Hi, I'm 27 and I live with my mother.

It's not so bad, really. She brings me coffee every morning with frothed almond milk. I actually get to work on time because of the coffee-in-bed ritual.

She's an excellent cook and great company. And she helped me clean out three years of abandoned hobbies and detritus friends have left behind from house parties and get-togethers. I feel guilty about that, but am so thankful that she was here.

So, it's been a while since my last post, and definitely not for lack of activity. Life activity increase = blog productivity decrease. C'est la vie.

I've been up to a lot! J finished grad school in December (yay!), schlepped through months of unsatisfactory work (boo) while searching for a satisfactory first-career job. He got an offer in May (yay!) right around our first anniversary. Who can believe I didn't blog about that one?!

J gave me some truly gorgeous anniversary flowers - birds of paradise, lilies and others - pictured here in case I never get around to dedicating a post to our anniversary... which is entirely possible.

Anyway, after months of anxiously awaiting news, a company that makes yogurt offered him a job! After ages of waiting, the usual "we need you to start... YESTERDAY." occurred. Chaos ensued.

Our anniversary trip to New York City turned into a frantic apartment search. We found a place; signed the lease; came home; rented a 22-foot Penske truck (her name was Penny) with a tow dolley; loaded almost all of our worldly possessions to said rental; drove in lightning storms and heavy construction maxing at 55 mph and listening to a crappy suspense book-on-CD through Tennessee, Virginia, D.C., Maryland, Delaware and finally Jersey; unloaded in the rain in New Rochelle, N.Y. (27 minutes by express train to the Big City and home of Dick Van Dyke on his show, apparently - things you learn from old people); unpacked; visited with our friends Christina and Daniel; and proceeded to sleep through three alarms and two phone calls from the airport cab driver at 4:45 a.m. on a Sunday morning.

Penny

I eventually made it home, exhausted, just in time to work on Monday to a cat on hunger strike. At my mother's house.

It's only temporary.

Holy hell, I need to find a job. I'm working on it.

It's only temporary.

More to come...

In the meantime:

• this is hilarious
• J started a blog! About food! We can blog together. Because, obviously, we don't live together right now.
• It's only temporary.
• I'm looking for work. if you're hiring.
• Charles is eating again. Her backbone still feels like a xylophone, but she is definitely perkier and eating her nom again. Phew.
  

Did you know that there are mobile truckers' chapels at certain truck stops?

I want to walk Scotland.

I just have to find the vacation time to make this happen.

I have been completely absorbed in the Outlander series about a time-traveling British woman from WWII era and her life with a 17th century Scottish highlander. Sensational? Bodice-ripping? Yes and yes. But also really absorbing and quite historically rich. I've learned all of this stuff about 17th century Scottish uprisings and early American colonial history.

Anyway, now I've romanticized the Scottish highlands and want to visit. And then I see this in my Washington Post travel email. I need to go. I need to take 18 days for vacation and walk this. They say walk, not hike. I may not be the most outdoorsy, but I can walk for millions of miles. Just don't ask me to jog or run and I can go forever. AND you don't even have to camp - there are B&Bs, self-service cabins, hostels and inns all across the trails.

Courtesy of the Washington Post - check out the rest of the slideshow (!!!) You'll want to come on this adventure with me.

This reminds me of another incredible book I read quite a while back - It's Not About the Tapas (hm, by the looks of that Amazon link, Ms. Polly Evans writes a whole series of travel books. I will be checking those out...) - that made me want to bike Spain. But walking seems a bit more accessible. The author of the Post piece is a food writer for crying out loud. That makes him like me. If he can do it, so can I. I mean, the hardest bit on the trail only has a two-hiking boot difficulty meter. Out of five. This is doable.

I'll even compromise. the first leg of Brian Yarvin's trip is the long-distance West Highland Way that only takes eight days (or stages), according to my the impressive Scottish walks website.

The West Highland Way was Scotland's first long distance route and remains by far the most popular. Stretching for 150km from Milngavie on the edge of Glasgow to Fort William at the foot of Ben Nevis, the route offers a fabulous introduction to the Scottish Highlands. Those wanting to add an extra days walking could even begin in the heart of Glasgow, reaching Milngavie by following the Kelvin Walkway.

I can take a ten-day vacation. I'm thinking anniversary trip. Thank you, Outlander series, in your historically titillating excessiveness, for reigniting my wanderlust. I'm going to make this happen. Just give me time. And help me figure out how to somehow include a kayak excursion to further pique J's interest in this enterprise...

If you're into this travel fantasy (hey - it'll eventually become a reality!) stuff like I am, this WaPo newsletter had a Europe guide that also featured renting a house in France, cycling through southern Portugal and exploring Ukraine's ancient walled city. I have some more article reading to do :)

Oh! Also - A Town Like Paris. Another travel daydreamer's must-read. The author moves to Paris to work a Parisian government job (sadly, probably not so cushy anymore...) and totally immerses himself in la vie Francais.

Time to roll up those Snuggie sleeves!

I love Airfare Watchdog.

If I recall correctly, I started using the website because it's what our bustling Huntsville International Airport (International - ha!) uses for fare alerts. It's great - I have a ton of alerts set up for fabulous places and three times weekly, I get email pings about especially low fares from Huntsville to a number of my preset, specified locations. New York, San Francisco, Chicago, anyone? Yes, please.

Anyway, like many of the new web-based offerings, the Airfare Watchdog crew are pretty witty writers. I received an email this afternoon that made me want to shut my mini blinds extra tight when I get home tonight.

Hi there Melanie,

Gosh, is it March already? Time to roll up those snuggy sleeves, get off the sofa, and start planning your big spring getaway, if you haven't already. So where will you be thawing out come May? Take a look at our latest finds from the Huntsville area and see what's up for grabs...

Their "insert contact name here" email marketing campaign got me dead on this time. Thanks for calling me out in front of everyone. I'll forgive you this time, low fare finders. I will suffer a lot for you letting me know that there are $138/rt fares from Nashville to Chicago right now.

Maybe it is time to shed the Snuggie and venture out of hibernation.

Charles likes the Snuggie too.

the water pilgrimage.

I just had the weird sensation of realizing that someone has been observing my daily habits, finding them unusual and trying to help me be a little more normal.

Let me explain.

I work in a really really super nice building.

The nicest building I've ever worked in over the (short) span of my working career thus far. When I move and continue working other places, it'll still probably be the nicest facility I'll have ever worked in. There's glass everywhere. Shiny marble. Fabulous modern furnishings in a four-story atrium and a little cafe serving breakfast and lunch.


There are scores of support staff that man that cafe and clean the building (including the bathrooms, all of them, at least three or four times a day.) It's ridiculous. But I am not complaining - it's also lovely.

Anyway. I have these habits. I think they're good ones. I drink a ton of water. Possibly a gallon a day; not entirely sure. I used to go fill up my trusty plastic cup at the water fountain right by my office. One day, or operations director saw me and said (I kid you not), "WHY, pray tell, are you drinking out of the water fountain?! You do realize that we have nice, filtered, refrigerator water in the break room across the atrium, don't you?"

Well, no I didn't, actually. But I guess since the water fountain is off limits (except for guests - they don't get the good stuff?), I'll start walking across the way for my many times daily fill-up.

So, for the past year or so, I've been trekking across the atrium, from my office to the break room across the way to fill up my water cup. I've really started to enjoy it - my office is nice as far as offices go. I have a secondary window that looks out on to a hallway, through another office and finally out an outside window. I get light of day, indirectly. I have a door. But the atrium. You saw the photo. Now, it's a break I look forward to - getting up, stretching my legs, checking out the action in the atrium (that's where visitors come) and enjoying the full sunshine you see in the fully glassed-in area. Plus, I walk like, half a mile a day, to and fro between office and break room.

This morning, my little routine was interrupted by a really pleasant lady who works in the cafe.

"I see you walking way over there at least 25 times a day," she says. "You know the cafe water is triple-filtered, right? And cold? Why don't you just come get your water from the kitchen?" She says this all very patiently, as I'm obviously a tad slow to be walking a half mile per day just for water.

So anyway, I feel obligated to explain to her that I skip the water fountain because I was encouraged to drink the filtered water. I'm not a water snob, I insist. A little fluoride is good for a person.

In summary:

• Water fountain (is less than) filtered breakroom water (is less than) super awesome triple filtered chilled cafe water.
  
• I am a weirdo who drinks way too much water, walks too far for it and thinks she's too good for the water fountain.
• We have entirely too many water options. I mean, seriously.
  

Sigh. Sometimes I wish I could just be odd in peace without people noticing my little quirks and trying to help me out. Although, it is kind of touching that they care.

And, I apologize for sharing the weird again. I do think this little exercise will help dissolve the writer's block I've been experiencing while writing pages for our annual report. So this has been beneficial after all. I think I need a water break first, though...

OH! And so this isn't a total loss. I give you, Barcelona:

EF - Live The Language - Barcelona from Albin Holmqvist on Vimeo.

Hm. This isn't my favorite of the series but it still makes me insanely travel-jealous. We wanted to go here for our honeymoon but realized that there was a bit of a cash flow issue for a weeklong (or more) Euro trip. We had the best vacation we've ever had in Vegas, thanks to a family friend. But Barcelona is still on the bucket list. And it sure would be nice to go there while I still look decent in a swimsuit. Although, I'm pretty sure I never looked like the girl in the video. Seesh.

Bejing

EF - Live The Language - Beijing from Albin Holmqvist on Vimeo.

(By the way, these all came from the ModLife blog, which is almost always interesting reading.)

I am fairly sure I'm more of a Europe girl than an Asia one, but this does make me want to explore the asian side of things as well... Can you study abroad for work? Sigh.

Oh, to be a study abroad student again...

EF - Live The Language - Paris from Albin Holmqvist on Vimeo.

And there are more... I believe I'll share them one at a time since I am the worst blog poster ever lately. This will give anyone who happens to look at my blog something to daydream about :)

Voyage

I love the holidays. But, as I'm sure is the case for many people, they are bittersweet. In addition to the joy I feel being around loved ones and eating food and looking at lights and glittery paper and ribbons, I also reflect on those lost. Bittersweet. On my way into work this morning, I heard this poem and it rung so true. Anyway, not much more from me today, just this:

Voyage

by Tony Hoagland

I feel as if we opened a book about great ocean voyages
and found ourselves on a great ocean voyage:
sailing through December, around the horn of Christmas
and into the January Sea, and sailing on and on

in a novel without a moral but one in which
all the characters who died in the middle chapters
make the sunsets near the book's end more beautiful.

—And someone is spreading a map upon a table,
and someone is hanging a lantern from the stern,
and someone else says, "I'm only sorry
that I forgot my blue parka; It's turning cold."

Sunset like a burning wagon train
Sunrise like a dish of cantaloupe
Clouds like two armies clashing in the sky;
Icebergs and tropical storms,
That's the kind of thing that happens on our ocean voyage—

And in one of the chapters I was blinded by love
And in another, anger made us sick like swallowed glass
& I lay in my bunk and slept for so long,

I forgot about the ocean,
Which all the time was going by, right there, outside my cabin window.

And the sides of the ship were green as money,
and the water made a sound like memory when we sailed.

Then it was summer. Under the constellation of the swan,
under the constellation of the horse.

At night we consoled ourselves
By discussing the meaning of homesickness.
But there was no home to go home to.
There was no getting around the ocean.
We had to go on finding out the story
by pushing into it—

The sea was no longer a metaphor.
The book was no longer a book.
That was the plot.
That was our marvelous punishment.

"Voyage" by Tony Hoagland, from Hard Rain. © Hollyridge Press, 2005. Reprinted with permission. (buy now)

Interestingly enough, my granddad was a ship captain. So was my uncle before he retired. My dad was in the Navy too. In her early twenties, Mom sailed from L.A. to Australia on the beginning of her great adventure that eventually led her to my dad in Spain.

My uncle posted this photo on his Facebook sometime this summer... it's of him on his ship in Vietnam. He met up with my dad there - he's in the reflection.

Granddad had Alzheimer's and many of my more vivid memories of him were in this state since I was old enough to remember. He told this amazing story about when he first left Norway to work on a ship, they still sailed on masted sailing ships. I'm sure it was part of some sort of hazing ritual, but when he was young, they dared him to climb up to the uppermost mast and balance there, entire ship and ocean below, on his belly. Crazy. Crazy what you remember when everything else is gone... Crazy how many life-changing moments in my family, on both sides, began with a ship.