October 2010 Archives

Day 2 Soundtrack: Megadeth's "Countdown to Extinction", the Pet Shop Boys greatest hits, and random selections from the country genre including "I Married a Woman Who Looks Like Jerry Reed"...

Today's drive was less eventful than yesterday.  The sunshiney niceness was replaced by cloudy drizzliness, and I opted to go via the interstate highway instead of the coastal highway.  One thing that has been frustrating me about the drive is that there are a million things to take photos of...but by the time you discover the great photo opportunity, you're already a quarter mile past it and it would be crazy to turn around.  I have a few gigabytes of untaken photos in my brain that I wish I could share with you.  (Particularly the sign where someone misspelled "corn".  I know what you're thinking.  "Aww, poor dummies probably spelled it with a K."  No, they spelled it with a "CRON".)

The other thing I wish I had better photos of is the trees.  Duh, the Pacific Northwest has a lot of them.  And this is a really beautiful time to be making this drive because of the autumn leaves.  Green, yellow, orange, burgandy, bright red.  There have been many times where I felt like I was looking at a Nuprin ad in nature: all the trees would be dark green and one lone bright yellow tree would stand out among them.  Little.  Yellow.   Different.

This is the best photo I took, and it doesn't remotely do it justice.  Orange, burgandy, and bright red aren't even represented!!



Then when I got to redwood country, it got even crazier.  The road was very, very curvy so I didn't dare try to take photos while I was driving.  But I will continue my drive through redwood country tomorrow, and I will definitely stop and take better pictures because you just have to see it.  Wowie.

This is going to be a short and unexciting entry, sorry.  I just wanna go to bed, so that I can get up and hurry along to Cousin Sheryl's tomorrow!

Day 1 Soundtrack: Hole's "Live Through This" and my Halloween playlist featuring the Hellbillies' "Surf Zombies"...

I have driven from Seattle to Portland dozens of times.  And I was always in a hurry, so I always took I-5, and always promised myself that the next time I would give myself more time and take the coastal highway.  Finally!  This happened!  Today's leg of the motor tour can be broken into two categories.  (1) The Grunge Legacy Hometowns and (2) Hollywood in Oregon on Location.

The Grunge Legacy Hometowns

Olympia is the capital of Washington.  It is also Courtney Love's hometown before she ran off to Portland to be a stripper.  Olympia seems like a regular suburban town, there honestly wasn't much to note there.

But if you turn sharply west in Olympia, you'll end up in Aberdeen which is Kurt Cobain's hometown.  He used to live under a bridge somewhere.  I remember reading about what a shithole Aberdeen was, and how Kris Novoselic decided to pursue music instead of lumberjacking "because there was less chance of decapitation in music." 

Aberdeen was pretty rough-looking.  Every third car on the road was a logger truck.  There were big patches of forest everywhere that had been clearcut.  Lots of low budget casinos and houses in disrepair.  The smell of crystal meth was in the air.  And Kurt was quoted on the "Welcome to Our City" sign:



I did not stop in Aberdeen.  I wanted to get to the less sketchy leg of the tour.

Hollywood in Oregon on Location

Did you know that a bunch of movies are filmed in Oregon? 

For example, Kindergarten Cop takes place in Astoria.  Remember when Arnold asked the children to raise their hands if they were born in Astoria?  And they all raised their hands?  Then he followed up by asking which children were not born in Astoria?  And they all raised their hands?  I was there today.  I asked myself if I was born in Astoria, and I raised my hand. 

There is a very long multi-mile bridge from the Washington border into Astoria.  The town itself is a cute little seaside village.  I purely accidentally and very smartly waited to fuel up my car until I got to Astoria.  This was smart because diesel is way cheaper in Oregon ($3.35) than Washington  ($3.50), and because the law in Oregon mandates that an attendant pump your gas for you.  That part has nothing to do with Kindergarten Cop.  That is purely for your information if you're ever traveling by car in Oregon.



Another movie filmed in Oregon is Goonies.  The pivotal scenes all happen at Cannon Beach, particularly the Haystack Rock part of Cannon Beach.  It's a huge rock formation out in the sea, and if you remember from the movie, Sean Astin used it to line up something from a map or something before he took a puff of his inhaler.  And I completely understand the need for the inhaler, because when I came around the corner and saw this, it took my breath away.  Both because it was so huge and amazing, and because for one second *I* felt like one of the Goonies, too.  And yes, I did listen to Cyndi Lauper's "Goonies R Good Enough" as I drove away.



And the final movie filmed in Oregon is Overboard, which took place in the town of Elk Cove.  (Or as the richies in the movie called it, "Elk Snout.")  I had hoped to stand on the waterfront with an air horn, blast it three times, and call out "Arturo!  Arturo!"  But sadly, Elk Cove seems to be an entirely fictional town.  I could not find it on any map, so I had to be content to drive along the Oregon coast, blasting my car horn three times, and shouting for Arturo out the car window.  Close enough.

I arrived in Portland and went to my friends Dmitria and Jason's house for my first night's stay.  Dmitria had cooked homemade macaroni and cheese for me.  With steak as a side dish!  Awesome! 

The first day of the motor tour gets an A++.  Stay tuned for more tomorrow.  There will probably be redwoods.

When Anji came to visit me in Helsinki in September, she brought me the funniest gift from Korea.  It was a luggage tag.  It was pink and cute.  There was a little girl on it, having a conversation with herself:

Little Girl: "Do you know what I like about road trips?"
Little Girl: "Motor tour."

I like motor tours, too.  And in the morning, I will embark on a pretty major one.  It is finally time to pack up my car and start the long drive from Seattle to Texas.  Because I will officially be unemployed effective tomorrow, I have all the time in the world to get there.  So I'm going to go the long, inefficient, scenic route.  I'll drive along beaches, through redwood forests, under bridges, across deserts, by canyons, stopping at every silly and unnecessary roadside attraction along the way.



Feel free to follow along on my adventure here, I'm hoping to post daily with updates from each day's drive. 

When I left Helsinki a week ago, there was a definite expectation that there would be an epic farewell party.  I was a bit stressed out with packing and moving and leaving, so I planned a very simple event: beer and pizza at the office, followed by karaoke.  There was talk of having a grander theme and/or costumes, but I just didn't have the mental energy (or luggage space) for that.  So that Friday it all went down like this...

08:45am I come to the office like any other day.

08:46am Things are quiet, not that many people are in the office yet.  This is odd.  These are Finns, they're always early.

08:48am I go into the breakroom to check that all the Budweiser tallboys are still in the fridge.  Everything is AOK:



09:02am I see Tanja walk in.  I avoid eye contact so I don't start getting all teary.  But I notice her hair looks extra fluffy.

09:04am Out of the corner of my eye, I notice Tanja is wearing a gold satin shirt with very puffy sleeves.

09:05am I bumrush Tanja's desk to examine what she is wearing, and realize she is totally 80's glammed out!?

09:06am Kesis approaches, and I see she is wearing a suede fringed vest and cowgirl boots.

09:10am Janne blows into the office, with slicked back hair and a cigar, wearing a suit.  He comes up to me, calls me "darlin'", and slaps me on the ass.



09:12am Janne starts strategically placing portraits of the Ewings (and me) around the office.



09:15am Lena shows up in a satiny red cowl-necked dress and garish makeup, looking EXACTLY like Lucy.

09:17am Sinttu follows shortly after, with a periwinkle blue dress with sleeves whose puffiness rival Tanja's sleeves. 

09:18am Sinttu, Tanja, and Lena declare themselves J.R.'s slutty secretaries:



09:25am I start to notice that several people are wearing cowboy hats.  Hanna was even in a meeting room, waving around a pistol:




09:45am Janne yells "DALLAS MOB!" from his computer.  All 30 people in the office stand up and start looking at me, the theme song from Dallas starts blaring, and everyone plays air violin along to the music.

09:50am Facebook blows up with announcements about how our company has been acquired by Ewing Oil for the day, and that all the slutty secretaries need their whiskey.

11:20am We go for lunch, and the girls all keep their jackets on.  :)

11:24am I mention that even though I knew NOTHING about what they had planned, I had walked around my apartment in my high-heeled cowgirl boots all morning and debated wearing them, but decided against it.  When they asked why, I replied, "Because I thought it would be too much."  Cue laughter.

12:30pm I ran home to change into those cowgirl boots, big earrings, and apply my Michael Maron Makeover Magic makeup job. 

02:00pm I make it back to the office.

02:35pm I decide I can't wait until 4:00, and I'm ready to start drinking.  So does everyone else.  Shit starts to get weird. 



03:30pm Valter starts freaking me out with his puffy vest and diesel cap because he looks almost EXACTLY my cousin Gary Don.  In fact, in this photo he and Erik look authentic enough they could hang out at the Stop 'N Shop in Groom, TX undetected:



04:30pm They make me sit in a chair and all surround me.  They start playing The Leningrad Cowboys version of "Those Were the Days" and do a full-on "Puttin' on the Hitz" lip-synching performance!  With bonus Cossack-style squatty inny-outty leg dancing action!?!  How do you people know how to do that???



05:00pm We steal Lars' whiskey because he's not there to stop us.  (Sorry, Lars.  Next time don't advertise on Facebook that you're hiding Chivas in your desk drawer!)

05:10pm Things start to get very fuzzy.

06:30pm We arrive at The Restroom Karaoke Joint (I think). 

06:45pm-02:00am Things get very very very fuzzy to the point that I only have random scattered memories, such as:

• Jaakko's riveting performance of "Jenny from the Block"
• Laughing / Crying
• Erik implanting David Bowie directly into his vocal chords and doing a perfect "Space Oddity" that brought the house down
  
• Laughing / Crying
• Steve's rendition of David Lee Roth's "Just a Gigolo" which I was drunk enough to think was "Giglolo", and that is STILL stuck in my head over a week later
• Crying / Laughing
• Dancing with Janne, and me and my ponytail being twirled around violently
• Me trying to sing Alice Cooper's "Poison" but being off-key from too much crying/laughing
• Crying / Laughing / Crying
  
• Making some random girl cry who didn't even know anyone in our group
• Laughing at her
• Valter's version of "Take On Me"
• Lena's air pan flute performance
• Hugging everyone way too hard, and probably getting snot and tears all over their shoulders
  
• Breaking Heikki's other shoulder from hugging him too hard
• Feeling very loved, and missing everyone before I had even left
  
• Not ever wanting the evening to end, ever :(
  

 


EPILOGUE: Addendum by participants who remember more than I do...

Tanja: "You seem to have forgotten Sampsa's PamPamPamela and THE We're the World moment when the whole bar was holding hands."

Henri: "We are the whuurld. Very vivid memories arise."

Lena: "My Eternal Flame is still burning for you, Halee! It's not Another Day in Paradise when you're not here. I must leave for North Carelia (Minä lähden Pohjois-Karjalaan) to recover!"

Well, this is it.  It's my last night in Finland.  I still have several backdated posts to catch up on, particularly the one about last night's Ewing Oil-themed farewell party.  (!)  But for now, I'm going to post a list that I've been cooking since I arrived here one year ago.  My list of the things I miss about home, and the things I will miss about here.


Things I miss about the USA:

• tumble dryers
• my iPhone
• cheddar cheese (or any orange cheese)
  
• cornbread
• Sonic Drive-In
  
• pho
• Netflix
• attentive customer service
• playing tennis
• 9 months of sunshine (Texas only, does not apply to Seattle)
  

Things I don't miss about the USA:

• people wearing flip flops and sandals year round
  
• rain (Seattle only, does not apply to Texas)
  
• waiting for buses outside in the stupid rain
  
• cockroaches, rats, and other vermin
  
• tipping
• flakey people
  

Things I will miss about Finland:

• people always saying what they mean, meaning what they say, and always being on time and well-organized
• saunas
• kitchen shelves above sink that double as a dish drying rack
• public transit efficiency
• excellent tap water
• proximity to continental Europe
• garbage service (especially biojäte)
• forest activities (lake swimming, mushroom picking, etc.)
  
• Spotify

Things I won't miss about Finland:

• mandatory coat check with fees
• snow, ice, cold, bronchitis
• spiral staircases
• bureaucracy
• Jonathan from Spotify

There is something missing about what I miss about each place.  The USA one lacks a list of all my friends and family who I can't wait to get back to.  And the Finnish one is missing the list of all my friends (and defacto family) that I am devastated to leave.  I won't list all your names here, because you know who you are.

There have been many buckets of tears this week.  I'm heartbroken to leave.  But if my biggest problem is that I have too many friends and too many places to call home, I'm a very very very lucky girl.  Thank you Finland (and all your inhabitants) for the best year of my life.