europe, day 2 -- un joyeux anniversaire

after all the stumbling around in a jet-lagged haze yesterday, frijolita and i decided to something completely different today: stumble around, but not with the jet-lag stuff.



notre-dame was our afternoon's true destination, though we wandered around the rive gauche -- french for "you don't smoke enough to shop here" -- enjoying the atmosphere, hitting the shops, staring at the braless french madamoiselles ... well, only one of us was doing that. i told frijolita to not be so obvious about it, but you know how she is.



the interior of the cathedrale was large, dark and actually inspired awe and reverence. the concept behind it, apparently, is to represent the majesty of God on earth by making the church as huge and imposing as possible. it was filled with tourists, and a sign out front helpfully reminded us all to watch our wallets and purses, as pickpockets target the cathedrale-goers.

after we'd walked for six straight hours, we decided to try the metro, and while i can say that the short, three-stop ride made our tired feet grateful, i also can say i came across an interesting mathematical theorem:

smelly frenchmen + crowded train car x (no moving air)² = angry, angry tourists

allow me to translate the last line of the sign for you:

"philosophers and general pains-in-the-ass"

yes, we stumbled across le deux magots. the front was filled will gawkers and tourists, and reminded me of what i saw at the two bookstores we stopped at today: every philosophie book featuring a french thinker was this: white background, black text, picture of said thinker with a cigarette either dangling from the lips, or used as a gesturing device.

and then there was dinner.



frijolita (remember, that's my lovely wife's nom de plume on this website) and i had dinner in at la place du tetre, in montmarte, at an outdoor cafe. i'm told that, in europe, it's standard operating procedure for these outdoor cafes to put more than one couple per table -- which is exactly the opposite of the good ol' u s of a, where we like our distance from other diners. why, we'd actually have to talk to them!

matthew and alana (i hope i spelled that right) were seated next to us, and over the course of dinner (quiche lorraine, moules, frites and ice cream), three bottles of wine, two beers and a few other assorted drinks, we became fast friends. matthew amazed the table with his knowledge of raymond loewy and how wal-mart uses the merchandise it sells merely as a cash generator for other investments ... while alana made us all laugh at the czech tongue twister she recited -- three times. even more impressive: it was done after most of the drinking was behind us.

they made the evening for us; we felt blessed to have shared the experience with them -- especially when tommy, a sketch artist (i use the term very loosely), approached the table. matthew and tommy bartered back and forth for what seemed like hours, and it was truly one of the funniest things i've witnessed. i wish i'd been able to record it. tommy did a horrendous sketch of the two and (long story short) he walked away with far, far less than he'd originally asked for.

matthew and alana, me and frijolita -- the best possible way for me to kick off my birthday.



really, this shot sums up yesterday. every street in paris -- at least, every street we saw -- looks that charming, especially when the weather is as angelic as it has been for us so far. the fact that i'm posting this, oh, eight hours later than yesterday's post is proof that (1) we're adjusting to the local time, and/or (2) we drank way too much last night.

oh well. c'est la vie!

(as always, the main flickr photo page -- with a few more shots than i had room to include in this post -- is located here.)

zooropa, day one

i'm sitting in my very chic, very tiny room.



our hotel is in the heart of the 1st arrondissement, which is french for "get out of the bike lane you filthy americans." it's a charming, w-esque little property on the rue du mont thabor and is just as charming as it sounds.

apparently paris is broken up into these arrondissements much the way chicago is broken up into neighborhoods, though the arrondissements are more formal boundaries. we are on the Rive Droite -- which is french either for "the right bank of the seine" or "i mean it, you fat american pigs -- the bike lane is for bikes, not for taking pictures of yourselves with your bloated oversized digital cameras" but i'm not sure which -- as if i could ever be on the gauche. i voted for W, after all.

this is my first time in europe, and i'm very excited about the things i'm seeing. frijolita spent a few years here in high school and college, but her time was spent mainly in germany (which we'll be getting to at the end of the trip). and i dated a scandinavian woman in college, so most of what i think i know of the continent is gleamed from these two experiences. i'm excited to be gathering my own misguided conceptions about paris and the french now. such as:

everything in paris is small.



i am so buying this car when i get back home, even if you can't get them in north america. it's called the Smart (though those aren't my abs and bikini babes aren't chasing me around -- yet) and is made by daimlerchrysler. you can learn more about it here. i'm very attached to small things (paging dr. freud) and this little baby car is just a bit too adorable for words. rest assured i'll be driving one around my very spread-out suburb not long after the car is available in the u.s. ... i'll buy four and park them next to the hummer one of my neighbors "needs" for his business.

no wonder hemingway got fat.



if it's true that "le papa" ate pigeons when he was young and poor in paris, then his selection was outstanding. we saw more pigeons in the jardins des tuileries -- french for "what, you don't smoke? everyone smokes, stupid" -- than i think we've ever seen before in one location.

when the evening light is perfect, the louvre is beautiful.



after dinner -- by the way, paris is tres expensive -- we walked around the tuileries and took some pictures. if you want to keep track of the photographic evidence, the flickr set is here.



this is the best i could do with a few shots i took, given that it's 7 a.m. here but 1 a.m. back home, i've been up since 5 a.m. here and i've not had my cafe au lait yet. i could do more with the sky, but what can you do?

i had a great anniversary.

even though the day was spent in a jetlagged haze, frijolita and i found a great way to spend our second anniversary. of course, if paris = second anniversary, i might have to book a trip to the moon for our third. and i don't even want to think about what that means for the tenth.

on the whole, though, day 1 in zooropa turned out to be very enlightening. i've learned that it's not uncommon here for a bottle of coca-cola to cost the same as a pint of beer ... i've learned that americans take for granted that everything around them will be big ... i've learned that dogs in restaurants are a natural thing ... and i've learned that it's easy to spot an american when you're away from america -- just listen. you'll hear us.

thank goodness

etranger, stranger ..., originally uploaded by pr9000.

... that france has "law and order" like we do.

i mean, i thought french culture was decadent and desolate. but with the "duh-DUNH!" sound on at least one french TV channel, I feel ... somehow better.

"there is no highlight for dignity"

it's a a bit melodramatic at points, but this story is pretty damn good sportswriting.

8-25-2

8-25-2, originally uploaded by beths96.

gas prices

as frijolita and i are in the new car market, and of course the price of benzine (as my dad used to call it) is foremost in our minds. in our area, the cost is about $2.60 per gallon wherever you look.

and this seems outrageously expensive to us. but i stumbled across this graph today and it really changed my way of thinking ...



the start date is 1979; the black line = actual price, and the darker gray line = price adjusted for inflation.

so bring on the H3!

idea for a book

i'm thinking about writing a book about "the (x) things they won't tell you about computers."

maybe not a book. maybe a common sense-type pamphlet.

it hit me the other night. we had friends over for dinner, and the husband was telling us about a horror story involving DSL installation and a new wireless network. i casually told him that he should go into his wireless router and, for the love of all that is holy, change the SSID from "d-link" or, worse, "default," to something a bit more unique.

i know that i can hop on a "default" network with no troubles in my neighborhood. and if i can do it, someone else sure can as well.

he was stunned. he never thought he'd have to do that, and he got a bit paranoid about it. not that i blame him -- but, there are just some things they don't tell you about wireless networks.

that's the idea -- a compilation of the things that aren't common sense to anyone but computer nerds, but could save non-nerds a ton of time and heartache.

things such as:

rename your wireless network and turn on encryption

don't use IE if you're running windows

if you must use IE, turn off ActiveX scripting

if you must use windows, pay good money for antivirus software and a router/firewall

all told, macs are cheaper in the long run -- if your time counts for anything

feel free to add to the list. i might credit you in the pamphlet!

why do i bother?

i tried to be mr. macho home guy again this weekend, and all it got me was lots of laughter from my wife ...

our front door blew off thursday. my father-in-law and i put up a storm door last year, and it was such a painful process that we never finished what, at the time, seemed to be an insignificant part: the plunger that keeps the door from flying open in a windstorm.

mistake.

eventually the door blew open too far one too many times, and pulled the ... wood ... thing ... it was attached to away from the door frame. i went to home depot -- i know, i know, big mistake -- and was, like, fourth in line for the only guy in the doors department to tell me how to fix it.

i mean, i know how to fix it -- 2 1/2" wood screws. they fix everything. but then you'd see the screws from the front of the house, and that's no good. the wood ... thing ... has these farked-up nails that are like magic nails -- you don't see them from the front of the wood, but they seem to grow out of the middle of the wood, and ...

i can't even describe them. i'm totally at a loss. it's as if they were injected into the unpained part of the board, but in a way that allows the sharp part to stick out and be ready to be nailed into the frame.

am i weak, or what? i'm sure there's a name for them. but damned if i know what it is.

anyway. i'll return to the depot of homes on a non-weekend evening and see if i can get some assistance.

i cannot make this shit up

... even if i tried:

***

Hi (person i work with) and (another person i work with)!

At the happy hour yesterday the managers covered the appetizers while we covered our own beverages. I covered your beverages. Your diet cokes were $2.50 each so I contributed $3.50 each to cover tax and tip. If you could pay me back that would be great!

Thanks! :-)

***

this email -- with original names in place of the redacted ones, because this is, after all, an anony-blog -- hit my inbox at 3 p.m. today. it quite certainly is the most bizarre thing that's ever happened to me at work.

and you know what makes it for me? the smiley face at the end.

"hi! i'm cheap! :-)"

my (amish) niece

8, originally uploaded by beths96.

'tis no pool, english ...

d'oh-eth!

like a fish to water

so i've decided to teach myself to swim.

i never learned when i was a kid, and frijolita thinks this is crucial, as she says it's far easier to learn this stuff when you're young. but what can i do? until she gets me a time machine, and i can go back to when i was four years old, i'm kind of screwed.

(and by the way: the first stop when i get the time machine won't be 1976. it will be 1989. there's some cheerleader i should have asked out, but didn't. they called her "halitosis" because she had a minor breath problem. their taunts -- behind her back, though i know she was aware of them -- kept me from doing anything about anything. but with the time machine, i assume i'll go back with the same knowledge and awareness i have today, and not have to just relive painful, pimpled adolescent moments.

i'm not sure of the rules, though.)

anyway. i'm going to the über-yuppie health club that just opened down the road. it's actually a very nice club -- and it better be, for the outrageous amount we're paying. everything is shiny and new. we went to another club in the same chain yesterday, just for kicks -- the new one is one mile away, and the one we visited was about 100 -- and it looked like crap, compared to the new one ...

damn. i keep diverting.

frijolita was trying to show me how to do the crawl -- and i closely resemble the animation, by the way -- because all the extremely healthy swimmers i see in the lap pool do the crawl. i want to be like them. i want to actually get my hair wet and put my head under water.

needless to say, the lesson didn't go well -- not because f. didn't do a good job, but because i think i need professional help on this. i need someone to look at what i'm doing and, with the expertise that only years of helping people swim can bring, get me onto a treadmill ASAP.

two things this morning

1. a. will have a new nickname on this site ... henceforth, she will be known as frijolita. as they say in the bible, let he who reads understand.

2. hailey and her mom (who is my sister)


taken from this gallery.

madison, wisconsin

the only person in the world who is smarter than glenn reynolds writes one of my favorite blogs. it's a great mix of legal issues and "american idol" analysis ... and she's based in one of my all-time favorite cities in the country: madison, wisconsin.

a. and i took a weekend trip to chicago and made madison our halfway point. since ann posts lots of pictures of her current hometown, i thought i'd do the same ...

every saturday there's a ginormous farmers' market that surrounds the state capitol building.



it got so bad that a. and i had to walk on the grass -- a no-no in hippieville USA -- just to navigate through the crowds. and while there are all sorts of healthy, fresh veggies at the market, we got there at 11 a.m. and i had one thing on my mind:



all the crunchy granola types were out. hell, if they weren't, i'd have been disappointed.



i was sorely tempted to ask her where i'd be voting, what war they were referring to, and if that vote also included a vote for more federal funding for a green time machine to go back to 1968 when the hippies might have been relevant ...



this was incredibly colorful -- sadly the exposure didn't turn out well ... and while it was near the PFLAG booth, i think this place was selling veggies and fruit. regardless, it was intensely colorful.

here's a slightly less "we're here/we're putting a rainbow umbrella near the capitol/get used to it" shot of the capitol building.



and after a long trek down state street, in search of two-for-$15.98 t-shirts at steve and barry's ... we had to stop at the most famous market in the world:



and what did our quest, in the 90-degree-plus heat and humidity, get us?



modeled by hannah and sarah carroll ...



purchased by the lovely a., but modeled by "saras" carroll.

a study in contrasts

100_0473, originally uploaded by beths96.

as compared to ...

100_0486, originally uploaded by beths96.

pop!

could this be the bursting of the real estate bubble?

now that i've doubled the number of TOL friends in the greater washington, d.c., area ... i thought this story might be of interest to them. all three of them.

found this on fark

in a thread about the worst team nicknames in sports ...