WOW: Watching the Oscars in Vancouver!

All alone at the Oscar Movie Marathon!

Last Monday and Tuesday (Feb 18 & 19), Bill and I enjoyed a two-day movie marathon watching all the 9 Best Picture Oscar nominees. We got the idea from a friend of ours, Sheila Ball who went two days before us. Surprisingly, the first day there were only six of us even if it was a holiday (Presidents’ Day); on the second day, it was just the two of us! We thought there would be more retired people who would love this opportunity to view all at a hefty discount ($6 per picture instead of $10!).

US/Canada Peace Arch: Children of a Common Mother

We had a fun time, devouring all the popcorn our little(?) tummies could take!  The refillable large popcorn and large drink was also at a discounted price of $6.50. We had three popcorn refills each day and by the time the last picture was shown, we did not want to see any more! The first day we shared a single pizza and Dr. Pepper for dinner and an 8-piece boneless chicken wing and root beer on the second.  Both screenings started at 12 noon so we had lunch before going.

We also had a great time, discussing the pros and cons of each picture. By and large we agreed with each other’s rankings, with some minor disagreement; we agreed on the best picture and the bottom three. To arrive at our ratings, I made a matrix of the following criteria for Best Picture: screenplay, acting, directing, cinematography, and meaning. Bill and I cast our votes and I added our scores for each movie and divided by two. Our joint votes yielded Lincoln as the Best Picture with the following other awards we, surprisingly, agreed on. Here they are with the Oscar nods on the next column:

                                                                           BillnCaroln                             Oscar 

Best Picture                                                   Lincoln                                        Argo

Best Actor                                                     Daniel Day-Lewis                       Daniel Day-Lewis

Best Actress                                                  Emmanuelle Riva                         Jennifer Lawrence      

Best Director                                                 Steven Spielberg                         Ang Lee

Best Actor in a Supporting Role                     Christoph Waltz                          Christoph Waltz

Best Actress in a Supporting Role                  Sally Field                                   Anne Hathaway

Best Screenplay                                             Argo                                           Argo

Best Cinematography                                     Life of Pi                                     Life of PI

50% is certainly not a very good score. I guess we belong to the secondary audience, the sexygenarians who are partial to history coming alive as in Lincoln and old folk tales like Amour. We were definitely not among the young hopefuls who loved the bipolars’ love story, Silver Lining Playbook, although  Jennifer Lawrence was our second choice for best actress.

There is a definite effort to make the Oscars appeal to the young with Seth MacFarlane as host, and movies such as Life of Pi and Django Unchained. But the Red Carpet moments were, as usual, fun to watch with people voting Jennifer Lawrence as both best and worst dressed. I loved Reese Witherspoon’s electric blue and Jessica Chastain’s nude-like ensemble. A high moment was the teary-eyed Best Picture acceptance speech of Ben Affleck who got snubbed for the Best Director Award. Jennifer Lawrence tripped on her gown as she walked up to the stage to accept Best Actress Award. But the audience stood in ovation and she quipped, ‘You are just standing because I fell…’. The dichotomy was best highlighted by songs from classic divas Shirley Bassey and Barbara Streisand and young stars Jennikfer Hudson, Norah Jones, and Adele!

view from out room at Pan Pacific Vancouver Hotel

We actually watched the Oscars in the Pan Pacific Vancouver Hotel where we met Claudine, my second daughter who arrived from Calgary to attend a 2-day conference. We drove from my eldest daughter Trisha’s home in Kent, Washington for 2 ½ hours plus a 30 minute wait at the border. For the first time I noticed that the Arch bears the phrase, ‘Children of a Common Mother’. It gave me chills. Trisha and Claudine, where they are, and my youngest April, in England…that is where I should be!

Actually, we will be in Calgary in July to be with Claudine as she delivers my fifth grandchild. And then we hope to go to England to see April and her beau Clint! After that, we will hopefully be in Phoenix in Stage 4!

WOW: Finishing Writing My Book

the yellow ones are obviously mine, pink and whites are my daughter Trisha's

toast of champagne at La Flora!

Valentines Day came and with it Bill. Actually, he arrived the day before together with a tall vase of yellow flowers. He was so happy to have had a meaningful one month with his son Jim in Boise, Idaho where he helped with the renovation of the office building they got as compensation for a real estate case they had won. Deejay and Trish had also reserved a table for us at La Flora, a Spanish restaurant at the University District in Seattle where we shared gambas, two kinds of paella and a bottle of rioja. Back at home we laughed till midnight watching Russell Peters while having pie and ice cream for dessert. Who else would take their parents with them on a Valentines date?

It was the longest separation in 4 ½ years of marriage. We were briefly apart for a couple of days two years ago and again for several days last year when I met up with Ann and Jingjing for a brief escape in Las Vegas. Since Bill and I married and started this RV cruising lifestyle, we had been together 24/7.  So, before he left, our pastoral counselor directed each of us to consider it a retreat  and to reflect, every single day we are apart, find meaning in a specific adventure of our 3 ½ year cruise, and recall how it was to be with the other.

The first days without Bill were hard. Compounding the situation was the change in medications Bill’s doctor gave me. I had decided to shift to him and consult him about my continuing breakouts of hives, acid reflux and heartburn. I like the MyChart system of electronic patient records of their MultiCare Clinic, something that would be practical given our constant travels.  I also tried to read the book Perfect Love, Imperfect Relationships, a book assignment from our pastoral counselor.

Trisha and Yeye joined me at the Zumba Party

Turning my attention to family, I was also able to get a handle on what was going on with Krishna, eldest daughter of Trisha, who had broken up with her long-time beau and is struggling to earn her keep while finishing her schooling at the Gene Juarez Beauty Academy.  She has reconciled with her parents Deejay and Trisha so she would come to the house whenever I cooked dinner, except for the time when her car broke down. Yeye, Trisha’s second daughter, usually slept with me. When Kenji joined us, it felt like a very cozy party in bed!

my Estrogen Club at the Zumba Party

One night my Estrogen Club joined a Zumba Party. Trisha and Yeye came with me. I must have strained a pelvic muscle. Worse, I stupidly followed it with four days of LA Fitness with Yeye. By the fourth day I could not move! Fortunately, Deejay knew how to handle such sore muscles and in just a few days I was able to function again.

Soon, the combination of my reflections and all the free time I had when the Trisha and Deejay left for work and Yeye and Kenji  were in school, I was able to complete the first draft of my book manuscript with the working title, Cruising to a Life Together, Becoming an American.

It is a 90,000-word book sectioned into 9 chapters 1) Changing Lifestyles, 2) Driving North to the Arctic Circle and South to Mexico, 3) Crossing the Gulf States to the Southeast, 4) Turning West Back to Seattle, 5) Going Back to Florida for the Winter, 6) Driving North from Florida to Maine, 7) Completing North America, 8) Transitioning to Stage 4, 9) Coming Together. And now I have talked to two publishing consultants, Archway Publishing of Simon and Schuster and Author!Author! of Penguin Books. Alternatively, I can look for a literary agent for the traditional publishing route.

 Meanwhile, the draft is being proofread and edited by Bill, the other main character of my creative nonfiction and travel memoir!

Wow: Picking our Top 10s from Our Travels!

we have chosen the city of Phoenix as our winter haven

Bill and I have been to 49 American states cruising in an RV. This January, while I am finishing my book and Bill is helping his son finish his office building, we agreed to vote on our Top 10s! Often we have been asked the question, ‘What are the best places you’ve seen?’ As usual, I developed a matrix to make our final selections. Most of the criteria centered on three: things to see, places to eat, and things to do.  We voted independently, in separate states, may I add, combined our scores electronically, and came up with the following lists:

Top 10 States to Visit

1.       Arizona

2.       Pennsylvania
3.       New York

4.       Massachusetts

5.       Maine

6.       California

7.       Florida

8.       Virginia

9.       North Carolina

10.     New Mexico

Obviously, we love history and nature!

Top 5 National Parks

1.       Yosemite National Park

2.       Grand Tetons National Park

3.       Glacier National Park

4.       Great Smokey Mountain National Park

5.       Yellowstone National Park

6.       Acadia National Park

In 19 years, Glacier will have lost all its glaciers, so this list will become 5!

Top 5 SMSAs to Live in as a Winter Haven

1.       Phoenix

2.       Tampa

3.       Orlando

4.       Tucson

5.       San Diego

That is why we are snow birding in Phoenix!

Top 5 SMSAs to Live in As a Summer Haven

1.       San Francisco

2.       Seattle

3.       New York City

4.       Boston

5.       Philadelphia

We left our heart in San Francisco

Top 5 SMSAx to Live in Year-Long

1.       San Diego

2.       Las Vegas

3.       Savannah

4.       Albuquerque

5.       Phoenix

You will notice that Phoenix made two lists and Arizona even made it to the top states list so we have decided to make the city our winter haven for Stage 4 and just make trips to other parts of the world or visits to our kids and siblings from there. It may even be our eventual Stage 5 (nesting) home!

WOW: Traveling Light, in an RV?

our roomy interior, decluttered, with a huge picture window!

In my last post, a friend commented that I should write more about each one! So I tackle 'traveling light' in this post. By definition, you cannot travel light in an RV! How can you travel light when you are, in fact, taking your whole home with you! But that leads us to what traveling light really means when cruising with an RV! It is all the more reason to just have the bare necessities in your moving bedroom, kitchen, and bathroom!

When I came to America, I had completely downsized to just two suitcases. When Bill’s second marriage ended, he downsized to a single’s condo. When we got married, we both downsized our two singles condos into one. Soon after he sold his business and retired, we sold most of our stuff on Craigslist and three garage sales and then packed all that we needed in Star and left the rest in two storage locations, DJ and Trisha’s garage and the storage unit of the condo we shared. But when we bought M’A ‘turn and the membership into Thousand Trails, we transferred all that we owned to the big rig and gave away the rest!

Now we just have to manage what constitutes bare necessities. For one, clothes can be a creeping culprit. Bill always says ‘I’ve got too many shirts’ when I see one hanging on a rack that looks like it would be great for him. Recently, when I found out that tight pressure and extreme temperature, whether hot or cold, cause a flare-up of hives, I changed my dress size to Large! I had to give to Goodwill a lot of my stuff before I could buy any new ones

.

Second, paper can also add a lot of weight!  So, as much as possible, we no longer carry books and magazines and store/subscribe to them on Kindle instead. Most of our files are also electronic, except those original documents that need to be presented like passports, birth and marriage certificates, divorce/annulment papers, etc.  Even Bill’s health records are all electronically held in MyChart of the MultiCare Clinics where his family doctor practices. That is one reason I shifted to the same doctor!

Third, the kitchen and dining area can be the heaviest room. We have service for four and no more! When we have more (the RV seats 10) we use plastic ware. Wine glasses come in glass-like plastic. Cooking pots are just 3, small, medium, and large; frying pans are just 2, small and medium. But we do have a bread machine and a slow cooker, small ones though! Bill makes do with a French Press since a coffee machine would be too big and heavy. The small pantry also loads only the bare necessities. And the refrigerator, though two-door, holds only a week’s worth of food. The microwave and convection oven are all in one, too! But we have to get rid of some beverage mugs…we have 8!  And my drawer of spices is too full!

However, we also carry the following on storage bins under the RV:  a portable fire pit (for sitting out even on cold nights), a barbeque grill, an outdoor table and four chairs, 2 suitcases, and 2 carry-alls for short trips elsewhere, Bill’s fishing gear, and a ladder. For entertainment, we carry a DVD player, a Ziller karaoke system, 32-inch and 15-inch TVs, a satellite dish, an iPod player, a laptop, and a Tablet.  We also have a space heater, an electric fan, and a vacuum cleaner. Not to forget, we also added a washer/dryer combo!  Come to think of it, we have to get rid of the icemaker that no longer makes ice!

May I hasten to add, however, that I have not been good with our bathroom…especially my cabinet! It has grown with soap, shampoo, conditioner, etc. supply of maybe 2 years! I have to stop collecting those things from motels, hotels, and condotels we stay in! Bill, on the other hand, keeps to the minimum toiletries. But our linens and towels are good for only four people, Bill and I, and a couple of guests!

In short, the principle in traveling light in an RV is this: travel with your home, if you must, but keep your home to the barest minimum! Our home is about 350 square feet of living space. We try to keep it from looking so overstuffed and adding much to the 20,000-pound weight of the RV. I must admit, we have been pretty good at it, even if we can do better!