8-31-2011

Stairs are the theme of today. Those are the ones from the hotel, but we went up and down over two hundred stairs to visit the catacombs. I've wanted to go here every since I first heard about/saw pictures of this place when I was a kid. There are literally walls of bones all though miles worth of tunnels that date back a very long time. I guess there six million people's remains though the whole thing. It's really amazing and surreal to see in real life. Here are some other interesting parts that weren't bones.

When we resurfaced, we went to sit at a cafe and look at people. I think Paris is a pretty great place for people watching. This lady is wearing a dress on a scooter. Then we did some window shopping and more people watching and more window shopping. This A.P.C. is on the "Rue Madame" that they put on all of their labels.

Like the catacombs, I've wanted to a creperie in Paris as a destination for a long time. This was the first crepe of the trip, and it was very good. I kind of wish I had one right now as I'm typing this. Nicole drinks a lot of tiny coffee. I bet she wishes she had one right now as I'm typing this.

Look, it's night time now. Night time is a good time to visit the Eiffle Tower. I know for sure that there's a law that every tourist must take a picture of themselves in front of it. The tower turns on its sparkles when Nicole puts her arms in the air (really it did). This shot is pretty obligatory as well. The thing that sucks about pictures is that they're never as cool as seeing something in real life. So here are a few pictures to help remember what it was like looking at the real thing, but it's nothing like actually seeing stuff like this and this in person. One nice thing about pictures is that that they're free, so I can steal shots of the gift shop (even though I got yelled at for it) and get the overpriced kitschy souvenirs without paying for them. Don't look down.

After looking around at everything at the tower, we started to go home as the cafes were closing. Crepe stands stay open later than cafes, and any time is a good time to eat crepes. To wash down the crepes, we got an Orangina. This drink is a word that they taught us about in my high school French class that I never though would actually matter in my life. I pretty much though that about my entire high school French class actually. Boy was I wrong. By this point, I was really wishing that I had paid better attention. I feel it necessary to publicly thank my teacher for the little bits of French that did stick in my brain though, because that's pretty much the only way I was able to do anything out here at all.

8-30-2011

These traveling posts are going to be very long and very scattered. I'm sorry in advance. I took way too many pictures.

This is this view from the back of our hotel. Nicole kept looking back there for French alley cats, but she never saw one.

This is an art nouveau metro sign. I think its cool that such an iconic decorative style is still being used for utilitarian purposes. Old people just like to make out under them.

My preconception of Paris mostly comes from the movie Amelie (and Warner Brothers cartoons about skunks), so I was excited to find the apartment and market from the movie in real life. As you can tell, it was closed. It was ok though, since the movie was set in Montmartre, an area historically known as the home of many famous artist, writers and musicians, and we somehow ended up in an area specializing in fabrics. So I was content to wander around here anyway. One thing that was open however was the cafe that Amelie worked at. They serve cheese and coffee.

Montmartre is also the home of a French national treasure and major tourist attraction not to be missed. The A.P.C. Surplus store. The store wasn't open yet when we got there though, so went to go look at some old church on a hill to kill time while we waited. This guy lives on the cathedral. This guy has a sacred heart. They all hangout together outside. It's really fancy inside. It's nice to look at.

We wandered some more and found a park, the exact opposite of a cathedral, and another famous place (which has been forever ruined in my mind by Christia Aguilera).

This statue is at the Cimetiere de Montmartre. I really liked seeing these dates and imagining there was some old lady out there that refuses to die even though she's outlived her expected century. Keep going, old lady.

There's so much fancy stuff everywhere that I forgot where I saw this monument, but it was on the way to the Champs-Elysees. I'm pretty sure there's a law that every tourist with a camera is require to take this picture. Look at these fancy gates and long line of people waiting to enter the ornate door. It must be some sort of museum right? Nope, that's just the fanciest Abercrombie & Fitch store on the planet. I guess I can't complain much, because I went half way around the world and was really excited to visit the Nike store to look at running stuff. While we're on the topic of American establishments corrupting the world, I had it on good autority that the McDonalds on the Champs-Elysees was a necessary stop for the people watching. It is. Also interesting for people watching (and America ruining the world) were the street performers that confuse Paris with the Brox in the 70's. It's pretty much understood that tourists love seeing upside down street performers though. Here's something equally touristy, but decidely French. It's Laduree, the super fancy and world famous patisserie that people come from all over the place buy cookies at. Don't get me wrong, it's totally worth going there to buy cookies. They invented double-decker macaroons which are pretty much the things I'll miss most from Paris. That and the architecture. Totally unrelated, Nicole's fancy coffee robot is apprently super popular in Europe. They have entire stores all over the place there for people to buy their capsules (Nicole has to order hers from the internet). Speaking of Nicole, she was too much of a giant to fit through the Arc de Triopmhe. This is the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier, and these soldiers were coming to make sure it was ok. This guy was not ok. I like taking people pictures when I go places because people are almost always more interesting to look at than places. Here are a few random people that I photographed. I like to take natural and unposed shots of people, but this guy looked unnatural and posed even though he wasnt. Places are intersting to look at too when they're as fancy as this or this.

This place was very high on my list of interesting things to see. They specialize in taxedermey and strange stuff and have been around forever, but they were closed since we got there around dinner time.

Since it was dinner time, we decided to have our one planned fancy dinner of the trip at a fancy place. This fancy place is famous because it's been around for ever and ever, and lots of writers and artists hung out there. It's so fancy that I didn't feel comfortable picturing all of our food, but I promise it was very pretty and delicious. This dessert was too pretty and delicious not to picture. Speaking of fancy, here's a picture of our rental car in front of the restaurant.

8-29-2011

We made it and we're alive. We even managed to make it though customs, and I stumbled though enough broken-highschool-level-French to get us through the train station to our hotel (this is a much bigger deal than I care to explain). More importantly, our hotel is above a boulangerie which bakes croissants and pain au chocolat. I would be totally fine with spending all my moneys on pasteries.

After carbing up, we were generously tour guided around by Nicole's relatives. I though it would be mostly rude to shove a camera in their faces though, so I shoved my camera in stranger's and local dog's faces instead. Walking along the Seine is supposed to be romantical. That's not New York in the background. Paris has a smaller Statue of Liberty replica (or Statue of Anarchy) like the one in New York. Paris also has a larger replica of the Eiffel Tower like the one in Las Vegas. I was interested to see that these people live in tents along the river. I was also interested to see this woman at all.

Beyond showing us where not to get robbed, Nicole's family also was nice enough to cook us a real French meal for dinner. This is Raclette. It's named after a type of cheese and is delicious. You can read about it on Wikipedia. This is wine. That's on Wikipedia too.

8-28-2011

Nicole and I like French things. Like French toast and French fries. It's only logical then that we should wait around in an airport for airplanes, so we can get on one and fly to France. Actually, it took more than just one plane and a very very long time. It took all day and all night and past bedtime.

8-27-2011

Sienna says that we can't go anywhere without our bags.

8-26-2011

8-25-2011

Panic! Chaos!! Call the S.W.A.T. team!!! It's been four years and Nicole hasn't gotten rid of me yet. To celebrate, Nicole got me a new car, and I got her fancy drinks and a ton of food. No, seriously...so much food. Enough food that they made their own secret society. This is the fanciest, most expensive corndog ever. We didn't like it nearly as much as this crème brûlée. Happy bananaversary, Nicole!

8-24-2011

This is exactly what it looks like, and I don't care and I'm not sorry. It was amazing. I'm not sorry for taking this picture of this guy either because he looks amazing.

8-23-2011

It's exciting to me that these still exist in the world. I'll be even more excited to see what comes back.

8-22-2011

So a while ago, Nicole and I got a hummingbird feeder. I've tried a few times, but never had any luck getting pictures of the quick little guys. I must have been extra bored, because I actually sat and waited there long enough to get some pictures of their dinner time tonight.

Speaking of dinner time, I'm making funny faces in my kitchen again. Honestly, that can mean any number of things, but in this case it means I'm being stupid and eating my peppers raw again. After all the time and work I went though to grow fresh ones, I feel like it's important to try them like this to really experience the experience. Nicole has no desire to do this, so I "cooked" again too. These are not carrots. This is what I made for dinner.

8-21-2011

With all my focus on cameras this weekend, I figured it would only be right to break out one of my favorites and shoot some real film. Hopefully I'll update this post when I get things developed. Until then, you can look at this and think about all the tacos I've been eating every meal for the past three days

So I got my film back and I'm really excited about it. I don't normally do this, but I'm going to post all of the shots (including me making dumb faces) because 1) I like how they came out, and 2) they were expensive to develop.

Kodak Ektachrome 100, over exposed at ~50 and cross processed:
Train
I have no idea what this end to end said
Confetti
Taco Time
People
Yo, girl
Legal wallz
Poser graffiti
Leica
Graffiti girlfriend chairs
R.I.P.
Polaroid

Kodak Ektachrome 200, over exposed at ~100 and cross processed:
Model face
Shadow
More shadow
Yo, girl
Coloring wall
Who tied me here?
Watching you watching people
It's true
Yo, girl
Model face
Urban Oufitters model face
Big homie, painting on a tiny train

8-20-2011

It's pretty obvious that I'm really into taking pictures and cameras. I'm so into cameras that I draw giant cameras as big as buildings. Great big fancy cameras.

8-19-2011

It's the time of year again when I hangout in strange places to eat lots of Mexican food and color on things. I fashioned myself an art spear to protect myself from heartburn.

8-18-2011

I know I post about my peppers too much. I don't care. This is very exciting for me.

8-17-2011

I've hardly been drinking at all recently, but when I do drink I'm definitely not stirring my olives all bummed out and depressed about it. Tonight, I got to see two people named Mark(c) that I used to see every single day but hardly get to see anymore. This is Mark and this is The Devil of Fun. Ol' Glazey Eyes was there too.

8-16-2011

A mandatory day off from running means I need to do something fun to distract myself from wanting to be outside. What's more fun and distracting from doing something healthy than stuffing my face with pizza and pasta? At least these were both exciting and mushroom-themed foods. The pasta had locally harvested chantrelle mushrooms, and the pizza had truffle oil. I thought about running at dinner, so I had to get something else unhealthy and distracting. There was nothing mushroom related in the crème brûlée .

8-15-2011

My job looks coolest when it's painted so we can make it disappear.

In other (Monday pepper) news, I think I figured out why my two habanero plants had such different colored peppers. One of the plants grows red habaneros. This is a nice surprise since the tag it came with has orange ones in the picture. The peppers on the other plant, which didn't come with pictures at all, are starting to turn orange now too, but I'll save pictures of that for another day when I don't have anything interesting to post on here.

8-14-2011

This is not a carwash. and this is not the tide coming in. This is what Nicole and I go though to get Sunday breakfast. If we went to church as often as we go to breakfast on Sundays, we would probably be a lot better people. And a lot healthier. We go to breakfast a lot. And drink lots of coffee.

We also went to see my friends at a craft show. After my rant the other day about art walks, I should point out that I think group craft shows are a much better idea. Attracting a big mob of people to an organized event of small, independent sellers is probably the best way to sell stuff like this. Especially if the sellers are actually talented and have cup cakes. I don't think there's any exhibition format best suited to sell awkward yoga in the middle of the room though.

8-13-2011

After five hundred and eighty-nine days of posting weird pictures, it's probably pretty clear and Nicole and I live a pretty odd lifestyle and do a lot of strange stuff. As a matter of fact, we do so much strange stuff that it's kind of hard to out do ourselves with new life experiences to post on here. Today, I think we out did ourselves. Like we out did the whole blog. I've painted all kinds of atypical stuff, from shoes to boxcars to rocks, but I've never even though about painting a belly full of baby. Much less paint said belly to look like a football helmet. There really isn't much I can write to describe the experience other than that as soon it even presented itself as a possibility of happening, I knew it was something that I've never known I wanted to do so badly my whole life. Almost done. These are pretty awesome parents. Greatest dad.

I'm not quite sure how a day can get any better from such a high point, but attempting to at least keep things as awesome as possible, we decided to go downtown and look for parking for a few hours. When Nicole gets frustrated about not finding parking, she tends to knock over buildings until the police show up. She's actually really strong. Ok, so only part of this story is true. We actually didn't go downtown just to find a parking space. We really went to try out a new ramen restaurant. We tried to go there before, but they have really weird hours. At least they have very good food and a nice view.

8-12-2011

Maybe it's just the elitist, art school snob in me, but nothing makes me feel like a total yuppie more than going to an "art walk." Well, maybe shopping at Trader Joe's, but this is pretty up there too. In any case, since my friend Paul had new work I hadn't seen before hanging in a restaurantbar, Nicole and I decided to go here instead of the same place we went last Friday night (not a Katy Perry reference). Paul is by far one of my favorite local painters. Look how awesome this little stuff is, and that's just a tiny detail of one of many big awesome paintings. Paul deserves big awesome shows in big awesome galleries. I think that's my main contention with "art walks." They're too democratic. They either put good artists in...um...less than ideal spaces, like dark bars where you have to stand next to people while they eat to look at things. Or they put a bunch of really really crappy work in "galleries" since the individual artists wouldn't ever be able to attract a viewership on their own. I'm a hater. I know. I do like the shopping aspect of art walks though, and I managed to find the kind of art that I like. This is the kind of art that Nicole likes. This is a sculpture of me and this is a sculpture of Nicole. This is a phone call I totally did not expect to have to make tonight.

8-11-2011

Remember when I used to not eat meat? Yeah, I kind of forgot about that too recently. Well my friend Antoinette stopped around the same time as I did, and hadn't eaten a cheeseburger since way before that. Pretty much ever since we stopped eating meat, we started talking about "breaking veg" and eating cheeseburgers together. This was kind of a big deal and very very awesome. The End.

Pepper update: Look how orange they got over night! They look so cool half ripe like this.

I always write about how pretty the places we run are, but how I can never take pictures. Well tonight, we went to a new place where I'm sure we'll be running a lot really soon, and I did have my camera. I can't wait to be looking at this while I'm hyperventilating.

8-10-2011

I found this creepy little monster shell on my way back from lunch. Here's a cropped close up to really show off the creepy.

P.s. I decided to keep him as a pet in my office.

I have bonus pictures. Mostly because my peppers are turning orange.
See, orange.
Turning orange.
Peppers.

Now I pretty much orchestrate my entire life so I can live like a perpetual twelve-year-old as much as possible, but owning a house pretty much requires doing grown-up things which work directly against my preferred lifestyle. Grown-up stuff sucks...except for days like today. We "discovered" a large yellow jacket nest in our font yard while mowing. The only mature and responsible thing to do is to pour gasoline down the hole to thoroughly soak the nest before setting the wasps on fire. This is the first "yard work" I've really enjoyed doing since buying the house. And this is what Nicole did with the foraged-though-the-poison-ivy berries from the weekend. It was a very good night.

8-9-2011

Lightning Bolt!
Lightning Bolt!
Lightning Bolt!
Death.*

*YouTube reference for less nerdy people.

8-8-2011

Running 10 kilometers for my "normal" runs feels great mentally, but I've never beat my paws up this much in my entire life. I even have mesh tan marks from from my Vibrams.

8-7-2011

Brunchday. On an excellent tip from Friday night, we tried out a new cafe named after both my favorite Harry Potter character and species of moth. Eating crepes and croissants all morning at sidewalk cafes is pretty much dress rehearsal for vacation this year. This one even had random opera singer street performers. Classy. Also classy were these kids and this car. I guess there was some sort of street festival going on. I'm not sure if this cop was considering getting a feather braided into his hair or arresting people for sitting on the sidewalk.

It's still berry picking season.

In case I haven't been posting enough creepy insect pictures, here's a fishfly that hitchhiked on our car home from dinner. There isn't a lot of information about them on the internet, but we did read that they're closely related to the dobsonfly. The dobsonfly is pretty rare to see in the wild since they only live for a week. Additionally, they can bite hard enough to draw blood at this size (about two inches long). I don't know if fishflies bite too or not, but for what it's worth, I thought that this was a dobsonfly while I was taking pictures of it and was scared the whole time.

8-6-2011

Every year, the suburb we live in attracts international attention with its festival celebrating multiple offspring pregnancies. They have a parade that involves candy throwing, reason enough to attend on its own, but Nicole and I have gone every year since moving here to watch the spectacle. It's become a tradition.

What's a parade without bagpipes right?
Mobs of twins.
Not all of them want to be there.
This costume(?) was my favorite.
It's a little like your eyeballs are drunk...everywhere you look...everything is twice.
It's a little creepy and a bit disconcerting.
This is fun though right?
They look like they're having fun.
They definitely are.
I'm not sure I want to know what they consider as fun.
This dude totally caught me.
I took pictures of these guys last year.

Beyond the parade, carnival lemonade is one of Nicole's favorite aspects of whole deal. If you've read my blog before, you know that we're pretty much on a diet of fair food as much as possible for the whole summer. Nicole encouraged us into embarassing breakfast even by our standards. Now lots of random pictures...I found twin poisonous mushrooms, and shot clowns in the mouth. I didn't ride any rides though. Nicole made new friends. I invaded a bus yard.

Also an annual tradition for us, wild blackberry season coincides with twin madness. We go foraging to pick berries. This looks harmless, but Nicole is really standing in a healthy field of poison ivy. She's very brave and daring when it comes to berries. I stay away from poison anything, and chase bugs around to take their portrait. The berry picking excursion was worth it though.

After some naptime, we went back for equally embarrassing vegetarian dinner. I'm a huge fan of carnival ride and carnival game people, but I'm a bigger fan of fireworks. Nicole and I ate key lime pie custard while we waited for it to get dark. Dark enough for glowing things like fireworks. We made sure to get close enough that we could see them launching right in front of us. The End.