I’ve always loved olives, but while I was in Barcelona, they became part of my daily life. A side dish at lunch, an accent with pasta, my new favorite drink accompaniment. But since coming back to NY, I had given them up because they are sold in such small jars! I was finishing them off in two sittings and then had these glass jars piling up. Not very eco-friendly.
Enter 4lb barrel of delicious kalamata olives available from Amazon by subscription. I love you.
I was rewarded after my first day back at work in well over a year with an overnight blizzard making everything white and fluffy this morning. This is the view out my (dirty, dirty) window. In Manhattan, snow does not stay white long. But this morning, it is beautiful, even on top of piles of bags of recycling that never quite got picked up.
Happy Sauerkraut and Mashed Potatoes Day! Wishing all health, love, and laughter in the new year!
And no, I don’t mean Merry Christmas, unless of course you celebrate Christmas, in which case, Merry Christmas. But also, Happy (belated) Hanukkah, Happy Kwanza, Happy Festivus, Christmakkah, Solstice, or whatever winter holiday your religion, culture, family celebrates. In any case, I love the Holiday. My family does the tree, and the stockings, and the presents. We always make spice and almond cut-out cookies, peanut butter buckeyes, and fudge, but seem to add on a new treat or two every year. The religious significance of Christmas has faded for me, but the cultural and familial significance is alive and well. It is a time for togetherness, joy, thanksgiving, and love, no matter what you call the days.
A frustration of mine this holiday season and for the last few years has been the push back against a more inclusive sense of the Holiday. People getting offended at use of the more general word Holiday as opposed to the more specific Christmas. This only makes sense to me if the goal is to exclude all the people who, for any number of reasons, do not celebrate Christmas. And that doesn’t sound like togetherness, joy, thanksgiving, and love. It helps to realize what the backlash is up against, though. I have watched (perhaps more than) my share of mainstream television program holiday episodes this year and almost every single one has gone out of its way to incorporate differing ideas or customs relating to the Holiday. Yes, they all still center around Christmas, and yes, the effort is usually somewhat heavy-handed, but I find myself deeply appreciative of it. Like the feminist twists in more modern Disney tales–they don’t get everything right, but there is the sense that there is a shift happening. And I think it’s going in the right direction.
And I hadn’t even known that I did. I was fully prepared to turn my nose up to these Ivy-Leaguers in their tuxedos, but instead I giggled. Not immediately, maybe not even until three-quarters of the way through on first watching, but I got there. It turns out that I love this song, and I didn’t really even know it existed. I recognized it, but had no idea that it was called Grace Kelly. I immediately downloaded the Mika version and was surprised that it had a low popularity rating on iTunes. I checked back a couple hours later and it had gone from maybe three bars to something closer to ten! It turns out most of us want to be like Grace Kelly. Well done, Whiffenpoofs.
There is no getting around how crazy lucky I have been this year. I have always loved Thanksgiving for all the amazing food and getting time off to be with the family, but as with any tradition, sometimes it is easy to take it for granted. For me, this has been a year of thanks-giving, and rightfully so. (And yes, that is the most amazing cranberry salad ever invented and those are homemade pickles. There was turkey too, but I always pass that up to save room for the stuffing and mashed potatoes.)
It has been a while since I have posted anything with more than a minimal amount of text. It is partly because the videos and photos needed so little explanation, but also because I have been suffering from something of an attention deficit ever since being reunited with my ginormous television. It really is beautiful, but I also need to give it a break every once in a while.
On the heels of this realization (or re-realization), I came across this article in the NY Times today entitled, “When the Mind Wanders, Happiness Also Strays.” The finding contained in the article are not particularly enlightening, but the article did get me thinking. For all the perks and wonderfulness of a life of leisure, providing direction is not one of its strong points. To be fair, I suppose that is my job, and I have not been very good at it. That said, I think the last time that I truly found myself in the “flow” was when I was starting this website. I happily lost hours and hours trying to figure out how everything worked and how to make it just as I wanted. While some of the initial excitement has surely worn off, I still love the idea of this blog. And tonight, I turned off the TV to spend just a little extra time here.
I took an Irish dancing class once. It did not help me in identifying this as having anything to do with Irish dancing, but I had no problem identifying it as fun. Love the eclectic set, love the rhythm, love the dancing moves, and love the song. The song reminds me of Europe for reasons that make no sense even to me. This whole thing puts my clap-tap-moving-cup rhythm game skills to shame, but I am ok with that.
Cliché, I know. But so true. The air was chilly; the water was warm. It turns out the beach is pretty great in late October.
I am loving the relatively new philosophy blog from NYTimes.com, the Stone. In the most recent post, the commentator discusses happiness. He basically argues that happiness is more than a feeling thus requiring more than pleasure, namely a sense of flourishing. He illustrates his point by reference to The Matrix: The heroes were struggling against being “plugged in,” they wanted more than the illusion of happiness.
I am sitting at the dining room table of my parents’ house in small-town Ohio. And I am smiling because, a few moments ago, the gong of my grandfather’s clock reminded me why I am here. Even now, its strong tick-tocking establishes a presence in the otherwise empty house.  My grandfather passed away a few weeks ago surrounded by his six children and their spouses, my grandmother having preceded him in death by a little over a year. I was on a bus somewhere between Vienna and Prague. Having not been able to be with my family during that time, to support my mother and to grieve with my cousins, I am finding a strange comfort in the ticking of the clock now resting on the mantle of my childhood home. It is an insistent presence that seems to remind both of what has been lost and that time marches on.
I am in Ohio for my elder brother’s wedding. Tomorrow we will celebrate the addition of a new member to our family and the love that will always hold us all together.
Bright colors, fresh produce, a spunky personality. This photo is happy. When she saw it among my photos of Venice, my mom said it should go on my happy blog. Well, here it is.
In Berlin, I took advantage of my hostel’s book swap system and traded in Cervantes’s Novelas Ejemplares for Henry James’s The Portrait of a Lady. Being one of less than ten books available to swap, I was delighted to read that it was about a young American woman who goes to Europe to “confront her destiny.”
I do not know if that is what I am doing here and things have certainly changed since the late 1800s but, as I read, I cannot help but look for any possible similarities between myself and Isabel Archer. I want them to be there and find myself taking pains to make any analogy possible or making excuses for myself as to our differences. I will be the first to admit, without a false sense of humility, that it is not an easy comparison. And yet I find myself immensely engaged and actively identifying with her even as it becomes increasingly apparent that her problems are not those I am likely to face.
An avid reader from a young age, I all but stopped reading novels sometime during college and never picked the habit back up. I am quite behind in having read the classics, though I always mean to, and am currently wondering if this is what I have been missing. Time will tell whether it is enough to get me back to reading for pleasure, but right now I am very much enjoying this bound companion during my travels and the way it is making me think as much as the many beautiful sights all around me.
You know, in a good way. I am into day two of my thirty-four day trek through Europe. Berlin, as promised, is quite an interesting city. I have done two 4-hour walking tours and am currently drinking my third beer.  I have taken over 200 photos and met young people from at least nine countries. I went to a flea market today and bought myself two souvenirs, which together cost less than 15 euro. I have a full list of things to keep me occupied for the next three days. I am body tired. But things are good. It has been a good start.
A cold front has arrived in Barcelona, and instead of grumbling like I was all winter and spring about the chill in the air, I am finding it quite delightful. Similar to those first days of the sun’s warmth, there is some excitement in the tangibleness of changing seasons. I remember when I was growing up, the first football game was usually the week before we went back to school. It is a strange feeling to put on jeans for the first time after a long summer. The sensation of having my legs completely covered never felt quite right just yet, but it was not entirely unpleasant. It was a sort of harbinger of new things to come. The new year marching on.
I am spending my last few days in Barcelona, sporting jeans as I get ready for the next phase of my journey. And what could turn into my new life is just around the corner, as the seasons march on.
Spain is not known for their customer service. This slight is warranted. While I believe that my not competently speaking the language makes it generally more likely that I will encounter rude or merely unhelpful people, I do not believe that can account for the huge discrepancy in customer service standards between, say, Spain and the United States. Having grown up in the land of “the customer is always right,” I find the attitudes toward customers in Spain nearly incomprehensible. In the U.S., when confronted with an unhelpful or rude service person, it is not all that uncommon for the customer to demand to speak with a supervisor. This is certainly more conflict than I would create on a regular basis, but there is some satisfaction in just knowing that it is an option. I have no idea what the reaction to demanding to see a supervisor would be in Spain, but I cannot imagine it would be particularly satisfying.
So there I was earlier this week with a task to complete. I needed to print my dossier for my upcoming Eurotrip, but wanted to print it on both sides of the paper because it was really long and my backpack will be plenty heavy. As far as I know, there is no Fed-Ex/Kinkos in Barcelona. Two days ago I stopped into a small shop that had “Fotocopias” on its awning. I asked if I could print something there. No. Did she know of anywhere around where I could print something? No. Fair enough. Yesterday, I left the Old City in search of a modern copy shop. I found two. The first was closed from Aug. 9 to Aug. 22. Upon entering the second, I waited ten minutes for the man working to get off of the phone, then another five minutes as he helped the man in front of me. I then explained to him what I wanted to do to which he responded, No. He went on to explain that he was leaving at 7 (it was 6:45), and the other man would then be alone. I explained that it was only one document. He told me to come back the next day. There were further trials that it is unnecessary to recount.
Today, I searched the web and found a third proper copy shop, this one even closer to my apartment. I may have paid more than I would have liked and she may have rolled her eyes when I did not understand what she was saying about printing on both sides, but I have my document and it is done. Victory.
Since undertaking this happy-making endeavor of a blog, I feel a sort of sense of responsibility to read articles like this one in today’s NY Times. Titled “But Will It Make You Happy?” it discusses changing consumption patterns in the U.S. in recent years and how there is currently a movement of people looking to lead more simple lives by limiting their possessions or focusing their spending on things that are more likely to have longer lasting benefits. Accompanying the discussion of current trends are studies about what kind of purchases tend to give the purchasers more happiness-bang for their buck.
Some interesting points teased from the lengthy article:
*Â Expenditures on experiences rather than things tend to bring greater happiness (i.e., travel and concerts bring us greater happiness than couches and the latest gadget).
*Â Purchases made after a period of anticipation are appreciated/enjoyed more than those bought immediately.
*Â We adapt our sense of happiness relatively quickly after acquiring new things so that they cease to bring us the same level of satisfaction over time.
* While the shifts in spending patterns were spurred on by the recent recessions, some experts are predicting that the days of conspicuous consumption are over. People are finally beginning to understand the pitfalls of keeping up with the Joneses and are spending money in a more thoughtful manner.
