Others borrowed from children’s and adult literature to create Frankenstein, Madeline (Peepaline) and Goodnight, Peep (Goodnight, Moon) scenes. The attention to detail is admirable on some. Another favorite of mine had a bunny Peep as Normal Rockwell in a re-creation of his triple self-portrait scene. Pure genius, that.
Although I've been a Facebook fan of the Peepthedral scene and do think it's clever and well-executed (extra points for its additional "marketing" effort on Facebook), here is the one I voted for:


It's the scene of the White House party crashers. I voted for it because:

• It's current (well, barely, but probably was at the time it was conceived)
  
• It's a good setting for use of Peeps as people
• The theme is good for a play on the Peeps word
  
• It's well-executed
  

Sarah was commenting the other day that she missed the scenes we would see a few times a day at this time of year while living in Geneva - the chocolate shop windows that not only made elaborate scenes but made elaborate creations in those scenes of chocolate Easter bunnies in family roles and gender-specific suits. We don't have as much of a chocolate culture here in this country as they do in Switzerland. We do go crazy with other types of Easter candy, however, and I suppose we'll have to settle for the way they have fun with their Easter candy here.

I did not enter the contest this year because I heard about it only about a week before entries were due. But I immediately told my artist brother about it and said that we needed his help for our entry next year.

See The Washington Post's page with photos of all the finalists

Getting walloped with winter weather

Our house at 4:00 Saturday afternoon

This is our first winter back in the U.S., and boy, are we getting a lot of it!

Sure, we are really noticing the winter weather after living near the Equator for a while. Sarah remarked the other day how she appreciates living in a place with distinct seasons again. Also, Geneva did not get any heavy snows (despite what people think, Geneva is not high in the Alps). So we have returned to the type of cold, wet, snowy winters we knew in Chicago.

First there was the pre-Christmas winter storm. They said that big of a storm was rare - only every 50 years or so. We flew out to Seattle the day after that storm, and we were nervous about the airports being open and getting to the Baltimore airport by road to fly out. But we made it to the airport and to our flight with no problems.

Then, this past weekend, an even bigger storm hit the D.C. area. We were walloped! The snow started falling on Friday morning and did not let up until Saturday at 5:00 p.m. There was so much anticipation around this storm - lots of talk and many things shutting down or letting out early. I felt a bit left out with no scheduled events of my own to cancel, since everybody else was canceling their events. The only thing we had scheduled on Saturday was a birthday party of a friend's son out in the suburbs in Virginia, but we didn't need to worry - this was called off on Friday.

With no flight to catch either, we had no obligations outside the house, so we stayed inside all day Saturday, content to let it snow. I went out in the late morning to start shoveling, and by then, there were 19 inches of snow in our back yard (where it had drifted a bit) and 14 inches on the sidewalk in front of our house. Our car was completely buried by that time. I shoveled part of the sidewalk around our house. Yesterday, I could feel the shoveling I did in my lower back.

A measurement taken at 4:00 Saturday afternoon in our front yard

We managed to get out of the house and go to church yesterday morning. Of course, the usual crowd wasn't there. Many members live out in the suburbs. There were only about 30 people there. We knew we could get there on the subway (only two stops away) but that it would take longer that way than usual. So we just started out early. It took us an hour to get to church. The organist could not make it, so I volunteered to accompany the service on the piano, and people really appreciated it.

By the time we got home from church in the early afternoon, the sun was beating down hard through a clear sky and was doing well to melt most of the snow off our car (I had shoveled most of it off earlier). So we finished digging it out, and now it's clear, although we still don't need to go anywhere with it.

As I said, there was a lot of lead-up to this storm. Everybody started talking about it and preparing for it early. We heard that on Thursday morning, 24 hours before the snow started falling, some grocery stories had been emptied out. But perhaps because the storm was bigger than what we thought was the biggest storm in December, the city was still caught off guard. Many streets are still not plowed, the buses are not running, and only the underground stations on the subway are open. So today, Monday, two days after the storm, on the first workday after it, most of the city is shut down. The federal government is closed. D.C. schools are closed. Sarah's office is closed, as is Lexi's daycare. I didn't get official word about my office being closed, but I decided not to go in today (our boss is on vacation this week and next anyway). So it's a snow day for everybody.

We aren't really unhappy or crabby about what's happening, but the only bummer is that while we are all just trying to cope with a huge amount of snow, another snow storm is on its way tomorrow afternoon. It is due to snow for about 24 hours more and leave us with at least 5 more inches! One little complaint I will air now, however: Since late Friday, the signal for our cable TV has not been coming in clearly. This was the ideal weekend for us, stuck inside, to catch up on all of our taped shows, but we haven't been able to watch any TV - live or recorded - since then because of snow on the lines or something probably snow-related. We do have one TV that is not hooked up to cable, so we've been able to stay caught up on the news.

Not to mention the previous weekend and last week: On Saturday of last weekend, it snowed much of the day as well, and we got about 4 inches. And then it snowed again on Tuesday - just a few inches. That last snow was very pretty. This was when I had family from Seattle (and some from NYC over the weekend) visiting. They managed to get out and fly back home before the big storm on early Thursday morning.

So, needless to say, we've had our share of real winter weather this first winter back in the U.S.

Lets go to the movies....

Stephen and I went and saw a movie in a theater yesterday afternoon. Only the second one since we have moved back to the States. We walked in the theater and pretty much stopped in our tracks - they had removed a row of seats and put in the table in each row so that people could eat during the movie. Condiments, napkins and the menu were already on these tables and a waiter would bring your food to you if you wanted to order anything. Both of us thought this was a bit weird. Do you really need to eat a hamburger while watching a movie in a theater?? Is this the norm now or just a novelty in Seattle??

(We went to see 'Up in the Air' and thought it was quite good. It doesn't have your typical happy ending so if that is important to you, you might not want to go see it.)

Our 2009 Christmas letter

Click on each image above to make it larger (so you can read it).

More scenes of the season

Lexi in front of the Christmas tree at a holiday party we went to

Lexi at the Botanical Garden, all decorated for Christmas

Christmas scenes from Our Nation's Capital

The Christmas tree at Union Station, a gift from Norway as thanks to the United States for our help in World War II (yes, a few years has passed since then, but they're still very grateful to us).

The Christmas tree on the grounds of the Capitol.

Fondue American-style? We say "Fon-don't!"

A little while ago, we saw advertisements in the paper for the holiday concert of the Air Force band. We know the son of our former (first) pastor in Chicago (at Ebenezer), who plays saxophone in this band. So we got tickets from him to attend (we’ve learned in D.C. that you don’t have to do things the conventional way like the public does them; it’s all about using your connections to get something).

We decided to make a whole date night out of it, so we got our friend (Michelle) to babysit Lexi and went out to dinner before the concert. We tried one of D.C.’s fondue restaurants, one of our favorite meals from our time in Switzerland, obviously. How does the American version of a fondue meal at a restaurant fare? Herewith our list of rants:

• Atmosphere: Granted, this restaurant was in the basement of a building, the same place you would find your Swiss friend’s carnotzet, where you would gather for your fondue meal and wine tasting (next to the cellar). But rather than the cozy, rustic atmosphere of a Swiss lodge with stone walls, they’ve got a modern décor with lots of wood and shiny metals and lots of modern art on the walls. And part of the atmosphere (the fun) of going to a restaurant in Switzerland for fondue is that you’re hit immediately at the door by the heat, humidity and strong, pungent smell of cheese. It’s an oppressive atmosphere, yes, but that helps keep you warm on a cold Swiss day, which is when you’d be eating fondue. This place was quiet well ventilated and didn’t smell at all.
• Quantity: The recommendation from the waitress, for the “whole experience,” was to get the multiple-course meal, which started off with a cheese fondue (the only course with cheese), then went to a salad and then the “entrée,” which really was fondue with meat (cooking meat in a broth), and ended with a chocolate fondue dessert. We didn’t want to spend a lot for the entire experience (it’s quite expensive), and all a fondue meal to us is bread and a lot of cheese – that’s it! So we ordered just the salad and cheese course. The pot of cheese was slightly larger than appetizer-sized but still not generous like a real Swiss meal would be (and the Swiss would gladly bring another pot of cheese if you finished the first one).
• Ingredients: Our main cheese fondue meal included “fresh” bread and three different types of it. A “real” Swiss fondue meal is just one type of bread – cut-up baguette (or that type), and it’s usually not so fresh and soft (fondue originated with stale, dry bread, and thus the melted cheese to soften it up – it’s what the shepherds carried with them high up in the Alps). Besides bread, we also had a couple of small bowls of apple chunks and chunks of fresh vegetables (celery, carrots and cauliflower). Again, something unheard-of with a real Swiss fondue meal. Our waitress made our fondue at the table in front of us, and it took all of a minute. It was just like all American foods – instant this or that. Real Swiss fondue cheese takes a while to melt and blend slowly. Plus she added nutmeg. We had never seen this before. There was a strange blend of spices in the cheese – pepper and nutmeg – that we weren’t used to.
  

One of the few redeeming things about the meal was that we were able to get a glass of white wine from Alsace, although there weren’t many choices on the wine menu for imported wines. OK, we’ll admit that we “ruined” the fondue anyway by ordering it with a salad, which we did all the time in Geneva as well (and were called on the carpet for on a number of occasions).

But we were able to get a more authentic Swiss meal even in Nairobi, at Rudy’s, a restaurant not far from our house there. Granted, Rudy was a native Swiss (Swiss-German), and we didn’t see any native Swiss at this restaurant on Saturday. We’ll never go back to there. We felt the way they did fondue was just so wrong.