new location for blog

i am moving my blog to fussyriceseeds.vox.com. it's a blog you can see through invitation only, so if i know you, and i only think people i know read this anyway, or if you'd simply like to keep reading, just send me an email.

back from europe

so i meant to post regularly from europe, really i did, but internet access wasn't always available at the budget hotels we stayed at and we were too cheap to shell out dough at an internet cafe. something strange happened to me whilst on vacation: my love for wasteful cable television and internet surfing went away. i was determined not to remember my time in europe as watching television in a hotel room or hunched over a computer, which are activities i reserve for the privacy of my own home. it was rather refreshing. of course matt said he wished i could be like all the time. but HE was the one who had to watch all the soccer games in the hotel rooms.
anyway, i'm hoping for the next few blogs to discuss the cities and sights we saw. i was also very bad at journaling during all those empty hours on trains and planes. i'm so trained on the computer that i can't even handwrite my thoughts anymore. so i read the last harry potter instead. more on that as well.
so, my next post shall be more about arles, then we'll hit london, edinburgh, and finally paris. a warning that we are not the typical tourists; sightseeing, museums, historical monuments all take a backseat to finding a good place to sit, read, and for matt, to enjoy his snooty espresso (coffee isn't good enough anymore) and yummy, reasonably priced food. i swear, i took more pictures of our meals than monuments.

i heart arles

after a bumbling arrival into paris and a surprisingly potent bout of jet lag, we have finally settled into our trip and are quite enjoying the provencal city of arles. it is the perfect size medieval walled city to wander around, find good cheap food and curl up at a coffee/wine shop to read a book. sure we missed the lavender bloom, but i am glad we decided to come anyway. and my half coherent french is returning and people can understand me! their saturday farmers market also beats any market we have seen thus far. we assembled a lovely picnic of valencia paella, baguette, goat cheese and some kind of spicy grape, and ate it in our red and yellow bedroom overlooking the gardens. i certainly hope the rest of the trip contains more high notes like this.

electronics

in our house, we have no electronics whiz. that is why our dvd player has sat useless for the last month, both of us unwilling to figure out how the tv, dvd player and cable box could possibly work together in harmony. but matt got some dvd about a japanese utopia cartoon and he wanted to configure the entertainment system. matt doesn't like directions or diagrams. he'd prefer to stare at the wires and wait for them to magically work. after ten minutes of screwing and unscrewing cables, he predictably threw down the wires and stomped off. he proclaimed it made no sense. that it was impossible.
so i was determined to show him up. i googled a search for a dvd/tv/cable diagram and after diligently working with four wires, i realized we were missing one cable cord and the modulator power cord. and after thirty minutes... success! naturally i threw it in his face. but of course, i have now set a dangerous precedent that i shall be the electronics go to person for years to come.

prepas, etc.

we are leaving for europe on wednesday and maybe there is no way for me not to feel so unprepared. i think i've done everything i'm supposed to. have called the credit card companies, held the mail, arranged for kitty/house care, gathered travel clothes, printed out itineraries and hotel confirmations....what else? i know i'm going to get there and just kick myself for forgetting something. if you realize i'm forgetting something, could you let me know?
we are discovering more neighborhoods in oakland, which makes me happy. we live within a few mile radius of rockridge, piedmont ave and grand/lakeshore. i think downtown has potential too (already found one fab vietnamese sandwich shop), but the driving and parking there make me feel claustrophobic.

earthquake!

so at 4:42 this morning, we had our first earthquake since arriving. and we've only been here a month! we awoke to a violent shake, which i immediately identified as earthquake, but matt thought were the cats running off the bed to chase each other. but i'm pretty good at recognizing the shakes and after getting an email this afternoon from a concerned student (thanks claire!), we realized i was right all along.
the earthquake was actually centered in oakland, which makes me feel oddly honored. it really is non-news though. no one seems really concerned at all, and the papers are treating it like a routine accident. the good news is our rickety ikea bookshelves survived and didn't topple over, which i was afraid they would do since they weigh next to nothing. good job, billy bookcases!
this is matt and the cats' first earthquake. we should celebrate.

we shall have full bellies

because there is no good grocery store closeby (but that will change in the next year, with whole foods opening down the street and trader joe's opening five blocks away), we have had to find other ways to get our goodies. and while it takes a bit more time than a supermarket, i find it very satisfying. for our fruits and veggies, we became members of a csa (community supported agricutlure), where we get a box of fruits/veggies every other week. the csa we chose was called full belly farm. i chose them for their cool name and even cooler prices ($15/box). on the weeks we don't get our box, we can supplement with the saturday grand lake farmers market, five blocks, so walkable on a lazy saturday. for our meats and fish, we walk to the piedmont grocery where they sell meats at insanely low prices (yet everything else in th store is expensive, as typical for a small gourmet grocery store.) for the rest, it's trader joe's in emeryville, which is a headache of a ten minute drive (a snarly freeway stands between oakland and emeryville), but we shall brave it until our own opens up in lake merritt.
it seems like we go grocery shopping every day, but it is the summer, when we could not get this stuff in the winter, but maybe since we're in california, we will now.