We head out today on our big trip. We leave in about an hour.
Make that a few minutes. (Time has elapsed.)
I will hopefully have a chance to post at some point during the trip. Perhaps some pictures.
Category: travel
the eleven-o’clock salad
It’s just past 11:00 p.m., and I just ate a big salad. I realized that before you know it, it will be time for my next CSA pick-up, and I still had 3 heads of lettuce, plus lots of other greens, onions, and kohlrabi. You will be proud of me to know that I opted to make and eat salad rather than going right to the freezer to get out the ice cream which we bought earlier this evening. (Note that I have not yet forgotten the ice cream. Its time will come.)
The salad was good. I do like salad. Especially when it’s been tossed with the dressing in a bowl, so that the dressing is all evenly spread around. An equal distribution of wealth, as it were. (I like to eat a good helping of socialist metaphors.) And by the way: boy-oh-boy has our salad spinner been seeing a lot of action lately.
I keep feeling like I want to record more of my life, of our life. I’m not sure why, exactly. Part of it is that I like my life, and imagine that some day I’ll look back fondly on this time, and feel a bit sad if I don’t remember what my day to day life was like. My future self will think things like: “Back when I was a new mother, did I eat enough vegetables?” or “Did I get enough sleep when I was a grad student?” or “I wonder what I thought about pants when I was in my 30s?”
I keep meaning to update the Phoebe Blog more frequently. Phoebe keeps growing and changing, and well, doing things. Again, things that I feel like I’ll want to remember. My memory fades so quickly, and the days blur together. Hell, the weeks and months blur together. I just managed to post a bit to the Phoebe Blog last night, but there are gaps. It’s strange this feeling that I need to record all of it. I don’t think my parents recorded too much about me, or even my sister (the first-born). I wonder if it’s partially my packrat tendencies making me want to store things away. (The packrat in me badgers me to squirrel things away? Can I fit a rabbit into this somewhere?)
The trip plans are coming along moderately well. I have squared away an apartment in Paris. I have filled out the form from the conference organizers to get a hotel room in Saarbrucken, who seem to have reserved every last hotel room in the town so that you must go through them. (Which means you may not actually get a choice about which hotel you’re going to stay in. Which may lead to some difficulties, as we have special public transportation and crib needs due to travelling with a toddler. I sent an email. I think I’ll be known as a troublemaker to the conference organizers. Because I also questioned their request to have a letter faxed from “the head of my institution” stating that I am a student in order to get the student discount for registration, in addition to sending a scan of the student ID. They claim that such a letter should only take “2 minutes” and is standard procedure. Which is a load of hooey.) I also still have to look more into trains.
And I keep thinking it would be nice to watch a movie. It’s possibly been weeks since I watched a movie. Oh yeah, and I’m supposed to be doing work. Oh wait. Now I’m supposed to be sleeping. Crap.
And you know how I felt compelled to write more 7 lists? Well, as I anticipated, I didn’t have much time. Phoebe’s nap ended, followed by needing to get her a meal, and get her dressed, and who knows what all, resulting in a time lapse of two hours. Then we went out a shopping excursion to get a birthday present for John’s aunt. (We’re going to her 80th birthday party tomorrow. Possibly not the 80th such party that she’s had.) We didn’t get home till 8 or so, then it was time for Phoebe to get a bath and get to bed. It was 9 by the time she was in bed. (Way past her bedtime, but she seems to have her parents’ night owl proclivities.) So, no time to work on lists. But since I don’t want to throw them away, or toss them into the compost pile with the beet greens, I’ll lay them on you here.
So, here are some sevens (and sevenths) I thought about incorporating into some lists.
More than seven more seven things.
books:
music:
If man is five (if man is five…)
and the devil is six (and the devil is six…)
then god is heaven (then god is heaven…)
this monkey’s gone to heaven
If you’ve got more 7s for me, toss them my way. Toss them like a salad.
vegetables are kicking my ass
I’m running a bit behind in the vegetable preparation and consumption. The fridge is loaded to the brim with lettuce, greens, beets, scallions and such. (There’s lots of lettuce again, but due to a ninja woodchuck who did in the lettuce seedlings a while back, there won’t be lettuce again for a bit. I swear I didn’t pay him to do it.) We got to pick our own peas (snow peas and snap peas) this week and last, which was fun.
Tonight I cooked up 3 heads of bok choi, and made a ginger cashew sauce to go with it. The sauce came out moderately well, in spite of my scorching many of the cashews in an attempt to multitask. (Did you know that cooking involves lots of swearing and shouting? It’s long been the case with me. I love cooking, but you wouldn’t know it to hear me at work. If I had a cooking show, it would either be rated R or would have lots of bleeping. Bok fucking choi. Bleep bleep cashews.)
One reason I’m behind in my veggies is that things have been hectic the past week or so. One major thing that’s been eating up extra time is planning this trip. We are definitely going. We bought air tickets. (The prices are outrageous, and shot up hundreds of dollars over the course of days. Effectively ending the debate over whether to get Phoebe her own seat on the plane. A lap baby she will be. Which, by the way, still costs over $300.) I’ve registered for the conference in Saarbrucken, Germany. My mother will be meeting us in Paris. Phoebe now has her passport. (Hurray!) Still to do is to square away lodgings for both Paris (we’re planning to rent an apartment) and Saarbrucken (we’ll do a hotel room). Also train reservations.
I continue to be wiped out, sleep-deprived, and behind in many things besides the vegetables. (Commenting, for example. I have not had much chance to comment on other people’s blogs. If you’ve noticed my absence, please know that I’m still reading, though!)
I find myself resenting the 4th of July, as it means that Phoebe will not be in daycare. (She goes there 3 days a week, and I commute 2 days a week. Wednesdays are my non-commute work-at-home day.) But with Phoebe at home, I won’t be able to get any work or much of anything else done until she’s in bed. If I am lucky, she will have a long nap, and I will have a couple of hours to either sleep or be productive. (Does sleep count as being productive?) I feel like perhaps we should do some sort of fun family thing for the 4th, and forget that I have lots of work to do. And just enjoy the extra day together. I’ll work on it, but I’m too tired to figure out something to do just now. Perhaps we will have a fun and festive Independence Day salad toss. Or maybe beet bowling. Anyone know of a craft project using kale and baby onions?
have toddler, will travel
We’ve headed down to the in-laws again for a few days. John’s Dad is doing pretty well, and has been in a rehabilitation place for the past few weeks. We managed to arrive there at mid-afternoon yesterday, a remarkable accomplishment. Our plan was to leave home at 10:00 a.m. (It always drives me crazy when I end a sentence with “a.m.” or “p.m.” What do I do with the punctuation? “a.m..”?). Our plan was to leave at 10 in the morning. And we were out the door by 10:59 sharp!
I’ve been wiped out the past couple of days. Can’t stay awake at night. (And no, I’m not pregnant. Just tired.) I think my schedule and ongoing lack of sleep are catching up with me. I had several days this week that were scheduled up the wazoo. And I spent most of Wednesday (my unscheduled day) doing research, not school or job research, but research about a trip to Europe this summer. I’m planning/hoping to go to a conference in Germany at the beginning of August to present a poster that I’ve co-authored with a couple of professors I work with. John and Phoebe would go with me, but probably not help with the poster presentation. (Though Phoebe is good at pointing, and could perhaps Vanna for me.) It turns out that the venue is in a city that is not terribly close to any major international airports, so we will need to plan on a train trip as well as the flight. And it turns out that it’s just as quick to get there from Paris by a newly opened TGV line than it is to get there from Frankfurt. So, we’re thinking a holiday in Paris would be great.
But.
The idea of travelling with a toddler is Daunting™. (Funny how I feel too tired to deal with footnotes, and yet I just felt compelled to hunt down that ™ symbol.) I did find somebody’s post on travelling with small children that looks helpful. Though things look no less daunting. (cf. other tales of toddler travel.)
We have to decide about whether or not to take the car seat, for one. We will be taking public transportation, so we will need to lug everything around with us onto subways and trains, and possibly busses. We need to figure out sleeping arrangements. We’ll probably need a crib in our hotel room. We may rent an apartment in Paris.
We need to decide all of this very soon. We did apply for Phoebe’s passport, but actually getting her passport may lead to more stress, as I’ve heard that things take much, much longer these days. (There are new regulations requiring passports for travel to Canada and Mexico, leading to many, many more people needing them. Passports, that is. I’m not sure that people need Canada and Mexico in greater rates than previously.)
welcome home
I hope I’ll have a chance to write some more about my trip out west soon. We had some fun activities, ate some great food, and the weather was absolutely gorgeous the whole time we were there. I thought I’d quickly share a couple of photos. First, here is a photo of us sitting on my sister’s front steps in sunny northern California.
Next, here’s a picture of my own front steps, back home in Massachusetts, taken earlier today.
Here’s a close-up of the front steps.
the skies just aren’t as friendly as they used to be
So, we made it out here to California. We almost didn’t get here last night. Phoebe actually did phenomenally well. For example, as we stood in line for an hour an a half at the U.S. Airways check-in counter, she was a trooper. She was amazing. Played games with John’s hat. Looked around at what was going on. Even smiled at other people standing in line.
Did I mention that we had to stand in line for an hour and a freakin’ half?? Before we could even check in? Not to mention going through security. But don’t worry! We didn’t miss our flight. Because it was delayed. So much so that we wouldn’t be able to make our connection in Pittsburgh. The last flight of the day going from Pittsburg to San Francisco on U.S. Airways.
Anyhow, we did make it. By way of getting bumped to another airline. Which was good. Because it seems that there was a good reason we got such a good deal on the tickets with U.S. Airways: they pretty much suck. It wasn’t so much just the slowness and the delays, which were apparently caused by a new computer system. The bigger problem was the lack of organization. The lack of courtesy to the people standing in line.
I was reflecting on some of the perky, cheerful slogans airlines used to have, remembering some from my childhood. United Airlines had “Fly the friendly skies” and Delta had “We love to fly and it shows.” American was “Something special in the air.” Such relics of another time. Airlines just don’t have such cheerful slogans these days.
Maybe the U.S. Airways slogan should be “Shut up and fly.”
I found a list of airline slogans. And can I just share that when I read two of TWA’s slogans, “Up, up, and away.” and “One mission. Yours,” I momentarily read the first word of the first slogan and the last word of the second. Which would make another good slogan for an airline of today.
Here are a few more potential airline slogans:
the friendly skies await
Today we embark on a big adventure: we’re flying out to California to meet my new nephew, Diego. This will also be Phoebe’s first trip travelling by airplane. Which leaves me feeling both excited and apprehensive. And at this point, I also feel a bit of panic. Because I still have a whole lot of packing to do. Because we will need to be bring with us a whole lot of stuff. Stuff in such quantities that we will wish we were traveling with a pack animal. (I understand that llamas can carry quite a lot…)
One of the many adventures we’ll have on this trip is making it through airport security. And I’m reminded of one more thing, which I didn’t include in my list from my post on that topic: the airport security playset, purportedly made by Playmobil, but now sadly appearing to have been discontinued. A few blogs wrote about it a while back. This one in particular shows some great pictures. Maybe if we had the playset, we’d be better prepared.
Okay. I really need to get going. I have to check the TSA website about travelling with a llama.
You think you know someone…
As I mentioned recently, John and I have been together for quite a while. Over 15 years, to be specific. So you’d think I’d know John pretty well. But he does find ways to surprise me.
John has a background in math and computer science. He’s been working in the computer industry since before we met, and in the years since I’ve known him, has become an expert in his subfield of the industry. John also is a technophile. He likes the cool toys, and has a weakness for electronics. So when John bought his first impressive digital camera, it didn’t surprise me. And when John started learning the ropes of photography technique and digital image processing, that didn’t surprise me, either. What did surprise me is that over the last couple of years, John has been taking some really beautiful photos. I didn’t know I’d married an artist.
Anyhow, I’m happy to say that John has started posting some of his photos on his blog. Three posts so far. Hopefully more to come.
I’ve been thinking that one of my new resolutions in the realm of blogging, once I get around to acknowledging the new year and writing them, should be to post more pictures on my blog. So I’ll take this opportunity to post some pictures. Below is one of John’s, of an abandoned mill in the town next to ours.
The lines of the structure actually reminded me a bit of a Shinto shrine. The vertical supports of the wall and the slightly curving horizontal edge of the roof suggest the shape of a gate to me. I was particularly reminded of a picture I took of a street-corner shrine I came across in Nara, Japan when I was there for a conference in 2004. Here’s a photo of it.
And here’s another one, showing a bit more of the street.
collecting tokens 