THE CONSTANT HOLIDAY

Silouetted

2011-02-22T07:00:00.000-08:00

I pulled this photo this morning to do this entry, because I love the way the statue is so crisp against the soft, bright stone of the building behind it. I didn't realize until I went to re-size it that there is a huge piece of netting on the stone wall at the corner where they are repairing the stonework. Arrgh.

Something made me keep it in though - it sort of crystalizes my mood today. I'm in the middle of moving, and everytime I look up from one of my (many) boxes, I find something else that needs doing/fixing/attending to. There's a lot of stuff we missed on our first look around, and now we need to make some adjustments so the house can be exactly what we want.

So this photo reminds me that things can be pretty, and pretty good, even if they aren't perfect. Which makes it perfect, in it's own way.

Photo: Statue outside Louvre Museum, Paris. Copyright Tracey Brower, 2009

Photo of the Week: One Way? or Another?

2011-01-25T07:38:00.000-08:00

Photo above, from a street corner in Montreal, where I visited last fall. You cannot tell me there is only "one way" to love cheese.

I have a friend who is contemplating taking a full-time job right now, after two years or so of freelancing. She's done the pros and cons list, contemplated the positives (weekly paycheck! whooo) and the negatives (telling HR your grandmother died, again, to get a day off), done the pros and cons. It probably seems crazy, in these unstable economic times, to not leap on a permanent, full-time position like a lion on a wildebeest, pinning it to the ground and refusing to let go, but we come from a freelance tribe, and it's hard to give it up - the flexibility, the challenge, and the allure of possibility, that the next client or job will be the coolest, most lucrative project ever. I can see her on the balance beam now, trying to decide which way to tip, and I desperately want her to make the right decision - the one that makes everything come out right, in the end, like a perfectly wrapped up movie.

I thought of that, and of this picture, and how frustrating it is when it seems there is only "one way" to get to where you want to be. What do you keep, and what do you shed along the way? Time? Safety? Security? Control? I have the same issues she does - the constant concerns about money, the worry that you won't get paid for work you've already done, the thought that the boring but lucrative project will eliminate the awesome cheapie someone wants you to do. Or, worse, the dread that there will be nothing but boring cheapies.

I don't have a neat wrap up for this one, no finishing point that ties up the loose ends and rolls into the credits with cool music. I just wait and cross my fingers for her, and try not to wish in one direction or the other. She'll find her way.

Photo of the Week: The Snowbound Edition

2011-01-11T07:27:00.000-08:00

So if you have been hiding under a rock in an undisclosed tropical location, A) I hate you, and B) you may have missed the news that it's winter. You cannot miss it in Atlanta, which is currently paralyzed by 4 inches of snow and ice. It looks wonderful, pristine and fluffy, until you realize you are out of beer and the football game is on, and it takes an hour to go to the corner store a mile away.

Cars are skiing across the highway and people are sledding down the hills with broken down cardboard boxes as we take in the strangeness; not of snow (it usually snows here once or twice a year) but of snow that stays. Usually in Atlanta it snows about a quarter of an inch and then melts within 8 hours, but the friendly weatherman assures us that this may stick for a WEEK. He's enjoying his moment in the sun, I think - no pun intended - and is determined to stretch it out.

We went out for a walk yesterday and took some pictures just in case Friendly Weatherman is wrong, and I got this photo of a neighbor's yard. There's something very romantic about the magnolia tree covered in snow - it's my favorite tree, so very emblematic of the south, all iced tea and linen dresses and fanning yourself on the porch - so to see it dressed up in winter wear is always something of a surprise. The tire swing seems to long for winter to pass and these silly sleds and snowballs go away, so the children will come play on it again. Until then it whispers to the magnolia, and they wait patiently for spring.

The Year in Travel

2011-01-05T08:57:00.000-08:00

If you're on Facebook (ah the demon facebook, how I love yet hate you) you have probably seen that game "The Year in Status". It takes two status updates from each month of the previous year and makes them into a huge collage, and gives you a great snapshot of what was on your mind as the year went by. I'm proud to see that my Antione Dodson obsession popped up in multiple months.

I thought I'd do a similar snapshot of all my travel from 2010, to see how many of my travel goals I met and think about my fantasy trips going forward. In chronological order, then, I give you:

2010: On The Road.

January - Columbia and Hartsfield, South Carolina - February - West Palm Beach, Florida, and Jobos, Puerto Rico - March - nowhere, sadly - April - Franklin, Indiana, and Anderson, South Carolina - May - Flowery Branch, Georgia - June - stayed home - July - was supposed to go to Brazil, but wussed out - August - Halifax, Nova Scotia, and Montreal - September - still in Canada, plus somewhere in South Carolina AGAIN - October - London - November - Paris, Brussels, Oslo, and Stockholm (18 hours each) - December - Tampa, Florida (wanted to go to the Bahamas, but nooooo)

Not as much as I expected, actually, and not a patch on 2008, when I actually forgot where I lived at one point, but not to bad. It helps to bear in mind that I travel a lot for work, and so at least half the places listed were work trips - hence the London-Paris-Brussels-Amsterdam-Oslo-Stockholm throwdown that wound up the year, seven - no, six - cities in nine days. I now know what bands on tour feel like. And some of the Georgia travel was not very far, such as Flowery Branch, which is all of an hour from Atlanta, but was for work, and helped me go to a place called "Out of my Mind" for two weeks.

Pressing forward to 2011, here's the travel dream list:

February: Puerto Rico, for our annual couple's week away
March: Morrocco, a trip I've been trying to take for three years
Sometime in the late spring: St. Lucia, just because I can
September: India
December: Bahamas or the AVI for christmas

In the same 12 months I have to: work, so as to PAY for all this; move, as my boyfriend is buying a house and I will be relocating there; go to NYC to see the Met for the first time in 10 years; go to Canton, Ohio, to see the football hall of fame (low priority) and go down to Tampa, Florida at least three times to see my folks, who live there, because I promised I would, and so that when I go to the Carribean for Christmas no one can complain. They'll complain anyway, but their arguments will be invalid. And ineffective.

Where are YOU planning to go in 2001?

By the way, the photo at top is of Greenland, taken as I flew home from the rock n roll Euro Tour in November. You can actually see the mountains poking thru the snow. So I guess I can claim to have been there, too?

Photo of the Week, "Happy New Year!" edition

2011-01-03T07:04:00.000-08:00

Sending you off into your first workaday Monday of 2011 with some floral fireworks, courtesy of the Farmer's Market stalls in Montreal. Bright, colorful, and non-noisy, unlike real fireworks, which might upset some of the still-hung-over among us. Not that I'm judging, or looking at you, Pickles.

Happy 2011! In the words of Kito, from the epic - epic! Step up 3 in 3D, I say to you, don't just make it work - "Kick some ASS!"

Photo of the Week: the Quick Like A Bunny Edition

2010-08-17T14:14:00.000-07:00

This is a short and sweet entry, as I am suddenly realizing that my upcoming trip to see friends in Halifax, Nova Scotia, is coming up in ten days and I have done exactly zero planning, and today I found out I am flying to Kansas City next Wednesday. Hope Delta doesn't lose my luggage this time.

Halifax looks fun, though, and will hopefully get me out of the godawful Georgia heat for a week. I'm ending up my trip in Montreal and flying back from there, so I'll get a nice cross section of Eastern Canadian-isms. (My flight to Halifax includes a hotly anticipated two-hour layover in Detroit, which is a cross-section I could do without.)

Photo! This is from Puerto Rico, the view north out of the El Yunque Rainforest (only rainforest that is part of the USA! Go see it!) down through the mist to the coast, which you can just see in the distance. If you are going to IslaVieques - and you should be, right now, and if I weren't going to Halifax I'd go with you - the entrance to the rain forest is on the right hand side of Highway 3, right before Luquillo. That's right, the only American rain forest has a drive-thru! Because that's how we roll. Literally in this case.

Go there. You'll thank me.

Photo of the Week: the Chill Out, Already Edition

2010-08-10T12:21:00.000-07:00

Whee! Hard to believe that a mere 5 months ago I was going out to my yard and marveling at everything being covered by snow and ice, like all the trees were being dipped in that jar that you made rock candy with when you were a kid. And that in 2 months it will be fall, and I will be able to go outside without an oxygen tank and/or a personal dehumidifier, and breathe the cool air of autumn. I love the south, but by god I am so glad that I live in the part that has seasons, as opposed to Florida, where I grew up. There they have two seasons: summer, and not summer. Summer is when you stick to the tarmac in the parking lot. Not Summer is... summer. But less sticky.

A friend of mine sent me a photo of snow in Yosemite he took a few years back and said he was meditating on it to cool the brain. Here's my version (his is much more artistic and, also, in focus). With everyone going nutty in the heat, I figure we can all use it.

Meditate, be calm, chill. Repeat.

The Big Move

2010-08-09T07:55:00.000-07:00

So my boyfriend showed up last night with the news that his ongoing struggles with his bank to get pre-approved for a home loan have finally borne fruit, and he can start making offers on houses. This worries me.

A little backround: about a year ago, he became obsessed with the idea that he was going to buy one of the multitude of foreclosed houses in our city, so that we could live together, have more space, lower our bills, all that good stuff. (I was originally thinking that there would be a wedding ring somewhere in that equation as well, but I've since disabused myself of that notion.) He began working with a banker, we looked at a bunch of houses (from the outside), and he began thrashing thru the paperwork. Since it was his project, I've kind of stayed out of it. And that's where things have stood, for about a year.

Suddenly this mortgage-approval-thingy has been, well, approved, and suddenly the "moving into a new house" idea has become One Step More Real.

I am not at all sure I like this.

I like my house, though it's clearly too small for both of us. I like the location. I like the neighbors, except for the psychos who made me get rid of my chickens, and they have the sense to keep to themselves. I like that I'm five minutes from the farmer's market. I like the huge yard, even though I hardly use it, and I like the deep, arching trees that go back to the woods. I like my landlord, who lives in upstate New York and could care less if I keep bees and paint the house purple, as long as I don't burn it down.

This moving thing, I don't know. I don't think it will save money (I've moved lots of times, and I can painfully remember cleaning out my bank account to move into this house). I don't like the idea of adjusting my indoor-outdoor cat to a new (albeit safer) neighborhood. I don't like being outside the perimeter, like some suburban square. And I will lose my Mexican joint, which is an outpost of the local Los Bravos chain that I eat lunch at at least twice a week. Everyone needs a place like this - the one you go all the time, and they don't even bring you the menu any more, they just bring you your usual, and you can go in alone and not get the hairy eyeball for taking up a booth by yourself (in fact you have "your" booth) and you can go in looking nice or go all ratty in track pants, claiming you just came from the gym, when everyone knows you actually are coming off a three-day sudafed bender in Las Vegas and you need your fajitas NOW. I don't like the idea of disassembling my entire life, putting it in boxes, taking it to another place, and trying to reassemble it, only to find that there are bits that you are missing. And they were never things that fit in boxes to begin with.

Probably I am just saying that I don't like disruptions of my routine, and I should look forward to this exciting new household chapter, full of challenges and changes and positive things. A quieter street! An office that's not in the living room! Space for more shoes!

I don't like this... at all.

Rose photo above, from somewhere in Spain. I love the warmth of this photo and the slightly melancholy lean of the roses - are they waiting for a princess? - and I would tell you where I took it but I have gone off coca-cola again, to try to be healthy, and my brain is rewarding me by turning into a sponge, and I'm sucking down green tea in a desperate attempt to stay caffeinated and not sink into the throes of withdrawl. So you're out of luck. It's probably in Granada, though.

Photo of the week - Sausalito Summer Night Edition

2010-07-19T11:48:00.000-07:00

Monday! Trying to get this post up before the summer heat utterly, competely drains me of motivation and leaves me on the couch gasping for air, with only the energy to munch TerraChips.

This is a room off of one of the main halls in the Alahambra, in Grenada, Spain. Apparently, where we would put a broom closet or a panel of electrical fuses, the Moors felt the need to put a handmade fountain in a tiny, ethereal space, with zilj tile and a view of the Andalusian countryside. Which we would do, too, if we didn't need a space to keep those brooms and fuses. This one is a little worse for wear, but I am putting it up because I am searching for a new studio space and the ones I have seen have been, shall we not say, diamonds in the rough. Man, are they rough. So I am using this photo to convince myself that with a little paint and curtaining and TLC, one of them can become the "room of one's own" that we're all supposed to have. Wish me luck!

And when you clean out your broom closet to make a niche like this one, bring me the broom. Boy, am I gonna need it.

Oh, and Sausalito Summer Nights is a totally cheesy 80's pop song that came out one summer when I was in, like , 7th grade. I love it, and you can listen to it here: Diesel

Pogo!

Photo of the week - now with more daylight!

2010-06-21T17:03:00.000-07:00

I had a different photo planned for today, a lovely Parisian sunset that was going to perfectly capture the longest day of the year. But when I went to get it out of my digital filing cabinet I found this one, and decided to run it instead.

These are the Bateau Mouches (I am totally murdering this spelling), the big, flat-bottomed boats that you can pick up at various places on the Seine and take a water-borne tour in. They pass the Louvre, the Musee de Orsay, and usually make a U-turn at the Eiffel Tower. Completely, utterly touristy, so of course I can't get enough of it. The night version of the tour is infinitely better than the day version, since the city is all lit up around you, glowing and romantic. The romantic part is wasted on me, since I always go to Paris alone, but the lighting - c'est magnifique.

This photo is taken just as we slip under one of the many bridges of Paris. You can see on this ride there aren't many people up top - it was March, I think, and totally freezing - but I once took the very latest ride of the night (yes, I've gone more than once) and was grateful that I was virtually the only person on board, since I was feeling a bit of alone-in-Paris melancholy - when at the last instant a herd of schoolkids got on board, at least 25 kids. They all poured noisily onto the upper deck and my first thought was, "AAAAARGH".

But you know what? they totally made the trip. They were French kids - so much for the theory that no French people ride the boats - and they were so innocently excited, scampering and laughing and going "whooooooo" every time we passed under a bridge, to test the acoustics - that it was like being on a field trip with the Harry Potter kids, a sensation amplified by the pre-teen Hermione look-alike sitting in front of me, whispering urgently in another kid's ear. I spent the whole ride giggling at (with) them, enjoying their antics, and when the boat nosed up to the dock I was actually sorry to see them go.

But I wasn't even concious of being alone anymore. And for that, tiny french children, I say merci.

Photo of the week: the where have you been? edition

2010-05-24T10:47:00.000-07:00

Hi, gang.

It's been a minute.

It's been a hell of a spring on the homestead. I started a new business which is eating me alive. I have people that actually rely on me to make their businesses work. Can I describe how terrifying that is, as a concept? My bees died in the last cold snap, about six weeks ago, and the bee box now sits silent and empty. My incipient trip to Brazil was canceled, smothered in the cradle by lack of funds (see starting a new business, above). And in a rank miscarriage of justice, the county code inspector came and gave us a citation for having chickens, and we had to give them away. No more fresh eggs, but more importantly no self-important chickies amusing me as they strut and fluster through the garden, scratching and pouncing.

It's enough to make a girl tired.

But! things are looking up. The wintry spring we've been having has finally turned into a gentle early summer, with lots of rain for the garden, which I got in by fits and starts in April. My tomatoes are growing like weeds. My boyfriend got me a library card, so I can stop draining my bank account at Amazon. And best of all, I found a beekeeper who will sell me new bees (it's late in the season, hence the difficulty) so I will have a functioning beehive once again. Oh, and Delta gave me my frequent flyer miles back. For a small fee.

I was sitting with one of my clients for the new business the other day, and showing him the list of tasks I had assigned myself to do weekly for him. "I won't get to everything every week" I said, "but if we use this as a guideline, then we continue to lurch forward. It's all about progress."

And this morning I thought, while I was searching for a theme to this post, if that's not a metaphor for life, I don't know what is. Whether you are reinventing yourself, or writing a novel, or planting a garden, or raising a child, or, I don't know, carving the Mona Lisa out of yak butter, it's all about progress. Keep on keepin' on, as they say. And somehow, in fits and starts, you make progress. Stumble some, run some, but stretch towards the light.

Reeeeeeach......

Photo of the week

2010-03-22T07:14:00.000-07:00

This picture is a little soft and fuzzy, due to ill-advised hand-holding, but then it's Monday and we probably ALL feel a little soft and fuzzy. I worked most of the weekend at my desk so I could use a little soft fuzziness right now.

Focus issues aside, I love the way the ceiling fixtures open up and draw you into the hallway. This is from a night tour of the Louvre (they are open until ten on Thursdays) and so all of the daylight that normally floods these halls is missing, leaving only the shadowy, gas-fixture light to illuminate the galleries. I like to think this is what it looked like in the past, with ladies in satin dresses drifting down the halls toward string music in the Apollo Room.

Flattering light is key, even if it's only in your imagination...

Book Review - "The Happiness Project"

2010-03-21T10:19:00.000-07:00

There's some irony to me writing this review today, since I woke up on the wrong side of the bed this morning and am being an impossible grouch. Then again, just thinking about this book makes me happier (at least a little) and if it can do it today, imagine what it would do on a day I'm not grumpy.

Seriously, here's my advice to you - go out and get this book. Buy it, borrow it, check it out of the library, whatever you need to do - get it and read it. It's one of the best, most practical books I have read in a long time. Gretchen Rubin writes of realizing one day that she had a great, fortunate life, and felt the need to appreciate it more, enjoy herself and her family more, and just be more aware of how lucky she (and all of us, really) was. She set out to make a series of simple, non-earth-shaking changes, and in the process improves her life and that of everyone around her - no drama, no damage, no running off to Indonesia and living with a medicine man. It's the polar opposite of books like "Eat, Pray, Love" that imply the only way to improve your life is to burn it down and start over - not just thinking outside the box but trampling on it and throwing it's mangled remains in the trash. (In the interest of full disclosure, I hate those sort of books, and I spent most of "Eat, Pray, Love" wanting to slap Elizabeth Gilbert in the mouth.)

Rubin breaks down her "Happiness Goals" into twelve sections, one for each month, taking inspiration from Benjamin Franklin's "List of Virtues", where he worked on one virtue a week for twelve weeks - and then goes from there. Vitality, Relationships, Work - I identified with all of them (well, except for the parenting one - no kids, just the cat) and found several useful pointers in each chapter.

Even today, when I am at my curmudgeonly best, I can dredge up her advice and nudge myself into a better, if not Pollyanna-ish, state. Yes, I woke up at 6.30 am on Sunday because I have so much work to do (and am breaking one of my personal rules, to not work on Sunday). Yes, the winery event I wanted to go to was rained out. Yes, my boyfriend changed his oil in the carport and now there's ^*&%^% oil everywhere that I am going to have to mop up. Yes, the store was out of red snapper.

But really, is it so bad? Take a deep breath and remember Gretchen's advice: Fight right (yes, the oil's a mess, but he also fixed my brakes last week. And don't drag his mother into it). Be flexible (no red snapper, but grouper - just as good) Give yourself credit - I just went out in the drizzle and cleaned the chicken coop, and just accomplishing that made me feel better. Crossing "write book review" off my list will improve my morale even more. And have some fun - maybe I can't go to the winery, but I can watch Pirates of the Caribbean again, and I can do it in my underwear. Can't do that at a winery. At least not until the second flight.

The Notebook

2010-03-19T15:19:00.000-07:00

This is not a story about the totally-cheesy-with-a-side-of-extra-cheese book by Nicholas Sparks, because although I am sure he is a very nice man and my mother loves all of his writing, his books make my head want to explode. This is a different story.

You know when you do something, and as you are doing it you think, "mmm... this is a bad idea" and you do it anyway and it turns out licking the light socket was a bad idea, and you say (to yourself) "dumbass! I told you not to do that!"? This is that kind of story. Only without the hair styled by voltage. (I have, in fact, stuck a metal object into a light socket and your hair DOES stand up. But that's for another day.)

Pictured above is my notebook. Or rather, one of my notebooks, because I go through them like crazy - I use them as a combination dayplanner/notetaker/recipetester/
mileagerecord/gumwrapper/whatever-er, and if you ask anyone who knows me I am almost never without it. I take it to lunch, I take it on dates, I take it on vacation (even though I keep a detailed vacation journal), I sleep with it next to the bed in case I get a blinding insight in the middle of the night. I don't even like not knowing where it is. It's a college-ruled security blanket, and I always have 2-3 blank ones in the house, just in case I unexpectedly run out of pages. I pick them up whenever I see one with a design I like, even if I have like 5 already. I'm a little obsessed.

And as you can see, I have a classic OCD approach to using them - things to do on the right, spontaneous notes on the left, subjects numbered in order of importance, stars by things, highlighter you get the picture I AM REALLY INTO MY NOTEBOOK.

So of course, when I had an opportunity to put one down somewhere that I would be guaranteed to lose it, I did. Because that is sensible.

I was in Belgium. Intentionally this time. I've been to Belgium once before, unintentionally, but even though that is one of my best travel stories ever, filed prominently under "disasters" I can never tell it here, to protect the innocent. So this is my second trip to Belgium and I was getting off of the Eurostar with my boss, and the clients, and about eleventy thousand pounds of photographic equipment. The Brussels Eurostar station has no luggage carts, in an apparent attempt to thin the human herd of baggage weaklings, and we had a lot of stuff. A lot and a half. And one notebook.

One of us (I think it was the ever-amazing Brooke, but I really don't remember) found a station worker to take pity on us and they brought a rolling luggage container - essentially an eight-foot-high cage on wheels - and we loaded all eleventy thousand pounds of gear into the cage, and since I still had to carry couple of bags I tossed my notebook up on top of the cage. Why I didn't just stick it in the bag I was carrying I'll never know. And as I did so, I thought to myself, "Don't leave that up there, dummy."

Which, of course, I did.

And of course I realized it just late enough to ensure it was to late to go back and get it. Aaargh! All my notes. Schedules. Lists of blog posts that I wanted to work on (like that was gonna happen anyway, notebook or not). All enjoying an extended vacation in the Brussels train station. It's still there for all I know.

And of course it was in the most gruellingly scheduled portion of the trip, where we were racing from location to location and I literally did not have five minutes to run into a drugstore and find a replacement. I had made, with rare foresight, extra copies of our schedule, and when I could no longer jam notes into the margins and had filled up the back, I started writing on napkins, newspapers, gum wrappers, whatever I could find that would accept ink - including at one point the palm of my hand. My boss noticed my notebook need and tried to help.

"Do we need to stop somewhere and get you a notebook?"

"No, I'm fine."

"I know you like to have something to take notes in."

"No, it's okay."

"Because we can get you one. I'll give you some euros if you need it."

"No, really, I'm fine. Are you done with that napkin?"

So there I am, suffering from the notebook jones, hanging fire for five whole days. The last couple of days were in Amsterdam - my boss, in a display of generosity I can only categorize as awesome, let me stay behind after the shoot and flew home with all that gear alone - and in my wanderings I found a tourist store that sold notebooks. They had one with a cow on it that said, Amsterdam, and I grabbed it and ran to the counter squealing like a kid at Christmas and I took out my wallet and I was out of euros. I looked, stricken, at the girl behind the register, at the notebook, and then I stalked back to my hotel, notebookless, in the cold Dutch rain.

I flew home the next day, still empty handed, a little piece of my soul still sitting on a luggage cart somewhere in Europe...

I wonder if it misses me?

The Friday Wrap-Up - March Madness Edition

2010-03-19T12:06:00.000-07:00

Is it Friday already? Gah. This week's story is still in the draft stages, so you'll have to wait til tomorrow for that, but in the meantime here's some odds n' ends for the past week:

- Is that picture above not the worst photo ever? Admit it, you think that's a paparazzi outtake, and Lindsay Lohan is behind that bush somewhere. But no. That, my friends, is a PHOTO OF HOPE. Because it's a photo of the first bloom on the Bradford pear trees, which I saw last night on my way home from seeing Shane at the Plaza Theatre. And when the pear trees bloom, spring is officially on the way - groundhog or not. So suck it, Winter!

- and in an additional note, that kid in Shane? Most annoying child actor ever.

- Just finished reading "Your New Sailboat - Choosing it, Using it" by the excellent and prone-to-rhyming editors of Chapman Piloting, and I can tell you what I've learned: I'm never buying a sailboat. I would be better off calling up Richard Branson and negotiating for a used spaceship.

- My friend Vere and I celebrated St. Patrick's Day in the traditional fashion, eating dinner in a Cuban restaurant. What? Mojitos are green.

- My boyfriend announced he wants us to take fencing lessons. He was an all-state fencer in high school. Why do I feel this will end badly?

- And looking ahead to summer vacation (in case I don't get stabbed) I just cashed in all of my frequent flyer miles and am going on an "adventure" in July. I always think of them as "adventures", rather than "vacations", because a "vacation" implies you will come home not racked with parasites or bitten by a poisonous snake. And why court disappointment? Nobody was more shocked than me when Delta actually agreed to accept their own frequent flyer miles, but apparently it's an early Easter miracle. I'll pony up more details as we get closer, but if you want to play pin-the-tail-on-the-globe, here's your first hint: I'm going to a country with a very large jungle in it, that's named after an online bookstore.

Or is it the other way around?

Photo of the week

2010-03-16T07:12:00.000-07:00

Since it's a beautiful, sunny day in Atlanta (though chilly) I thought I would share this sunny beach photo from my recent trip to Puerto Rico. We saw this surfer on his way out to the point while we were bobbing contentedly in the water for our post-breakfast swim, and I particularly noticed him because - honestly - he had really pretty hair. Better than mine by far.

A few hours later I saw him on the way back and got this image of him framed by the waves. I bet he had fun. Even if his hair is now messy.

Go out there and get messy, people!

And the Winner is....

2010-03-11T05:54:00.000-08:00

I could beat this Oscar meme to death all WEEK. And I didn't even watch the show! Which I only regret because I missed the Crazy-Purple-Kanye-Lady. Lord, please let me be that wacky when I grow up.

Crazy-Purple-Kanye-Lady aside, you will remember that a few weeks ago I posted the First Ever Constant Holiday Give-away! I'm really into caps this morning. I got caught up in work, and in planning (and then taking) my Puerto Rico trip, so I haven't had a chance to announce my winners yet. So today's the day!

And yes, I did say WINNERS. In an atypical spasm of generosity, I decided to give both my copies of "How To Travel Anywhere" away (admittedly after I had read one of them. But they are used books so no one will ever know.), and randomly selected two of my reader comments, who obligingly sent in an account of their favorite vacations.

Drum roll, please....

K. Smith and P. Foster! Come on down and accept your prize! Or rather, wait feverishly by your mailbox. K sent in an account of a family trip with her mom and grandma to Chattanooga Tennessee, and P sent in this haiku-like description:

"Scotland, 2002.
What's a little freezing rain when
you're in a real castle?"

My thoughts exactly. I will be contacting these fine folks for your addresses and sending prizes out post-haste. BTW K is also the author of the excellent Amira blog, which I have linked to at the bottom of this page. You should check her out.

Champagne all around! We will have another contest soon, as this was fun and I have WAY to many books in my house.

And the award for Friday Wrap up goes to... Tuesday

2010-03-09T08:19:00.000-08:00

Yeah, I know. Late again. I'd like to say that I'm doing constructive things, but mostly I'm eating and getting sand out of my luggage, so don't waste that sympathy. Save it for poor James Cameron. Heh.

To the (late) Friday wrap up!

- we returned from our trip to Puerto Rico in one piece, and with a minimum of awkardly located sunburns, a key metric in how much you enjoy your vacation, I think

- I met an amazing photographer, who I am hoping to do lots of work with in the future, named Pat McDonnell, You should check him out here: www.medicinebleu.com

- my friend Amy and I went to Hae Doon Wae Korean bbq last week, and it was scrumptious. I have this game I play where I go to a different foreign food joint each week, partially to expand my palate and partially to annoy my boyfriend. The less recognizable the food the happier I am (though I passed on the barbequed tripe). Pictured above, the wreckage of our table.

- I also went to the Bookstore in Atlanta and had Duck Breast with mushroom risotto, which was so good I may have to let Jason, my buddy who recommended both the restaurant and the dish, date my sister. Her husband may mind, though. Jason, you can date my mom.

- Katheryn Bigelow! You go girl. Anyone who gives us Bodi deserves an Oscar.

- Please, PLEASE go to http://dianevadino.tumblr.com/ , website of the excellent writer Diane Vadino, who is Bunnyshop, one of my favorite travel and fashion blogs. She has audio excerpts from her last book, Smart Girls Like Me, up now, and is putting up excerpts of what looks to be a hilarious book about her Mongolian adventure, which I am still jealous off. Check it out.

- I just found out how to add multiple photos to my blog. Watch out, world.

And we're back!

2010-03-09T08:05:00.001-08:00

Back from an excellent week in Puerto Rico - actually I've been back for a week, but laziness and procrastination is how I roll. So there. Above, view from my apartment in Jobos, on the northwest coast of the main island, complete with point break and surfers - in honor of Katheryn Bigelow's finest film, Point Break. You go, girl. Enjoy that Oscar.

Lots to come this week so stay tuned! And now we are done with the silly TV references.

Friday Wrap-Up

2010-02-21T13:43:00.000-08:00

This is a new section on the blog, designed mainly to give my lazy ass a way to post something without straining myself to much intellectually. Which is not hard to do, as you can imagine.

And since I am writing this on Sunday, you can already see where we are going with the issue of tardiness. Well, at least I'm not raising expectations too high too soon.

So! A round-up of the weeks weirdness:

- I know I am late to this train, but Johnny Weir? Totally Awesome. And, I might add, ROBBED at the Olympics.

- Bought myself a cool crystal-and-fake pearl necklace that I turned into a bracelet, to wear to the beach this week. Since it was only 5 bucks at Ross, I figure I won't care if I get sand all over it. It's very Coco Chanel-ish - will post a photo soon.

- tried two new recipes this week, Chicken Caccitore and Morrocan Chicken Tagine, both from the excellent "Ready When You Are" cookbook by Martha Rose Shulman. My only complaint: if you advertise something as a "one dish meal", it shouldn't really take 6 pots to make it in, should it? (the Moroccan Chicken). Just sayin'.

- speaking of chickens, we relocated one of our chickens, Greta (aka Miss Personality, pictured above) to the farm of her birth, because she had gotten so noisy. Robert the Chicken man, on taking her out of her transport box, took one look at her and announced, "Um... yeah. That's a rooster." Which explains a) the noise and b) why she never laid eggs. She/he has been replaced by our new chicken, Lucy, who Robert assures me has no sexual identity issues. Amelia, our other chicken, seems fine with it.

- Fave quote of the week, stolen from tem internets: "When my life flashes before me when I die, it's gonna make a GREAT movie. Grab your popcorn, 'cause sh*z took some CRAZY turn's in the '80s...." I couldn't agree more completely.

- Went to Machu Picchu Peruvian Restaurant with Alex and my friend Jason for Foreign Food Friday (albeit on Wednesday, because that was the night we all had off) and during a conversation about extraterrestrials - don't ask - Jason dropped THIS bit of wisdom: "how pathetic would that be, if when we finally make contact the aliens are dressed like the bee gees in 1976, because that's when they picked up our transmissions?"

Because if there is anything worse than unexpected alien visitors, it's unexpected alien visitors wearing polyester pantsuits with flares,platform shoes, and large gold chains nestled in their chest hair. The earth may well stand still in shock.

On the Road. Or Boat.

2010-02-21T13:40:00.000-08:00

Alex's vacation is this week, so we are off for our annual week of sun n' fun in Puerto Rico. We usually do a five-day trip, with 3 days on the west coast on Jobos, and two days on Vieques Island, which is where this pic was taken two years ago. See everyone in a week!

Springing

2010-02-03T08:31:00.000-08:00

It's lovely but cold in Atlanta today, the kind of treacherous weather that makes you start thinking of laying out the garden and maybe putting in a few early herbs, only to have them zapped by the next cold front. Oh, Mother Nature, you will not fool me so easily, even though I have the screen door open - I drove home three days ago from Raleigh in the snow. I will not be tricked.

(And yes, I know you don't actually have to have the screen door open since it is already made of screen. Thank you Adam for pointing that out.)

However, it does feel spring-like (spring-y? whatever) and despite the groundhog's dire prediction I am going to post a lovely flower photo taken in Cordoba, Spain, where all good geraniums go to die. They are everywhere, and they are not subtle. They splash out in great bursts of neon pink and blood red, puncuating the white stone walls down every alley. They are the floral equivilent of a silly hat that makes everyone smile.

Let the wind blow, the sun is still shining....

At Heart, in Paris

2010-01-24T20:14:00.000-08:00

Hope everyone enjoyed their weekend. I am just finishing up for the night here and am going to finish "We All Went To Paris", a history of Americans in Paris, before I go to sleep. So here's a photo I took in the Louvre, looking down from the second floor into the Coeur Napoleon, one of the sculpture galleries at either end of the building. It has a soaring glass ceiling (it was open to the elements at one time) that throws beautiful shadows across the creamy Loire river marble that makes up the courtyard. Since it's away from the Mona Lisa - La Jaconde, as the French call her - it is almost always empty, so it is a perfect place to sit and rest your feet, and contemplate the dreamy, diffuse light.

"Couer" means "Court" in French - as in courtyard - but I always mistranslate it as coeur, which means heart - appropriate for such a romantic city. More French stories to come....

I know what I saw...

2010-01-19T19:42:00.000-08:00

There is a phenomenon, hotly debated among boaters, fishermen, beach bums, etc. - called the Green Flash. If you spend any time watching sunsets over the ocean, you have heard of it. In it's simplest terms, it is a tiny flash of green light that you see when the sun sets. Or, I should say, HOPE to see - the Green Flash is rare, and people hotly debate if it's even real. You can go your whole life watching the sun go down and never see one. Other people claim that if you know what to look for, you can see them all the time.

The scientific explanation is that when you watch the sunset, the last rays of the sun, angling through the atmosphere (I would say "up", but that' s not really scientific) reflect off of moisture in the air, and refract, turning the light green for a moment. Why green? Because the wavelength of the light is in the blue-green range, but the atmosphere filters out the blue and leaves the green.

There is (as always with a sea-borne phenomena) a list of superstitions and portents attached to the Flash. People say it is the soul of sailors, or that it signals that the Flying Dutchman is near (they had fun with this at the end of the third Pirates of the Caribbean movie), or that it fortells a change in the weather. There's even an old Robert Burns story where he claims "those who have seen the green flash will never again err in matters of the heart".

I prefer the more common superstition, that seeing the green flash brings good luck and prosperity. Probably I am projecting here, because I always need a little bit more of both. But in any case, I never saw the flash, so whatever it brought, I wasn't having any of it anyway.

Until....

The sunset photo above was taken on my trip to Greece last fall, on Paros Island in the Cyclades. I spent most of my trip island hopping (terrible, I know) and this was the last night of the island portion of the trip. I was down by the port, taking photos of this sunset - by far the best sunset of the trip, and I was out shooting them every night - watching people feed the inevitable sly cats, watching the ferries come in, taking some more photos.

Just as the last sliver of sun sank into the sea, I took the camera down from my eye, but was still looking out towards the horizon. And there - just in that instant, so quickly that I saw it both through the camera and with my own eyes - it was. Flash. I saw it, and in the instant my brain registered it, it was gone.

Now, I am not the most reliable of people when it comes to visuals. I am forever "seeing" things out of the corner of my eye, I wear coke-bottle glasses or contact lenses that should come with a seeing eye dog, and my hair is always out of control (never more so than at the beach) and getting in my eyes and obscuring my vision (which I will claim is why I am always walking into things). To call me a reputable eye-witness is laughable. But.

I have played that instant over again and again in my head, and it always plays back the same. I saw it. Plain, ordinary me, who is about as average as.... I don't know but I am pretty damn average. Me. Hardly the sort of person who sees extraordinary astronomical events, but there you go. I took that camera down from my eyes, looked at the horizon, and there it was. l remember looking around to see if anyone else had seen it, but no one seemed to notice but me. Had I imagined it? Was it just the reflection off the camera lens?

I don't think so. I saw it. I know I did. My last night in the islands, in a place I loved and knew in my heart I would never see again, the sun flashed a green petticoat, a tiny glance back over it's shoulder. Just for me.

I know what I saw.

The First Ever Constant Holiday Giveaway!

2010-01-17T18:58:00.000-08:00

I recently ordered a book from the lovely people at Smoky Mountain Books, called "How To Travel Practically Anywhere - The Ultimate Planning Guide" by Susan Stellan, published in 2006. I am a big fan of the theory that planning the trip is half the fun - I am really not happy unless I am surrounded by lists and maps and post-its and pictures, puzzling out a new destination - and somehow, being me and able to mess up the simplest thing, including an internet order, I managed to order two copies. The nice people at SMB's, who cannot recognize senility when they see it, obligingly sent me two copies.

Now, as much as I looooooove planning, I cannot use two books. Even a person as lazy as I am cannot see leaving one copy in the den and one in the kitchen to save the effort of carrying it from room to room. (Though I considered it.) SO! I have decided to put it to good use: it will be the prize in the first ever Constant Holiday Giveaway!

All you have to do to enter is put a note in my comments or send me an email telling me your favorite vacation EVER. How easy is that? A caveman could do it. And I will pick a winner, totally at random, because everything else in my life is random, so why not this?

So comment away, or send an email to constantholiday@gmail.com, and get to winning!

Oops

2010-01-17T18:37:00.000-08:00

Just in case you haven't seen the posters, public service announcements, and radio commercials (I guess you hear those rather than see them) about the dangers of texting while driving, here's what they are saying: DON'T.

But also, if you are an uncoordinated clown like I am, refrain from walking while texting. Because while it may not lead to automotive chaos and destruction, it may lead to you walking through the airport, on your way home from somewhere, feverishly tapping your thumbs in a humorous story to someone you could tell that story to in fifteen minutes, and then walking onto the little airport tram without hearing "The DOORS are CLOSING and WILL NOT reopen".

At which point the doors WILL close, nearly snipping off your nose, and you will look up startled and see a tramful of people snickering at you, as you stand on the wrong side of the doors (fortunately still in possession of your nose), reduced to waiting for the next tram.

And feeling silly.

(Which you will then text about.)

A Mini-Story

2010-01-03T11:02:00.000-08:00

Just to start the new year (two thousand and ten IN THA HOUSE! whooo) on a fun note, here's a quick mini-story from this summer - not enough for a big post, just an appetizer. A fun-size, if you will.

I went to Savannah this summer for a shoot and got there early enough that I could go down to Tybee Island and watch the sunset, something I have done approximately 15 zillion times, being a resident of Atlanta, but somehow never get tired of. It's not the greatest beach I've ever been to - I grew up in Florida, so the bar is pretty high - but what it lacks in pristine white-sandedness it gains in having the lovely Tybee community around it, where I keep swearing I will rent a beach house for a week one summer, and, also, in being the nearest ocean to land-locked Atlanta.

So after watching the classic Tybee sunset, all wispy clouds and tangerine skies, watching the pod of dolphins that frolic near the lighthouse cavort in the sleepy evening light and some little kid hit her brother with a sand shovel, I headed back to Savannah proper, and on the way off-island (all this beach talk is going to make me listen to Jimmy Buffet for the rest of the day, and it's nineteen degrees outside) I saw the sign in the (horrible) picture above.

You can't really see it, but it says, "Fresh Local Shrimp - FRYED". Not Fried. FRYED. Which for some reason amused me so thoroughly that I had to whip the car around and go back to see if I could get some of these locally prepared misspellings for myself.

(And for those of you who think I am mocking, allow me to say that it took me five tries to spell "thoroughly" above, and I am by no means confident that it's even correct now.)

Sadly, the Gerald's catering truck was closed, and deserted except for the enormous fiberglass pig that was standing beside it, forever snuffling the grass for some plasticine tidbit. But that just gives me a reason, a quest, if you will, to go back. Like I need one.

Assuming I can find it. True to form, on an island - an ISLAND - with only one road on or off, I got lost on the way back to Savannah (trip number fifteen zillion and one) and it took me two hours to get back to Savannah and my hotel. Next time, perhaps, a dictionary - and a map.

Happy (Constant) Holidays!

2009-12-30T05:51:00.000-08:00

Here's a late Merry Christmas, Happy Hannukah, Kwanzaa, Yule and Festivus greeting to all Constant Holiday readers! Thank you so much for keeping up with me this year.

The week between Christmas and New Years has been designated "catch up with all that stuff you've been meaning to do and I mean NOW, cuss", so the regularly scheduled post (like anything around here is "regularly scheduled") will be reduced to the Photo of the Week while I run around like a dog chasing it's tail.

Photo: view up into the glass atrium of the Galleriew Lafayette, a very fancy department store in Paris where I can't afford to do much but ogle and be spritzed by perfume ladies. Or mademoiselles de perfume, depending on how you look at it. It's beautiful nonetheless.

(This photo is from last Christmas (2008) and I sort of remember hearing that the Galleries may close. Or maybe that the Samaritain? Either way it means I am far to involved in French Department stores.)

Happy New Year to all! Be safe, and many blessings.

-trace

Stir Crazy

2009-12-16T02:42:00.001-08:00

Ever feel like you are climbing the walls? I sure do this week. And not as attractively as the flowers in this photo.

Bougainvilla, Portosissi, Crete 2009

Big News, though - I recently had some calendars designed by the fine folks at Snapfish, and they came out GREAT! I am thinking of offering them for sale on the site. Email me or leave a note in the comments - I have one for Greece and one for Spain, and I will post the photos for each to Flickr if anyone is interested.

And up we go....

2009-12-07T09:31:00.000-08:00

It's Monday! time to start climbing the ladder again. But remember, take time to smell the flowers on the way.

(Even if that's a cheesy expression)

Stairway, Portosisi, Crete, 2009

The Great Egg Taste-Off Challenge!

2009-12-04T14:50:00.000-08:00

First of all, I'd like to apologize for the disturbing resemblance of the eggs in the photo above to the owl in the Hooter's logo. It weirds me out too, I promise.

Second, I suppose this is the moment to out myself (Just like Meredith Baxter-Birney! Only without the cruise ship full of women) as a closet chicken-keeper, since I haven't mentioned them before on this blog (I think). I do talk about them all the time on Facebook, to the dismay of my FB friends, many of whom have helpfully suggested that the way to deal with chickens is to go down to Publix and buy them off the rottisimat. The mojo flavor is particularly good.

At any rate, we (I) bought two chickens in July, and for the last several months they have been running amok in my yard, because when I got them home and put them in the lovely chicken coop I had made for them, they escaped in, oh, aproximately 15 seconds. We never could catch them either. Wily things they are.

But over a few months we ( I like to pretend my boyfriend is anything but appalled by all this) got them accustomed to us, and eventually one of them would even eat out of my hand. They got so used to me feeding them that they will now follow me around the yard like a pair of oddly feathered, diminutive puppies. But they got a little too exploratory (I came home from Amsterdam a couple of weeks ago and found them halfway down the block, cheerily eating someone's begonias) so we persuaded them to take up residence in a NEW, improved, larger pen (a huge 6X8 dog kennel with a hutch inside). This had the additional benefit that we can finally get eggs - we suspected they'd been laying but could never find any, and now they have a special nest box for the purpose.

Amelia, the shyer of our two (Greta is big on personality, if you can consider a chicken to have a personality) promptly showed her approval of the new digs by laying an egg. My God, I was so excited I nearly laid one myself. She has since laid about a half a dozen (Greta's energy apparently goes into making lots of noise and strewing feathers everywhere) and with that first, precious egg (raised at a cost of approximately $135.74, if you include the shower curtain I bought for $1.99 at Publix and am using to keep the rain off them) we did a taste test. My Boyfriend was willing to help with that bit.

As you can see, there is no mistaking the different eggs in their raw state. The egg on the left is an organic egg from the grocery store, and the right hand egg is ours. The home-grown egg is visibly yellower, the yolk stands up sharply from the white, and the white is much tighter and rounder.

We (I) carefully cooked the two eggs separately, using the same method (scrambling), in the same pan (carefully washed between), gently decanted them in bowls, and then I closed my eyes (no peeking!) and Alex patiently gave me a sample of each to taste, and asked me a careful series of questions, including:

- does one egg taste markedly different from the other?

- does one have a different mouthfeel or aroma?

- if you had to be stuck on a desert island with only one egg, would it be sample A or B?

- can we have breakfast now?

And the results are in, and they are......

I can't tell you.

Not because I am sworn to secrecy, but because the two eggs TASTED EXACTLY THE SAME. I almost just wrote that "eggsactly", btw.

No kidding. My carefully raised, organic, no pesticide, specially fed chicken, whom I adore, gives me eggs that taste no different than what comes of the shelf at the market. Oh, the horror. To be so ordinary! Which is not to say it wasn't delicious, and we didn't enjoy it for breakfast. But I was stunned. They were literally interchangable. No difference at all.

This is quite a blow to "my home-made is better" philosophy. I'll have to turn in my foodie membership. And what happens if Michael Pollan finds out? He may berate me for being a bad egg-taster. And he might bite me. We'd better not tell anyone, ok?

Photo of the day...err, Week

2009-11-13T15:10:00.000-08:00

This has been a busy busy week (when are they not, I'd like to know) so the Photo of the Week may be all you are getting. But it's a nice one - the cupola of a beautiful church on Paros Island in Greece, from my trip there a few weeks ago. The building is actually still under construction - the exterior is still pure white, rather than blue and white, and the interior frescos are unfinished. So eventually the white areas you see around the painting now will all be decorated. I kind of like it as is, though - floating peacefully in it's white frame.

Have a good weekend!

Cookbook Review - Halloween Special Edition

2009-10-30T07:36:00.000-07:00

So this it's time for this week's Cookbook Review. Where are all the OTHER week's reviews, I hear you asking. Listen, I am a busy person and not every week gets it's own review. Some weeks are not that special and some weeks I just wind up being a heavy Chick-Fil-A consumer. BUT! This week IS special because it's halloween, and so we are cooking from the book "Bones" by Jennifer McLagan, to fit in with the whole scary skeleton theme. Whooooo!

"Bones" is delicious - strictly for carnivores only, though. The vegetarians among us may take umbrage at the description of how gelatin is made (don't read before eating jell-o), how cooking with bone-in meat keeps a dish moist and flavorful, and most importantly, what a marrow spoon is for. Mmmmm. Your shins will feel weird for about an hour after you read that bit.

The recipes are great - I've eaten most of the lamb chapter, even though eating lamb makes me feel slightly guilty - and they are mostly my favorite kind of food, which is to say things you stick in a roasting pan with a half a bottle of wine and some veggies and let them cook for hours, until the house smells so good you are ready eat the furniture. Don't do that though. The book is divided up into chapters by the actual critter it came from, and in the beginning of the chapter there is an illustration that show said creature as a transparent butcher's diagram, so you can see where, say, that beef shank you plan to rub with olive oil, braise, and serve with citrus gremolata, was originally attached to the owner's body. Did you know the "picnic shoulder" on a pig is not actually the shoulder at all, but the lower end of the front leg? I had no idea. The artist who did the drawings left the head on, so to speak - it is rendered normally instead of the skeleton effect, and so as you study the diagram of the cow it seems to be looking at you out of the corner of it's eye. Maybe it wonders why you are drooling. The lamb chapter features a drawing of a full grown sheep, ostensibly because there is a mutton recipe in there but really to save the sensibilities of weenies like me.

"Bones" (whoooo!) also has a series of vingettes about uses for bones, bones in art, and the way bones and words for bones have become part of language - did you know fibula is latin for pin, becuase Romans used that bone to make clothing pins - and a great collection of expressions that mention bones - I feel it in my bones. I am worn to the bone. Rolling the bones. Hard work breaks no bones. And so on. They show how integral bone was at an earlier time in history, when there were no plastics and the flexibility of bone gave it a thousand practical uses, from buttons to tools, to pins to jewelry, yet retained its mystical significance and was used in magic, superstition, and medicine. There is an expression "bone useful", i.e. good for all manner of things, and yes, it was.

Photo of the day

2009-10-15T14:46:00.000-07:00

Seville, Spain, Spring 2007. May be my favorite photo from that trip, and it's literally like the third picture I took after arriving.

What doorway will you walk through today?

Video Test, 1, 2, baaaaa

2009-10-15T09:29:00.000-07:00

This is just a test to see if I can post video to my blog, as I haven't done it before. How cute is this goat, though? He's from my recent trip to Greece. (If he were talking you could tell that.)

More Car Adventures

2009-10-14T21:37:00.001-07:00

So I am on my trip to Greece, and I am driving a little two-door rental car. It's got 4,000 miles on it and runs like it has 400,000. Greek renters are not kind to the local cars. It is - this became a theme - bright, canary yellow.

So here I am on Paros Island, happily tooling around in my cheery yellow rental car, and I decide to explore Paros Town - the main town on the island, also the port - on foot for a while. It's a cute little town, I highly recommend it. White washed walls, cats everywhere, bougainvilla to make you weep, it's so pretty. I spend most of the afternoon walking around the pedestrian-only section of the town, all tangled walkways and narrow steps up to surprise views of the sea. It's perfection, really.

And eventually, I get tired and head back to my car, which is right where I left it in the public parking lot. But something is wrong. My key won't turn in the lock. In fact the key doesn't really even want to slide in smoothly. What the....?

I am getting a little flustered now. I turn the key upside down and try again. Still no luck. Crap! what is wrong??? I'm getting hot, and frustrated now as well. (Given that I am writing this back home in Atlanta where it has been 50 degrees and raining for four days, the mental image of that sunny, blindingly bright parking lot comes back to me like the wave of a hallucination). Okay, I am really close to the rental agency, thank god, I can walk over there and explain that I somehow broke the key, or the lock, and hope they don't charge me a million euro to fix it....

Just as I am running this worst-case scenario through my mind, I realize there is a german woman calling to me from across the street. Has she been trying to get my attention for long? She must have been, because she and her friends are looking at me with concern and hurrying across the street. I catch the last few words they are saying..."our car?"

Oh, my god. "Our car." THIS IS NOT MY CAR.....

I look up and see MY car - a virtually identical, bright yellow two door (the rental agency must buy them by the gross) exactly where I had left it... one row over.

I look back to my right and see the nice german ladies in stitches, laughing at my confusion. At least they had a sense of humor about it. It's probably not everyday some clueless American woman tries to steal your rental car... by mistake!

The Joy? of Cooking

2009-10-14T21:01:00.000-07:00

How'd you like to make dinner for the people at THAT table, hmmmm? It seats, like, thirty per side I think. It's actually in the "Emperor's Rooms" in the Louvre, which I highly recommend, even though it's about seventy-five miles from the Mona Lisa. Seriously, you should go see it. These people lived LARGE.

I wouldn't want to cook for them though. Have you ever heard of the famous French chef Flauvel? He was a cook in the 1700's (assuming I am remembering this story correctly) and when the fish he ordered arrived late for a banquet he was so distraught he stabbed himself in the stomach and died. I don't ever want to take my cooking that seriously.

I do love to cook, though. I am a very process-oriented cook; I love the stirring and the mixing and the chopping as much as I like the eating, which is saying quite a bit. I own a food processor, but it languishes under the counter while I dice onions contentedly by hand. It's almost a meditative act - if one can meditate while messing up the kitchen and weeping from onion fumes.

This is not to say that all of my kitchen experimentation goes swimmingly. I read a lot of food blogs - A LOT - and I love when people talk about how they just grabbed a bit of this and a bit of that and next thing you know they have dinner from the Cordon Bleu. That never happens to me. When I decide to experiment in the kitchen - even if I am making something I've made before - the timeline usually goes something like this:

- decide to make, oh, chicken with raspberry sauce over pasta, something I have made approximately ten thousand times.

- cheat completely by buying one of those rottisserie chickens from the Publix. Seriously, are those things the best invention since sliced bread or what? If I had to pick the greatest invention of all time, and was given the choice between Publix Rotisserie chicken, and Dr. Salk and his pesky vaccines, I know which way I'm leaning. You can't eat a vaccine.

- decide to have bread and cheese for appetizer, since even a poodle could put that together

- realize the cheese I plan to use has mold growing on one edge.

- scrape mold off. It's cheese, right? It's not like it can go bad. It IS bad.

- open some wine. alcohol content will protect us against dodgy cheese, surely

- usually I make the raspberry sauce (equal parts rasperry jam, mustard, and butter, if you must know) in the microwave, but tonight I think I will make it on the stovetop, just for kicks. I don't know why I don't make it that way all the time, really.

- decide to grill veggies to go with chicken. Shoot, that means I have to light the grill.

- grill filled with ash. Wet ash, since it's rained since we last used it and we left the vents open. Ugh.

- sauce is simmering away merrily on the stove. In fact, it's spattering all over the stovetop. THAT's why I always make it in the microwave. Ugh.

- Shoot, forgot to start the pasta water

- drink some more wine

- slosh the marinade for the veggies on the counter

- get veggies on grill, come back inside just in time to prevent sauce from burning. Whew!

- "taste sauce for seasoning", burn tongue. Soothe with more wine

- set table with appetizer. Realize my boyfriend has been eating the bread while we cook and now there is only cheese.

- eat cheese. still good even w/out bread

- go to drain pasta, find colander is full of peaches meant for last week's jam project

- eeww, they are all soft now

- plate chicken, drizzle artistically with sauce. Sit down to eat. Why yes, I will have more wine, thank you....

I can get it for you Wholesale...

2009-10-12T15:00:00.001-07:00

My favorite story so far from my trip to Greece -

I got off of the ferryboat in Santorini (on Santorini? Whatever) and wandered down the street looking at the rental cars. I picked the place where the guy out front seemed the most enthusiastic. If you can't reward enthusiasm, what have we become, really?

The conversation goes like this:

Me: "What's the cheapest rental car you have?"

Rental Dude: "I can give you that Jeep Suzuki for 30 Euro a day."

Me: "Do you have anything cheaper?"

RD: "Well, I have this little two door car for 25 Euro... it's yellow. (points to a photo on a chart) But the Jeep is nicer."

Me: "Yes, but I'm on a tight budget, so I think I'll go with the car for the 25 Euros."

RD: "Are you sure? The Jeep even has the convertible top. It's VERY nice."

Me: "No, I'm good. I'll take the yellow car."

RD: "You are clearly a nice person. You deserve to have the Jeep. I am going to give you the Jeep for 25 Euro a day."

Me: "Really?"

RD: "Yes."

Me: "You don't have to do that. The car is fine."

RD: "No, you are a nice person and you should have the Jeep. And, also, the yellow car is already rented. Enjoy your stay in Santorini!"

Cuba Madness, or Dinner tonight will be partial take-out

2009-05-28T18:48:00.000-07:00

Nine Thirty PM. Just home from Dance Class. Did something to my neck while talking on the cell phone to my mom. While driving, natch. There will Be. No. Cooking.

Except to fry some plantains, quick, and melt some butter and add orange and lime juice to it. Pour it over some leftover chicken. Listen to Ricky Martin. (Ok, he's Puerto Rican. I can't find my Buena Vista Social Club CD.) Eat.

Aaaahhhh... Much better.

The Favorite Purchase

2009-03-25T19:38:00.000-07:00

I am not an enormous souvenier person. I actually tend to buy most of my souveniers in the grocery store, so even though I am a carry on person on the way out, I inevitably have to check my bag on the way back, because I am laden with bottles of olive oil, honey, fancy syrups and jams, whatever. My purchases never stray far from the kitchen. I went to Paris (god, I love saying that, it's so worth getting ripped off at the currency exchange) last fall, and I even came back with two mini-bottles of champagne in my bag, because I had bought them at the grocery store across from my apartment, and I was too cheap to throw the two I didn't drink out. I spent the entire (endless) flight worried that they were going to explode in my luggage from the pressure changes in the belly of the plane.

My favorite souvenier, though, is a tiny green tube. It's a lipstick that I bought on a one-day tour of Tangier, in Morocco, on a day trip from Spain. It's made of the cheapest green plastic imaginable, and the lipstick inside is BRIGHT GREEN. This is not because Moroccan women have a Kermit the Frog fetish. The lipstick is made of henna, and it reacts with your body chemistry to turn bright fuschia pink. It is, in fact, slightly reminiscent of what a drag queen might wear. I mean, we're talking VIVID.

I love it though, even though I almost never wear it (and then the lightest possible application), even though it sits, like a tiny green monolith, on my dressing table. I pick it up and remember that day - riding a camel (briefly), seeing a snake charmer, watching the men in their Arab robes walk with their hands clasped behind their backs, walk in the classic, contemplative manner of the Arab world - was I really that exotic person? Did I really go to AFRICA?

And then I put it back on the table and put on something more subtle. Something that suits my everyday life a little better. But I see it there, in its cheap green plastic finery, winking at me from behind the lip gloss. It whispers to me. You are not so ordinary, it says...

I choose to believe it.

On The Cusp

2008-11-30T14:23:00.001-08:00

Today it is 40 degrees in Atlanta, raining, and I think something is wrong with my bees. Sigh. It never ends, does it.

But tomorrow I leave for Paris, so life is looking up... of course it's forty degrees and raining there, too, but I can pretend to be Gene Kelley and do "Singin' in the Rain". Until the gendarmes come take me away.

So until then, I will meditate on this lovely flower, from the gardens of the Alahambra, in Granada, Spain. Taken last year in May.

And practice my tap dancing.

Bigness

2008-11-24T05:33:00.000-08:00

Seriously, they don't call it the GRAND Canyon for nothing.

Tracey's big adventure

2008-08-18T07:43:00.000-07:00

72 hours in the Film Business... a cautionary tale.

Tracey’s Day
Volume XVII:
Olympian Heights of Stupidity

7.30am - Director arrives from out of town, hates hotel. Has to be moved

8.00 am – Change director hotel reservations

8.30 – craft service falls thru. No snacks, no show

10.05 – need to leave for tech scout at 10.30

10.07 – call new hotel for credit auth fax

10.10 - need to leave for scout

10.12 – hotel fax comes

10.15 – seriously, need to leave for scout. Gonna be late

10.17 – no time to do credit auth, have to do when get back

10.20 am – finally leave for scout.

10.25 – stop for gas. Beyond lateness now

11.00 – Arrive at scout. Everyone else late too

11.00-3pm – follow Producer around at scout, pretending I know what’s going on

3.30 pm – find new craft service person, yay. Snack crisis averted

4.00 p – PA’s leave to get cube truck, as camera has to be picked up before 5.30

4..15p – Accountant calls from camera house. Production company owes 7,000 dollars in
back bills. No camera gear for us til it’s paid

4.20 – Call accountant at production company. Claims to have no idea what camera
house is talking about

4.22 – Art Department calls, has massive hot dog cart that needs to be picked up before
5.30

4.30 – Camera House Accountant forwards unpaid invoice

4.35 – Oh, THAT $7,000. Here’s a credit card to put it on.

4.45 – Credit card declined.

4.50 – EP calls bank, gets cc cleared

5pm – Finalize deals with camera department. “You’re so helpful,” they say. I assure
them that I LOVE the camera department. It’s the WARDROBE department I hate. A
percipient statement, as it turns out

6.pm – PA locks keys in the 15 pass van

6.02 – With it running!?!?!?!

6.10 – Call AAA.

10pm – place call #2342 to Producer. Not responding

11pm – pack it in. go to sleep.

11.15 – phone rings. Sound guy claims didn’t get map.

11.20 – pack it in. go to sleep

11.30 – phone rings. Security guy wants to double check call times.

11.45 – third time’s the charm. Go to sleep.

12.45 am – phone rings. Driver from Hotel car service says wardrobe girl’s flight has
landed. Sadly no sight of wardrobe girl.

12.50 am – Driver calls again, says hotel has called him and wardrobe girl has already
checked in.

12.51 – Call hotel to confirm check in. Turns out to not be correct.

1am – Call driver, beg him to stay until I can find out where wardrobe girl is.

1.10 – 1.30 – On phone with Delta, trying to find out if Wardrobe girl is on any flight,
anywhere. Delta says she has canceled her flight and taken a voucher. Wardrobe
department: completely MIA.

1.30 – Hotel Driver gives up after two hour wait.

1.40 – Producer calls, just to see how things are going. Apparently has not received any of
the 4,000 panicked messages I have left her this evening.

2.00 am – pack it in. go to sleep

2.15 am – wardrobe girl calls, is bitch beyond belief. Wants to know where her car
service is.

2.16 am – Add wardrobe girl to “hold grudge against for life” list. Funny how that list
isn’t getting any shorter

2.17 am – Remember earlier conversation with camera guy. Who knew I had the gift of
prophecy?

2.20am – fifth time’s the charm. Go to sleep

4.15 am – alarm goes off. Who am I kidding? Reset for 5.15 am, sacrifice hairstyle.

4.16 am - And showering

5.15 am – Morning so soon?

5.20 am – early pa calls looking for call times

5.50 am – early pa shows up, smells of liquor from 3 feet away

6 am – second pa calls in sick

6.10 am – third pa calls to tell me he has left his phone home. Calling from someone
else’s phone, obviously

6.30 am – get hopelessly disoriented on one way streets downtown. Lack of sleep
possibly a factor

6.40 - fourth pa 20 mins late

6.55 – fifth pa, 35 mins late

7.05 am – fifth pa sits down to eat breakfast, despite major lateness. Anytime you feel
like working, buddy….

9.30 a,m – Client shows up with her chiuaua mix

10.00 – Female star talent shows up one hour late, with her yorkie in tow

10.15 – Female star’s ‘Manager’ (ie best friend from High school) shows up, clutching
tiny maltese puppy

11 am – number of little rat dogs now running around in restaurant we are using for talent holding: five. Number of
health codes we are breaking: uncounted

11.30 am - Male star talent shows up, four hours late. Mercifully dogless.

12.00 pm – Client leaves her rat dog with me to babysit – says she will “settle down and
sleep”. Fat chance

12.55 pm – Dog has been fussing constantly for an hour. Perhaps a walk will help

12.57 pm – Get ten feet out of door, dog goes into seizure,falls to the ground choking
and foaming at the mouth. Grab dog off of ground and rush into restaurant, frantically
calling for help on the radio. Dog pees all over me.

12.59 pm – Client comes running into restaurant, just as I get dog semi revived. Casually
mentions that dog is epileptic. “I can’t believe I didn’t tell you that!” Neither can I...

1.15 – send pa in search of replacement pants

1.30 pm – Lunch

1.31 pm – Morning talent released, all come to me looking to get paid. Guess lunch will
have to wait.

2.15 pm – Caterer comes looking for payment, since lunch is over. Still havent’t eaten.

2.20 pm – Finally fix self plate

2.22.pm – Walk outside to tell Producer something before I sit down and eat. Get asked to
watch her dog while she gets her food. Dog eyes plate hungrily.

2.35 – Helen comes back with locations scout. Scout Bumps into me, knocking my
plate into the street. Clearly not destined to eat lunch.

2.40 – get fresh plate.

2.41 - Food not all that good actually

2.45 – Still no sign of replacement pants.

2..50 – Producer asks me to watch her dog while she goes to do something. Not the best idea
under the circumstances

3.00 – Talent that left before lunch still needed. Oops.

3.10 – covered in dog drool now. Nice addition to the pee

3.20 – Helen returns, takes dog. Considerably relieved.

3.30 – WHERE ARE MY NEW PANTS?

3.35 – Jessica in Art Department tells me I look like I’ve lost weight. Love, Love, Love
the art department.

3.50. – new pants arrive, fit perfectly. Praise God. Actually nicer than the pants I was
wearing.

4.00 – Production shocked – shocked! that it might rain. At 4 pm. In the summer. In the
south. JUST LIKE IT DOES EVERY OTHER DAY.

5.00 – Helen leaves to supervise the casting for the other job she’s producing this week.

5.15 – Client comes in wanting to know where we can find playback gear, which they did
not want to pay for originally so we didn’t order it. At 5 pm on a Saturday?

5.30 – 6.pm – Frantically call all over town for playback gear. No can do

6 pm – order dinner for crew – 8 large pizzas

7pm – look at large, mutinous crew. Double pizza order

8pm – Go to Female star Talent and tell her her driver will pick her up at 7 am for her
return flight. She informs me she doesn’t want to go back tomrrow, will return on
Monday instead.

8.30 – Call travel agent at home on Saturday night to change this bimbo’s flight. This is
going to be a pleasant conversation

10.30 – Camera wraps, 2.5 hours behind schedule. Start cleaning up the mess

11.45pm – pick up last scrap of trash in street. Roll out!

12 am – Meet Helen and Marc for drink at local pub. Just one.

12.10am – Well, maybe two.

12.15am – Gosh that Phelps kid is fast

12.30 – head home. Sleeeeeep

7am – up and at em!

7.30 – Call hotel and cancel female talent’s hotel –to-airport shuttle

8.15 – Pa who is supposed to be picking up first airport run at 9 am is not here to pick up
the van yet. Disconcerting

8.30 am – Said PA calls, looking for directions to my house. Clearly not making the 9am
pickup

8.40 am – Call hotel, arrange for hotel-airport shuttle for 9am dude

9am – PA finally shows up, casually mentions he stopped partying about 90 minutes ago.
Why, Why, Why would you mention that? To your boss? When you are half an hour late
for work?

9.30 am – Get call from Hotel. Female Talent’s yorkie howled and barked all night. Now
charging us a pet fee, $200

9.45 - Also, there were two dogs. In a non-pet hotel.

10am – Get call from Producer, Client has realized she left her dog carrier with us, needs it
to make her noon flight.

10.15 – Call PA, tell him to come here and get the dog carrier

10.40 am – PA leaves for hotel with carrier. Client not making that noon flight, that ‘s for
sure

11 am – Client left for airport before he got there. PA now has to follow her to airport

12pm – PA calls, is at airport with client. Great, except that means he’ll miss the 12.15
hotel to airport pickup we have scheduled.

12.05 – Call hotel shuttle people. Again.

12.15 – start cringing whenever phone rings

1pm – Stop bailing. Ship going down anyway….

Breaaaaaddd....

2008-07-06T07:56:00.000-07:00

Thursday night we went to the Horizon Theater in Atlanta to see the new musical, "Song of the Living Dead" which is a musical love story about Zombies. It is absolutely hilarious and we laughed ourselves sick (easier than usual because it's pretty gory) and I beg you, beseech you, if you live anywhere in the Southern half of the Northern Hemisphere to go and see it. Twice.

This morning I went to the Farmer's Market to do, well, the marketing, and I picked up a loaf of hot, fresh French Baguette bread, and as usual I didn't even make it out to the car before I was tearing off one end and stuffing it in my mouth, like I'd never eaten before. Like THAT's likely. And I realized that as I was stuffing my face I was mmmming and yuuummmming and moaning "mmmBreaaaadddd..." and I sounded EXACTLY like the Zombies in the play when they were moaning "Braaaaaiiinnnsss...."

Which is pretty funny when you think about it.

Now with Added Smoke Flavor

2008-06-30T14:14:00.001-07:00

I went out on Saturday night to see Big City Burlesque, one of the retro-burlesque troupes in town (there are three). Not being attentive to the flyer, I showed up about forty-five minutes early, so I got my ticket and walked over to a local cafe to grab a snack.

As I sat, idly perusing the freebie newspaper I'd picked up on the way in, I noticed vaguely that the cafe was awfully smokey. I was on the patio so I assumed someone was smoking at an adjoining table. Or maybe some heavy diesel burner was going by. God, it WAS smokey. What on earth...?

I glanced up to realize, I had set my own newspaper on fire with the candle on the table. Aaargh! Newsprint burns quite fiercely in case you've wondered. I blew on it, but that only made it worse. Fortunately I had the presence of mind to roll the paper up quickly and smother it. And fortunately the tables around me were filled with jaded hipsters who apparently did not notice my attempt at inadvertent self-immolation, because they would have had to stop comparing their eco-chic outfits in ordere to do so.

Still, embarrassing. Thank god the waiter was stoned and I wasn't wearing polyester. I'll be able to go back.

Once again proving I don't have to go far from home to get myself in trouble.....

Weirder and Weirder

2008-06-18T17:57:00.000-07:00

And just in case babysitting dormant butterflies isn't enough, I just pushed back from my desk and thought,

"Oh, that reminds me. I have to feed the bees tonight."

When did I become the fucking Bug Whisperer?

(Photo of my bees, above. Not stolen from anybody.)

FlutterBy

2008-06-18T17:47:00.000-07:00

We are doing a butterfly release for one of our shots on Friday, so I am in charge of babysitting 3 dozen dormant monarch butterflies that have to be kept in a cooler at 62 degrees for the next two days. Then I have to put them in a special box, warm them up, and we poof! let them go.

Seriously, I have the weirdest job in the world.

(Picture cheerfully stolen from MonarchWatch.com)

The Unbearable Lateness of Being

2008-06-12T07:41:00.000-07:00

Today's my last day on the home schedule - I start a new project tomorrow, and even though it's not one I'm really interested in, I am so glad to be gainfully employed again that I'm sharpening my mechanical pencil and dusting off the adding machine. (There's some irony to the fact that I failed algebra repeatedly as a schoolgirl, and now make my living almost entirely with math).

But the big change is the schedule. When I am working at home, I slowly shift my body clock backwards, closer to my natural circadian (is that the right word?) rhythm, and closer to my boyfriend's, who runs a restaurant and is always up til three in the morning. Within a couple of days I, too, am sleeping until 8.30 AM and thinking vaguely that I should turn in about midnight.

But oh, once production starts again - ouch. I have to be in the office by 8.30, showered and dressed and orally dentifriced, alert and ready. Since I'm a slow waker, and I have to drive half an hour to get there, that means the alarm's going off tomorrow at six. Ugh. I haven't seen a single-digit wake-up call in a month.

This....will be ugly.

The Top Five Meals Ever

2008-06-11T12:49:00.000-07:00

Ac-cent-u-ate the Pos-i-tive...

That's an old Johnny Mercer tune, for those of you not familiar with it. Jazz N Swing - it's your musical heritage, people. Look into it.

Anyway, enough ranting. In an attempt to do an upbeat post, to take my mind off my painful, bee-induced disfigurement (hopefully mending, as we speak) I am going to do a roundup of the best five meals I have ever eaten. No particular order.

First: Honey Roasted Leg of Lamb at the Santa Clara restaurant in Seville, Spain:

Seriously, probably the best piece of meat I have ever put in my mouth, and I say that as someone who drools as I drive by cows on the highway. Sweet, but not too sweet, rich sauce, and melting, fall apart on the plate lamb. Perfection. I can't even remember what it came with, because my mind was so blown by the lamb. I have to learn to make that one day. And the setting - an outdoor, courtyard restaurant, surrounded by orange trees and jasmine and the walls of a 18th century convent - I felt like I was in a movie. (photo above).

Second: Tapas at Gervais and Vine, in (no, I'm serious) Columbia, South Carolina

I reiterate: Columbia, South Carolina. Not exactly the ass end of nowhere, but certainly the lower back of nowhere. Tiny, packed to the gills tapas place - I was there alone, I was in Columbia for work but my companion stayed in that night - I had perfect grilled scallops, an Ozark Pork Belly with cherry sauce that almost knocked me off my chair, and something else I can't remember except that it was good. Only the potato pancake was boring. And for once I didn't go back to the hotel and pass out, overstuffed.

Third: The first time I ever ate real, pit smoked, southern bar-b-que

He took me to a place called Daddy D'z, in Atlanta. It was our first or second date. I was wearing a white sundress. Was I high? Listen, until then I didn't know from Barbeque. I thought it was what you did on the Weber in the backyard. But that night I fell madly, passionately in love...and now I eat BBQ all the time.

(and He's still hot stuff too)

Fourth: Beef Bourginonne, which I cannot spell, from Julia Child's "The Way to Cook"

A best meal I can make whenever I want too, since I make it at home. MMMMMMMMMmmmmm.

Fifth: Chicken and Chorizo Stew at La Basque in San Francisco

I ate this until my stomach hurt, and then I kept eating it. Oh, the humanity!

Oh, how I suffer for my art....And there are a few things that tie for Honorable Mention, including the meal I had at the original Carrabas' in Houston, Texas, the barbeque at Maurice's in Columbia South Carolina (there's that damn town again), and the coleslaw at both Sam's BBQ in Florence Alabama (seriously, now THAT'S the ass end of nowhere) and at Taqueria del Sol in Atlanta, Ga. Both totally different, but equally hhmmmmnnnnyummy. Puerco pibil in Mexico, in some tiny town near Chichen'Itza....onion soup at the foot of the Eiffel Tower in Paris...

Mother Nature Strikes Back, V2.0

2008-06-11T11:30:00.000-07:00

Appaaaaaarently, Bees do not like publicity. Yesterday morning - mere days after I brought them to your attention, and while I was having my morning, "aaaaawwwww" glance at them- a bee flew up from the hive, got tangled in my bangs, and BAM! stung me just under my right eyebrow. My face now looks like the Mets requisitioned it for batting practice - that is, if the Mets could hit anything this year besides the bottom of the standings - and I would be shopping for an eyepatch if I wasn't too embarrassed to leave the house.

I wonder if Topshop sells eyepatches online? Finally, a real excuse for internet shopping.

I should be fine in another day or so, but ow ow ow it hurt. Bees! Love them, but saddened by bang-diminished navigation.

And While we are on the Updates....

2008-06-08T15:01:00.000-07:00

Allow me to introduce my new roommates... all 40,000 of them.

Yes, I now have a beehive in the backyard, not because I'm very touchy-feely earthy mothery - I got them before the current wave of "Save the Bees" mania - but because the idea always seemed sort of romantic and medieval. I'm a Renaissance man! Well, woman. 'Cause really, when you think about it, having a box full of pets that could theoretically kill you if they got mad enough - I mean, that's pretty *%$^#! goth. No? Yeah, my boyfriend thinks I'm an idiot too.

We'll see who's laughing when I make honey and biscuits for breakfast. AND REFUSE TO SHARE.

Actually he's been great about the new beasties, helped to put the hives together (they come in a flat pack, as if it's designed by IKEA) and feeding them when I went to Boston a couple of weeks ago. I'd make a joke here about washing all those tiny little plates, but you people are way to smart for that. Aren't you? Yes, you are. They actually eat out of an upside down bottle, like a hamster feeder - if your hamster consumed 4 pounds of sugar water a week. And wouldn't he be running in that little wheel THEN.

So welcome, bees. The garden was less lovely without you.

Updates...No, Really. I Swear!

2008-06-06T18:24:00.000-07:00

Soooo... been a little slacadasical on the blog front, which is interesting because I've been traveling like nobody's business, at least up til 6 weeks ago when work slowed down and now I'm apparently unemployed for the rest of my life. So I've been sitting at home for six weeks, and all I've got to show for it is raging cabin fever.

But! Before that, I was interesting, I was employed, I was I veritable Pepper Potz of coolness, if not with such nice hair, but we can dream. And so in the last year I went to: The Grand Canyon (big), Montana (cold), Spain (hot), San Francisco (hilly), Boston (revolutionary), and Puerto Rico (salsa!).

So there. Now we're all up to date. I feel better.

Kidding. Real stories and updates to come.

The Visccitudes of Nature

2008-03-09T07:55:00.000-07:00

So, my hot water heater has given up the ghost, and it announced that fact by pouring water all over my laundry room the day before yesterday. Thank god I rent. I figured, not a problem, I'll deal with cold water for a couple of days, and hopefully the landlord will get it replaced quickly. It's already spring, the daffodils are popping and the chipmunks are out, so it's not like it's December.

So of course that means I woke up yesterday to my first day of cold showers, and found that it was SNOWING. In Atlanta. In March. I know the heat's on in the house and all, but soft, fluffy flakes of coldness - every one different! - did nothing for the shower morale. I got an ice-cream headache on the OUTSIDE of my head when I washed my hair.

Mother Nature: a cranky, untrustworthy bitch, given to strike at any time.

NomNomNom

2007-12-19T14:23:00.000-08:00

Is anybody else out there trying to make christmas cookies, and being hopelessly defeated by the fact that they keep eating all the cookie batter raw, before they can get it in the oven? No? Sigh. Must just be me.

hobbylobbyhobbylobby

2007-11-28T11:41:00.000-08:00

Once again proving that I don't have to travel far to get myself in trouble:

Last night I had to take a package to the late drop off at fedex, at the Atlanta airport. The station is actually on the airport grounds, and if you get there less than five minutes before the cut off time, they run your package out to the plane and pass it up to the pilot thru the driver's side window.

I pull up, tires smoking, trying to beat the cut off time, and in my haste I hit the speed bump a little harder than I should, and the THUMP somehow activates the (turned off) cassette in the tape deck, which just happens to be an instructional tape on how to speak Arabic, in preparation for my trip to morrocco next spring.

So as I pull into my parking place in front of the fedex, in the airport, my stereo starts blaring ALLAHINSHALLAHMYCULINSALLEM....

I mean really. Do things like this happen to anybody but me?

Wicked!

2007-11-21T04:28:00.000-08:00

Oh, boy, I'm such a nerd, but this is the coolest. I'm sitting in the airport, waiting to visit my mom for thanksgiving. It's juist as painful and dull as you'd expect, and if I hear one more "Homeland Security" announcement I am going to start goose-stepping down the jetway, but get this- I'm whinging about it on my blog VIA MY PHONE. My inner geek has the shivers. I bought one of those styling new sidekicks, with the huge keyboard and the unlimited web access (which I was able to sign up for in only four attempts- c'mon, tmobile, Ilm offering you money) and now I am unblogstppoable. Except now, cause I'm b oarding.

I'd call it a Hole in the Wall...

2007-09-22T20:13:00.000-07:00

...but that would be disrespectful to actual holes.

I haven't mentioned it but I was in Chattanooga, TN fo several days over the last two weeks for work - oh, the exciting places I get to - and I had a fun night out with two of my buddies on the crew in a local barbeque joint.

(Actually, Chattanooga's a lot of fun, the downtown is very walker-friendly and they have a great Aquarium there.)

One of our nights there we got off early enough to do some wandering around downtown, and feed my barbeque fixation. We'd seen several places we wanted to try, and one chain - Famous Dave's - that we didn't, but I was obsessed with a place about 3 blocks from our hotel.

It was the classic hole-in-the-wall joint - crumbling like a biscuit, one window boarded up, an enormous smoker parked on the sidewalk outside (I wonder if they take it in at night?), and old guys sitting around out front. I suppose they were playing dominos but even that was to much effort, since we were in the middle of a heat wave and it was 95 degrees at 9 pm. So mostly they were sitting around sweating.

We tooled in - me, ravenous as ever, Andy the Gay Biker, and our loyal assistant Kari, who would probably rather have eaten at Applebee's - and took seats at a battered formica table with one short leg. The place was clean, if you didn't look to closely. If you looked closely you felt slightly sick. A woman as battered as the table came out and took our orders. She had the short leg issue too. It was the kind of place that, instead of ordering off the menu, it was safer just to ask what was available. You avoid disappointment.

The service was slow - the waitress may have also been the cook - but it gave us time to admire the decor, which was done in Early American Homeless Shelter. Everything that was there, had been there, for a verrrrry long time. And had the dust coat to prove it. The only thing gleaming in the flickering flourescent light was a wall of barbeque trophies. There must have been fifty of them. I'm not sure where they came from - this didn't look like an operation that went on the road - but they were lovingly polished and displayed.

Our food was great. It had to be, in a place like that. It had authenticity by the bucket. Andy and Kari got ribs, I got chopped pork, tender and juicy with bits of crackling. The ribs were better. I know because I stole some of Andy's. The mac and cheese was rad. The fried okra was out. Damn. How can you run out of okra? Andy got fries instead. I went for pasta salad. What the hell I was thinking I don't know. It was terrible.

The rib sauce was the Georgia sweet tomato-y style, with an intriguing bitter edge that may have been herbal or may have been from baking in a pot on the top of the stove all day. Still not quite sure. We polished it off while listening to an older man in the corner booth ramble loudly about the drug trade in the neighborhood and the government. All atmospheric southern diners have a guy like this. I think it's in the building codes. Gorged on pork, we left huge tip and waddled out into the night, steaming slightly in the humid air.

I'd give you the name so you could try it yourself, but the neon sign out front was broken, so I couldn't read the name. It started with an F. Franks? that sounds right. But trust me, when you see it you'll know you are in the right place. Your common sense will be saying, "run! run like the wind!" but your nose will be luring you in, like a character in a cartoon, your feet trailing helplessly behind...

Heed the scent of the pork.

By Popular Demand: The Human Flesh Story

2007-09-22T12:15:00.000-07:00

The title says it all, really.

I used to go to Mexico once or twice a year, until I found out I could go to Europe and have people be rude to me for only three times the expense. On one visit, I was in Chiapas, near San Christobel de las Casas, and found a place that gave horseback tours to some of the smaller villages. They took us thru all this wild mountain scenery to a village that was in the middle of it's annual pagan festival - I kid you not, the people of the town were still worshiping in the traditional fashion, and they had gutted the local colonial-era church, painted it all kinds of wild drug-trip colors, and held ceremonies there. Cameras totally forbidden in the church. It was amazing, even without being hot and saddle-sore from the ride.

I took a break on a hillside near the cemetery - you could take pictures there - and two little boys came up to me, mugging and goofing for the camera, with those incredible, angelic, trusting faces that you only see on country kids. They must have been five or six years old. I fell instantly, utterly in love with them. As soon as I took a picture, they stuck out their hands and demanded payment. Ambitious little guys.

We rode back to San Christobel - more great scenery - and by the time I got there I was in serious pain. A, I hadn't done a lot of riding in a loooong time, and B, the saddles were basically wood with a stretched leather cover. So riding, for any length of time, was just - frankly, every jolt of the horse was like being rapped sharply on the ass with a frying pan. I feared I might never sit down again.

When I got back to town, I was sweaty, stiff, and tired. And ravenous. I found the nearest cafe and stumbled in, glancing at the menu on the chalkboard. I saw something that looked reasonable - "Milenesa de something something" - and thought, that'll be good. I couldn't remember for the life of me what the second word, the one that actually id'd the meat, was, but I knew that Milenesa always means "breaded and fried" and what's not to like there? I'd figure out the previous owner's mode of being when it came to the table.

But I NEVER DID.

It was a white meat, I can tell you that. Fairly mild. Didn't taste like chicken. Probably the only thing in the world that doesn't. Not quite pork...I tried to catch my waiter's eye, to ask him what this thing I was wolfing down was (I was too hungry not to eat it), but he was behind the bar, studiously ignoring me. Apparently menu translation was not included in the price. Possibly, too, he was avoiding me because I reeked of horse, and kept shifting my weight from one buttock to the other.

I ate it. I paid. I went back to my room, got out my spanish dictionary and searched for that word while laying butt-up on the bed, poring thru the pages...

No luck.

So, if I ever develop a crazed desire for the taste of human flesh.... I'll know where it came from.

The Best News I've had today

2007-09-19T07:16:00.000-07:00

San Francisco has a Pirate Store!

Oh, like there wasn't enough reason to go already. They may not have Bacon Ice Cream, but this may be even better, especially since I was cruelly denied a visit to Charleston's pirate store in the spring, due to their "We claim to be a pirate store but really we're a money laundering front" opening hours policy, which basically meant they were open for half an hour a day. Bloody lubbers.

But I'm verrrry excited about this new pirate store sighting, can't wait to go. They even sell "pirate perfumes!" I wonder what THAT smells like? Because frankly, pirates look like they should smell of dirty leather and unwashed hair, and possibly bad teeth. No Matter. Even more tantallizing is this quote, stolen - er, pillaged - directlly from their website:

"And stop by 826 Valencia, Eggers’ writing center/pirate store. David Byrne says it is “one of the top five pirate stores I’ve been to recently.”

There are more than five Pirate Stores?

San Fran Countdown, and Tybee Island

2007-09-17T16:39:00.001-07:00

So only 12 days till my trip to San Francisco, which means it's time to start eating up all the food stored up in the cabinets, which would probably survive nuclear fallout, and stop spending money, because SF looks expensive. But I'm very excited, and if I can just stay out of Target I will be ok.

Just to keep my hand in, since I haven't been anywhere on a pleasure trip since Spain in the spring, the man and I went to Savannah/Tybee Island for a quick beach trip. We had a hotel right on the beach - the fabulously ratty Desoto Beach Resort - and we spent two days swimming, lounging, making picnic lunches in our room, and in my case getting horribly sunburned on my back, due to my cunning deciscion to spare my face from the evil of UV rays. Possibly sunscreen on all exposed portions of the body would be better. Possibly I should consider spending my time laying on the beach enclosed in a tent. Maybe next time.

Naughty, Naughty

2007-09-07T06:08:00.000-07:00

You know how some people can't resist a sale? Maybe it's a sale on shoes (mea culpa, mea culpa), or clothes, or day old bread (pointless, in my opinion). Whatever. You know the feeling... I don't need it, I don't have room for it, oh, it's on sale? I'll take two.

Well, I'm kind of that way with traveling. I am on every airfare pricewatch list known to man, including the aptly named Airfare Watchdog, and the excellent Kayak (please fix your site so it will stop crashing my Safari, guys), even though they all have basically the same lists, and I get emails and notices from them all, which I peruse greedily each morning before (while?) I start work.

And last week - paydirt! Airtran Airways - love Airtran, and they are based in my hometown of Atlanta - had a sale on flights to San Francisco. 278 dollars, round trip, non stop. Love non stop. Whip out the Visa, press "submit".

So hey! It looks like San Fran in four weeks. Just a quick trip - 5 nights, 4 days - time enough to do some whale watching, visit the famous farmer's market (mmmmm....) sing a bit of Tony Bennet in a kareoke bar. Perhaps I'll just do that in my head.

The City by the Bay awaits!

Holy Cow. And Pig

2007-07-10T17:44:00.000-07:00

Divine revelations are all around us this week, it seems. Not only have I had the scales taken from my eyes in terms of goat cheese (see previous post), but I have finally found a reason to visit Los Angeles. Despite the talented and lovely people I'm aquainted with thru my line of work - hi marla! and the lures of the architecture, I could never bring myself to visit. In the words of somebody famous, there seemed to be no there, there.

But now! things are different. I have heard of an ice cream shoppe - I think it's called Scoops, and I'm pretty sure they are too hip to spell shop with an 'e' - who serves Bacon Flavored Ice Cream.

Can you imagine? Just think about it. Bacon. Ice Cream. The mind reels. Is it made with little bacon-y chunks? is it a maple or hickory cream base? Can you request your bacon soft and fatty or super crispy? Or - horrors - is it made with imitation Bac-o Bits? You could crack a tooth on that. One thing is certain - it probably isn't low-fat ice cream. I mean, what would be the point?

So a new addition to the must-do must-see list. I think I'll slot it in right after "seeing the Taj Mahal" although the airfare is certainly cheaper to LA.

And it will put to the test my personal theory, that EVERYTHING is better with bacon. Mmmmmm.....

OMG: The Goat Cheese Revelation

2007-07-09T16:59:00.000-07:00

Despite the fact that I have, in the past, in this very blog, trumpeted the Grossness of Goat Cheese, I have to stand corrected. I have finally stumbled upon the fact that there are two types of goat cheese: the strongly aged type that does a nice job of standing in for a rancid, sweaty goat itself, and the young, unaged, soft, creamy, delicious... sorry, sort of lost control there.

Who knew? Not me.

I'm certainly glad I had decided to give the chevre another shot - part of my trying to expand my palate (instead of just my waistline) with stuff I'd always thought was yucky. Yeah, it's my inner five-year-old using the thesaurus today. But my inner adult is trying to come up with ways to use up the rest of this cheese, before I just break down and start licking it off the wrapper.

In a Paris Cafe, Or: Beware the Sausage Appetizer

2007-06-30T13:59:00.000-07:00

I love, love, love to eat when I'm traveling. Whether it's barbeque in the south, seafood on the coast, or tapas in Spain, I am always looking to try out the local cuisine.

My language skills are rudimentary at best; I usually learn a few words in the local idiom, but I generally speak like Tarzan: one painful word at a time, all in the present tense. I hungry now. I sleep now. I buy many shoes now. And since I'm always keen to try new things (except, apparently, a Berlitz course) I often wind up ordering something on the menu that I don't quite know what it is. This gave rise to the human flesh story, which is not in this episode. And it gave rise to the Episode of the Sausage Appetizer.

I was in Paris. (Wow! Doesn't that just sound amazing? That is possibly the coolest thing, ever, to be able to say). April in Paris, they tell you, is fabulous. The stuff of song and poetry, the springtime of the soul. It was not April. It was the last week in March, and Paris was holding on to the bitter damp of winter with both hands. It was FREEZING. It was rainy. It was, in the way only weather can be, miserable.

I did not care. I was in Paris. (Wow!) I was in Paris and I was going to eat in outdoor cafes, nibbling quiche and drinking red wine, even if it killed me, even if I froze off my feet and I had to stump home on my ankles. My thoughts turned to some of the heartier options on the menus, to help stave of hypothermia.

Many of the cafes had "chacuterie" on the menus. I had never had this famous dish of northern France, though I had read about it, and I have what I assume is an excellent recipe for it in my Julia Child cookbook. In the book, it's call "chacutrie garni" - garnished sausage - and the photo showed a comfortingly messy, homestyle platter with fat sausages, pork chops, potatoes, and mounds of saurkraut. You can almost smell the steamy kitchen it came from. I've always admired the concept - it seems like the best sort of beery excess, more food than anyone could eat - but I've never actually made it.

After days of tramping around in the frigid rain, the idea of this warm, homey platter became an obsession. The quiche was very nice but in the evening it was COLD and I wanted that hot food. I found a cafe with the magic words on the menu, and found a seat. It was still, barely, warm enough to be outside. My cane chair was damp, but I had the vision of dinner to keep me warm.

I ordered from the waiter, who looked slightly surprised yet impressed at my order. We confirmed that I only wanted a serving for one - did he think I was on a saurkraut binge? a garni junkie? And he trotted off with my order, leaving me to wonder vaguely why they didn't have the "garni" part of the title on the menu. A Parisian quirk, clearly. I dismissed that thought and observed the man at the table next to me, who was intently smoking a Gitane or a Galoise or what ever it is they smoke there, smoking with such intensity that he was lighting the fresh cigarette with the stump of the old one, and clearly waiting for someone.

His date and my dinner arrived at the same moment, though it was hard to tell who was less pleased. "Chacutrie" in Paris is not the near mythical Alsation dish of my dreams. It is, in fact, a platter of cold sliced sausages of various types. A HUGE platter. It seemed like pounds, like a sausage nightmare, a nightmare where your dish keeps refilling itself. And I, the ignorant American, had ordered it.

So I had to eat it. All of it. Oh, no.

As I plowed through my sausage festival - foie gras sausage, pork sausage, duck sausage, something with nuts - I watched with increasing interest the activties of Monsieur Gitane and his date. You know how you constantly hear that French women are the most seductive in the world, that they are the most stylish and knowing, that they wrap their men around their fingers? This woman was having none of it. She sat down and instantly made a cell phone call, with only the most perfunctory acknowledgement of her escort, and chattered away like an American teenager. Their drinks came. Her phone rang again. More chatter.

I was beginning to sweat from the sausage. There was no way I was going to finish this. There was no way I was going to concede defeat and not finish it.

Monsieur Gitane smoked furiously. His date chattered away, oblivious. I began to feel sorry for him. I definitely felt sorry for me. And also slightly sick.

Finally the table on the other side of me was filled, by a large and florid Frenchman smoking an extremely smelly cigar. That was the final straw, and I threw in the towel. Victory: to the Sausage.

Note so self: invest in a menu translator. And I staggered off, listening to Madame's cell phone chatter as it drifted behind me, into the night.

Airport Lust

2007-06-21T15:03:00.000-07:00

This is NOT a hinky post about the mile-high club, or some freaky new use for luggage straps. So calm down.

It is, however, a little strange...

Does anyone else get really excited about the airport? I have to say one of the bitterest disappointments of the post-9/11 era is that going to the airport isn't quite as thrilling as it used to be. Now, instead of getting a knot in my stomach when I think about where I'm going and how ridiculously long it's going to take me - really, I won't sit in the exit row because at hour 7 of any trip, I start thinking about jumping out - I get a knot in my stomach thinking about going thru security and if I left my lip balm in my purse.

True confession - I have been known, in more innocent, psychotic-shoe-bomber-free times, to go to the airport just to watch the planes land. I used to be the sort of person who would meet a friend who had a layover in the airport - and trust me, I live in Atlanta so EVERYBODY did - for a drink, just for an hour, in the airport bar. How could you not? All that hustle and bustle, it made me feel jet-set by osmosis.

I fly a lot, and so I still get a great deal of enjoyment out of the airport. I love to watch the people rush around, tickets grasped tightly in their hands, carry-ons packed to bursting, and wonder where they are going. I love the USO greeter who meets the soldiers at the terminal entrance, when they come back from whatever God-awful tour of duty they've been on. I love watching the faces of the folks waiting to pick up their relatives at the officially sanctioned greeting spot, by baggage claim. And I love mocking what their relatives are wearing when they get there. Reallly, people - pajamas are meant to be worn by CHILDREN on airplanes. If at all.

But my favorite thing is to scan the departure boards as I walk towards my own gate - because it's ALWAYS the last one - and look at the names of the various cities, and daydream about a trip to this place or that. Sometimes, the city listed is less evocative than others. Kansas City, for instance, inspires a daydream of about 14 seconds. But coming home from my recent trip to Spain, after two weeks away from home, I looked up at the departure gate next to mine and saw: LUXOR, Egypt. Home of the Valley of the Kings, King Tut, and the epicenter of Egyptian history.

And for a second, my imagination was filled with sand, camels, the hot desert wind, and Howard Carter looking through a chink in the wall and whispering, "I see wonderful things..."

Now, to even consider changing my flight home for a flight to Egypt was completely insane. I had been gone for weeks already, I'd been in Chicago for two weeks befor that, I was just about broke, and I was literally dying to get back to my own turf and eat enormous quantities of American food. I got on my flight to Atlanta and a very happy homecoming, and told myself I didn't miss anything at all.

But still....

"I see wonderful things...."

Take A Bath

2007-06-18T21:38:00.000-07:00

"Baths, women and wine may ruin our bodies, but they make life worth living" - Roman Gravestone

One of the most fascinating holdovers from antiquity in Southern Spain is the Hamman, or Arab Baths. These baths are actually descended from the Roman bathhouses, and were picked up by Islamic culture with it's emphasis on purity and ritual bathing. There are ruins of Arabs Baths in several cities in Andalusia, my favorite being in Ronda - a nearly perfectly preserved bathhouse, complete with roof pierced by skylights and niches for steaming.

I was surprised to find that there were still functioning Hammans in several cities along my route - Cordoba, Granada, and of all places Madrid - where you could experience the timeless ritual of steaming, bathing, and massage. I was determined to live my inner Arab princess and enjoy a day at the baths.

It should surprise no one but me, but I didn't manage it. Somehow I kept putting it off to the next day, the next day... there was so much to see! And to my dismay I never did go.

I have come home, however, determined to re-create the Hamman experience at home as best I could (in keeping with the Constant Holiday philosophy). I did some research on the web to get an idea of the proccess, and consulted my copy of Tony Perrottet's excellent book on eastern travel (both modern and ancient) "Pagan Holiday", from which the above quote comes.

The point of the Roman or Hamman Bath is not just cleanliness but relaxation and even socialisation. People often went to the baths in groups in ancient times, and the proccess could take all day, with meals, exercise and beauty treatments part of the experience.

For my own "home-style Hamman" I've taken to filling my tub about a quarter of the way with hot water and bath salts, both to give my feet a good soak and to fill the room with the gentle steam that is a feature of the bath (unlike the strong heat of a sauna). One website suggested placing herbs in the hot water, which I plan to try. After washing my feet and legs, I can either fill the tub the rest of the way and soak some more, or switch back to the shower and use my best smelling bath gels and scrubs. The scrub down is an integral step in the bath experience, and leaves you feeling soft and incredibly clean.

I finish off with a liberal rubdown with a scented oil, instead of a lotion, to seal in all that moisture and make me feel more authentic. Sadly I have had to do without the full-body massage that closes a real Hamman bath, but I'll have to talk to my boyfriend about that. One never knows. I'll never get him in a turban, though.

Overheard

2007-06-17T10:44:00.000-07:00

Why is it, when you sit down in a restaurant, and you hear the guy in the booth behind you saying, "I don't care if they don't like it, that's the way I'm gonna do it. 'Cause that's just the Kind Of Person I AM." - why do you instantly know the the kind of Person He IS, is an asshole?

Piggy

2007-06-12T19:49:00.000-07:00

I'm on a job in North Carolina for a few days, and my favorite part of coming up here is the opportunity to - I think "glut" myself is the word I'm looking for - on barbeque. As mentioned in a previous post, I just spent two weeks in Spain, and despite the delicious food there, I came home insane for American food. Chicken wings especially. And barbeque. Oh, God, barbeque. I don't want to get all Anthony Bourdain on you here, but honestly, pigs can die happy, knowing that they are serving a nobler end.

In Georgia we have the sweeter, more tomato-y sauces, but in North Carolina they do a thin, vinegar based sauce that is very tangy and delicious. We've been here for one full day and have already had a great barbeque meal at Mama Dip's in Chapel Hill, where the chopped pork is smooth and delicious, with one of the best vinegar based sauces I've had. Highly reccomended. Skip the subpar sweet potato biscuits, and make up the calories with extra pork or the equally tasty fried chicken.

Two more days, so 4 more opportunities for NC-style que. Unless we start eating it for breakfast. Not, really, all that farfetched...

Cookbook of the Week

2007-06-11T10:26:00.000-07:00

I - like, I'm sure, many people who like to cook - have approximately eleventy-million cookbooks in my collection, not to mention stuff neatly clipped (read: torn) from every cooking magazine on the planet, or at least the ones that I can afford the subscription too. And I often, often think to myself, "What on earth am I doing with all of these things? I'll never use them all. Ooh, look, the new Mario Batali is out - better order it."

And so the collection grows. To avoid them becoming a collection of paperweights with food stains, I instituted a policy of selecting one cookbook a week to cook out of, thereby forcing myself to wade thru them and actually put them to use. And I enforce this policy strictly, about twice a year. But that's twice more than I would be if I didn't have a policy, right?

So to expand on my already feebly enforced regimen, I'll give a review each time I do a new one, even though some of them are ages old and I bought them on Amazon.com for a dollar. Someday, when I confound all expectations and write a book, I hope someone will buy it on Amazon.com for more than a dollar. Someone, say, other than my mom.

So! On to the cookbook of the week, which this week is "From Tapas to Meze" by Joanne Weir. I believe it is the second, revised, edition, and it's one of the dollar-on-Amazon ones, so it's not exactly hot off the press. It's really good. My favorite type of eating is tapas style, where you order one of everything on the menu at a small plates restaurant, and you and all of your friends get to eat a bit off each other's plates, which you would have done anyway. But at a tapas place it's expected, so you don't feel like a complete pig. Then you all gasp loudly when the bill comes. So I'm always pleased to be able to do tapas-y things at home, but with an eye on the dishes I usually only make one or two.

All of the dishes in "T to M" are very Mediterranean, so there is a lot of olive oil and lemon - nice and refreshing since it's summer, but choose the dishes wisely or else everything you eat all week will taste the same. The recipes are also mostly simple, and lend themselves to substitutions- I've done her baked squash soup with sweet potatoes, and her grilled tuna with green olive relish with chicken and black olives, and anything with goat cheese in it with anything that isn't goat cheese, because goat cheese is, sorry, disgusting.

On the downside, because the recipes are all of that Mediterranean style, there's a little repetition. Weir has three variations on salad with oranges, black olives, and red onions. Does anyone need three variations of this? Does anyone need more than, hey, there's some red onion and some oranges in the icebox, let's go to town? No. But three there are. Also, she's a bit fonder of salt cod than I am. I strongly suspect salt cod is one of those things Europeans only pretend to like, to make Americans feel inferior.

Rating, 1-5: 3, but only because of the orange salad thing. Otherwise a four.

There you have it, the first Cookbook of the Week. And actually for next week too, since I'm not quite done with it. But next week we will discuss the best cookbook of all time, which is Julia Child's "The Way To Cook" which is terrific and should be titled, "Mastering the art of French Cooking Without Wasting Time on Jellied Poached Eggs and Aspic, and Other Gross Things Even French People Won't Eat."

Now I have to go check Amazon. Maybe Mario is on sale.

Car in Europe: Yea or Nay?

2007-06-09T20:31:00.000-07:00

So, I've just returned from a two week trip of Andalusia (Southern) Spain, and for the first time on a trip like this I rented a car. (Full disclosure: actually I once rented a jeep for a week in Belize, but as there were no buses - nay, barely ROADS - it doesn't count) Usuallly I make use of the excellent public transportation system available, but since I had a lot of ground to cover, I decided to go mobile.

The Verdict? Undecided. It didn't really cost me that much more to rent the car than to take buses/trains wherever I wanted to go, and it WAS quicker, if you didn't factor in the time lost while (frequently) lost. Fortunately there are apparently no traffic police in Spain, so my occasional (constant) flouting of No-U-Turns, red lights, and Pedestrians Only signs went unpunished. (One afternoon I got so frustrated in trying to reach a parking garage thru the maze of donkey-wide, one-way streets that I simply gave up and drove completely across a pedestrian plaza - just cruised right past people at cafe tables, old men on benches, small boys peeing in fountains). And I did like being able to pull right up to my hotel and dump my bag, instead of getting off in some train station halfway across town, then humping my gear uphill (it's alway uphill, isn't it? usually both ways) to the hotel. And I definitely didn't miss dragging my gear to said train/bus/mule station, only to find I'd just missed the last ride out for the night.

On the downside, I got taken to the cleaners by the parking garages - in Madrid it was 20 euros a day to stash my car - and I spent a lot of time worrying that something would happen to the car itself that I would have to pay for. I made some unwise driving decisions - at one point thinking I could drive from Seville to Tarifa at night, realizing after an hour that the directions were too confusing to deal with in the dark, and having to go back to Seville. I used taxis just as much in the actual towns as I would have had I not had the car, since the streets were so narrow and difficult to navigate. And the car gods wreaked their revenge on my liberal interpretation of the law by guiding me to the one illegal parking space on a square in Ronda, resulting in a trip to the impound yard and a 60-euro fine. Those whom the gods will destroy, they first make park in a tow-away zone.

So all in all a mixed experiment. My next trip may give me the opportunity to test it again... we'll have to see.