Raleigh in the spotlight for the NHL All-Star Weekend

Raleigh was taken over by hockey the past few days. For months I've stared at a huge banner advertising the NHL All-Star Weekend (and advertising some Carolina Hurricanes players) hanging from one of the downtown high rises. I'll kind of miss that banner now that it's over, but at the same time I'm kind of happy I'll be able to take pretty sunrise photos without it getting in every shot.

So I didn't go to the All-Star game Sunday, but I did watch it from the comfort of my own home. It's funny how hockey players are pretty much the only guys in the world who can be missing a tooth and still be attractive. I'm looking at you, Alexander Ovechkin (right). 

I was bummed that Team Staal (Eric Staal from the Canes) lost 11-10 but was still glad the attention was on Raleigh last weekend. 


Because hockey fans were visiting for the game, we made friends Saturday night with a group of guys trying to find someone from Canada to buy a drink for. They asked me because I was holding a can of Labatt Blue (a Canadian beer... the only one I drink when I'm at Hurricanes games, by the way), but my friend actually is! So my girls and I won that game. Bonus!

On Friday night at the free concert downtown, I snapped this photo of fireworks behind the City of Oaks light mural on the back of the Civic Center. It's about the only time I like to see it red (for the Hurricanes! I'm referring to N.C. State red versus Carolina blue.). I just think it looks so good, especially at night. And what is it about fireworks that makes everyone stop what they're doing and stare into the sky? They're really a powerful thing!

Fearless Female: Natalie Portman

"I'm tough on myself in terms of the standards I want to live up to, but that's also part of my pleasure: knowing you are being your fullest self. Being your fullest self is a lot of work."

--Natalie Portman, Vogue (Jan. 2011) 

While reading Natalie Portman's interview in Vogue this month, I stopped to read that quote several times.

I admire NP for many reasons. Yes, she is an extremely talented movie star with flawless skin who looks gorgeous even with a shaved head. But she really does seem like a well-rounded woman who does the things she wants to do. She wants to leave acting for a while and go to Harvard? No problem. She graduated and then came back in full force in the film industry. Start her own vegan shoe line? Done. Work on a character for a movie she first heard about 10 years earlier by dancing two hours a day a year before the film and then eight hours a day during the last two months? Check.

Of course, the movie I'm talking about is Black Swan (2010), which just won her a Golden Globe for Best Actress. You've either recently seen this film or heard or read about it, but her performance really is spectacular. Nina, the ballet dancer she plays, is so disciplined it actually shows how disciplined NP must have been to become her.

Being a professional dancer must be one of the hardest jobs. I took ballet for a couple years when I was around 7 or 8 years old. It was physically and mentally demanding. I wouldn't say my instructors, John and Karina, put any specific pressure on me, but even at that age, I put it on myself. I wanted to do splits like the other girls, but I just couldn't force my body to do it. (Seriously... how does someone do that??) I graduated to toe shoes (I think when you turned 10 you were considered strong enough to start), but quit soon after that. I had to miss school for a rehearsal for the Nutcracker and a classmate of mine asked me why I'd missed class. When I said I had ballet practice, that kid's response was, "Ballet? You don't look like you take ballet." So I quit.

I can't be too hard on my 9- or 10-year-old self for interpreting someone's comment negatively and then acting upon it, but I do wish I had kept with it. I remember being a teenager and feeling annoyed with my mom that she let me quit so easily, though I totally can't blame her for letting her daughter make her own choices! (She danced for decades from childhood into adulthood and is actually still dancing now.) In eighth grade, the one year I lived in Wisconsin, dancing was the thing. All the girls were ballet dancers. I felt so out of the loop. At that time, I felt it was too late to start again. Who wants to be in the beginner class with the 8-year-olds?

My point is, even with the minuscule dance history that is mine, I still felt a connection with Nina in Black Swan, and I could understand how someone growing up like that could become so strict with herself. But with all her rigidity and perfection, a major point of the movie is that that isn't good enough! You need to have heart and soul. It may actually be easier to strive for perfection than strive for what makes you smile and what makes your heart race and feel full. That is what I want to search for. I want to fill my heart and my life with things I'm passionate about. For example, it's unlikely I'll ever be a professional singer, but the hour I spend every day playing guitar and singing fills me with joy. I look forward to that hour. I've been missing out on that specific type of happiness for about a decade. It feels so good to have it back again, but finding these things that make me feel like I am being my fullest, truest self really is as Natalie Portman says. It is a lot of work.

One more thing I love about NP: I don't think she takes herself too seriously. It's important to be able to laugh at yourself (that is something I have down at least), so I'll leave you with what is probably my favorite thing Natalie Portman has ever done: her rap for Saturday Night Live.

Oscar Wilde Thursday

For a couple of months (ish) on Thursdays, I've been posting Oscar Wilde quotes on my Twitter account. I don't know why I started doing this. Maybe it's because he has a whole lot of quotes to his name, and I find most of them to be really funny and/or thought provoking. 


Or it may be because I was researching e-readers for Christmas (and I got one - thanks, Dad!) which brought me to Amazon to look at the Kindle which brought me to the way-too-expensive Kate Spade canvas covers which brought me to her The Importance of Being Earnest cover:

Isn't it gorgeous?


Anyways, I have loved the play The Importance of Being Earnest ever since I helped created part of the set in high school. My mom was the props master at The Arts Center on Hilton Head Island (I know it's since been renamed, but I don't know what it is now... Coastal Carolina Performing Arts Center or something), and I helped stuff newspaper in chicken wire to create a hedge that was painted green. So I had that connection with the play before I even saw it, but seriously, it is one of the funniest shows. I love playing with words, and it's total wordplay! If you haven't seen this play (or even if you have), you should rent the movie version with Colin Firth and Reese Witherspoon. Or grab a copy and read it!


So after the longest tangent ever, I think I am going to continue with my Oscar Wilde quotes on this blog. Twitter is fun (I got on it for work, actually, and then easily got swept up in its 140-character updates), but I'd rather flesh out my reasons for some of the quotes I'm feeling that week.


I'm going to start off with my absolute favorite quote from him: 
"We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars."

Vincent Van Gogh's The Starry Night

Okay, so the quote is a little cynical. But it's kind of nice, right? Because it gives you the chance to choose to be the "some of us." If we're all in the gutter, are you the one face down in sludge and the dark? Or are you keeping your face up towards the sky, open to the light that will surely come in the morning and all the possibilities that light may bring?

It's still a new year

I've decided to expect a lot from 2011. 

More specifically, I've decided to expect a lot from myself this year. I'm not really one for resolutions. I'm more the type of girl who gets an idea I want to do something, no matter what month or time of day, and acts on it. (These things I act upon don't always get finished, but if they don't, then they tend to be things I'm not completely committed to. Once I make that commitment, I'm in, and it gets done.)


Case in point:

In November, I mentioned to a friend that I wanted to learn to play guitar. It just so happened he was willing to let me borrow the guitar he'd had sitting in his closet since high school. So I picked it from him (er, actually my dad picked it up from his mom because that was easier) a couple days later and have been slowly teaching myself chords. My goal is to play three songs at an open mic night hosted by another friend of mine. I've sung there before with that friend playing for me, but I want to be able to play for myself, just because I can.

I wanted to play guitar more than a decade ago. I took "lessons" for a day from my dad in high school. He doesn't even remember doing that with me because I recently asked him about it! I mostly kept the guitar (borrowed from my aunt) on a stand in my room. It got very dusty. In college, I took "lessons" from my (now) ex-boyfriend for a week. I either lost interest or gave up. I don't really remember. I'm not sure why it's different this time around, but it is. (If I had to fancy a guess, I'd think it has something to do with me being different this time around.)

I sometimes think it's easier for me to try and learn a new skill (ex: guitar) than learn something about myself. But something I have had to learn during this process is patience. 


I have never been a patient person. When I was 10 or something I had a birthday party at a mini-golf course. My mom wouldn't even let me finish the game I was so frustrated with the stupid ball not going into the stupid hole. I had so little patience I whacked that ball as hard as I could and it got lost in the fake pirate cave that went along with the whole course theme.


Back to patience: The first day I touched that guitar, I looked up some chords on the Internet. I sounded awful and it hurt my fingers and I wanted to stop immediately. In fact, I did stop for a couple of days. That guitar patiently sat in its case in my room just waiting for me to pick it back up, which I did because I couldn't stop thinking about it.

It wasn't easy letting myself sound bad. I tend to expect perfection from the get-go, but I wanted to play so badly I let myself be a novice. I'm still a novice now! I'll still be a novice when I play those three songs next week. But I'll be a presentable novice getting better every time I play.


So, back to what I want from this year. It's not a resolution, but I feel there is something to be said about a fresh start, and I consider any time in January to be a good time for new beginnings:

I want to remember to love myself, love those around me, love the city where I live and love the life I have been blessed with.

I've also found something new to love: guitar. I expect this love to stick around for a while.

Eat, Pray, Love: Sending light and love

I'd had Eat, Pray, Love sitting on my counter for more than a week when I finally watched it. I read the book a couple years ago and really enjoyed it. I kind of got a little bored in the middle, but overall I remember I enjoyed it. I may read it again sometime soon.


Tangent: Elizabeth Gilbert (the author of Eat, Pray, Love (2006)) wrote a follow-up book last January called Committed: A Skeptic Makes Peace with Marriage. Oh man is that book good! It's about marriage and what it means to be in a marriage. I really recommend it whether you're single, in a relationship, have been married for a day or married for 25 years.


So this post is not for me to give a little review of the movie. I'm writing about what I want to take away from the movie.


There is this scene where Liz is in a fantasy dancing on a roof in India with her ex-husband. They're dancing like they did on their wedding day, and he tells her he misses her. She says, "Then miss me." 


She tells him when he thinks of her to just send her light and love, and then let it go.


I've found myself doing this several times already. Wishing someone light and love and then letting all other thoughts about that person go. It really works. I feel better at the end instead of obsessively thinking about stupid old things I cannot change that would inevitably make me feel worse.


I don't think you have to necessarily use this for someone you don't want to be thinking about. It's nice to think of someone and then send them light and love. Try it. I bet it will feel good for you, too.


Finally watching this movie inspired me to pick up a book I've been holding onto for a couple years. It's called Turtle Feet: The Making and Unmaking of a Buddhist Monk (2008). It takes place in India, where Liz also went (well, I'm sure they weren't in the same place in India). I am definitely interested in the spiritual journey in the book, but I am also enjoying being transported back to a place of peace for me. Although I haven't been to India, I have visited  several monasteries in Thailand and China. Even though they are pretty bare (well, some are quite elaborate) and often dirty, they are also always beautiful and peaceful. 


So when I read about this monk in India, I pretend that he is in Lhasa, Tibet, and that I am there again, too, for just a little while:

Monastery in Lhasa, Tibet. Can you see the monk in his red robes?

On the roof of the same monastery in Lhasa, Tibet, with the market square below and Potala Palace in the background.

Eating out at Capital Club 16

Last night I ate dinner with my parents at Capital Club 16, and we will all definitely be back. (Seriously, we're going back in a couple weeks for my dad's birthday!)


I'd mentally put CC16 on my list of places to check out because it's a restaurant downtown that I'd walked by several times and always thought it looked cool. My parents had actually eaten dinner there a week or so ago, and they wanted to introduce it to me as well. The bar and chairs in the restaurant have a really cool story to them. They come from a restaurant in New York City (I can't remember the name), where my dad and granddad used to eat together when he was growing up. The owner and chef of CC16 moved to Raleigh from NYC and brought these pieces from warehouses up north. My dad was so excited to see them again! They're pretty deco and go well against the open white-wall feel of the rest of the space.


Anyways, we were actually the first to arrive for dinner, so I picked the table right in the window. I love people watching. I enjoyed a glass of Chardonnay while my mom opted for Big Boss Brewery's Aces and Ates. I was pretty excited when she ordered it so I could have a sip (it's a heavy stout - think Guinness) because Big Boss is a great Raleigh brewery, and I desperately wanted to try that beer, but not with my dinner! It's brewed with Larry's Beans, which is a local fair trade and organic coffee company. I've bought his espresso beans from Whole Foods and man oh man is it a good roast! I can't get it every time because it's a little pricey (you get what you pay for, though: fair trade organic beans) but it's so worth it when I can.


We all started with the roasted vegetable soup (yumm) and also got a bread basket with German pretzels (double yumm). Dad then got the potato cakes with applesauce, and I got a Caesar salad. It may have been the best Caesar salad I have ever had. They definitely make their own dressing and croutons in house. It was just so delicious. For our entrees, we all ordered the special, which was NC trout in a cream sauce with spinach and cherry tomatoes over black rice. The trout was cooked really well (overdone fish makes me sad) and the cream sauce was so good (but I wanted a little more to mix with my rice). Then for dessert, Dad got the chocolate bread pudding, and Mom and I shared some apple blintzes (basically fried apples I think) in a vanilla sauce with vanilla ice cream. What a delicious meal! Though we were the only people in the restaurant when we ordered, it was packed when we left.


Like I said, we will definitely be back for my dad's birthday (and then some). Granddad will actually be in town, so he'll get to see that bar and those chairs from New York! I'm happy I can cross off a place I wanted to go from my list.

Photo: NewRaleigh.com