i'm here

I'm sorry oh blog...

Just because I have been ignoring you does not mean I have forgotten you. I have been very busy with various activities, including a visit from my mom and sister, a trip to NYC, a work trip to Columbia, SC, a weekend house guest, and lots o' work. Please forgive me and see the pictures below as evidence of my stated activities.

other LA snippets...

As I mentioned in my previous post, I visited LA last weekend to visit our good friend Jon Garda. I liked LA a lot more than I thought I would. It had a unique kitschy quality that I didn't expect. I imaged an image-driven, shallow place. Instead I found great food, cool vintage shops, beautiful landscape, oh and did I say great food? I can't really imagine living there for too long with all of the driving, but it's definitely worth a visit. Funny thing- it rained two of our three days there. Sunny LA- Ha!

Here are a few highlighted moments:

Here we are at the Getty, looking over LA

There was great Mid-Century furniture shops. Here is my first vintage Herman Miller sighting. A big day in my life.

Pelicans roaming the Pier.

We went to a great arcade on a Pier where we played vintage games and redeemed our tokens for a "suprise" prize box. It contained random keychains, nail polish, whistles, etc...

Jon took us to the Farmer's Market where we ate amazing doughnuts and Crepe's. I would go to this outdoor food market everyday if I lived there.

Classic Hollywood fare

Protesters for Conan

And because it rained for a day and a half, the Valley totally flooded (notice the power line down).

If you haven't yet, skeptics like me should go to LA and be pleasantly "suprised."

Stonington/ Mystic excursion

When I was born my father was stationed in Connecticut. During that time my parents and sister lived in a quaint house on the tip of a Connecticut peninsula right in front of the Stonington Lighthouse. Now that I live in Boston, I have the pleasure of easily traveling to just about anywhere I want in New England, and today my destination was Stonington to see the house I lived in for the first two months of my life. The trip took only about 2 hrs. It was a snowy day, so I look forward to going back in the summer.

This was their house. My mom tells me how she read about this house at the local library, where she learned there was a secret smuggling passage leading from the house out to the ocean and ghost sightings.

This is the house down the street where my supposed god-parents live. They weren't home, but still live there.

Here is the point where my mother took us (mostly my sister) to play on the lawn and at duBois Beach.

Then Aaron and I drove to Mystic and ate at the famed Mystic Pizza. What a perfect day.

Saturday in Battery Park

Me and Mayumi off to see the Statue of Liberty!

Halloween

Wow- I can't believe I'm so behind in my blogging. I have so many post ideas backed up I don't even know where to start.

How about Halloween? Do you like my pumpkin? It's hard to tell but its a white pumpkin- so he has a ghost face.

Aaron and I decided to spend the day driving around the North Shore of Massachusetts (Oh I love you Zip Car). It's so great that you can drive 45 mins out of the city and you are in some cute small fishing town. Here is our trip in pictures:

We didn't get very far before we started noticing all the kitschy old signs on the highway. Its like nothing changed in the state since the 50s. Not that I really mind considering my mid- century dispositions. We were driving though so I missed a lot of good ones.

First we hit up Glouschester

not even the churches escape the fisherman's influence

when your name is Bob Whynott- you better just run for office

Our next stop was Rockport- such a beautiful town

Roy Moore's Lobster. Enough said.

our meal came from these crates- well, probably not, but you get the idea

And now we arrive in Essex

next to one of the many antique stores we came across an ancient graveyard. fitting for the day I think.

Then we went to Ipswich, but no pictures were warranted there. Sorry Ipswich. I did like you.

what a spectacle

I have admittedly been absent from this blog -- and for good reason! Matt and Jessica have come to visit and we've been seeing all that Boston has to offer. This includes great restaurants and bakeries, historic sites, and candlepin bowing (more on that some other time). It also means taking a trip to Spectacle Island. This island in Boston Harbor was once shaped like a pair of eye glasses, but after a long history as Boston's trash dump, glue maker, and dirt repository, it has since retained a round shape, no longer resembling spectacles. It has also since been turned into a natural environment with paths and picnic tables. Also, as you can see, there is a great deal of black berries for the picking- or so we presumed. Only a short, cheap, ferry ride away, and we were smelling the sea air and taking in a view of the city from across the bay. I'm excited to explore more islands, and possibly even camp on one. We only have two nights left with our friends, and we are back to being alone and boring, but also rested. 

what to read in europe

I had a great weekend, with lots of apartment improvements, and a great tour of Fenway Park. I'll share the apartment updates later, when the place is cleaned up enough to take pictures.

For now I have a different kind of post. I read so many great books while in Europe I thought I would share. I found overwhelmingly that reading books set in the place you were traveling truly made the experience that much more fulfilling. 

The first book I read, Lord of the Flies, by William Golding, did not follow this logic. I read it in Sardinia, and while it was a very interesting read, I found it to be distracting from my overall experience. I recommend reading this disturbing comment on the animal character of human nature during a rainy day at home.

The next book I read was one of two Hemingway novels completed during the trip. This posthumously published unfinished novel, The Garden of Eden was loaned to me from a  friend in Chicago, and when I read the back I was not looking forward to it. A man caught between passion for is eccentric wife, and the love of a woman who his wife has also fallen in love with. Sounds pretty twisted. But it was a great book, with interesting relationships and perspectives on the writing process. The best part for me was the continual traveling thorough Europe. Hemingway is so good at capturing that feeling; driving from town to town, sitting at a local cafe enjoying the spectacular food and drink. Even though it was set in the coastal regions of France and Spain, it seemed to really elevate my experience in Cinque Terre. 

The third book, Marie Antoinette: The Journey, by Antonia Fraser, was another great setting book. This fairly dense biography taught me a great deal about the French Revolution, late 18th century French culture, and made my visit to Versailles and Paris like a Marie Antoinette pilgrimage. And considering I read it over Bastille Day, it was very relevant. 

Then I read The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini. Again, not fitting for the European experience, but a quick and entertaining read. 

Finally I read A Moveable Feast. This was a book I picked up at the Shakespeare and Company bookstore in Paris. I had wanted to read another Hemingway book, and when  flipping through it at this quaint english store, I saw pictures in the back of the book of the very place I was standing. Apparently when Hemingway was living in Paris he frequented this bookstore, as well as many other expatriate writers. So naturally I bought it, had it stamped by the store, and felt very cool. The book was short essays about his time on Paris and his experience with the city and the writers living there. Such a a wonderful book to read in the city of lights. Paris seemed very much unchanged in many ways from when Hemingway lived there, and you could just sink into a cafe and be there with him. I loved it and would recommend it to anyone. Hemingway is so good at those simple yet powerful one liners. 

Happy reading!

back in business!

Well here I am. Back. After landing in Chicago Aaron and boarded a plane to Boston, and the past week I've been occupied with moving in and looking for work. But I feel like we're finally settling in. I had originally planned on blogging through the whole trip, but since I didn't it seems so hard to go back through and update on what we did. All I can say is that I'm so glad I went. A few favorite destinations included Cinque Terre, Chamonix, the Loire Valley and Paris. I didn't expect to love France as much as I did. Currently I can share a Paris picture, but I'm having a hard time accessing the pictures we loaded to an external hard drive, so I'll try and post more later. 

Our apartment is so big and nice that its been really fun thinking about what to do with it. The first major project was stripping a mid-century danish dining table we got from craigslist. I was so happy to have learned thins new skill! Here it is with some Ikea chairs we bought.

I'll post more about the apartment as we finish each room.

Boston has been really great. Dorchester is a really diverse and pleasant neighborhood (at least our area). Last might we met a neighbor from across the street who moved to her house "as a bride" and has been there 62 years! Amazing. True to form Aaron has started his baking, already making english muffins and a peach tart.

Also, to be real Bostonians, we had a shrimp boil last weekend. So good. I'm excited to start blogging again, what with a new apartment to put together, a nice kitchen to cook in and a new life to start.