Shoving off!

I will be going on my first REAL vacation since New Years 2007/08 - that's over 2 years ago and way overdue. I've gone places in between, but mostly for Work. I've been to Portland & Seattle and Atlanta for work conferences in the interim - but those don't count. Granted, pretty much all of 2009 was a hiccup year for my life, working to get back on track and figure out what the hell I'm doing with myself.

So I'm going to Portland, OR to visit & stay with one of my oldest (and dearest) friends & his family. Hang on to a handful of the people who knew you when you were young, seriously. I'll also be visiting one evening with a couple friends from college who live in Oregon (one in Portland, one is taking the bus up from Southern Oregon) who I haven't seen since a mutual friends' wedding in Boston almost 10 years ago (has it been that long???)

Needless to say, I'm jazzed about this trip. I only got to spend a very short time in Portland a few years ago when I made a stop on my way to Seattle. I'm looking forward to seeing more of the city this time. I'll have a couple of days for just random whatever and then two days will be the Oregon Brewer's Festival. Saturday, Brett & Jessie are having a BBQ and hand-craft brew party, then I go home.

On the must see list are Voodoo Doughnut, a couple of parks/gardesn, the riverfront (which I believe the brewfest is a part), and just chilling out and relaxing.

Annie will be staying with my sister & my folks on her own little vacation and my neighbor will be watching the kitties. So I'll be incommunicado for a while. I am going to completely detox myself from all online anything except checking my personal email once or twice, checking my flight status information, and that's it.

Oh, and for those wondering from the last post how nerd dating went: relatively well. It was interesting, I'm glad I did it but I'm glad I had a friend go with me. It was organized so everyone was in groups at tables and then teams rotated after each round of trivia (music, movies, literature, history, comic books, and general science stuff). I didn't do as well as I thought I would in any round - they really dug deep for real nerddom. But that's OK because I met some interesting people - it's good to get out and actually talk to new people - but it was good that it was in a structured context so you're not falling all over yourself trying to think of something to say. I talked to one guy for a good hour & a half after the trivia thing ended. We'll see where that goes when I get back. He seemed nice and was a music nerd - always a plus for me.

I'm back!

I got back yesterday from a whirlwind tour of the Pacific Northwest. Ok, well, not a tour really but whatever. I decided to tack on a visit to my friend Silver in Portland to a conference I was going to in Seattle and it worked out pretty well. Mrs. Silver unfortunately had to have emergency back surgery three days before I got there so she wasn't very mobile (though much more mobile that I expected - she surprised the hell out of me). So I got to hang with them, their 9 month old and 2 teenage daughters for a few days and I got to watch Silver make beer. It looked suspiciously easy.

More later as I'm catching up on work today. But a few things I learned (and/or re-confirmed):

1) Beer seems easy to make
2) Babies can be cute but I still don't want one.
3) Dred locks only work on black people. White people with locks just look filthy.
4) Bus stops are meeting grounds for hippies in Seattle.
5) Pike Street Brewing company in Seattle ships their Kilt Lifter Scotch Ale to Chicago.

Oh, and John showed me this... for all you YouTube sensation searchers... this is so great:

Paris, Day 3

New Year's Eve: Boat Cruise, the Louvre, and Fireworks in a Public Square --what the Fuck Were We Thinking?

We woke up intent on using our river cruise ticket from the night before, before it got too crowded. So we hopped in a taxi and went to the pier near the Eiffel Tower - and took more pictures of the tower in daylight. We waited about a half hour, got seated on a boat in the outdoor section in back (where picture taking is best) and had a great time. Below are only a few of the photos we took:

View of the tower from the river below.

I could spend all day taking pictures of the bridges. They're amazing.

Annie enjoyed the cruise too.

This would be a great picture if it weren't for the crane.
John photoshopped the crane out of it, but I couldn't find the file. So use your imagination.

After the cruise, we poked around in the little gift shop, got a few souvenirs and were going to go to the Louvre. John, however, wasn't feeling well, so I left him to nap while I took the Metro to the Louvre and spent about 2 hours in the Ancient Greece & Egypt wings. I should have spent more time there.

One of the main halls in the ancient Greece wing.
This place really was a palace at one time, and it looks it.

I call this "Great Pan's Nutsack, Batman".
I really didn't intend to get a money shot here, I just liked the sculpture.
Good thing for me, my camera captures superb detail...

The Louvre certainly has a great Egyptian collection.
Thanks to Napoleon who raided the goddamned place and stole all their goodies.
This is a bronze statue of Horus. I just loved the shadow effect.

In retrospect (and you'll see why), I should have stayed until closing, stopped at the grocery on the way home to get a bottle of champagne to chill in the bathroom sink (well, where else?), gotten John, gone out for dinner and stayed in our hotel room watching the festivities on the Rue de Rivoli from the comfort of our terrace.

Instead, I went back to the hotel, John and I got some dinner at a place down the street, and we headed over to Trocadero, a plaza overlooking the Eiffel Tower to watch the fireworks.

A little brasserie near our hotel in the Marais. I had a wonderful dish of sauteed shrimp over rice made with some kind of cheese. John had... a burger. The cheese and bread are like nothing in the states.

Now, those of you who know me are probably asking themselves - "You intentionally went to a public place you knew would get crowded to watch fireworks? You won't even do that on July 3rd in Chicago."

Yes. I know. We're dumb. I don't know what we were thinking. I guess I was thinking that I could deal with it for the novelty of the experience (in retrospect - crowds are crowds, and fireworks are fireworks). I mean, how much worse than the fireworks at Taste of Chicago could it possibly be? Right?

We should have taken in the view for a while, and then left.

Well... It was horrific. One of the worst experiences of my life to date.

Not only was it crowded, but the French push, no, shove their way through crowds. You've seen the videos of people getting crushed at Futbol games in Spain right? Well - it was that level of shoving. I'm not joking or exaggerating. To make matters worse, we camped out on the edge of a dry fountain on a building, because it was a place to sit. This also meant that we were effectively cornered. From about 10:30pm to Midnight, all John did was hold back a wall of people from falling on us. Thankfully Western Europeans are a small people.

People sitting on the fountain and statues in Trocadero.
In retrospect, where we should have gone but I was afraid we'd get kicked off... puh.

John's favorite way to sum up the complete disregard of others in favor of individualism that was on display is this:

Imagine a 6' 3" guy holding back a crowd of people who are being pushed from the middle of the crowd, when all the sudden, a tiny Japanese woman emerges from the crowd with a kid no more than 2-3 years old. You might be asking what she was doing there - she probably got trapped up front without realizing how bad it would get - the mass crowd descended almost instantaneously like that scene from The Birds where Tippi Hedren is waiting outside the school while the crows silently pile up on a jungle gym behind her without her realizing until it was too late - only to be forced to make her exit through the mass humanity to prevent herself and her kid from being crushed. Anyway. She's trying to exit the Trocadero plaza and wanted to get up and over the wall of the fountain (about 2-3 ft high - about neck level of her kid) to get away from the pushing. As she tries this, she's hunched over her kid trying to protect him from being crushed up against this wall that likely would have broken his neck or choked him - when John notices this, and loses his cool. He shoves the crowd back, and yells "There's a child here, stop pushing!!" When no one seems to understand, he uses the word "baby" instead of child. One man in the crowd - intent to get where he is going, looks at John dead in the eyes and says "It's not MY baby" and continues on. The woman finally did get over the wall and disappeared. Absolute chaos.

It wasn't all bad. There was a nice older couple who was trying to help calm me down after I started feeling claustrophobic and trapped and was about 2 steps away from a full-blown panic attack.

The aftermath was, however, enjoyable. After people started leaving, we scurried into a corner no one would want to be in, and ended up talking to some people. One man from Germany, another from Paris who spoke very little English, and another couple consisting of a guy from Quebec and his girlfriend from California (the only girl who kissed John (on the cheek) that night except for me - and that was for helping her off the fountain).

The Parisian, drunk off his ass, fished a bottle of what can only be described as the French equivalent of Boone's Farm out of his backpack (he had broken his other bottles in the backpack) and is pantomiming a corkscrew to people to help him open it. John looks at the bottle, looks at me, I giggle. Then John takes it, untwists the screw cap and says "Voila!" The man looks at John bewildered, not believing that the bottle is open, he sticks his finger in the bottle and then pours a little out to make sure it's open - then gives John a huge hug and shares his libations with me. He didn't understand that John doesn't drink - and offered it to John about 50 times as well. He also offered for us to come live in his house while he went to Chicago. He told us that he hated Paris in one sentence, but then praised it as his "coeur" (heart) the next. Awesome fellow.

After this, we wandered through the streets looking for cab, avoiding the broken champagne bottles, puke and occasional reveler who had more than their share. Eventually we found a cab and got back to the hotel room around 2 am. We talked a bit about what happened and cuddled until we fell asleep around 4 am, when finally we crashed from the exhaustion of the day.

Paris, Day 2

Sunday, Dec 30
Musee D’Orsay, Eiffel Tower dinner, river cruise and Moulin Rouge

View from our hotel window at night. Those blurs are scooters.

We got a later start than we wanted again, just due to sleeping in and then getting our stuff together. We went to a little patisserie down the street and got some pastries for breakfast. I had the best chocolate raspberry croissant in the world. We turned on the TV in the room to see if we could find a local weather report. Instead, we found that French morning cartoons are really fucking strange. The picture below is from a cartoon in which a dog was trying to convince a talking pea to eat his vegetables. We were cracking up.



We planned to go to the Musée D’Orsay on this day because the museum is closed every Monday and also would be closed New Year’s day.

Rue de Rivoli, a.k.a. the Ravioli Road

We made our way there on foot (just under 2 kilometers). We spent about an hour in the plaza of the Louvre just taking pictures of the architecture and the pyramids while every five minutes John would say with fake teary-eyed inflections “this is where Tom Hanks stood.” That experience made us decide to go to the Louvre the next day rather than the Picasso Museum.

This is where Tom Hanks stood when he pondered the greatest conspiracy theory in the history of the world...

Pyramids by I.M. Pei. Equally loved and hated, depending on who you ask.

The building alone is impressive and I started to realize that Eddie Izzard wasn’t kidding when he said “we’re [Europe] up to here in fucking castles...we long for a bungalo.” The Louvre was first built in the 12^th Century and eventually served as a royal palace to Louis the XIV. It was turned into a museum just after the revolution.

On the way, John stopped to rig up his tripod to take pictures of us on the bridge.

That's the Louvre on the left and the Musée D'Orsay on the Right.
We're standing on a little footbridge just West of Pont Royal.
Awwwwwwwwww. Yes, I know.

We eventually made it to the Musée D’Orsay around probably 1 or 2pm, and the lines to get in were massive. Instead of reading signs, we stood in line for probably a good 45 minutes until I decided we were in the wrong line. Sure enough, after investigating further, our Paris Museum Passes should have put us in the shorter line.

We were in the wrong line... c'est la vie.

Ironically, we probably had just as long left to wait in the longer line by the time we got in. We decided to just wander around and skip the Impressionists (which is what a lot of people go there to see) because, well, the Art Institute of Chicago has the second largest collection of impressionist art outside of France. I wanted to see things I haven’t seen before.

The museum was once an old train station, and what used to be the central room of the station is now one huge sculpture gallery.

The main hall of the Musée D'Orsay, where the bulk of the sculpture collection is kept.

We spent a great deal of time in this area, just looking at all the sculptures from various periods and places. One in particular caught John’s eye because we had seen it on a show called Art in the City on Ovation TV (if you get this channel, check it out, it’s awesome). The host of the show pointed out one sculpture that was actually rescued from a Paris trash dump. In fact, much of the sculpture in the Musee D’Orsay was lost or forgotten in storage rooms and never would have seen the light of day otherwise.

This sculpture was rescued from the trash.

The fanciest bathroom set I've ever seen.
Can you imagine crapping in a solid gold chamber pot?

There are many sculptures in the plaza outside the museum as well.
John just had to get a picture of an artist's rendering of a rhino's asshole.

We went back to the hotel, grabbed a snack, and took a brief nap so that we would be ready for our late night. We got all dolled up for our night on the town and took the metro back toward the Louvre to the tour office. I’m not much for tour packages, but this one seemed like one we could handle. It was dinner at Altitude 95 on the first level of the Eiffel Tower, followed by a river cruise, and finally a show at the Moulin Rouge. Well, things didn’t quite work out as planned.

The Eiffel tower elevator lines were massive. The tour guide said he’d never seen it this bad, ever. By the time he got the OK to get us on the lift, we were already 40 minutes late for dinner. It was decided that there would be no time for the cruise that night. The tickets for the cruise, however, were good any time for 2 years. John and I decided we would do the cruise the next day – which ultimately worked out better because it was less crowded and we got better pictures in the daylight.

The dinner was pretty good. I mean, it was a group meal for 25 people, so it couldn’t be the best meal Altitude 95 could provide. Much to our surprise and John’s delight- the meal was chicken. There was a salad, chicken with herbed mashed potatoes, and for dessert a mini chocolate soufflé and ice cream. It was decent – better than I expected for a group meal and I’m thankful that it wasn’t jellied duck balls or something like that either.

We had some time to wander the Eiffel Tower until we had to meet the bus back by the river to go to the Moulin Rouge. These are some of the 8 million pictures of the Eiffel Tower that we took.

Taken from Level 1, looking up.
The tower is so delicate looking despite being made of steel girders.

The show at the Moulin Rouge was good. The seating was cramped...the rear section is crammed with tables meant for six, seating 8 people. Thankfully there were a couple of no-shows in our group so we had a few empty chairs. Otherwise we would not have fit. The show started off like a Vegas Jubilee, then took on equal parts Vaudville, Burlesque, Circ de Soilel, Liberace on Fire, and of course – the Can Can. There was a strong-man and woman team that did all kinds of acrobatics and contorting their bodies in every which way while balancing on one hand and such. They were truly impressive.

I could probably write a whole analysis on why, with rare exception, all the women on stage were bare breasted while the men were almost always fully clothed. I know, I know… very few people in the world want to watch men jumping around stage in banana-hammocks, but still. It seemed extremely heteronormative and heterosexist...but then again, most of the world is.

We got back to the hotel after 2am.
A very busy day.
Posted by Laura & John (but blogger won't let us show it like that)

Paris, Day 1

Day 1: Dec 28-29
Departure & First Day: Travelling, settling in, wandering, Notre Dame & giving up.

We drove with our luggage and Annie over to my parents’ house. Since they were watching Annie while we were gone, we decided it best to just leave our car there and my dad drove us to the airport. We were afraid that flights were going to be delayed because they were predicting snow storms throughout the afternoon, but our flight left on time at 6:15pm.

On a whim, John upgraded us to Business Class so that we could have room to stretch out and sleep. While the food was good—a salad, pork, and selection of cheese or ice cream for dessert; all served on real dishes with real silverware and free wine—I honestly don’t think it was worth the price of admission.

Laura never says no to free champagne. But Annie can't have any.

First off, the flight attendants are actually less accommodating than in Coach. For instance, they would not give John an entire can of coke (yet he had two whole cans on the Coach trip home) because they’re “not supposed to.” We didn’t get any real sleep on the plane despite the help of drugs. Oh, and you can’t stow carry-ons in the seat in front of you so it kind of defeats the purpose of bringing stuff on the plane with you if you have to keep getting up to get it. The lesson here? It must take a special kind of person to enjoy Business Class flights because I felt out of place and didn’t see what all the hubbub was about. Sure the seats reclined, but really, that’s about it.

We landed at about 9:30 am local time – which was now 2:30am Chicago time. Needless to say, we were beat. Customs was kind of a joke at Charles de Gaulle airport. They didn’t even ask us any questions like how long we were staying and if we were carrying any snails or other disease causing agents like the US Customs forms do. At first I wasn’t sure we’d actually been through customs at all.

We grabbed a taxi to the Hotel, which was not what we were expecting. We did grow to like the hotel after we were moved to a different room. The first room we had was tiny. Now, I know European hotel rooms are small, and we were OK with that. But this first room barely had enough room for two people and 2 suitcases. We got upgraded to a “Deluxe Double” which was much better. Still small, but with a full bathroom (the previous one had only a shower stall), and a window that opened out onto the Rue de Rivoli (or as we called it jokingly, the Ravioli Road), a full bath tub, and just had a better vibe to it.

The hotel itself was strange, since it was built into existing apartment buildings in one of the oldest districts is Paris (the Marais). You would hardly even know the hotel was there except for the small single-door awning on the street. The desk clerk held all the keys, and when you came and went, you left your key at the front desk – which was hard to get used to for us at first. In the end though, it was a nice place to stay. I wouldn't recommend this hotel to families or to people who are used to being pampered, but for us and the time we were there, it was fine. When we do eventually return, I would much rather rent a flat or condo. We couldn't do that this time because most of those are rented on a weekly basis and we were there only 4 days.

C'est une très jolie femme, n'est pas?
The Hotel France Louvre from the street.

Our surrogate Annie perched on the terrace.

By the time we settled in, it was between 11am and noon (4-5am Chicago time) and we were tired. So we took a nap and ended up sleeping until about 2pm. We got a later start than we wanted, but it worked out. We wandered around Isle St. Louis, one of the two small islands in the Seine between the right and left banks of the city, and made our way to Notre Dame. I just stood in awe that something that massive and ornate has been standing for over 700 years. We didn’t take the interior tour since the line was long and it was getting late. Next time.

St. Paul Church in the Marais District: The oldest Jesuit church in Paris

Isle St. Louis and Pont de la Tournelle



Notre Dame

We made our way back to the hotel, changed for dinner, and went to a little Italian place up the street called Le Bucheron John had found out about while researching restaurants. It was a tiny little Italian café run by Parisian hipsters. John had lasagna and I had Gorgonzola ravioli in a cream sauce. The waitress looked at me sideways when I ordered a half bottle of wine and John said he wasn’t having any… like it was a crime A) for John not drink wine with dinner and B) for me to drink a half bottle by myself.

After dinner, we decided then to make our way to La Cantada, that punk Absinthe bar I had found online. We took the metro to where (I thought) the closest stop was, and proceeded to get lost (even with the help of John’s GPS) as the neighborhood got progressively worse. John decided he’d had enough (read:pussied out) and we caught a cab back to the hotel. In retrospect, it was probably the right thing to do, but I wasn't happy about it at the the time. No big loss really since I can go to Delilah’s, a punk bar on Lincoln Avenue a couple miles from our apartment in Chicago and get absinthe now that it's legal.

Posted by Laura & John (but blogger won't let us show it like that)

Yes, Yes, we're back

It's going to take a while to sort through all the pictures (1,300 photos in 4 days) and write a collaborated post about our trip. Some highlights:

1. You can, indeed, find chicken almost anywhere you go.
2. New Year's Eve in a public square overlooking the fireworks is a bad idea. It made Grant Park on July 3rd look tame.
3. Pictures just do not do architecture and sculpture justice, you have to see it.
4. The Arc de Triomphe in person gives a whole new dimension to the term Napoleon Complex.
5. I finally found a city that has a better Magnificent Mile than Chicago.
6. Pretty much everyone speaks a little English, but they appreciate your effort of trying to speak French.
7. Everyone wears friggin jeans - so let's quash that rumor that if you wear jeans in Europe you'll instantly be spotted as an American.

and.

8. With the exception of the Hooliganism on NYE, no - the French are not "rude" and they don't hate Americans.

Photos and such forthcoming.

Tattoo appointment went well, I'm done. Hannah is back in LA, new episodes premiere this week. I'll post pictures of that once it's healed.

OK... now, back to work for the first time in 2 weeks. Ack.

Bon Voyage et Bonnes Nouvelles

Christmas was great here in Laura & John Land. We got to see Cillic and Heathen for a bit on Saturday and in the exchange of gifts, I got my new nickname... Bumpy. Huh? Yep. Apparently Heather's handwriting is ambigramic...

Carl handed me a little package and I looked at Heather and said "Bumpy?" John, Carl and Heather looked at me like "Buh?" So I showed them. Too funny.

John scanned the tissue paper and flipped the image on top of itself so we could show the world:


Inside was a lovely beaded bracelet that Heather made.

Saturday night we had a nice dinner & game night at another friend's place. They gave us a talking Jesus action figure with the Kung-Fu grip - so of course as soon as we got home we gave him R. Lee Ermey's sword from the Full Metal Jacket doll and took pictures of him perched in a giant vagina. I mean, what else would you do with it?
It would be fun to try and balance him on a My Little Pony and have it be the coming of the Queer Apocolypse or a Pleo Dinosaur and re-enact a history lesson...

We did Christmas Eve at my parents house and Christmas day at my Aunt's house. We got all kinds of things from my family even though we had all agreed to "take it easy" this year. Uh-huh.

I got a ton of bath & body stuff - a Lush gift box full of yummy smelly stuff and some bath & body works. My parents got me a Gift that Gives More from the Click to Give coalition sites (linked to the left) to send two girls to school in Afghanistan for a year. John got 8 tons of cookies and an Evil Monkey and about a billion t-shirts. That's OK though because he wears them all the time. His favorite was a Threadless shirt entitled "Yes You Are."

We have all our crap packed for the trip. Rather than pack light, which we normally do, we're bringing one suitcase a piece so that we have room for stuff to bring back with us.

I finally heard back from Hannah and I have an appointment for January 3rd to finally finish my back piece (applause). I'll be a bit jet lagged, but that's ok.

Bon Année
Bumpy

PS. My heart goes out to all of Pakistan today. Truly a tragedy brought on by ideological cowards and narrow minded goons.

Stuff

The gauntlet of Christmas is approaching. Eeek.

We leave for Paris a week from Friday. Double Eeek.

Annie will be vacationing with my parents and a friend of mine who lives in the 'hood will be popping in on the kitties once or twice while we're gone.

We're leaving our time there pretty open. We did find one cool place we're going to go called La Cantada II. It's an Absinthe/Punk bar. We'd like to spend New Years Eve there, but it's so far away from the Champs Elysees where the party & fireworks are that we may just go there a different night and see what happens.

We're also planning on going to the Musee D'Orsay and the National Piccasso Museum and probably are going to skip the Louvre. It's just too big and it gives us a reason to return when the weather is warmer.

We still don't have dinner plans for NYE yet. We've decided to leave that up to fate. I had tried to make reservations at one place, but it turned out they were having a prix fixe menu with not a whole lot either of us would or could eat. So we're going to have the hotel find a reservation for us or just wander. Even if it's just a casual dinner in a neighborhood cafe - I could care less.

I got the second draft of my thesis back from my one committee member who will be on leave in Spring. She had one minor change in one paragraph. So now I just have to wait for feedback from the other committee member, who I also suspect will be my toughest reader. She's going to read it over break and get back to me in January.

I see the light at the end of the tunnel.

Guh,,,,

I have been less than motivated to do just about anything this past week. The days are getting shorter, my mornings darker, and my brain muddier. I have started getting back in the habit of sitting in front of the Sad-Lite when I wake up, but I am still just sluggish. This is the reason I could never, ever live in Scandinavia, Northern Canada, or even the Pacific Northwest. I'm like a plant. I need sunlight otherwise I wilt.

The last two weeks have been pretty hectic as well... here's the roundup:

• Last weekend we got to see Heathen & CilliC who were in town for Heathen's birthday. We went to Neo (of course), Wishbone (you don't say?), and Sunday we went to a brunch place called Orange. Let me tell you - put this on your list of sites to see if you're ever in Chicago. They have flights of silver dollar pancakes (four different kinds all within a common theme). They have Frushi (fruit sushi - yum), and the whole time we were there, they were playing Daft Punk. My kind of place. I had Chai Tea French Toast. Double-yum.
• Our office at work moved this week, and shall we say, it was less than organized? I won't get into details, but it was a big ol' mess. Everything is moved finally, but it could have been handled much, much better by those organizing the whole affair. Basically it boiled down to this. We were moving to a space that belonged to a different department, and another office was waiting for our current space. Well... nobody bothered to tell the department that owned the space we were moving to that they had to move their stuff. So it was all last minute -drop everything that could have been avoided with a single phone call. OY
• Last Thursday I got together with a friend of mine I haven't seen in several years. We went to high school together, were very good friends through my time at DePaul, and then lost touch shortly after I graduated. Basically, after everyone graduated, most people moved back to the burbs and it became impossible for me to hang out with them since I had no car. Then I had a less than pleasant exchange with a ranking member of the posse' about his pompous attitude and his holier-than-thou way of treating people and that was pretty much my last bridge that I burned. Well, it turns out that my dad bumped into my friend, now a member of the Harley Owners Group, while riding a couple years ago, and we finally got back in touch. It's funny because for the past 2 years or so, my dad has seen him more than I have. So it was really nice to catch up, especially since, of all the people from my former life, he's the only one I ever truly missed.
• I'm finally getting my ass in gear and writing my thesis. I have it in my brain. I have amassed most of my arguments separately in various research papers I have done for other classes in my program. Now I have to weed through it all, bring it together, add some additional thoughts and research, and polish it up. My trouble has always been just getting started. With the weather the way it is now, it's even harder because all I want to do is sit on my ass and watch TV.
• I have got to get back to the pool. I haven't been swimming in 2 months. They closed the pool for renovations and then I got sick. I really need to get my ass in gear with that. I'm sure exercise will make me feel better and more energized too.
  
• I'm struggling with learning French. I'm terrible with languages, I always was. At least I know how to say "I'm sorry, I don't speak French." Now all I have to learn is "I'm sorry my president is a complete dick."
  

That's all for now. I'm still here, just totally unmotivated to write much of anything lately.

Busy weekend

Vacation plans
John and I have been toying with the idea of going to Paris for New Years since this past Christmas when SecretRudy put the idea in our head. He noted to us that fares and hotels were really cheap that time of year and wouldn't it be fun...

So we mulled it over and decided, yeah, that would be fun. I've been looking at some information on flights and hotels and such, and last weekend, John and I booked a pretty cheap vacation package. I love Expedia and those such sites. It was so below our budget that we threw in an evening dinner package on top of the hotel and airfare.

Dinner on the Eiffel Tower, followed by an evening boat cruise down the Seine, followed by a show at the Moulin Rouge, and transportation to and from our hotel. I usually don't like doing the so-called "touristy" stuff, but if you're only going to a place for a very short time (a few days), sometimes it's the best way to get a small taste of everything.

The rest of the time I fully intend on spending walking around the city just doing whatever we feel like at a relaxed pace. The hotel is walking distance from the Louvre and Notre Dame - two of the sites on my "must go" list. Now, I know that one could easily spend 2 weeks in the Louvre alone, but we'll just have to pick our priority collections carefully. Other than that, whatever we feel like doing, we'll do. If we feel like sitting in a cafe playing Scrabble for 3 hours, we will (yes we have travel Scrabble - we brought it to Hawai'i too. There's nothing quite like sitting in a quiet oceanfront condo playing Scrabble with a man who cheats and tries to get you to accept "Quif" as a real word while listening to the waves crash on the shore).

Swimming
I finally got back to swimming again this week. I couldn't go for 2 weeks after my tattoo work and then Memorial Day weekend was too busy and last weekend I had stuff goin on. So I went Monday and did 30 laps in about a half hour. Not bad. Though I did realize that I'm not doing my breast stroke (hee hee, she said breast stroke) quite correctly. I'd love to find a swimming class that teaches technique instead of how not to drown. I looked up some videos online and found my timing is off and I'm extending my arms too far. So last night I went again and tried doing it the right way and - wow... a LOT harder.

Work
Our student worker is slowly losing his faith in the intelligence of his fellow students. You'd think college students at faculty with PhDs could figure out how to correctly complete scantron forms. Nope. I promised him that before he graduated, this place would turn him into a full-blown cynic. Higher Ed has that effect on people.

Bluesfest
I'd like to get to Bluesfest this year. I always think I'm going to go, and then for some reason, I never get there. Usually because it's not fun for me wandering in the hot sun with 200,000 of my closest friends. I generally try to avoid mass humanity. I might wander over after work Friday for a little while and check out the secondary stages. I have no real excuse not to - I work about a block and a half away from the park.

Roger Waters
I'm taking my dad to see Roger Waters at the United Center on Saturday. From the reviews and other such things I've read it's supposed to be a fantastic show. I hate the United Center with a white-hot passion, but what'y'gonna do? The sound is usually terrible, but I have faith since Waters is known to travel with sound systems that can overcome even the most craptacular acoustics.

Graduations
John's step sister is graduating high-school and was accepted at Texas A&M - Galveston to study Marine Biology. Her party is Sunday so that should be fun.

George Bush's Bullshit Excuses
Bush wants us to believe he has our best interests at heart when he vetoes a stem cell research bill. He said he didn't think it was right to force people to pay for something that is morally questionable (using tax dollars to "destroy" human embryos that are already going to be destroyed anyway). Why not pass a bill that makes it illegal for embryos to be grown in the first place then? I mean, there's always adoption, right? Isn't that what they tell the women seeking abortions? This, opposed to an immoral war in Iraq, Abstinence Only education programs, mercenary armies, and the illegal torturing and detention of human beings. Our tax dollars pay for those too, and last time I checked, the majority of people were opposed to most of those too. So, spare us your excuses Georgie.

More pictures

For those who have not visited the CilliC Braindump or the Queen of the Universe already, there are some pictures there. The Queen I think will re-post the one she had, once she removes John. See, he can't have his secret identity exposed lest the world knows he's really Valerie Plame...

We made it back!

Yes, we lost money. No, we didn't lose a lot of money. I played a bunch of Pai Gow Poker - always a fun time. I even got Cillic and Heathen playing too... not to mention my dad. It's just such a casual game. We had many lovely meals (as always). It was really cool to have so many people fly halfway across the country just for me :)

The view from our room at the Flamingo. Not bad eh? This is the Bellagio at sunrise.


One of these days, I plan on watching the sun rise on the real colluseum. Until then, this will have to do. We've decided that one of these years we're going to take a trip to Europe with Cillic, Heathen, the Queen of the Universe and maybe a few others. They may never allow Americans back on the continent once John and Cillic get deported, but at least we'll be the last ones to have been there. ;)


Yeah, I hate pictures of me, so this is the only one you're getting. Of course, I'm sure Cillic, Heathen and the Queen won't be as kind to me... I know they got some rather unflattering pictures.


You can't make this shit up... Yes, that's a crowd waiting for Gene Simmons to make an appearance at a Dillard's department store. Oh, how the mighty have fallen.





It was a little bit on the cool side for swimming, but that didn't stop Heathen and the Queen of the Universe from basking in the sun with their femi-nazi rags. Could there be a better picture? One reading Bust and the other Bitch? Both great magazines by the way.
Our puppydog was returned to us from boarding unharmed. She does have a little bit of chaffing where her harness was on - apparently they left it on her for the whole 5 days she was there. I am going to have to call them and complain about that one - that's just stupid. Other than that, she's happy to be home and we're happy that she's in one piece.

More later.

I really don't want to go back to work tomorrow.

Vegas Baby!

We leave tomorrow! I'll be back soon, with pictures and stories I'm sure.

Click the picture and turn up the sound....