This Arlingtonian Life

Between a Book and a Soft Place

2010-11-18T14:10:00.033-05:00

Yesterday, trapped in the alternating confines of my bed and couch, I finished Between a Rock and a Hard Place, the book by hiker/climber Aron Ralston about the harrowing six days he spent wedged by a boulder in a Utah canyon in 2003. To escape, the severely dehydrated and sleep-deprived Ralston broke the bones in his forearm and cut through the flesh. Oh, and then he rappelled down a rocky cliff and hiked about seven miles to safety.

Much like when I read Into the Wild several years ago, I was struck not just by the physical circumstances (my mouth felt dry when Ralston described his parched tongue) but by the isolation, the vast wildness of being outside.

A single bird flying overhead, the shuffling of a rat in a nearby nest and a few pesky mosquitoes were the only interactions Ralston had with living things. Even sunlight only permeated the deep hole for a few minutes each day. But in spite--and maybe because--of this extreme solitude, Ralston found an incredible drive to survive.

I remembered hearing about the incident (it was around the time I was finishing college) when I saw a trailer for the new movie, 127 Hours. Now that I've read Ralston's book, I'm simultaneously yearning to see the movie and unsure if I want to know what Hollywood did to further dramatize what is already a compelling true story. (i.e. adding a romantic relationship, etc.) But I'll see it, even if only out of curiosity and a growing intrigue about Ralston.

Maybe Ralston's ego got the better of him in some of his climbing and skiing experiences--he was nearly attacked by a bear and almost buried in an avalanche--but in the interviews I've watched, he seems (for lack of a better phrase) pretty down-to-earth.

In his epilogue, called--appropriately and hilariously--A Farewell to Arm, he makes this cheesy-but-dynamic statement:

"Saying farewell is also a bold and powerful beginning."

It was all Yellow

2010-11-16T13:52:00.002-05:00

Image credit: www.flickr.com/photos/vhtrc

In the beginning there were colors. That's what Charlotte Hatherley says, and she must've taken a recent trip to Potomac Overlook Regional Park.

The trees are brilliant--I feel like the reflection from the yellow canopy makes everything glow.

There was a trail race there over the weekend that I was thinking of doing, but I decided to continue to enjoy the solitude of the trails instead. I rarely see people other than an occasional dog walker.

Wildlife, on the other hand, is abundant. Practically every few feet there's a squirrel or bird scuttling about in the leaves and trees. And often, the rustling belongs to deer; in the past few months, I've seen a doe and two fawns happily frolicking in the brush and a giant buck with huge antlers scampering away from the clearing where I spotted him. Last Friday, I came within a yard of a grazing doe that seemed unfettered as I ran past.

Autumnal bliss.

p.s. The trail race offered the most hilarious prizes in lieu of traditional medals or trophies: hats with ear flaps. 'Tis the season, I suppose.

The Great S-Crepe

2010-11-09T11:32:00.002-05:00

The bright yellow autumn leaves were no match for the hot pink trailer.

Between the leaves still clinging to the tree and those already dusting the ground near the Ballston Metro, Solar Crepes popped out of the landscape.

I recently visited the solar-powered food cart for the first time--and then the second time, all in the span of a week. I hold food carts to a high standard, and Solar Crepes exceeded it. Their website boasts: "Almost every ingredient is organic or local!" I was in local-ganic heaven.

Kabocha squash special

On my initial visit, I ordered the Kabocha squash special, a savory crepe bulging with the almost iridescent orange veggie. Next time, I went for the Tuscan white bean hummus crepe, a regular menu item that comes with tomatoes and spinach. Both were deliciously fresh--soft crepes with a slightly crispy exterior that gave way to fillings galore, creating a tasty mess.

Opened by Danna Andrews and Camille Dierksheide in July, Solar Crepes will continue serving crepes through the winter. Last week, Andrews and Dierksheide had already busted out their knit caps for extra warmth in the tiny trailer kitchen.

Lots of the components of Solar Crepes' menu come from Virginia, Maryland and Pennsylvania farms. Their buckwheat crepes are gluten free, and they also offer sweet crepes--like chocolate and sugar lemon--that are served on white flour crepes. Check out the unique beverage offerings, too; there are smoothies made with milk from local farms and even chocolate sodas!

I hope the food cart trend is here to stay--in Arlington and elsewhere. The food-scape could use more bright spots like Solar Crepes.

Just remember to ask for extra napkins.

Fright on Fairmont Street

2010-10-28T09:01:00.028-04:00

The nicest compliment people could give Elle Becker this Saturday is to tell her that she’s one sick f***.

She’d like it if people raise their eyebrows and believe something is seriously wrong with her.
So she said on an October afternoon as she tinkered with a flashing red object in a jar labeled ‘heart of bat.’

Judging by her preparations two weeks before her Halloween party, Becker is well on her way to achieving the reaction she seeks.

Becker, 36, is hosting her third Halloween party in four years on Saturday night, and the cauldron of ideas in her head is bubbling over.

Her decoration collection alone would rival any Halloween superstore: stuffed snakes from a taxidermist, a blood-splattered chainsaw that plays loud whirring noises, and rubbery body parts with bones jutting out are just a few of the ghoulish items that bring a smile to Becker’s face.

And surely the decapitated heads in her foyer are deterring any would-be thieves in her Columbia Heights townhouse.

“I don’t have to go insane,” she said, “but if I do have life-size mummies in the living room, it’s fun.”

Mixing the Potion

Becker hasn’t always been so, well, gutsy.

She does have a soft spot for zombies and World of Warcraft, but otherwise she’s an ordinary federal government employee.

“It’s not like I’m a morbid person,” she said. “I’m not a Goth chick.”

Instead, Halloween is Becker’s opportunity to reinvent a childhood that didn’t offer her the chance to enjoy the holiday. One year, for example, Becker came to school without a costume only to have her teacher put a paper bag over her head.

She didn’t trick-or-treat much either, she said, attributing the lack of candy-filled sacks to many elderly people and few kids in the Florida neighborhood where she grew up.

“It always seemed like something I should enjoy more than I did,” she said.

So, starting in 2007, Becker has done just that, steadily multiplying her decorations and her creativity.

In 2008, her caterer bailed on her at the last minute, throwing Becker into panic mode to ensure a gory feast on short notice. On top of that, some of her decorations damaged her walls and necessitated costly repairs. Between the memory of those snafus and her work schedule, Becker took a break from Halloween in 2009.

But the spell had been cast: “The hiatus made me go further overboard,” she said.

The Dev’Elle is in the Details

Stephen Colbert may want to relocate his March to Keep Fear Alive because Becker’s $15,000 Halloween party budget (out of her own pocket) allowed her to leave no tombstone unturned.

Decorations cover the gamut: there’s a $5 severed hand, a $250 corpse and a wax bust named Deidre that cries wax tears but cost too much to mention, Becker said.

She has mapped out themes for different parts of her house. The foyer will house a Texas Chainsaw Massacre table, as well as scaffolding from which decapitated heads will hang under red light bulbs. The upstairs patio is H’Elle, to be lined with flame-pattern fleece, and the downstairs deck will bear 100 birds for a Hitchcock theme. Tombstones go out front and pumpkins – real and fake – out back. The witches’ den downstairs will feature tarot card readers alongside life-size witches. To flush the upstairs toilet, partygoers will have to reach into the coil of a real stuffed snake. (Becker wanted a live snake for a terrarium but realize snake rental would make for an odd Craigslist ad.) The downstairs bathroom won’t be any less creepy: the Psycho theme begins with a Bates Motel sign on the door and continues to the shower, where a life-size Norman Bates awaits.

Becker doesn’t actively encourage the 100 people she expects at the party to snoop in her medicine cabinet, but if and when they do, they’ll find tiny glass jars of immaculately labeled surprises. There’s dirt from Edgar Allan Poe’s grave, a rattlesnake tail, a dead moth and even the penis bone of a fox.

Becker has moved books off her shelves to make room for her wine selection, which includes selections such as Bone Dry Red and Ghostly White. Attendees will sip from custom-painted wine glasses.

“It’s kind of overwhelming,” Becker admitted, surrounded by boxes still to unpack two weeks before the party. “I’m only one person – there’s only so much I can do.”

Tricks and Treats

But Becker will enlist the help of a caterer; the food will complement the decorations and themes.

Some of the approximately 20 menu items include a beef tenderloin and leek dish designed to look like a severed arm (that, of course, goes in the Texas Chainsaw area), radishes peeled to resemble bloodshot eyeballs and a witches’ hair salad made with frisée.

“A lot of it I came up with on the fly, doing research and using my own imagination,” said Chris Mueller, the caterer who is preparing the freakish feast. He and Becker have been in touch since September to create the deliciously spooky menu.

One of Mueller’s favorite items is a dish he calls witches’ fingers. On top of finger-shaped sugar cookies and gummy worms in a pail, this sweet treat will feature Nutella mixed with N-Zorbit, a tapioca maltodextrin that will make the hazelnut spread powdery, like dirt.

“It’s great to have someone who allows me to go outside the box,” Mueller said of Becker, adding that it’s not everyday he’s encouraged to be grotesque with food.

A Fairfax County ecologist by day, Mueller works part-time for Susan Gage Caterers in Maryland and would eventually like to open his own restaurant.

“Cooking is my passion and my love,” he said.

Mueller will have a sous chef and two assistants with him on Saturday to ensure the food preparation and presentation goes smoothly. He need not worry about where to display the food; Becker has ample Halloween serving dishes to accentuate Mueller’s creations.

“I was pretty impressed,” he said. “That’s the most Halloween stuff I’ve seen in one place – ever.”

Where-wolf

Becker’s unique serving dishes and decorations clearly don’t come from a one-stop party store. She has spent months ordering specific items from various websites, including Etsy, which allows her to get personalized and hand-made items.

Intrigue has heightened among co-workers, since Becker received box after box of gruesome deliveries at work.

“I’m at the point where I empty my office every weekend, and every week it fills up again,” she said.

Becker rents a 10’ x 11’ storage unit in which her decorations mummify for the remainder of the year.

Now that friends and family know of Becker’s Halloween parties, she often receives decorations as gifts for birthdays and other occasions. She recently acquired gold skull place card holders, for instance.

“It seems inappropriate to open a corpse on Christmas,” she said, “but it works for me.”

Monstrous Moment

Although Becker’s mind drifts to Halloween throughout the year, she’s still unsure what costume she’ll go with on Saturday. A custom-made autumnal gown didn’t turn out as she’d envisioned it, and a corpse bride costume didn’t work out, either.

Whatever she ends up wearing, Becker has achieved her goal of creating her own experience for Halloween with flying colors – and perhaps colors won’t be the only things flying.

She believes her generation is more individualistic, and this is her time to wield her decapitated heads and shine.

“It’s about enjoyment,” she said. “It’s about the moment.”

------------------------

By the numbers
Though she doesn’t officially keep track of her inventory, Elle Becker has a very accurate spreadsheet in her mind. It includes:
11 decapitated heads
3 life-size witches
2 tarot card readers
100 Hitchcockian birds
20 tombstones
7 fog machines
1 cat mummy
44 bottles of wine
200 bottles of beer

Champion of the Sun

2010-09-29T11:47:00.013-04:00

In the darkness of night. In dimly lit alleys and in shadows on creaky wooden porches.

That's when mysteries are formed and revealed. Right?

Ah, but I'm finding the mysteries of the day are far more complex. Day people are creatures who openly move about during daylight hours, who run errands while freely soaking up vitamin D instead of squeezing in a grocery store trip by moonlight after a long day at the office. They are the women who attend mid-morning yoga classes, the city employees who clean up roadside brush and the backpack-clad kids who saunter home from the bus in the afternoon.

I never thought much about the day people or what day things happened when I was tucked away in an office. But now that home is my office, answers to some of my previously unknown yet apparently burning questions have been revealed.

Q: Who does the red-car-that-doesn't-ever-leave-its-spot belong to?
A: Chain-smoking retirees who seemingly leave their apartment only to take out the trash.

Q: Why are the squirrels relentless in their attempts to dig up my tomato plants?
A: Said couple feeds them peanuts two feet from my patio--on the way back from taking out the trash, of course.

Sure, these are hardly candidates for Unsolved Mysteries, but I'm starting to illuminate what this day thing is all about.

Especially because now I am a day person.

Mystery awaits.

Waiting to Inhale

2010-03-02T19:32:00.008-05:00

I wouldn't be surprised if lilacs are sprouting in my lungs.

Not in a subtle, these-are-nice-and-pretty-and-purple kind of way but in an unwillingly-seeping-into-every-fiber-of-my-being kind of way.

The automatic air freshener in my work bathroom was just changed, and the smell is beyond overwhelming. Ew.

I wait as long as possible between bathroom trips, holding my breath and crossing my fingers that the automatic sensor doesn't go off and cause another 8-magnitude eruption of faux-sweet flowers.

It's like hanging out with a group of women who each accidentally spilled an ENTIRE bottle of perfume on themselves and then decided to congregate in a small space.

I call for the lilac epidemic to cease before further nasal impairment ensues. Perhaps I shall undertake a campaign. In the meantime, does anyone have a leftover swine flu mask?

An object in motion

2010-03-01T19:08:00.001-05:00

Yesterday, in the midst of prepping for an impending international trip, I decided it would be the perfect time to change my shower curtain liner.

I ran the dishwasher. And the vacuum. I folded and put away all my laundry--while it was practically still warm. And I revived my semi-dormant exercise routine by going for a run.

The trip prep? Well, that happened, too.

Why I thought my empty apartment will be better off with a fresh shower curtain, I have no idea.

But apparently an object in motion remains in motion. That, and there's something to be said for deadlines.

What're you in for?

2010-02-10T14:36:00.010-05:00

Back-to-back blizzards have made me realize that I would do remarkably well in solitary confinement.

Instead of gazing aimlessly into the darkness, I'm surrounded by whiteness. Don't worry--I have no plans to sport an orange jumpsuit, but like those locked up:

I am kept away from other people. In a small space.

I have a limited supply of food.

A vast expanse of time to just think lies before me.

I am only allowed periodic exercise, whether in small increments in the treacherous yard outside or bursts of sanity-saving jump rope indoors.

Cabin fever moments aside, I'm rather enjoying the break from the world. (I suppose prisoners don't relish the forced respite from society quite so much.) I've read books, made tea daily, finished long-neglected projects and started new ones, and taken time to, well, be. It seems my normal, non-snowed-in life, with its schedules and tasks and meetings, leaves me too much of a prisoner for that.

Picnic anyone?

2010-02-10T11:21:00.001-05:00

FLOP

2010-01-30T15:07:00.010-05:00

I saw two people wearing flip flops in the snow today. TWO.

Image source: www.rocktownweekly.com/rocktown/rock_archive_details.php?AID=136&page=focus

Science Fare

2010-01-29T19:40:00.011-05:00

As part of a greater effort to reduce waste, I vowed to undertake the move from many individually packaged yogurt cups to a larger container doled out into daily servings. Thus, this week I launched (drum roll) The Great Yogurt Experiment. Pardon the spotty methodology; I haven't set foot in a science lab since high school.

Problem: To find a reliable way to move yogurt from large container at Point A to consume in smaller quantities at Point B. Yogurt must be transported with minimal spillage; yogurt containers must possess a minimal spray factor when opened.

Control: vanilla yogurt, from 32 oz. container

Variable: types of tupperware used to transport smaller amounts of aforementioned yogurt to Point B, including but not limited to glass tupperware and a recycled plastic butter container.

Results: No yogurt was spilled in the course of the experiment. Preferred container: small butter container--allows for portion control and easier polishing off of side-dwelling yogurt remnants.

Conclusion: Yogurt transport provides reliable storage options while reducing disposable packaging of smaller yogurt containers.

Extra credit: Make my own yogurt? Hmm.