Jun 22, 2012

damage

Wait—
that didn't go as planned;
my fear got in the way.

Wait—
the words didn't come out right;
that wasn't what I meant to say.

Wait—
I meant to tell you my heart is in your hands;
I meant to ask you to stay.

Wait. Wait. Wait.

Jun 17, 2012

To Gluten Free or Not to Gluten Free...That is the Current Bane of My Existance

I am frustrated. Why? Because I just went through my cabinet and discovered everything in it contains gluten. Why do I care? Well...after suffering off and on from stomach issues, listening to one of my besties talk about how much better she feels after going gluten free, and then spending a few days in Minnesota with someone who said the same—I decided I would try it for one month and see if I noticed a difference. 

It's day three, and I've already messed up once by eating an ice cream cone. But, it was after a 4-mile obstacle race that was advertised as a 3-mile race, and made me pretty much hate life for 52 minutes, so I wasn't in my right "does anything I'm eating right now have gluten in it" frame of mind. Between smelling soft pretzels at the biergarten last night, and being tortured by the sweet smell of bread at Fuddruckers today, and not being able to eat it either one of them, it seems like all I can think about is eating everything that I can't. Human nature right? Always wanting what you can't have. Well, I want gluten—delicious, not verboten, gluten. Don't even get me started on how I had to give away my step-mother's mouth-watering homemade coffee cakes after lunch. Please tell me this mental anguish is worth it!

But, anyways, back to my cabinet. My favorite chicken marinades contain gluten, the pasta obviously does, my knock-off Capt 'n Crunch cereal is still debatable at this point (Can I eat oat flour?), Rice-A-Roni, yep that has gluten, that and enough sodium to kill a horse, and that pretty much sums up my cabinet. Pathetic, I know, but, I guess that's also part of this process—to make me eat better. To get rid of the late-night Oreo snacking (Dear Oreo, please make a gluten free version for me, thanks.), to cut out the water-retaining carbs, to help my belly out, and maybe to finally lose those last five stress pounds I gained last winter. 

After realizing I had nothing to eat except plain chicken, I went to the overpriced health food store up the street. After spending $40 on next to nothing, I am frustrated, as I mentioned. I mean, it was painful for me to cut soda out of my daily routine, so this next month is going to be very hard, and evidently very expensive, but hopefully worth it in the end. I have friends who are on the Paleo Diet and have encouraged me to do so, but even thinking about that at this point makes me feel like I am drowning. Plus, life without ice cream is not a life worth living. Period. So, I will try my best to stick to this gluten-free diet, but that doesn't mean I have to be happy about it! Granted, a better attitude probably wouldn't hurt. I feel like a five-year-old stamping her feet crying, "BUT I WANT A COOKIE!"

Jun 15, 2012

Once Upon a Time in Minnesota

Just got back from a work trip to Minnesota, don't chya know. Or should there be a question mark after that? I don't know. I don't really understand the local expressions, such as, Uff da! Which I am told does not actually have an exclamation point after it, or hand gestures. I'm still not clear what it means, but I find it nearly impossible to say without said exclamation point or hand gesture. Anyways, here are some random snapshots from the good ole' twin cities. (By the way, no one there was able to tell me why they are named the twin cities. I suppose I can ask Google, but, funny that the locals had no explanation other than they are two cities near each other.)

You too can do yoga in the basement of an old diamond store that looks like it was attacked by a Zelda bomb. Well, maybe you can't. But I did.
There's an aquarium in the Mall of America. Yesterday's special show was "Sharks after Dark," which I didn't think a whole lot about until I saw this wall ad for it. Why the disco ball? What exactly DO sharks do after dark? Do they bust out ass-less chaps and get down on the dance floor in a haze of red light and vodka buzzes? This actually seemed so cheesy it made me wonder if the sharks are even real. Do they have styrofoam sharks with awful paint jobs that they try to pass off as real sharks with bad lighting? Well, I guess I will never know. I just hope the caveman below made it out okay. 

Jun 7, 2012

Here I Am...Doing Yoga!

For a very long time, my vacation photos included me presenting something...the Golden Gate Bridge, the Great Wall of China, waterfalls in Puerto Rico, the Eiffel Tower, to name a few. The pictures kind of said, "I made this for you. You're welcome." The past few trips, however, I've taken to doing yoga—standing bow pulling pose, to be exact. 

It started in Turks and Caicos. After a horrendous ordeal getting down there, I managed to get drunk somewhere between the flight from Miami to Turks and arriving at Club Med. We wandered around the hotel for a bit, grabbed another whiskey, and it wasn't long before I came across a schedule of events, noticing that yoga on the pier started in about a half hour. "This," I thought, "would be a great idea." 

I convinced the gals to go and a few minutes into it I realized I was entirely too drunk to be doing yoga on an uneven pier where one wrong move would land me in the gorgeous Caribbean waters. During one pose, my friend who had arrived to the island on time the day before, looked over and asked, "Just how drunk are you?" 

I was fairly drunk. The Club Med photo crew who stalks you your entire stay, caught my friend and I doing standing bow pulling pose.

It made a fun story, and somewhere along the way I decided this would be my new vacation shot. I'm fairly certain I'm doing a terrible job at the pose, but to be fair, it's really hard to do in jeans. Now I just need to travel to more places!

Chicago
Versailles, France

Jun 5, 2012

I Need It RIGHT NOW

I was not a fan of the subway in Paris. My French friend told me he feels it's far superior to New York. There were positives: it has vending machines and food vendors, which is  pretty nice if you're hungry. They also had fairly ornate entrances, which I liked, until I remembered that I was about to embark on a trip into an MC Escher drawing. 

I mostly didn't like the stairs, and that was mostly because the tendon I had hurt running a couple of years ago was very pissed off at me this trip, and with each step on the last few days in Paris I felt like the tendon was being ripped off of the bone. To get to any train it seemed like you had to go up a set of stairs, down long hallways, up some stairs, then down some stairs, until you're so turned around you feel like you've traveled to the center of the earth. 

Then there was the task of getting out of the train station. When traveling on the RER, you will need your train ticket to get back out of the train station. As Americans, or maybe just as New Yorkers, we were not used to this and were constantly not paying any attention to where we threw our tickets, causing us to dig through our pockets, purses, and backpacks trying to figure out exactly which ticket we had used to get into the station in the first place. The subway system in Hong Kong is set up in a similar way, but at least there you have a reusable card, so you only have to keep track of one "ticket" that looks like a credit card—much harder to misplace. Plus it's called "the Octopus card" which makes it inherently cooler than the french Metro tickets.

But, through all of my journeys in the subway, scaling stairs and winding around hallways, I noticed that there are a lot of condom dispensers. A lot. So, what do you think the most common scenario there is? Someone's on the way to a date and thinks, "Hmmm...this might go well, let me stock up." Or, is it that a date had already gone well, and they're on the way back to one of their apartments. He or she has been going through a dry spell so they aren't properly stocked up, ah mais oui!, there are condom dispensers. Or are the french just oh so passionate that they can't even wait until they get home? 

"Sophie," Thierry pants, "I just need to FUCK YOU RIGHT NOW!"
"I was hoping you'd say that," Sophie responds. "Let's just stop at the Durex dispenser and then have sex on the turnstile."

Or maybe I just have too much time on my hands and these are the kinds of things I think about. 

"Promise of the West"


Jun 2, 2012

Louvre

When I was in college, I took two art history classes. I took them both in four hour blocks. This was a mistake. Spending four hours in a dark room looking at slides with a professor who was incredibly monotone made it very, very hard to stay awake. More often than not, I'd find myself nodding off, my notes sliding off the page. She said that we would remember everything she taught us for the rest of our lives. Well, I don't. I have a bad memory, but I also may not remember it all because I was probably sleeping. I do remember her discussing Victory one day.

"Tomorrow...we shall talk about...Victory...with wings...but for now...Victory...without."

Well, I finally got to see Miss Victory, and it was exciting, since I actually did remember learning about her.

Victory with wings
Child trying to murder a goose
I wouldn't trust this guy
Shhh...
Venus de Milo

Au Somment de la Notre Dame


Versailles

I don't know this child. But luckily that swan did not eat his face.

Mardi et la Tour Eiffel


Lundi

On Monday, my fellow travelers ventured off to Belgium, and I stayed in Paris with Christophe. We ventured around to what you might call "second tier" attractions. I had wanted to see the Jardin des Plantes, which happened to be next to the Museum of Natural History, and the Mosque of Paris, all of which I went to. In the museum, I learned that a norwhal is a real animal and not just a claymation creature in holiday TV specials. I'm not going to lie, that blew my mind a little bit. I also got to run around like a kid looking at the animals.

After the museum, it was time for some sugary snacks, and I cannot stress the word "sugar" enough. In the back of the mosque, there's a tea room, where they serve mint tea that was pretty much 80 percent sugar. Christophe grabbed some pastries that were also entirely too sweet to ingest. So, I fed sugar to the birds that kept visiting our table.

Next stop was the Luxembourg Palace (Palais du Luxembourg), where I didn't take a lot of pictures because it was so hot out I felt like I was melting on the sun.


Sainte-Chapelle

Day two in Paris we ran around looking at more famous landmarks. The winner of Sunday, next to getting to see my friends from Holland, was seeing Sainte-Chapelle. Much smaller than Notre Dame, and built in a fraction of the time, the church is still a work of art.