having a hard time doing once a day!

Having a hard time recently keeping up with the once a day posts that I promised. It will be a relief to go to once a week starting in December.
I'm planning to do updates on Tuesdays - fresh from the weekend, but enough time to write up on Monday and edit on Tuesday. One thing that has definitely been lacking in this once-a-day stream of consciousness writing has been any kind of editing.

I usually write it once, spellcheck it, and post it immediately.
It's quick, relatively painless, and often ends up being pointless.

I found that I stopped right at the 200 word mark and didn't finish a complete thought, didn't take the time to fully explain or explore the topic that I introduced.

Hopefully going with a weekly post at 500 word minimum will help a lot with that particular phenomenon.

One thing that was interesting and I didn't expect is just how much I have to talk about!

There's always something interesting, or at least interesting to me - it may not be my own life, but perhaps a news story or a new podcast that I've gotten into. In fact, it has sometimes been difficult to choose one thing to write about!

Tomorrow is Thanksgiving - and that's really exciting in so many ways :) gobble gobble

Artomatic 2016

Today K and I had a delightful suburban adventure. We decided to go out to an art festival called Artomatic. It's an annual festival that runs on the weekends through November into early December. It seems to be a place where anyone can display their art - in fact we saw at least two exhibition panels with art from local middle schools!

But before I get ahead of myself - on our way out of town, we realized we were too hungry to wait until we arrived at Park Potomac so I did a quick scan of restaurants along our route (there's this new feature on Google maps that is awesome) - and we chose to stop at Mrs. K's Restaurant and Barrel Bar. It is an adorable stone house that used to be a tollhouse in Montgomery County, Maryland. It was converted to Mrs. K's Tollhouse Restaurant in 1930. In fact, hanging in the lobby is a newpaper article from 1941 praising the colonial dress of the wait staff and delicious food :)

Our waiter did not wear colonial dress, but had a lovely little blue bowtie. The food, however, certainly lives up to the reputation. We had the Saturday two-course brunch - we both chose the Maryland crab soup for appetizer and I had succulent and spicy shrimp and andouille sausage with grits as my main course. It was such a delightful indulgence and set us up well on our path to the art fair.

K and I have been thinking about art for our home but had not yet picked out anything together, so this was our first opportunity. We discussed a couple of ideas - nothing too figurative, prefer colors that will match/enhance the color scheme of white blue and tan in our living room, etc.

Instead, we bought a gorgeous rainbow cityscape by Jay Yirenkyi!!!!

When we turned the corner and saw the piece, we both gasped. We knew instantly that it was the right piece for us and immediately emailed the artist. But then we pushed ourselves to continue walking around and look at the rest of the show. We took our time and sat down to discuss whether we were ready to make the investment and ultimately, made that choice and went to paypal! We won't get the piece until after the show closes in December but in the meantime, we met an artist named Cheryl Ann Bearrs who was so enthusiastic and warm that we were inspired to pick up a couple of her beautiful abstract pieces for our dining room.

There were a lot of beautiful pieces throughout the Artomatic - and because the show is uncurated, there is a huge variety of art, style, personality. If you're in the DC/Maryland area - go check it out!

 

J'aime Paris, je t'aime à Paris

K and I closed out the month of August in Paris. It was a gorgeous weekend full of laughter and tears and scrumptious, indulgent food.

It's hard to put into words how important, how essential it was to see one another after more than two months apart. And then how devastating it was to get on separate planes and travel in opposite directions.

But let's focus on the beauty of our cheeky long weekend in Paris.

I arrived in Paris at Charles de Gaulle six hours before K. I was looking forward to wandering through beautiful Terminal 2 and maybe getting a massage or even paying to access a first-class lounge. I didn't realize until we were all shuttled off the flight into a dark hallway that arriving planes drop off passengers in an entirely different area than the gorgeous halls full of duty-free that I was expecting.

We had a short, dark hallway, a quick line through customs, and then were spit right out into baggage claim.

What a disappointment!
I mean, seriously, CDG, I was hoping to spend a bunch of money in your airport while I waited for my partner to show up. I can't be the only one who's ever wanted that!

Luckily, things started looking up when I found a Paul's with seating overlooking the Grandes Lignes trains. When I heard a solo piano piece start playing, I was impressed at the choice of music in the train station. A trip, a pause in the music made me realize that it was live! I looked around and spotted a piano tucked underneath one of the escalators and a frumpy, wrinkled, young traveler playing those beautiful pieces.  It was a combination of classical easily-recognizable tunes and more contemporary pieces, some of them probably of his own composition. That was a lovely way to enjoy an espresso and a pain aux raisins.

After we finally found one another, K and I made our way to the hippest of the hip hotels in Paris, Mama Shelter.  Somehow we roused ourselves from our jetlag nap to make it out to a beautiful little grocery/restaurant that K had found called Le Comptoir de la Gastronomie where K had foie gras ravioli (who knew that existed?!?!) and then we wandered out into the rain and stumbled upon the glass pyramid of the Louvre.

We turned and, exclaiming with joy, found the Eiffel Tower, lit up and sparkling with its nightly light show. It was a magical start.

On Friday, we found the most delicious bakery just outside the door of the hotel. Fortified with quiche lorraine and another pain aux raisins (for me - they just don't make them the same outside of France!) we braved the metro system and made our way from the 20th arrondisement to the 8th arrondisement to check out the Palais de Tokyo. We loved the two major exhibits - acquaalta by Celeste Boursier-Mougenot - and l'exposition de Patrick Neu.  But unfortunately we were left disturbed and uninspired by the others. K lamented that she wished Sarah Urist Green from PBS's The Art Assignment were there, she would undoubtedly help us plumb the depths of the art we'd experienced and find something meaningful.

As it was, probably the most exciting moment of our visit for K was spotting the dead drop.

"I've been looking for these for almost a decade now!"

My favorite moment was getting to be the gondolier in the acquaalta exhibition. It brought me back to reading The Passion aloud with K on our New Year's trip to Williamsburg.

My favorite orange summer jeans didn't match the dark and brooding atmosphere.

To be continued...

I have important news... and other (hopefully useful) phrases I am learning in Arabic

I have set up my iPhone and newly acquired iPad to type in Arabic, but I haven't figured out how to use that gorgeous script on my actual computer yet, so I won't be able to share all of my exciting phrases with you this time. But I have a new goal of updating my blog at least once a week, so you will see some phrases soon.

I'm certain that all 5 of my loyal subscribers will be extremely excited about this new intention.

In case you are not connected with me through social media or I haven't seen you in person (and yet for some reason you are reading this blog, hm?)  I have received my very first assignment as a Foreign Service Officer!

I will be going to Beirut, Lebanon as the Cultural Affairs Officer!

This means that I am currently in full-time language training and I will be until mid-April 2015.

For those of you in the DC area: I am still around and up for brunching!

For those of you not in DC: I probably won't be able to see you for another year at least.

Full-time language training is amazing and fun and brutal and discouraging all at the same time. I had a bit of a meltdown today - a combination of too little sleep and too much going on.

But a tasty empanada from my new favorite cafe Boccato and a bit of a venting session with some of my favorite new colleagues helped bring my mood back up.

Plus, the chance to use my new iPad to review my vocabulary makes me feel justified in my birthday present for myself as an investment in learning (despite a certain looming credit card bill).

P.S. check out the engraving.