Parisian Flashback

This morning Dan drew my attention to a post from the Frugal Traveler about a week living in an apartment in Paris, and compared it to our Thanksgiving weekend there in 2003. It's fitting that today I would indulge in such nostalgia because Pablo, our long-lost-to-kilts-and-PhDdom friend, is descending upon our household this evening for another brief weekend. So without further ado, I present a few shots from Paris, back in the day. (Confession: The night these photos were taken, the four of us -- Dan's now ex girlfriend was there too -- bought four bottles of wine. Devon decided she didn't want any. So we took it upon ourselves to finish the rest. I think I could probably hack a bottle-plus these days, but back then I most definitely could not, and the night did not exactly end well for me. However, I have survived to post the photos on the Internet.)

The three of us. Check out my sweet PJ pants.

Possibly one of the most ridiculous photos of these two ever taken.

Shadowy me and Dan.

All IKEA, all the time!

London Town

I am a sucker for the New York Times' "36 hours in..." travel feature. I don't really know why -- the kinds of things they recommend would take much more than 36 hours, but I guess you don't need to take it literally. I was thrilled to see a piece on London this morning, and then even more excited when I realized it was 36 hours in literary London! I really need to go back there, primarily because the three days I spent in London when it was actually sunny and somewhat springlike were some of the best I ever had there, and I think a week sometime in the summer would be awesome, albeit tourist heavy. (Compare that to the city on Christmas Day.) But I've never seen a play at the Globe! I've never had a picnic in a park there! So this piece definitely stoked the flames of London love. I haven't been to any of the spots except the Globe and the British Library, which, by the way, is amazing. One of my favorite experiences there.

Now, to sit at work and be grumpy.

Belize it or not

Whew. What a day. I spent a good part of yesterday and today trying to find and buy tickets to Belize, where James, Justin, Dan, Laurel and I will be traveling at the end of March. We totally managed to con Continental Airlines' website -- it's kind of a long story and I'm still not sure how it happened but the point was we couldn't buy four tickets at once for $520 apiece, we could only buy 4 for $580 each. But, when we searched for just one ticket, it was $520 each. The customer service rep said that meant that there weren't enough tickets available at the lower price point. So I tried to buy three tickets for $520 -- and that was working. I did that while James tried to buy one for $520, and somehow, it worked! It was completely worth the fifteen minutes James (who also works at Google) and I spent on the phone walking through the Continental website together while my boss sort of patiently ignored the fact that I wasn't working. Luckily the rest of yesterday and today I was really busy with work -- luckily for her and my company, but not so much for the rest of you, who I am sure have missed my compulsive updates tremendously. Don't worry, I plan on catching up on blogging tomorrow and over the weekend. In the meantime, I'm wrapping up my work day and getting ready to go stand in line for like, three hours for the chance to see Vampire Weekend. It is truly ridiculous that you East Coasters have seen them play ad nauseum and the rest of us are reduced to queuing in the rain in SOMA just to be as hip as you all and see them once.

Still.

(Side note: The fact that "Belize" sounds like "believe" is furnishing us with tons of puns and you should expect to hear them through at least April.)

Pitchfork roundup (possibly part 1 of 2)

Pitchfork was pretty much amazing. It wasn't exactly that we listened to the music that much and there were definitely some kinks that could have been worked out on that front (putting people like Girl Talk and the Klaxons on the stage crammed between the tennis courts and the street was not so much a great idea) but it was all around a ridiculous good time. We documented well via Twitter but it is arguably completely incomprehensible to anyone who was not Orges, Cristina, Dan or me this weekend, so I figured I'd do a little documentation blogstyle. Trust me, I'm not including everything. We are inappropriate.

Cristina is excited about something, possibly just her outfit. We needed to blend in with the hipsters, so she wore formal shorts, layered tanks, and a vest, plus the bangles (on Day 1). I wore a tube top with a lacey shirt worn as a jacket and formal shorts as well. I think Cristina wins the hipster competition.

Orges wore a Miller shirt with a bass on the front (why? Not sure) and he latched on to this hat that Cristina had bought which was very much a girl's hat.

The headliner on Day 1 was Yoko Ono. She was crazy and awesome at the same time. What a throwback. The whole first 10 minutes of her show was dedicated to this art film project crazy thing she made showing people how to say "I love you" to the world and the universe (not kidding) with a flashlight. I recommend. The above picture shows how we reacted to Yoko. Also we reacted by finding flashlights (which had been handed out to people sometime during the day) on the ground and flashing them at each other for the rest of the weekend, plus by telling people "1, 2, 3" or "i. ii. iii." which means, you guessed it, "I love you." Oh Yoko.

The view from Orges' window, if you strategically take a picture without the giant building in it.

My artsy photo of the weekend, this was taken where we had brunch with Dan's parents on Sunday. I love the china. It is inspiring me to build a collection of dishes purely from thrift stores. Ooh, project!


I'm a little in love with the El. So cool looking. And so functional!


Again. I feel like I'm in another era.


Back to reality, or at least, our "weekend of hedonism and play and irresponsibility" brand of reality (which, as I was saying to Dan yesterday, is both a reality check and the complete opposite of one - it's totally not how I live my daily life, but it's a reminder that it could be, and that this is what you should strive for) - Dan and Cristina pose in their Day 2 outfits alterna-prom style, and Orges takes a sideways picture, which I love because of the way the El looks in the background.


Waiting for our train. I like the rusting paint under this awning.


A study in patterns - lots of stripes and shadows and ripplings of light. I love that I took this picture.


This guy's outfit was so awesome to me that I took a covert picture of him on the train. I love how he managed to perfectly match his shirt with his jacket. And make it look actually cool, somehow. This weekend was sartorially inspiring really.


The license plate was from Kentucky. I think they roadtripped.

There were about 5 sunsets on Sunday because the clouds kept covering the sun. This was one of them, during Of Montreal. And those are Dan's glasses.

Of Montreal. I think. And the banners and the lighting. I love this picture. It was right around this time that Dan & I got on one of our rhapsodic "Our lives are too awesome, our apartment is going to be too awesome, gardening hey" things and our Twitters started to make no sense.

Here we are, waiting for the Klaxons to go on.

Final tally...
Bands we actually watched: Yoko, Clipse, Mastodon (Orges' idea, clearly), a few songs from New Pornographers, the Cool Kids, Of Montreal, Jamie Lidell (omg), Junior Boys (pretty damn good live actually), De La Soul, and like 3 songs of the Klaxons.

Bands we heard from a distance: Cat Power (a bit), Grizzly Bear, Voxtrot (better on CD I think), Battles, Iron & Wine (barely heard him though)

Bands we attempted to hear but failed to hear because of the crappy Balance Stage or whatever it was called: Fujiya & Miyagi, Klaxons, Girl Talk

Food and drink consumed: lots of cheap ($4!!!!) Goose Island IPA, delicious pulled pork sangwiches with coleslaw (inspiring all of us to learn how to make pulled pork sandwiches), vegan ice cream, fried cheese curds (only one, Orges and Cristina finished them before they could get to me and Dan), my first authentic (or semi-authentic) sweet tea, a slice of apple pie from the farmer's market that Cristina brought from Ann Arbor, disgusting pizza, and something that I didn't eat but the others did called cevapcici or something like that... etc. I said hedonism, didn't I?

Twitter messages: Oh, thousands. (Maybe not, but I felt like quoting Bridget Jones when she's keeping track of "alcohol units.")

For you to check out, since for me Jamie Lidell was my "discovery" of the weekend:

He looks all soulful and normal here, but he's actually crazy. He wore a crazy hat made of streamers and half the time his soul singing is layered over crazy beats and stuff. I am minorly obsessed.

Dan sent this to me. It takes me back. Back to around TWO YEARS ago when we went on our road trip! How I wish I could do that again... maybe hit up the Eastern Seaboard this time. Or Canada. Or, make it to Yellowstone or Glacier National Park. I love road tripping. I should be independently wealthy.

This is really awesome. It's a map of what an LA subway should/would look like if the map looked like the London Tube map. I'd be way out on the yellow line somewhere between the Colima and Beach Blvd. stops. In Zone "I say I'm from LA but when I say that to people who are from LA proper they get a funny look on their face."

Via Notcot.org

Summer Manifesto

For a long time I have been wanting to write a spring manifesto. I bombed all my New Year's Resolutions and spring is a time of renewal and this spring especially for me is a time of renewal and recharging and rearranging my life. But spring foiled my manifesto with fever and gorgeous weather and good friends, and now it's the middle of May (no matter what the weather in Mountain View thinks right now). Almost June. Therefore, almost summer.

Here, then, is my summer manifesto:

This is the summer I will go outside every weekend in the sun. I will go camping at least once. I will go to the beach. I will kayak at least once. I will go swimming.

I will eat in season - tomatoes, berries. I'll go berry picking. I will do my best to eat naturally. Avoid Splenda overdoses.

I will remember how good it feels to run in golden afternoons. I will buy a bike, and use it.

I will barbecue, have picnics, make cucumber salads and tomato tarts. I will make sangria. I'd like to make sun tea.

I will wake up early on weekends and enjoy the whole day.

I will meet people and catch up with people and value the time I spend with people.

I will take my time. I will write more. I will sit still sometimes, paying attention. I will divorce myself from mediocrity, boredom and superficiality.

I will have at least one party in the hot weather when the nighttime breeze is your only air conditioning and you feel purified by sweat. A party that goes long into the night and is like a beacon of light in the dark summer evening.

I will go to Costa Rica and to Chicago.

I will take time out for solitude, for reading, for cooking, drinking iced tea and iced coffee alone.

I will force the rest of you to join me!!!

It's official. Memorial Day weekend I am going here.

Led by the ever intrepid Dan, I'll be hiking in 11 miles and camping and then hiking out 11 miles.

I can't wait for sore muscles, sleeping bags, nature, fresh air, quiet, sunrises, and dinners of vacuum packed tuna.

Dan alerted me yesterday to let me know that Cafe Amelie, this tiny little courtyard cafe restaurant we went to in New Orleans on our road trip, is still open. Despite the fact that less than three months after we ate there, Hurricane Katrina hit. And despite the fact that when we did eat there, only about 2 other couples were eating in the restaurant and it employed 2 people, which includes the owner, who was a transplanted New Yorker who I suspected, but hoped, would never have weathered the troubles in NOLA post-Katrina. Turns out he did! There isn't really any information about the restaurant on the web, but it's in this courtyard and on a certain level I am thinking to myself... damn, that would be a good place to get married! Not that I am getting hitched ANYTIME soon, but if I was...

Anyway I love the idea that the owner of this restaurant stuck it out and stayed. It was such a beautiful, tranquil, not to mention delicious place. I really want to go back.

This is the pub where Sean and I went for New Year's Eve dinner (delicious, and great beer, but they had a bit of an issue with credit card payments and made us miss the fireworks above the London Eye).

Anyway, apparently since then they have more of an issue with "40 thugs carrying knives, baseball bats, wooden clubs embedded with nails and hockey sticks."

Classy.