A weekend at the Biltmore

You can’t go wrong with a hotel known as the “jewel of the dessert“! The Biltmore has been around for 80 years, and has hosted celebrities like Marilyn Monroe and every U.S. President since it opened its doors in 1929. John McCain’s camp actually took over more than 90% of the 739 rooms during the week of the election. The hotel and grounds are stunning; Frank Lloyd Wright served as the consulting architect, after all. It’s the kind of place with a fountain and a citrus tree around every corner, swoon-worthy art deco furnishings and mega-expensive weddings on the grand lawn. During our stay we managed to eat some great food at a hole in the wall Mexican joint in Old Town Scottsdale and Dr. Andrew Weil’s super healthy restaurant, True Food. We also had the opportunity to check out Frank Lloyd Wright’s desert home, Taliesin West. We picked our tour time wisely, emerging from the house minutes before sunset. I’ll hand it to the desert southwest….you have the best apricot-flavored sunsets around!

A delicious Sunday night

Little Monkey is curled up on my legs, we still have free HBO, the husband is working hard in the kitchen, and my favorite lamb stew with dark beer and barley is cooking in a cast-iron pot.

View from my desk

I really hope they don’t build anything next to our office any time soon, because the view from my desk at sunset is breathtaking! That’s my darling Swedish teammate, Sara, hard at work.

A fall day with little Grayson

Delight on my waistband

Much to the shagrin of my husband, my new job came along with the need  for a few new items from my favorite store of all, JCrew. Today was the first time I took the tags off a new pair of whool trousers. As I pulled on one pant leg after the other, I noticed a sweet little detail I must have missed in the store: a thin ribbon stitched to the waistband and printed with this darling copy: “clever (clev’er), adj. ingenious; having sharp or quick intelligence; bright: “she is a very clever girl.” Ah, JCrew, you have made my day once again! Now, when can I expect the “charming” line of trousers?

Congratulations, Prada

Our friend, James, just accepted a new position within Vestas. The legal team gathered tonight to wish him well and buy him some delicious Hopworks pizza. It also gave Alec and James the opportunity to pose for this year’s best Modern Family portrait. Prada and Alshe, you are a DARLING couple!

Vote for Mitra’s voice over project

About a month ago, my best friend, Mitra, did a small voice over project for a friend who was making a trailer for Star Wars: Death Troopers. He entered it into an online contest and it’s currently winning! The trailer has already garnered 34,000 views on YouTube with a goal of 100,000 views. If you have a moment, please go vote for trailer. Thank you!

Alec’s birthday beach weekend

Joanie, Oskar and the kids invited us to celebrate “Uncle Ally’s” 42nd birthday at the family’s beach house. The kids pulled together a (sorta) surprise Scooby-Doo themed birthday party, complete with homemade cupcakes and frosting, balloons and Scooby masks, plates and cups. Even the chicken dance made the list! 

Portland Fashion Week

Elaine and I attended Portland Fashion Week for the first time this past Friday. The four shows were hit and miss, but the highlight of the night came at the very beginning; before the shows had begun or the lights had dimmed, the girl 4 seats down threw up all over the floor and herself, leaving her embarrassed friends to drag her passed-out little behind down the runway. It was a “thank God that’s not me” moment. Poor thing. If her friends have any decency, they’ll forget the whole thing and never tell her how the night ended.

A blogger I stalk

I want to introduce you to an old friend. But here’s the thing: I don’t actually know her in the sense of…um…having shook her hand and split a cookie in a cafe. I stumbled upon Amber through another friend’s blog and immediately fell in love with the way she strings together words, bares her failures with candor, and achingly loves her husband and children. She is candid with her struggle to love and forgive herself. Who doesn’t know how that can feel? The way she tells a story has brought me to tears, clad in pajamas and hunched in front of my computer with a cup of coffee and a purring cat wrapped up on my lap. I am green with envy of what feels like her effortless poetry and her rich life in embarrassing, hushed secret, not even daring to leave a comment after a particular confession or memory has made me swallow my breath and say “wow, that’s how I feel”. I admit I enjoy falling in love with her words from afar; it feels special that a stranger opens my mind when I least expect it. I’ve copied and pasted a little taste of her storytelling prowess here in this post. Enjoy!

Our neighbor was my mama’s grandmother, and she sent Erin and me there, to our Mama Lois, and we ran to her house, bare feet slapping, alternating from the scorching black-top road to the thistled grasses lined with saw briar and honeysuckle-twined maypops and bitterweed.

We ran there for Dr. Pepper and Starbursts and wore her girdles, fur hats, gloves, and clip-on rhinestones. We were fancy there, high heeled, and we thought of Elvis in Hawaii. I sounded out romance novels, ears turned hot, the “b” sound – bulge, bosom.

Once, on the way home, I ran onto a tree stump where a green snake flipped in the air. There my heart changed, racing wild, though I knew not to be afraid. Once, on the wall of roses, a blue and red bug bit and shocked my arms numb. No day without a little blood, a little tobacco-spit rubbed into a sting. No day without discovery: a yellow jacket hole, unearthed glass, willowflies heaving in the shape of a barn. 

The country taught me to love the pounding, the fear of a spanking, the sound of blood rushing – ears in the bath water, a diesel-engine always backfiring through birdsong, that breathless second just before breaking the short side off the wishbone.