Santa and the City.
Dear Friends and Family:
As we receive yet another Christmas letter from loved ones afar, it’s time for us to consider our own penning of this ubiquitous form of Yuletide correspondence. Honestly, we don’t think we’ll be able to match any of the impressive anecdotes of travels, accomplishments, or real estate purchases relayed by most of our friends or their children, but what the heck, we’ll give it a shot anyway (digitally, of course, to save paper and postage….).
The year started with an amazing, only-in-the-Pacific-Northwest meteorological feat of over a month of solid rain. That’s right, it rained EVERY DAY for well over a month. Will and I were wondering if perhaps we shouldn’t have added razor blades as 2005 stocking stuffers, in case we wanted to put ourselves out of our misery. Just when we thought it couldn’t get any wetter around here…
That is until a week ago: Seattle made the nation’s headlines again with record-breaking urban floods, windstorms and power outages. Luckily, we weren’t one of the million or so households without electricity. We didn’t have to resort to firing up the Weber grill in our living room for warmth and the biggest inconvenience I encountered due to this storm was that one of my favorite coffeehouses was closed the day after and I was forced to drink Tully’s instead. Aaaah, the travails of a yuppie.
Anyway, by June the sun finally decided to grace us with its presence, by which time I had graduated with my Master of Fine Arts in Design from the University of Washington. It was the grand finale of a grueling two years where I learned almost more about narcissistic personality disorder than I did about design, thanks to one of my “wonderful” studio mates. But I digress….I also made some wonderful, life-long friends from the good ‘ol U.S.; Mumbai, India; and Kaohsiung, Taiwan.
The research for my Master’s thesis was quite a fascinating intellectual journey; a year of delving into the design of tactile maps and wayfinding systems for the blind. This work culminated in an 8′ x 15′ mixed-media, interpretive exhibit at the Henry Art Gallery: “A Tactile Point-of-Reference: Visualizing from a Blind Perspective”. Friends and family gathered ’round my tactile maps and Braille to celebrate, with a special trip from my older brother Seth, by way of Farmington, New Mexico.
With all my free time now that I’m no longer in grad school, I spend my evenings and weekends honing my photography skills and volunteering to help reform the drug laws in Washington state, lobbying for decriminalization. That and donating money whenever I can to Planned Parenthood. I am also working as a design consultant for the Seattle office of Gensler, a job found via a lucky trip to the dog park.
Speaking of dog parks, Oslo + Mies continue to monopolize our entire lives. With Seth currently in Alaska, alternating between ice-skating and plowing huge piles of snow, and Michaela still refusing to be seen with us in public (we had to bribe her with Starbucks to sit for the holiday photo shoot), the Weims are all we’ve got. And to our delight, they’re always ecstatic to see us (even if we’ve only left the room for 10 minutes) and up for anything! Including training to become therapy dogs. They were both enrolled in a class this fall, preparing them to take the Canine Good Citizen test. Mies – to our surprise since he’s the more mischievous of the two – passed with flying colors. Oslo did too, up until the part where Will and I had to exit the room, leaving him behind with the trainer for three full minutes. He was not happy about being abandoned, barking loudly and indignantly until we returned, thus flunking that part of the test. We thought about consulting with the Dog Whisperer to see if these barks translated into profanities, but it was too expensive to fly him in from LA.
Will, finally relieved of the pressure of being the sole provider, is taking the opportunity to test the waters as a free agent. Gone is the nasty, foreign-oil dependent commute across Lake Washington to his drab, suburban-sprawled corporate cubicle on the Eastside. Instead, he sets his own hours; his cubicle being replaced by a cozy table at Top Pot under the Monorail or his desk downstairs under which there’s usually one Weimaraner at his feet, if not two. He’s interested in working once again in the energy sector – where his true passions lie – and volunteered to help pass Initiative 937.
Michaela, back from Alaska, continues to give us a run for our money, unable to decide whether to hate us or love us. We attribute this to her not yet fully-developed brain; we’re patiently awaiting her 30th birthday when hopefully, she will have learned to appreciate those of us over the age of 21. We ask for wishes of good karma…or better yet, boarding school recommendations.
At any rate, she’s a high school junior this year, interested in American Sign Language, photography, and ballet. Having danced from age four to eleven, she’s recently decided to refresh her knowledge of pliés, pirouettes, and extra-sore calf muscles.
We traded one kid for the other. Seth, who is currently with his dad in Alaska, spent five weeks in Oregon last spring as a volunteer for Northwest Youth Corps, a non-profit organization focused on trail building and restoration. Sweating, grunting, and strumming (he took his guitar) his way through the forests, we picked up a Grizzly Adams look-alike in Eugene where we had dropped off a clean-shaven urban lad a few weeks earlier. He’s exploring educational opportunities at the University of Alaska in Anchorage and is planning on resuming his studies this spring. Like his mother, he has a knack for foreign languages and has expressed interest in becoming an interpreter.
Well, we hope this letter finds you smiling as we look ahead to nice things in the future: less rain, more sun breaks, fully-matured adolescent brains, and January 20, 2009.
And with that, we wish you a Merry Christmas!
Love,
Callie, Will, Seth, Michaela, Oslo, Mies, + Stieglitz (the cat).