Friday, October 21, 2011

Magic Monday

Magic Monday is happening on Friday because I forgot.  I FORGOT, OKAY??  I was trying to start something, and then I forgot, and Magic Friday doesn't have any kind of ring to it, so just pretend it's Monday.  Except it's really Friday, and the weekend is tomorrow!!  Best Monday ever!!

I have 3 wonderful friends landing in Paris in an hour, and we're going to Provence on Sunday.  Olive oil, lavender, tomatoes, rosĂ©, sun, & slow everything.  I can't believe I haven't been to Provence yet this year.  End of October isn't the ideal time to visit, but it will still be quaint and slow and adorable and Provence-y as only Provence can be.  I'm going to grab a bag of lavender and throw handfuls in the air while skipping down the lane drinking olive oil out of the bottle.

Just going for two days, Sunday and Monday, which of course means next Monday Magic will be on Tuesday.

Happy Friday! (slash Monday)






Wednesday, October 19, 2011

French Neon Pirates Storm the Metro

After 3 years in Paris with Fat Tire, our amazing, fabulous, wonderful, super sweet Office Manager, Amanda, is moving to Berlin.  (That was a lot of commas for one sentence.)


Sadness fills our hearts, as this place will not be the same without her...so of course we had to send her off in style.  This girl loves a good costume, so for her last week at work, we had a dress-up week, including:

French Stripes & Mustache Mania on Wednesday


Pirate Thursday (Argh!!)





















and Neon Friday


We toasted Amanda on Friday night after her last official day of work, with champagne!

In plastic cups.  Keepin’ it real.

Saturday night was the grand finale, with a Metro Party!  The instructions were to dress crazy, meet at the office at 8pm, and head to the metro to ride it around all night. 


Having nothing crazy in my closet to dress up in, I opted for Goth.


This was SUCH a fun night.  We hung out, laughed, sang, blasted music on the metro and danced from stop to stop, periodically turning it off or switching lines when we realized the metro police were on to us (apparently loud music, running, and general craziness is frowned upon). 


Yes, there was a boombox, yes we owned the metro with our boombox, yes we roamed the streets with our boombox. 

It was one of the most fun work weeks we've had to date.   And if you haven’t had a massive costumed dance party on your local transportation, I cannot recommend it highly enough. 


We love you, Amanda Carolina Garcia!!  You will be missed!!


Tuesday, October 18, 2011

Katrina's Visit: Top Ten

10. Eiffel Picnic with PITA CHIPS & HUMMUS!!!
















This is REAL EXCITEMENT. I can't find pita chips in Paris.

Pita chips & hummus were a nightly ritual at our apartment.  We would sometimes leave at 11pm to make a grocery store run if we were out.  I could walk blindfolded into Tom Thumb, snag both of these items, check out, and return safely to my car out of habit alone. Backwards. While talking on the phone. Hopping on one leg.  Can't imagine any other way to get my pita chips.



9. French Food


We ate well.  I won't go into detail.

Ok I will.  Cafe cremes, croissants, macarons, gazpacho w/ tomato and basil SORBET, a massive cote de boeuf that took up an entire table, crazy bacon-topped lobster salad masterpieces, a bowl of rice pudding bigger than Katrina's head, zucchini cucumber soup w/ black truffles, raspberry millefeuille...on and on and on.  I may just do an entire blog post about the desserts.












8. Night Bike Tour


Can we talk about how my ice cream cone is already empty??  Just a hollow shell of a cone that once held ice cream before I hoovered it out of there in 30 seconds flat.




...or how my camera accidentally went off as we hopped back on bikes, and I look like Jack in the Box in this picture.


Paris is SO beautiful at night, I can hardly stand it. Especially as the sun is setting.  BAH!!



One of my favorite things is people going crazy over being on a boat. Or seeing people on a boat. Suddenly everyone feels compelled to scream and wave at each other.  Can you imagine if while walking down the street everyone just started screaming "Wooooo!!!" and waving at you?  But when you're on a boat, it's just standard. Everyone turns into kids again.  "You're on a boat!! I'm on a bridge!! Wooo!!!!"



7. Rue Pasteur Wagner


Shout out to the Watermark peeps!! We found Todd's street!

6. Freaky First Night in Scotland

This was the WEIRDEST night, we just couldn't get over it.  We landed in Edinburgh about 10pm or so and headed to our B&B.  We were walking down an eerie, barely lit, yellowish street, silent, empty, and filled with fog - straight out of a scene from Harry Potter.  Dementors flew out, tried to suck my soul out of my face, but I cast my patronus (a baguette) and saved our lives. 



Then we finally found our B&B and the hostess acted like we were interrupting her in the middle of the night, rushed us through the place, practically threw the key at us and gave us 2 seconds to make our breakfast order for the next morning.  Katrina wanted something simple like a banana and ended up ordering a traditional Scottish breakfast with smoked salmon & eggs because she got all scared and nervous.  "STEAK! I'll take STEAK! Ahhh I wanted cereal.  Why did I get that??"

Since we got in so late and hadn't eaten, we walked down the street to "Crystal's Unicorn" for some traditional Scottish Chinese take-out.  While walking outside with our food, a gigantic thundering boom/cannon/explosion/firework filled the air at a deafening volume, like we were under attack.  "What is going on??? Why is Scotland so weird???"  This is our "Why is Scotland so weird" face:



First the dementors, now cannon fire, we're just trying to eat our Chinese food from the glowing purple & blue Crystal's Unicorn Chinese Palace.


5. Carpet Picnic


We had to eat our Unicorn Chinese on the floor in the bedroom, after stealing forks from the made-up table downstairs, assuming, of course, we would be kicked out the next morning for this theft.

4. Hairy Coo Tour

A day tour of the Scottish Highlands!
 This is a hairy coo.










3. Holy Grail

Yes, we saw the ACTUAL castle from Monty Python & the Holy Grail. Yes, there were coconuts.  Yes, I galloped around the whole time banging the coconuts together with this exact look on my face.



2. Scottish Food

These are my kind of people!! I'm a protein girl.  Look at that breakfast!  Throw on a steak and some peanuts.

What's that? Don't I eat a 9-foot baguette every day?  Shut up, I eat protein. 


1. Laughing so hard I tore my abdomen

Or had a hernia. Or both.  More to come on this.  Prepare your abs, do some sit-ups, and we'll meet back here in a couple days.