adventures of a tired coder

I’ve been cooking a lot again this summer, thanks to the weekly supply of veggies from my CSA. But I haven’t been all that great about posting about it because most of what I’ve been making has been really simple. For example, tonight, I fixed some Rice-a-Roni, but I added half a can of cannelloni beans and two shredded zucchinis. Actually looks like real food, but I can’t write a whole post about it.

About a week ago, I felt like doing something that was a little more involved than steaming vegetables or making a chopped salad. I’d eyed the summer issue of 30 Minute Suppers by Cook’s Illustrated / America’s Test Kitchen after seeing it in an airport or something, but I couldn’t bring myself to pay $8 for it. With 40% off at one of the Borders closing sales, though, I snapped it right up. I’m actually a terrible fit for America’s Test Kitchen because they go to all this effort to find the perfect recipe, and I never follow recipes exactly and these days I don’t even bother measuring most things. But whatever, I liked the pictures in this magazine.

It was also kind of dumb because most of the recipes in the magazine involved a lot of meat, and I’ve basically stopped cooking non-seafood meat at home. But when I saw the recipe for polenta with leeks and corn, I knew I had to make it. I love polenta. I love leeks. I LOVE corn. I even had leeks from my box. And if it were last year, I’d have corn, but for some reason it’s really late in the boxes this year.

My assessment? Yummy recipe! They called for both parmesan and mascarpone cheese and fresh corn, and I used only parmesan and corn from a can. I also substituted half and half and water instead of whole milk because that’s what I had on hand. And if I were to make this again, I’d do it all on the stove instead of microwaving. I don’t mind stirring, but I do mind being burned by the steam that comes out of a bowl that has been covered in the microwave for 10 minutes. Finally, the one thing about polenta is that it doesn’t taste as good once it has cooled because it solidifies.

Creamy Polenta with Fresh Leeks and Corn
serves 4

2 cups whole milk
2 cups water
1 cup medium-grind cornmeal
Salt and pepper
2 tablespoons butter
3 leeks, white and light green parts only, halved lengthwise and sliced thin
1 can corn
2 Tbsp chopped fresh basil
3/4 cup grated Parmesan cheese

1. Whisk milk, water, cornmeal, 1 tsp salt, and 1/2 tsp pepper in large microwave-safe bowl. Cover with plastic wrap and microwave on hgih power until cornmeal is thick and creamy, 15 to 22 minutes, whisking cornmeal and replacing wrap halfway through cooking.

2. Meanwhile, melt butter in large saucepan over medium heat. Add leeks and corn and cook until softened, about 6 minutes. Transfer half leek-corn mixture to bowl with basil. Cover to keep warm.

3. Stir microwaved polenta into saucepan with remaining leeks and corn. Whisk in Parmesan cheese. Simmer over medium heat until creamy and cheese is melted, about 1 minute. Season with salt and pepper. Divide polenta among individual bowls and top with reserved leek-corn mixture. Serve.

Distance: ~13 miles
Elevation gain: ~3500 feet
Trailhead directions and more on WTA.

Last year on the last weekend of August, I managed to convince Mike to go on a backpacking trip, the first one either of us had done in awhile. There was a lot of new gear being tested out – tent, GPS, water filter, his backpack and sleeping bag. And we discovered that "fisherman’s trail" meant "blindly pushing through plants." This year, the last weekend of August happened to be the one for this year’s backpacking trip.

I reused some of my ideas from last year. Still had the packing list, and getting things together was much easier this time. For the destination, I used the same strategy: find a pretty wimpy day hike that can be extended to a backpacking trip ending in a short fisherman’s trail. The wimpy day hike part keeps things manageable – easier than many of the day hikes I do. The horrible part at the end keeps the crowds away. My opinion is that if I’m going to work that hard to slog my lazy body with a 35 lb pack up the mountain, I don’t want 8 other parties camped next to me.

 
left: Janus Lake
right: view of Glacier Peak from the PCT

I never managed to get my GPS to acquire satellites, so I don’t have tracks or official statistics for this hike, though I have someone else’s that go almost up to the the point where the trail descended into the lake. The easy trail is Smithbrook trail to the PCT to Janus Lake, a measly 6.5 mile hike, 1550 ft elevation gain (about half going in, half going out). When we first arrived at the trailhead, there were two groups of people there, with horses and llamas. They obviously knew each other, and not long afterwards, another car pulled in with a bunch of loud kids who joined the menagerie. My dreams of solitude were rapidly degenerating into a pile of horse manure… but reason took over and I knew that there was no way those people were going where we were. When Smithbrook joins the PCT, you can go two directions. The other direction is a short cut to Lake Valhalla, a hike that’s apparently very popular with children and llamas. So I am never camping there. Smithbrook is part of the Wenatchee National Forest and not the Alpine Lakes Wilderness so instead of permits, there’s a register to sign. Almost everyone who had signed went to Valhalla, some to Janus, and a few to destinations beyond.

   
left: PCT trail marker
center: lupine on the trail
right: fisherman’s trail of death

The trail to Janus Lake is not very exciting. It's all in the woods, and it was only kind of interesting because there were still lots of wildflowers blooming and also a lot of horse poop to avoid (this mostly disappeared after the PCT junction). Janus Lake was also not very exciting. The lake was pretty murky and unspectacular, but the campsites looked nice. They even had a stock camp if you happened to bring your llamas. Didn’t see anyone there on the way in or way out, but the lake probably got a few campers over the weekend. Definitely less popular than Valhalla. We did see a few people heading in the opposite direction during the first few miles of the hike, including one solo backpacker who had come all the way down the PCT from Rainy Pass (117.5 miles, 26351 ft elevation gain – sound like fun?) who was able to confirm that our hike would be mostly snow free. There were a number of blowdowns on the PCT, nothing extremely difficult, though right at the trail intersection it’s enough to make you wonder where the trail is.

left: mosquito paradise
right: pretty ripples on Glasses Lake

After Janus, the hike picked up quickly, gaining 1200 ft or so. At the top of that, things started to get good. Finally, there’s a ridge walk, and the views are gorgeous. We got a great view of a huge mountain that confused us – it was definitely something to the north and we were thinking Baker, but when I got back and looked it up, it’s actually Glacier Peak. Mountain views are always way better in person than a point & shoot can capture... so basically, it was a really spectacular sight, especially on a cloudless, sunny day. We also started hitting a few snow patches here, some that made me unhappy because the length and positioning had me worried that my feet would slip and I’d slide down the snow and off a cliff. Really it just required being a little careful, but I think this hike would have been questionable a few weeks earlier.

Glasses Lake

The path going from the PCT down to Glasses Lake was pretty easy to find. Actually hiking the path down was quite a different story. I think I can say without question that it was the worst trail I’ve ever been on. Very steep, trying to keep feet on questionable foot holds while pushing through trees... it was pretty scary and tiring to go down. I don’t know if I would have been comfortable doing it if it had rained recently. It was at least easy to follow the "trail" – the path was clear in the wooded section (even if your vision wasn’t) and there were cairns through the boulders. Climbing up on the way out was difficult, but it seemed less dangerous, and poles helped immensely.

We saw another person almost right away, fishing around the nose of the "glasses." We stayed on our side of the glasses and looked for a campsite. The first area we found was kind of marshy but would have worked. Mike scouted around more and found three tents on the other side of the glasses and a suitable campsite for us on our side. I was a little disappointed that other people were there, but we didn’t see or hear much of them and they left the next morning. They had come from Heather Lake (which probably was a much easier hike but a further drive) and came to our side in the morning to see if the trail we’d taken down was better than theirs. Conclusion: they both suck. There was also a giant boulder that fell down the boulder field right next to our tent in the middle of the night that was REALLY loud. Scared the crap out of us and apparently they heard it, too. No one else came down to the lake for the rest of the weekend.

 
left: Glasses lake on the right, Heather Lake on the left
right: lakeside campsite

One thing we heard a lot of that weekend: the buzzing of swarms of mosquitoes. It was really bad, completely intolerable at times to the point where we would hide in the tent. Wasn’t this bad last year, but it was a lot colder at this time of year, too. The other thing we heard frequently was the loud “EEEEEP!” of the pika (eep-munk). These things are really cute, and unfortunately I never saw one during the day, but after dark I saw the reflection of my headlamp on two little eyes.

Finally, something observed by almost everyone who was out backpacking this past weekend -- the night sky was spectacular for both Friday and Saturday night, due to absence of clouds, moonlight, and light pollution. I can’t remember the last time I’ve seen so many stars so clearly. With the mosquitoes pretty much gone when it got dark, we were able to lay on a lakeside boulder and enjoy the night – lake, trees, huge, unobscured sky. Saw the Milky Way and watched planes, satellites and some shooting stars.  Doesn’t get much better than that.

A few years ago, I went to Eastern Washington and camped at Sun Lakes State Park, looking for a good place to see the Perseid meteor showers. We only spent one day out there, and we ended up driving down a forest road and parking illegally (after being shooed away by a ranger at a more visible spot) to watch the stars. While driving up Banks Lake, we found a campground and turned in, looking for a convenience store. It was such a gorgeously situated place that I said to myself, “I have to come back and camp here.”

(driving by Grand Coulee)

Easier said than done. First of all, this area is far away. On our first trip, we camped near Wenatchee on the first night to split up the drive, and the drive home seemed to take forever. So it was a bit of an ordeal to make the drive to a campground that was even further from Seattle than Sun Lakes. After camping for a few years in Western Washington, last year when I was doing my annual campsite booking, I decided that it was time to go to Steamboat Rock. Washington State Parks reservations open up exactly 9 months before the start date of the reservation you want. So I went to the site exactly 9 months before a July Friday and… nothing was available. The next week, I woke up at 6:50am to hit the website exactly at 7am, when the reservations opened up. There were two sites available when I loaded the page, and when I tried to grab one exactly at 7am, it was gone. Same thing happened the next week. I was getting pretty tired of waking up so early to get nothing, so I was ready to give the whole thing up and find another option. But as luck would have it, I checked a few weekends back, just out of curiosity… and there was a site open for the weekend after the 4th of July! Someone must have booked it and canceled. MINE!

(Steamboat Rock – we hiked to the top!)

A lot of people in Seattle think of Eastern Washington as a scalding desert in the summer and a frozen wasteland in the winter, but the geography in this part known as the Scablands is actually pretty spectacular. You can’t fully appreciate this area without a geography lesson, though.

It started out millions of years ago when volcanic eruptions dumped a bunch of lava all over the place, causing a lot of the rock in that area to be basalt. Then during the Ice Age, ice dams formed and trapped a huge amount of water in Lake Missoula in Montana. When the pressure of the water became too great and burst through, a giant rush of water surged from Montana to Washington, traveling at great speeds and cutting into the landscape, forming the interesting features that are there today. Grand Coulee is one of those features, as well as Dry Falls, once the largest set of waterfalls in the world.

(on the Steamboat Rock trail)

There’s a lot to do in the area. Swimming, fishing, boating, and hiking are all right at the state park. Then there’s the spectacular Grand Coulee Dam a few miles away and Dry Falls and Sun Lakes State Park to the south. This time we explored more of Sun Lakes and it turns out, there are lakes and trails that I didn’t have time to check out. I wouldn’t recommend camping here unless you don’t have a better option, though – the sites are dusty and lacking in privacy. Steamboat Rock, on the other hand, has lush, green campsites complete with shade trees. Our neighboring site didn’t show at all, and we had no neighbors to the other side, so the privacy was even better. And the trailhead for hiking up Steamboat Rock was right across the street.

Steamboat Rock (4 miles, 650 ft gain)
Trailhead directions and other information on WTA.

Steamboat Rock is the big landmark at the park – why wouldn’t you want to climb to the top? The first part of the hike, getting to the rock, is mostly flat, but you get enough elevation gain to get a decent view of the campsites, the walls of Grand Coulee, and a bit of Banks Lake – not a bad turnaround spot if you’re injured or lazy. As soon as you hit the rock, it quickly turns into a scramble that will probably involve using your hands. Only a short section is like that, but it’s enough to turn some people back. From the bottom, you can see where the people end up at the top, and it seems daunting, but it’s really not that bad. Beautiful views the whole way, looking up at Steamboat Rock, looking back at the campsite, and looking at other parts of Banks Lake. At the top, you get gorgeous panoramic views. We saw other trails the split from the main trail that went to other viewpoints and possibly to the other side of Steamboat Rock. The descent sucks more than the ascent.

Northrup Canyon (6 miles or 3 miles to the homestead, 400 ft gain)
Trailhead directions and other information on WTA.

This is the first trail I’ve hiked where I turned around before reaching my intended destination. No regrets.

The plan was to hike the Canyon trail past the homestead to Northrup Lake, which looks really pretty from the pictures. I’d scoped out previous trip reports and it didn’t look too bad, other than a few people mentioning the possibility of running into rattlesnakes. First mistake: not bringing insect repellant. In our defense, mosquitoes weren’t a problem for the rest of the weekend, and I would have expected them to be at Banks Lake if they were going to be anywhere. Oh, so wrong. Swarms of hungry, hungry mosquitoes.

But we kept going. This canyon is described as an oasis in the desert, and we saw lots of interesting flowers, ponderosa and lodgepole pine trees, huge dandelion seed heads (as big as a fist), birds, and butterflies. A “canyon lady” used to live in Northrup Canyon (thus the homestead), and there were definitely things on the trail that indicated previous human occupation, like a field of rusted paint cans and metal shed roofs in the middle of tall grasses.

Speaking of tall grasses, they started to take over the trail, making us a little wary. We jumped at bugs, questioned whether or not sounds were rattlesnakes in the distance, and avoided the grasses as much as we could. There was certainly no questioning when a rattlesnake finally showed up. Mike was ahead, probably right next to it. I just heard really loud, angry rattling. Being bitten by hordes of mosquitoes was enough, we didn’t feel like getting bitten by rattlesnakes, so we turned back at that point.

Later on at the Dry Falls visitor center, I was browsing through a hiking book to look up the length of this trail, and I took a look at the map for the hike. You know how they’ll mark points of interest on the map, like views, old mining equipment, or campsites? On this hike, they marked “rattlesnakes” on the map. That’s great.

~N

Last year, I was all about throwing things together in a pot to make risotto. So far this summer, my obsession has been quiches. Quiches aren’t new to me – I’ve been making this Chard Tofu Quiche for years. But for some reason, I’d only think about making a quiche when I had chard I needed to use, which meant I always made the same one over and over again.

This year, I was reading my CSA’s weekly newsletter and saw a recipe for asparagus quiche. Coincidentally, I had a bunch of asparagus in my fridge and many of the ingredients I needed to make a quiche, so I did it! I feel really guilty making an egg-only quiche because of the number of eggs that go in it. Tofu-only quiches don’t hold together as well as they should. So I compromise by using half eggs, half tofu, and it has worked out well.

(quiche with duck eggs, cheddar cheese, spinach, onion,
asparagus, and shiitake mushrooms)

I’m not really big on measuring things or following recipes, so admittedly some of my quiches have been a little too watery or not watery enough (in that case, I end up with veggies at the bottom and a solid tofu-egg mixture at the top). Still, it has been a great way to use up a bunch of whatever is in my box that week, and I’ve been doing quite a few weekly quiches. For reasons I can’t explain, stir-fried vegetables don’t sound like an appropriate breakfast, but vegetables in a quiche are just fine. So it’s a great way to get veggies in three meals a day.

One particularly interesting week, I had a bunch of basil, some grape tomatoes, and a few zucchini. So I shredded the zucchini and made a caprese-inspired quiche, perfect with some aged balsamic vinegar drizzled on top!

(quiche with basil, zucchini, tomato, garlic, cheddar
cheese, and mozzarella cheese)

My extremely approximate quiche recipe

Ingredients:

• 3 eggs
• Half package extra firm tofu (~7 oz), chopped into 1 inch blocks
• Store-bought pie crust
• Shredded cheddar
• Milk
• Assortment of vegetables (spinach, asparagus, tomato, mushrooms, peas, etc.)
• Spices/salt/pepper

Directions:

1. Heat oven to 350. Prebake the crust as instructed on the package.
2. Cook the vegetables as needed – this is different depending on what you’re using. You should season appropriately as well.
3. Using a food processor or immersion blender, blend the tofu, eggs, some milk, and spices/salt/pepper.
4. Put the veggies in the prebaked pie crust and pour the tofu/egg mixture over it.
5. Bake for 25-35 minutes or until firm.

West Tiger 3
6 miles, 2100 ft elevation gain
Trailhead directions and other information on WTA.

I’ve done a lot of hiking over the last two years, but people are often surprised to hear that I haven’t done the popular hikes closer to Seattle, like Rattlesnake Ridge, Mount Si, and until this weekend, Tiger Mountain. Instead, I’ll drive an hour or more to go hike elsewhere.

Why? Mainly because what I get to see is more spectacular when I hike in the Cascades, and the hikes closer to Seattle tend to be extremely crowded due to their convenience.

But this time, Mike and I wanted to take a hike before going to the Seattle International Beerfest, and all the hikes I’d normally consider were buried in snow except one in Eastern Washington. So we went for the most popular hike on Tiger Mountain, West Tiger 3 – a short but challenging hike to one of the three summits of West Tiger Mountain.

The convenience of hiking close to home can’t be denied. As you can see from the map above, West Tiger is just minutes away from Seattle’s East side suburbs. A short drive + a short hike = time to do other things that day. It was a quick 1.5 hours up to the summit and about 1 hour coming down, with stops.

Most of this hike is in lush, green woods, and the shade and the well-maintained trail make the elevation gain easier. It’s not an easy hike, though… it’s the same amount of elevation I gain on my other hikes. A bit after mile 2, it opens up to sun and mountain views. It was pretty at the top, and I was happy that there wasn’t too many buildings visible in the panoramic view. But I still prefer seeing a lake at the end. :) This trail would probably also be more scenic in a few weeks as more flowers bloom.

Well, that was a good warm up hike for the season. Now I’m ready to see some alpine lakes! Hopefully the warm weather will stay and melt away all the snow in the mountains.

Seattle Stories (USA, 2010) – Part of Shortsfest weekend, this included 10 short films by local filmmakers featuring the Seattle area. Not the most technically impressive, but it’s great seeing the city get this treatment. A few of the shorts focused on local artists and musicians, including a few practically permanent fixtures in Pike Place Market and Belltown. The 3 Minute Masterpieces contest winner filmed around ACT Theatre, and I recognized it right away. Sitting behind me, I had a guy making priceless comments after each short and his wife kept trying to hush him. He stated that "he “didn’t come here to hear about about Ivan,” the guy who does the laser shows at Seattle Center and was the focus of one of the shorts. After Woman Seeks Man For Date On Friday, he announced that he was giving it a 2 (rating) and that he didn’t think she would ever get a date. When his wife told him to shut up, he added that she should try looking in the “women seeking women” section. Nice! Hopefully, that was his last SIFF screening.

After seeing both Cherdonna and Lou in separate shows at the ACT, I became a fan. They’re such great performers – beautiful dancers when that’s what they want to do and silly, hilarious characters when performing as the Cherdonna & Lou Show. Their short was the one in the bunch I was looking forward to the most, and I was not disappointed. And to make things better, they were there! And I got a picture!

Young Goethe in Love (Germany, 2010) – I have to refrain from calling this “Young Goat in Love.” Now we’ve got the German version of Shakespeare in Love! This film shows Goethe and his first love, which provides the inspiration for The Sorrows of Young Werther, a book that made Goethe famous and caused lots of European teens to kill themselves. The theater wasn’t even half full for Lope (the Spanish film about the writer Lope de Vega I saw earlier), but for this one… I got to the Neptune (same theater!) an hour before the film started, and there were already about 20 people in line. By half an hour before, the line went down most of the block. People like their German films! I liked this one better than Lope – cinematography was prettier and not as gritty, and Goethe’s love story was better than Lope’s lusty relationships with every pretty woman he saw.

Lesson Plan (USA, 2010) – The subject of this documentary was extremely interesting. In a time where experimental teaching was encouraged, new teacher Ron Jones responded to a question about why people decided to follow Hitler by implementing his own fascist regime in the classroom, which ended up being more successful than he expected. Unfortunately, this experiment was very short in duration, and there was very little documentation on it at the time – only a few pictures. So the documentary focuses on testimonies of Jones and the students 40 years later, which is not completely reliable and only somewhat effective. Still, the conclusion is a good one – we are convinced that we are rational creatures, but we are in fact rationalizing ones. And it’s quite scary what evils people will justify, especially when in group situations.

Wednesday night I decided not to see anything and volunteer instead. I picked up a short shift at the Harvard Exit because I heard good things about volunteering there. It was fun, but definitely all the travel time wasn’t worth it for only 2 hours of work. I liked working Uptown last year because there would always be a 5-9 or 6-10 shift. This year, almost all of the shifts were something like 3-7 and 8-10, with exceptions at the Admiral (too far) and Kirkland (worked there a lot), and I got one 4 hour night shift at the Egyptian. The film that exited at the beginning of my shift was Marrow, which seriously got the most split reactions I’ve ever seen from a SIFF film. I heard some people left early, and the people who left before the Q&A were saying very unhappy things to us as they left. One guy even said that he’d been going to SIFF since the 70’s and it was the absolute worst film he had ever seen. But many people who came out later said they loved it, and not all of them were affiliated with the film! Some of also had fun chatting about Finisterrae because the poster was hanging at the theater. Seriously, a whole film about two “ghosts” (guys with bedsheets over their heads with two eye holes cut out) wandering around with a horse. The trailer is awesome. Another awesome trailer? Shut Up Little Man! I love SIFF. :)

The White Meadows (Iran, 2009) – I wasn’t sure about this one, but I’m so glad I ended up going. It’s an otherworldy, allegorical film that’s starkly beautiful in its cinematography and hard-hitting in its message. A man rows a boat around a salt lake, stopping at places of tragedy to collect people’s tears. The tragedies make the filmmaker’s points very clear – there’s a girl who died (was murdered?) because the men found her too alluring, the most beautiful girl in a village is sacrificed as a bride to the sea to appease the gods, and an artist is tortured and imprisoned for painting the sea as red and refusing to say it was blue. The Iranian government was less than amused and threw the director and co-director in prison.

Film count: 14, Volunteer vouchers: 9

In real time, SIFF is almost over, just four days left to go. I’m getting a bit filmed out so I’m finding myself working more shifts and seeing fewer films. And I sure have a lot of catching up to do with my blog entries…

I look at the SIFF Flickr page every once in awhile. It’s usually the same old pics of people having fun at galas and directors answering questions at screenings. But the other day, I was looking at the set icons on the side and went, “OMG! I think that’s me and Alexis!” It’s actually, me, Alexis, and David, but David wasn’t visible in the icon crop. It’s us walking into the theater to see Littlerock and me looking like a doofus. I know photographers took pictures of me and David while waiting in line for another screening, so maybe that one will end up there, too. I feel somewhat important, since all the other photos in that set are of an actor answering questions. :)

Littlerock (USA, 2010) – Could be considered slow or boring to some people, but I love this sort of film. Quiet, subtle, and beautiful, Littlerock explores small town America through the eyes of a Japanese girl who doesn’t speak any English. The film does a fantastic job of putting you in her shoes, seeing how things we normally don’t think twice about in America can be weird or amazing to someone from a different culture. The characters are also great, especially the American character Cory who appoints himself the personal guardian of Atsuko and her brother because he’s decided he’s in love with her. You get to see both sides of communication without a common language: the amazing potential for humans to understand each other and the incredible frustration when the most important communication doesn’t translate. At the end, Atsuko and her brother end up at Manzanar, a memorial at the site of a Japanese internment camp. The actor (who played a minor character) mentioned during the Q&A that he never knew about those camps before, despite having grown up in the Pacific Northwest. Good thing it was mentioned in this film, I guess?

Mysteries of Lisbon (Portugal, 2010) – It’s 270 minutes long. And despite the announcement that there would be an intermission, the “Part 2” screen came up only a few moments after the “End of Part 1” screen. Oops. My butt was ready to be out of that seat by the end! I knew from the length and description that there would be lots of interwoven stories told in this period piece. It starts out being about a little orphan boy living in a church and a priest who seems to know everyone’s secrets. From there, you end up meeting many characters and getting a lot of information. By the third hour or so, the pattern started getting a little repetitive. A character would say, “Let me tell you a story,” the audience would snicker, and we’d see a mildly interesting flashback that involved one or more other characters. Some of the stories were interesting and drew you in – for me, I liked the plotlines about the boy and his parents the most – and others just felt like pieces of information. The love stories tended to be pretty lame and obviously written by a man – if there was more of an emotional connection, it would have gotten me more interested.

Paper Birds (Spain, 2010) – Craziness is attending a 270 minute film and then rushing (because the film started and finished late) over to see a 125 minute film. I didn’t really pay attention to this film when I made my original list, but when I saw that it was selling quickly and getting good reviews, I got a ticket. Keeping my schedule flexible definitely paid off with this one, it was one of my favorites of the festival. It’s one of those heartwarming and heartbreaking stories with a lot of similarities to Life is Beautiful. Set in Franco’s Spain after the Spanish Civil War (a handful of SIFF films were set during this exact time period this year, I was surprised), we follow a vaudeville troupe attempting to survive and entertain. Loss due to the war pushes three of the main characters into an unlikely family: an older gay man, a man turned reckless by the loss of his wife and son, and a spunky child who lost both of his parents in the war (played by a very talented boy who is a real life orphan). The director (Emilio Aragon) gave some interesting information during the Q&A… he comes from generations of clowns and performers, so many of the stories were true. His father was in the film (at the end). And he composed all of the music for the film himself. Pretty amazing.

I volunteered at SIFF Cinema Sunday morning. It was Shortsfest weekend, but the ones during my shift weren’t very popular. Sadly, they were enforcing the official policy of not letting us see films during our shift, so we just sat around during the first one, This Woman’s Work. I left to pick up some food at the Folklife Festival (my shift was early enough that parking was easy, thank goodness). The second set of shorts, In Extremis, was a little busier but still pretty slow. Our shift finished at this point so we were allowed to watch, but if you take a look at the photo on the film page, you’ll see clearly why I was not interested.

Late Autumn (South Korea, 2010) – Another one I picked up both because Alexis was interested in it and it was selling out quickly. I think both of the screenings ended up being on standby. It got hyped up a lot because it was a Korean film set in Seattle with a lot of Seattle-y shots. I also realized afterwards that I had seen the lead actress (Tang Wei) in last year’s Crossing Hennessy. Overall, I thought the film was okay. I liked it enough to be interested, but I wasn’t engaged the whole time. It got slow and the girl was overly mopey and silent. The producer told us it was a remake of an old, famous Korean film by the same name. Some great scenes, and I did feel the actress’s pain pretty well. I probably would have left with a more favorable impression if I didn’t go in with expectations.

Film count: 10, Volunteer vouchers: 8