Baby Quilt

So my friend V. is having a baby at the end of August. This weekend is her baby shower up in Boston. I started a baby quilt for her, and just finished. Its actually a simple quilt, but I just wasn't finding the time to finish it.

There is a polka dot blue fabric, with two appliqued yellow fleece ducks, a border of white (with stars and moons in a slight off white), and then a satin baby blanket binding. The back is a soft textured fabric. I quilted simple squares on it (to look like blocks). I'm proud of the ducks, I think they are really cute.


Isn't he cute?? (By the way, they are having a boy)

The iPhone chronicles

So exactly 3 weeks before the new iPhone came out, Nick's old phone decided to die on him. Well, it wouldn't charge anymore...and a battery only lasts so long. So, we decided to brave it, dot matrix style, and only live with one cell phone in the house for 3 weeks. Those were three very long weeks.

However, the day finally arrived when Apple would launch the new iPhone to Apple and AT&T stores everywhere. And, we had an Apple store less than 1 mile away at the Cambridgeside Galleria (there was even an AT&T store and a kiosk in the mall as well). Thus began the iPhone adventure.

Day 1 - Launch Day
Nick is up before the sun and out the door in order to get to the Galleria and in line before the store opened. He arrived around 7am (store opened at 8) and was 57th in line.

Apple only sent 50 phones to this prominent, mall location, adjacent to MIT, Apple store location. Nick was talked into pre-ordering a phone at the AT&T store. They said only a few days and he would have one.

Well...days later, and his order is still backordered.

Attempt 2 - 5 days after launch
Nick decides the AT&T promise of a phone is bogus and doesn't want to wait any longer (remember he doesn't have a phone...) so he gets up before dawn again to head to the other Apple store in Boston.

Now, this Apple store is the largest Apple store in the country (only the one in Tokyo is larger). Right here on Boylston street in little old Boston.

He gets there ready to wait in line (still, days after the launch), but there is a sign on the door saying that they didn't get a shipment in and have no phones.

Attempt 3 - Same day
Coming back from a job site, Nick calls me (he's at work using his desk phone) and asks if I'll stop by the Apple store in the Galleria and see if they have any phones. My office is two blocks from the Galleria, so I agree. I get there just before 10, when the mall (and the Apple store open). There is a short line, of 10 people or so, so I que up.

Then they announce that they didn't get a shipment and only have white 16 GB phones. I'm not waiting in line and paying a lot of money for the color Nick didn't like. So I left.

Then...90 minutes later, I get another call from Nick...thus...

Attempt 4 - Same Day
Nick tells me the Galleria did get a shipment in, just in and asks if during lunch I could head over there again. I agree.

When I arrive I'm told the line is 90 minutes long. Sure, a long lunch, but I am promised they have enough phones for me to choose black or white. Sweet.

THREE HOURS LATER...I leave the Apple store with a black phone and a promise that I can control the TV for the next 10 years.

Of course Nick had to wait for his phone as I had to make up the hours at work that I stood in a line, filled with MIT geeks on summer vacation (and some professors also taking a long lunch). But he finally has a new black 16 GB fancy new phone, and he can not only check baseball scores, but actually update his fantasy baseball team with it. Fabulous (do you hear the sarcasm?).

(I'll admit that the internet and the GPS tool are actually really cool. But I still don't have control of the TV...perhaps someday). How I wish I could take a picture of Nick on the couch right now, in his underwear, checking baseball scores/stats while watching the Cubs game, but I won't subject anyone else to that...

Bachelor Party Weekend... at Bernie's

I can still taste the Jagermeister. Yuck!

Now that I've gotten the only negative out of the way I figure I'll write about some of the awesome things I did this past weekend while in the Hamptons -- the setting for one of the best movies of all time -- and the setting for my friend Steve's bachelor party. Thanks for agreeing to get married, Steve, and congratulations for inviting me. Or.. is it the other way around? :-) Also, many thanks to Steve's friend Doug for opening his house to us drunken slobs.

Anyway, what a great weekend. It began with me waking up at 5 am in order to meet my friend Dan, who was driving, and hit the road. On the way we picked up my other friend Jay, and set off driving to the ferry in New London, Connecticut. We were shooting for the 8 am boat, and arrived half-an-hour early and were able to squeeze onto the 7:30 ferry at the very last minute. A pleasant surprise for us, anyway.. but not so much for Steve.

Once landing in Orient Point, NY (at the far eastern tip of Long Island) it was only about a 45 minute drive to Doug's place in Hampton Bays. So.. we pull into the drive way just short of 10 am and give Steve a call. He'd been out drinking the night before and was not very happy. But, he and the other three guys that were there successfully rallied and we all went out for breakfast.

After eating we drove to a place where we rented jet skis (seven skis for seven guys) and took to the ocean with the help of a huge wife-beater-wearing muscle guy who turned out to be completely whipped by his stereotypically New York Italian girlfriend. But, to be honest, she scared all of us, so we aren't criticizing the guy. She was a beast. Once we got out on the water, it wasn't long before I took a bath. Falling off a jet ski is actually pretty fun.. once you get the salt water out of your lungs.

After the jet skiing we came back to Doug's place, cracked open a couple cases of beer, then sat on the beach and pier for a while, until Steve and Dan decided to go Greco Roman and see who could win a fight for dock supremacy. In case you're wondering who won, Steve is the splash you see there.

But.. it turns out Dan may have been the real loser, as one of his favorite Penn State shirts did not survive the ordeal.

After that, we got a game of wiffle ball going. It didn't last long, though. Mr. D-3 Baseball (Dan), who proclaimed himself too "thick" for his own good, cracked the wiffle ball in half.

But don't worry, we got back to him after he passed out (or if you asked him, "took a nap") on the lawn.

While Dan was finishing his nap, pizza was ordered and we got ready to hit the clubs. We went to a place called "Beach Bar," which was populated by a bunch of guys exactly like this...

No joke, either. EXACTLY like that. All with the same haircut, all obsessed with lifting weight, tanning, and picking fights. (The best source of information on this type of person I can giv eyou is the video called "My New Haircut" on YouTube. Go watch it. You won't be sorry.)

Cases in point:

1) We witnessed two "jacked and tan" guys get in a screaming match and get tossed out onto the street by two even more "jacked and tan" bouncers.

2) Doug popped his collar in a nod to the video -- and a huge middle finger to all the "My New Haircuts" in the place and was quickly called on it. A guy comes over to say "Hey, has your collar been popped all night, or did you just do that? Doug tells him he's been taking it up and down because it's just too big to wear up the whole time. And the guy, relieved, says "Oh, good! Because that chick over there told me it looked stupid, but I'm glad you're on my side and have my back." He had no clue.

And 3) Once we were outside waiting for our cab, we saw a Power Bar-eating, protein-pounding ogre yelling at his girlfriend on the phone.. all raging out. As he and his buddy walk past, Dan decides to attempt to provoke a fight (none of us remember exactly what he said in order to do that) that Steve quickly, and thankfully defused.

I can honestly say that I have never seen stereotypes lived-up to to the "T" ever before in my life. I didn't think all the guys there would be the way that video and all the rumors say they would be, but damn it, they were. It was amazing. Completely frightening and sad, but amazing. Unfortunately, there are no pictures of these kind of people. I decided, in the name of preserving something that would be expensive to replace, to leave my camera at the house for the night.

There are the highlights. Thanks for reading...

Turning 27!

Berries!!

So, I know my birthday was like more than 3 weeks ago, but I figured I'd share.

The saturday of my birthday weekend Nick, Susie, and I went strawberry picking at a local U-Pick place. Who knew they had those in Boston? We had a blast. I may have eaten more than I picked, and I even ate a couple green ones (that's an inside VB family thing). In total we picked over 8 lbs of berries. Fabulous!

We then had a nice lunch and I came home and promptly froze about half of the strawberries.

On my actual birthday, Sunday, we had a nice relaxing day. Susie came over for dinner and brought over a beautiful wacky cake. (Note: Wacky cake is a family recipe that is actually a vegan cake, no eggs, no butter...but it does have vinegar. Its the best chocolate cake ever!) She actually put little frosting strawberries all over it (and it even had an A on it). The berries even had seeds on them! It was quite a cake. Unfortunately she took a few turns too hard driving over and some of the frosting slid so it wasn't perfect when she arrived. However, personally, I think it was her best cake to date!

Our European Vacation

In celebration of our 5th wedding anniversary (yes, I know, 5 years already!) we hopped a flight across the pond to Spain. After spending a couple days in Barcelona, we boarded a cruise ship and cruised to Marseilles, France, Sardinia and Sicily and then back to Barcelona. We had a fabulous time. Below are just a few highlights and photos. If you are so inclined, more photos are uploaded here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/26038463@N07/. However these are still just a handful of the almost 1400 photos we took.

-Ann

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Barcelona:

What a great town! Imagine putting a city as historic, clean, walkable, and featuring as much great architecture as Chicago in the location of a Miami or a Los Angeles -- or better yet, on the French Riviera (okay, the Spanish Riviera). That's Barcelona. For me, at least, it doesn't get much better. The city's harbor area is great -- with plenty of beaches (clothes optional), waterfront parks, and tons of boats to look at. There's a huge bluff right in the middle of the town near the shore called Montjuic, where most of the 1992 Olympic Summer Games venues were built. Great for walking -- more like hiking, actually, strenuous hiking. Oh, and seafood lovers like me will never be at a loss for something new to try when sitting down for dinner. Funny story, though. I thought, since I am fairly proficient in Spanish, that communicating in Barcelona would be no problem at all. One problem. I forgot that in Barcelona, and the rest of Catalonia, they speak a different dialect than the one we were all taught in High School. If you ever go there, keep in mind that Catalunyan is much more similar to French than it is to the familiar Castillian Spanish. This slight snag did not at all diminish our enjoyment of this great city.

Here are some highlights:

La Sagrada Familia: Construction began on this massive, Roman Catholic church designed by Spain (and maybe Europe's) most renowned architect, Antoni Gaudi, in 1882 and continues to this day. Gaudi, known for his eccentric nature and almost neurotic attention to detail, devoted the last 15 years of his life to designing the church, living and dying there -- which is why it is incomplete. The design calls for 18 towers (four of which you can see in the picture), representing in ascending order of height the 12 apostles, the four Evangelists, the Virgin Mary, and the tallest of them all, Jesus Christ. When complete, the Christ tower will stand more than 560 feet.

Casa Batllo: Probably the most amazing house I've ever seen -- inside and out -- another Gaudi work. Again demonstrating his wackiness, it seemed like Gaudi was trying at all costs to avoid using a straight line in the design of this house. Much of the facade is decorated with a mosaic made of broken ceramic tiles. The roof is arched and likened to the back of a dragon or a dinosaur, complete with shiny scales. A common theory about the house is that the rounded feature to the left of center, terminating at the top in a turret and a cross, represents the sword of Saint George (the patron saint of Catalonia), which has been plunged into the back of the dragon. There are even hallways inside that appear to be very skeletal. Pretty awesome place.

Parc Guell: That's Annie standing next to Gaudi's favorite animal (yes, he's even involved in the construction of the city's flagship park) -- a chameleon. There are many stone arches, patios, staircases, and other public areas decorated in typical Gaudi fashion -- complete with ceramic mosaics and unusual shapes. We liked the chameleon so much we got a miniature magnetic version of him to put on our fridge and a scaled down ceramic version for our display cabinet.

Oh! And Barcelona even has a competitive and historic sports team. FCBarcelona (Futbol Club Barcelona). It's one of Europe's oldest and most successful. I realize that rooting for FCB would sort of be like being a Yankees fan, but if we some day move to Barcelona to open up an English language bookstore (which we talked about due to the shortage of such places and how successful we gather one of them could be due to all the tourism), I think that as long as I would have to seriously watch soccer every day (snore!), I might as well follow a winner.

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Marseilles:

The first stop on our cruise was Marseilles, France. The city, while the second biggest in France in terms of population, felt like a quaint fishing village, complete with dockside seafood vendors (which completely freaked Annie out due to her aversion to fish, both dead and alive -- and there were some still alive on the tables)...

...and other family businesses lining the harbor. By the way, who in the world eats eels?! Yuck.

Those food options aside, we found a great place for breakfast/brunch, where we got a basket of bread with about twelve different kinds of spreads. Chocolate, white chocolate, dark chocolate, honey, strawberry preserves, hazelnut spread, etc. Needless to say, Annie was in heaven, and that meal alone made the stop in Marseilles worthwhile to her.

Here's the spread: Oh.. and the meal also helped Ann develop a hopefully short-lived love of Cappuccino. (Most of you know how much I hate the smell of coffee.)

Anyway.. I was much more interested in the trek to the city's highest point to visit Notre Dame de la Garde. It's a basilica situated on a limestone outcropping on the south side of the harbor. They even let us into the sanctuary when a service was going on. Hundreds of tourists trying to cram themselves through very old, very slow-moving revolving doors. Yeah. Not a good thing. Not to mention how loud and quick with the flash photos the people were once they got inside.

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Cagliari:

Our next port of call was Cagliari, Sardinia. We hardly had any time in Cagliari, our time on shore only lasting about 3 hours, but it turns out that was enough to enjoy most of what this town had to offer. It's a very picturesque seaside, and mountainside, town -- it just doesn't have a lot to do or see. For me, the highlight was an old Roman amphitheatre that's still in use today. (They've set up more modern chairs there, as well, as you can see.)

Probably the funniest thing we saw there was a guy on one of the sidewalks with a mother cat, several kittens, and a band of mice all sharing the same stool and water dish. Cats and mice living together!? Mass hysteria!

And.. last, but not least.. the most important lesson from Cagliari: If you order a Latte in Italy, all you get is milk. Annie learned that the hard way. :-)

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Palermo:

Our final stop on the cruise was Palermo, Italy. Sicily, baby. Very mobbish. Cool. Certainly the busiest city we visited on the trip, just crossing the street was an adventure here in Palermo. The higlights in my mind, awesome pizza and awesome mummies. That's right, mummies. Freaky ones, too. Some of the guys stuffed in the monestary's catacombs were put there in the 1500's and still have their skin! Unfortunately, no photography was allowed so I can't show you any of MY pictures from the catacombs, but here are a couple I found online:

Originally, the catacombs were intended only for dead friars. However, in the following centuries it became a status symbol of sorts to be entombed there. In their wills, local rich folks would ask to be preserved in certain clothes, or even to have their clothes changed at regular intervals. I guess you can't wear white afer Labor Day even if you're dead. In any case, it's weird to see monks in traditional brown robes, and families of doctors in top hats and tuxedos in the same place. The Spanish painter Velazquez is the catacombs' most famous inhabitant.

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Well.. that's my commentary on the places we visited before, during, and after the cruise. As for the cruise itself, it was great. The ship was huge, the food was good, the people were nice, and I love vacations where people do most of the work for you. Crusies are so relaxing, not having to lug your luggage everywhere, etc., that I'm already looking forward to our next one -- even though we have no idea when that will be. Some destinations I would love, though, include Hawaii, Australia, and a trip to Egypt. Come to think of it, I haven't even been to Mexico or the Caribbean yet, either, so those places would also be fine. Well.. we have a lot of options.

-Nick

Here We Go...

Yes, Nick and I have joined the blogging community. Mostly to fulfill our friends' and family's curiosity about our happenings out here on the east coast. With friends and family spread out across the country it is hard to keep in touch and share our adventures in Boston (and beyond) with everyone. We may even save a few cell phone minutes (we're already paying for internet).

Plus it seems like everyone else was doing it...

So we hope that you enjoy our posts and photos. We'll try to update weekly. And please just remember that Nick writes professionally, while I well...don't. So if my posts are boring and grammar error laden, I'm appologizing ahead of time.

We truly hope you enjoy.