New Years in old haunts

I've been back in the US for a few weeks now and I've seriously neglected not only the blogs I stalk but also you, my curious clicker. I guess I've been pretty busy, catching up and eating well. Sebastien and I have been to DC, Boston, Cape Cod, Mill-E-Walk-Kay and now chilling out in Columbus, Ohio. We skipped southern VT, and put off Toronto Canada, and once again ended up not meeting up with a billion people we meant to. But we had some good times and some great foods. Did I mention the foods? Because I may have come back to America just for the sheer diversity of foods.  Just a little bit.

Australians are fatter than us. Tell all your friends.

Christmas was at my mom's place. It went exceptionally well. Surprisingly so, in fact. I guess it has to do with my youngest sibling being 16 all of a sudden and the fact that Sebastien isn't one to sit on the couch and watch the women work.
I left my camera in a friend's car, on the trip back from Revere beach and it just arrived via le mail, broken. My "big gift" from my mom, an Ipad, was also broken upon unboxing and I'm pretty much fed up with the mail system and electronics altogether. At least I didn't have need or want of an ipad.

Yeah, I'm all set with where this is going.

This trip wasn't about gifts. It has really been about laughing till my sides hurt and seeing more stars in a night then I saw in a year. Boston is always a good time and I loved catching up with my friends from High school there. One of my besties has a new boyfriend and I'm so happy to see where this is going.

 Not only are they adorable together, he  also lent Sebastien and I his copy of Skyrim. We subsequently saw very little of Boston this trip by day but a whole lot of Skyrim by the afternoon, when we awoke. Must obtain copy. Must keep boyfriend of bestie. Anybody who would willingly part with that game is better than any of us deserve. If she breaks up with him, she's getting punched.

Cape Cod is so, so beautiful. The salt air and the sound of the wave crash make me want to mix my metaphors with something that burns going down and comes back up as poetry I only share with the  midnight sky. I have to stop myself from trying to drink the sea's water whenever I stand at her edge. It's an urge I have never been able to explain.  But the ocean is our oldest friend and my closet relative.  It's so nice to be in total darkness walking down a quiet street, testing my blue eyed night vision, sharpening my skills-- such privilege!  I was amazed at how many coyotes and shooting stars I saw. I had forgotten the way there are no yellow lines or sidewalks or need for either on some of my favorite roads. I wish my camera had been there to capture how calm Chatham harbor can be at 3 AM, or that I could better explain the taste of a Cape Codder when no one around you is calling it a vodka, cranberry.
My mom made my absolute favorite dish, scollop casserole. Pronounced:

scal·lop

   [skol-uhp]  Show IPA

noun.

 Not to mention both her signature pineapple upside-down and cheese cakes, respectively.  I visited with all of my brothers and sisters and their kids too.  Everybody is in a much better place than where I last left them. I leave invigorated.  My cousin had the first baby among her siblings and it's so cute seeing her parents get to be grandparents for the first time. I know they're overjoyed. 

This one is actually my mom. She's basically as cute as the kid.

Here in Ohio we've been with Sebastien's family taking a lot hikes.

Yesterday's hike involved a lot of jogging back in the half dark when the park was clearly closed. It's cool, I needed the run and whenever I jog in the wilderness I always feel like Legolas trying to catch up with Hobbits and Orcs. 

But who doesn't, really?
Hey, Hocking hills is hardly New Zealand or Middle Earth, but damn if it ain't the grand canyon of Ohio....I don't know if it is but Sebastien's dad will tell you as much.

We'll be here until the 4th and I'll have one week left in DC to get some paper work done while Sebastien heads back to Paris, ahead of me. I have no idea who I'll stay with for a week in DC but I'm pretty sure I've got credit I can cash in on. I think this is the last year I'll ever give sausages as gifts. Life is just one big dick joke to some of my friends....sort of explains why we're still friends, I think.

En bref, 2011 was a great year for me. I finally made it to Africa and this year I have designs on Asia.       Can't you just see me and Seba backpacking through India? Plus, I sort of plan to move to China someday once my non-existent kids are bigger. We have put in our applications for the Peace Corps so more of Africa I may soon enough see. Bringing it back briefly to Skyrim, if I may-- I realized that I refuse to die without seeing the Northern Lights or vacationing in Bora Bora.

Ok, Bora Bora has no connection to Skyrim whatsoever but it's still pretty dope.

Seba likes to joke that we should go to Tora Bora instead of Bora bora presumably because he's mean.

My only resolutions for the coming year are to look even better naked and spend all my money on excellent clothing, great food and travel.

Well, that's about all I have time for, atm. We're making the Bûche de Noël tonight, I'll link pictures if it comes out cute. I have two great posts coming up thanks to some old drawings and book reviews I found. One involves David Duchovny, the other involves the Snark Squad. Be looking out for those.
Personally, I'll be burning the stub of a white candle for my intentions tonight. I hope the New Year brings you closer to your goals and the ones you love, closer to the self you want to be and the state you want to be in. You're kind of a sucker for waiting until now, but I guess it's not too late.

Check out the Quadrantids meteor shower on January 3rd if the weather is good where you are, or tune in at 1AM to hear it pass! Have a safe New Year's Eve, please.  Taxis rides are always preferable to ambulance bills, so make good choices. Wow, grandma, wow. This is why I'll be settling Catan and eating all Trader Joe everything instead of whooping it up with the young and the restless. Whatever you do tonight, make sure to have fun.
:)

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Project Life

Today was the day! The camera I bought earlier this week finally came in the mail after what seemed to be FOREVER. Christmas morning I reached in my purse to grab my camera only to find it was dead. lifeless. broken. As the annoying person who constantly has their camera out, my family probably found this to be good news. Nope. They say a picture is worth 1,000 words, but I think a picture is worth so much more than that. A picture captures moments that may otherwise be forgotten. Spencer has had about enough of me taking pictures, and we're not even married yet.

As part of my New Year's Resolutions, I'm going to try to be better at documenting life. This is something I wish my mom and Grandma had been better at growing up. I want my kids to have something fun to look at when they're older. I'm usually not very good at writing in a journal which is why Becky Higgins is a lifesaver. She's created the coolest project called Project Life It's basically one picture, for everyday in the year all set up in a nice album. Starting January 1st, I will be taking one picture everyday to document our year. I did this a few years ago and LOVED it! It's really fun to look back through a year worth of pictures! 

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A Beginning Blogger!

I'm giving in and starting a blog today!
One of my New Year's Resolutions is to be better at writing down, and documenting my life with words and pictures- this is the perfect combination of both. This upcoming year is going to be one of the best of my life, and I want to be able to keep family and friends posted with everything that's going on! I might be bugging some of you awesome blogger friends soon since I have no clue what I am doing! :)

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Two Days in Amsterdam

I wish I had more time to tell you all the things I took mental notes on concerning our two-day trip to Amsterdam. But I really do not.  Instead, I will share my general impressions and photos that speak to my musings. Have to hurry, so have to keep it simple, keep it light.


Point the first: Amsterdam has the best fries in teh worldz.

Well, maybe it's the sauce--you can get a cone full of them anywhere--but the homemade stuff we got at Vlaamse Friteshuis was the finest in the city. (Trust and believe we came to this conclusion through rigorous experimentation)The sauces you see are Dutch Mayonaise and Joppiesaus. Granted, to my most of me,  mayo sounded gross, but you need to try it yourself--it doesn't taste like what we have back in the US. Swearzies.

#2
Amsterdam is a bike snob's wet dream

Totally getting out of your way, please keep ringing your bell. No seriously, keep ringing it. This world is your bike lane which I have mistakenly crossed through--pretending I didn't know you've got places to go and that your destination is more important than my own. We're clear. Moving on.

My relationship with law enforcement is much less oppositional when doing what I want to do isn't illegal.

For I have been to Mecca, the cheese is dope there. The dope is also dope there. (YUP) But that cheese, though, we went to a tasting of six different kinds of Gouda. If you're in town, check them out.

Fun Fact: My best friend and I travel well together.

Even if Eurobus had us going nuts.

I didn't take pictures in the Van Gogh museum because no one else was doing it and I hate being chided. However, I remember seeing these paintings:

Sometimes I want to lick the color right off the canvas. 

These were all done during his French period. Dutch paintings are too dark for my taste.
Pictured below is from his time in Holland. 

This was not cherry-picked.

Ever since I read The Botany of Desire  nearly a million years ago, I've been interested in seeing this flower market.

We got there at day break and had the Bloemenmarkt all to ourselves.

It was my first time eating Indonesian food too.
We were wicked stoked to get there just before the early supper special ended.  (I'm a very exciting person, I know...) The coconut milk drink (not pictured) tasted like flavors making love in my mouth....if such a thing was possible and also not disgusting to describe to readers as imaginative as yourselves.
Mmmmmmmmm, delish.

We also came across a lot of great street art.

Though I admit some of those are accidentally cheeses.

New rule: Trust what I know. From now on, we'll always use the application Guide Pal and Guides Gallimard map/travel guide--they've given us great ideas,  easy to follow directions and plenty to try out and explore on a reasonable budget--in London, Budapest and Amsterdam.
I recommend them highly.

Verdict: Amsterdam is the Vegas of Europe. It's a great place to go with a few friends and a lot of money. Book wayyyyy in advance and don't expect the prices to be reasonable on the weekend. We went midweek and would go midweek next time. Yes, we want to go again--durring a different season when we have more money and don't have to take that horrible bus. Eurolines, you're proof that I can't be a diplomat. Thank you. I hate you very much.

Well, that's about it--be checking into the Chipster Diaries if you want to hear more about the foods we tried in the Netherlands. (Linked above is his post about Joppiesaus flavored chips. Check it out!)

And so I'm off--wish me luck. I've got more traveling to get done--we leave for the States today!

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Adventure time (Erin goes gorillas)

On December 2nd, two-thousand-and-ten Sebastien and I landed in Paris, at Charles de Gaulle airport, ready to write a new chapter in our lives...

As happy and sappy as it sounds--the lead up was a particular version of hard that we of the first world are permitted to call hell.
Let's take it back to the last day in November when Sebastien and I, with the help of our very best friend Brad, played a game of Tetris verse the back of a U-haul moving van. 

Brad and banana boxes, really couldn't have done it without ya.

The three of us went to sleep on the floor of our apartment once the game was over around 5 Am. Brad left for work around 8, we said our final good byes to him and Seba and I went to unload the van in a storage facility. That was really fun because everything on our bodies hurt! Once our 5 by 15 space was fuller than the Lestrange vault, we decided it was time to go to the airport. Auspiciously, there was a parking lot full of taxi cabs at our disposal.  We found an on-duty dude who spoke French--a small something I interoperated it as a good sign. Predictably, we encountered park-and-walk traffic, but that clean cab smell had me relaxed.  Or perhaps it was the reoccurring muscle spasms that were simply keeping me immobile. On either account, I stared fixedly out the window at the Beltway and focused on important things, like why I never feel obligated to fasten my seatbelt in a cab...

Well, anyway--we got to the airport and I dumped out my water bottle in the trash,  put everything I planned to own for awhile on a conveyer belt and walked slowly through a gate so that someone coud look at me all naked-like over some scanner and I could simultaneously prove I didn't put bomb parts up my bum. At least that's why I think they make us do that. Whatevs, I was through security, we were good.
Have you ever been sitting on your plane waiting to leave when the attendent says something like, "Is Person Mc Lastname and Other Macotherson on the plane?"
Or, "Will Donner party of five please check in at your gate, the plane is waiting."
When I hear this I'm either outraged or curious--it really depends how tired I am. Anyway, when we got to our gate to get on the plane they had apparently been doing that for us. We were five minutes away from missing our nonrefundable, one way, trans-Atlantic, international flight!
If you know me yet, you know I'm a bit of a spaz when it comes to traveling. Being on time is hardly adequate; having four hours with nothing to do, safely on the other side of security is how I like to roll. So, I'm really glad I read the tickets wrong and had no idea we were cutting it so close, because I would have been forced to murder one of us and I really didn't have the energy.

Other fun things happened. For instance, we met the weight allowances for Lufthansa, the german air carrier we purchased our ticket from, but not Delta, their american partner who would actually be providing our flight. So when we landed in Roissy,  we had  5 bags to navigate with instead of the 4 we had planned on, and I ripped my silk stockings.
That was basically the most fun ever.

But really that's where the horror stories stop.
We made it to our hotel and luxuriated in a hot tub, soothing our aches and scrapes and blocking out the Frenchness of the outside world. We walked around that night in a snow encrusted town with all the holiday lights poking through and cheering up the streets. We found a creperie and had  galette crepe with eggs and ham, sweet cider and desert crepe with whipped cream and chestnut butter. It's funny because a year ago, on that night, I would have been afraid to make crepe at home, now it's just something I whip together if we're hungry enough.
We spent the next two weeks with the best friend of Sebastien's father and his family while we looked for an apartment in Paris. I saw the seventh Harry Potter film with French subtitles.--which amused me to no end.

Harry left his backpack at the Burrow, giving Ginny full reign to rifle through it and sniff its contents: deleted scenes, disk five.

I learned so much about French cooking and table service. I tried fine wines and new foods and I got to meet David Sederis at a book signing he was doing at a small book shop. All in the first week!

We found a flat shortly after that with a a balcony, in a cute neighborhood.   And then I don't know, here we are, encore !
It's been quite a year. My level of French has jumped from non-verbal, non-comprehending infant to that of a fully formed toddler--one who's cute accent is sometimes intelligible by those who interact with me most. Sebastien and I have developed a sense of humor about our arguing that has helped mitigate or resolve conflicts more quickly. I've learned a lot about the strength of my partner's resolve and have found inspiration in his dedication to making our lives better--e.g getting up for work at seven, even if we've been partying till 5.  It's not that I'm not capable of that level of duty and responsibility, it's just that I would be crying the whole time.
Turn your judgey face right off!
That's a job for Judy.
OK?

I'm not joking when I say he sets a good example for the sort of  adult I want to be. I love Sebastien and value the time we've put aside in our marriage to explore commitment, the universe and everything else. It's also cool that I can use this blog as a tool to track the progress and watch the way we've both grown and changed. Sure we could be parents and home owners by now--if we had stayed in jobs we weren't happy in just for the money, doing what society expected of us. But instead we've seen more of the world together. We've eaten millions of new chips, experimented with common French meats and animal products in our kitchen here that would be luxury items priced way out of our  range back in the States. (And one time, last week, we even cooked Kangaroo steaks.)

So, to commemorate our one year anniversary with France, I hung out on tumblr and Sebastien played a russian remake of the 90's video game, Fantasy General. But that's just because we're humble people. 

After lunch we went for a long walk dans la bois de Boulogne, pictured above at sunset, and from there we walked to The Avenue des Champs-Élysées and took our first stroll around the Village de Noel, sharing a cup of mulled red wine and returning just in time to play a great board game with friends in the kitchen.  Milestone unlocked.
I tell ya, the internets, I've tried a bunch of stuff to get happy and stay happy and to be perfectly honest with you, all I've ever really been cut out for  [so far] is adventuring. I am grateful that I have partner who is skeptical of all my best ideas enough to help me make them even better. He's also good with map reading, exchange rates and other languages. Bref, without him, team awesome would only really be, team Erin...and that wouldn't be awesome at all. #foreveralone

I guess what I'm saying is, I love someone. He's the Jake to my Finn and it's totally Rhombus.

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Twenty-ninth in the year of my tyranny

My last birthday party took place in the second grade. All the cool kids were there--Scott Thoms, Kenny Owens, Dave Kelty, and even some people I didn't have crushes on! We had pizza, cake, 3 liter bottles of soda and friggin' dixie cups (remember those?) Yeah, I would say it was going pretty smoothly until Rebecca Roy started crying in the middle of our ET screening and we had to switch activities.

Seriously Becca, you were kind of a baby for an 8 year old.

Undirected we may have done some jumping on the couch, freeze tag indoors sort of  activities, but nothing I wouldn't do at school if I was king for the day, which I was, btw. I had asked for a skateboard that year and my silly parents wrapped helmet separately and had me open it up first. (Last time I touched that thing)  Plus all my classmates gave me books and dolls and candy and cards and as an added perk, a bunch of that positive reenforcement crap everyone says is ruining Americans.

Anyway, they left and I went to the couch to gloat and index my loot. But my grandmother always used to say, if you laugh too much before you go to sleep, you end up crying. My mom usually reminded me of this while I was already crying and the relationship was clearly causality based at that point. I still don't know how it happened, but someone got footprints on her new wallpaper. And that, my  sweet internets, was the last birthday party ever. (For more first world problems, please scroll to the post below)
But the date that marked my 29th revolution around the sun took place last Saturday slash Sunday morning. Let me tell you, the makeup gods had blessed me that night. I looked like one of those bitches, you know what I mean?  I had on cute ankle boots, amazing, black thigh-high stockings and a short lavender dress--plus my silver danglie earings and this chunky green bracelet I always forget to wear. Trust and believe, the birthday girl had it wrapped up tight. My whole thing was about a 7 on the Ph scale--which is a hard achievement to unlock if you're trying to keep the Ass in class.

I've never actually seen the end of this movie because a Mariah Carey video was taped over it. Does it work out with the gay guy???

So many cool people showed up--some people who didn't even RSVP and some people who weren't even invited. All told we were about 50 at our peak. That's what I love about our parties, people were speaking, French, Italian, German, Russian, Japanese and English. I was just speaking loudly. Seriously though, Paris is such a beautiful smash-up of cultures, if someone would give in and plant some friggen trees on my street I'd buy the place. (I mean Paris, all of it. Totally using Francs, though.)
I just want to stress that I was really surprised to receive gifts. I mean, it was a party--if you brought your own drank, we're square. But my friends and even a few casual acquaintances gave me some thougthful presents. (I resisted the urge to take photos of them and list them here for you.)  Truly, there was enough handmade stuff to start an Etsy shop. I was even gifted a bottle of wine from 1998, a Bordeaux no less, and from his family's vineyard! I don't even know when I'll be fancy enough to be worthy of it.

It was a long night. A friend crashed on the couch and we had to kick one guy out at half-six--literally, he was actually kicked a bit. I woke up around 3pm, had some Advil for breakfast and realized someone wrote on my bedroom wall. A bunch of my roommate's food got eaten, whoops on that, and a bowl and a chair were both broken durring the 7 am cleanup process--but it was the best party I've ever thrown. YUP. My mom would have beat the life out of me. .....My grandma would have seen that coming.

Here are some photos!
Oh, play this song while you look at them. If you're too lazy to look up/translate the lyrics, he's just basically saying, life is hard, so we dance.


Did it tell you to watch it on Youtube? Then, be a doll and open it in another tab! Photos, aller!

So yeah, excellent party. Sebastien got me a cake, the coloc all pitched in to make it awesome both food and guest wise and we even had a  featured apparence by Sweeney. (Did you see us in our second grade hats?) It's not like I'm growing up or anything, but I'm fairly certain I almost nothing embarrassing. Ok. I likened not getting a scarf to pedophilia somehow. I don't know. So maybe that..but otherwise, totally appropriate evening--I wasn't even afraid to look at the pictures the next day!

And now it's time to bring the recycling out...It's the walk of shame equivalent granted to you in your late twenties. It also gives you a chance to tone that upper body. Take that walk of shame!

So much tyranny left, it's gunna be awesome!

Have a wicked good birthday post? I'd love to link it.

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