Blog hiatus

With all of the craziness of packing, moving, unpacking, settling in, getting internet, and everything else involved in uprooting our lives and kind of starting over, I need to take a little break from the blog.  We are very happily moved in, mostly settled, and the cats have never been happier!  I will start updating more once school starts, and I promise, promise, promise to post photos soon!

Epic Road Trip: Part II

Hello dear readers!  Things have gotten pretty busy around here and I haven't kept my word to you about writing over a span of three days.  Luckily I have a little down time as I wait for our new apartment to call me back about some paint questions I had, so I will continue this saga...

Caroline Survives NYC

When I was in high school, I had big dreams about attending NYU, being a theatre major, and ending up on Broadway.  Somewhere along the way, I realized not only was life putting me in a very different (and amazing) direction, but I also developed some sort of irrational fear of New York City.  I mean, never, ever, ever wanted to visit NYC ever, ever, ever.  Seeing Times Square on TV on New Year's Eve is more than enough to give me the heebie-jeebies.  And then Isabelle and David moved there.  And Lillian lives in Buffalo, and has been to NYC many times.  And Aunt Lynda lived there for two weeks last summer while she attended an artists' master class.  And Joseph simply loves NYC and would like to live there for a little bit...someday...in the future...

So you see, I pretty much had no choice but to go.  One day.  In the future.  And as it happened, this trip provided the (almost) perfect opportunity to finally take this trip.  Joseph was at a bachelor party; I was in the DC area on my own for a few days; Isabelle was in town long enough for me to stay with her.  The one minor catch was that Joseph returned from the party the same day I left for NYC.  Oh well!

Photo Credit: Isabelle Selby

 Isabelle is the most amazing speed tour guide you'll ever meet in NYC.  I had about 26 hours total, we stayed in Brooklyn the majority of the time, and I now feel confident to visit the City again (and I'm even excited about it)!

Photo Credit: Isabelle Selby

 We went to eat lunch at a very cool diner, and I can't remember the name of it now.  But it was yummy!  I had the duck hash.

 I got to meet my new best friend, Charlie, who hates me.  We had some great conversations.  After settling in, we walked to the flea market by the East River.  And went to Rosamunde's where I met Isabelle and David's friend, Harper.  We later met up with her for dinner and to watch David play at the BET Awards.

Photo Credit: Isabelle Selby

Photo Credit: Isabelle Selby

We had dinner at Pauly Gee's in Greenpoint.  In order to get there, we had to ride the ferry.  The sunset was amazing, the weather was perfect, and of course the view of the city was incredible.  As we walked to Harper's, we passed lots of graffiti murals, so of course I posed for each one.  You can see more photos on Facebook.  Isabelle said I was a good sport :)

Photo Credit: Isabelle Selby

Dinner at Paulie Gee's

Paulie Gee, as you may have suspected, is the owner of Paulie Gee's.  He's an elderly man who walks around the restaurant and speaks to each of his customers.  At first, you have no idea who this old man is walking up to your table with his coffee mug (he didn't have the mug the night we went, though).  We ordered two pizzas, because that's their specialty, which were amazing!

The next morning was a little rainy, but not uncomfortably so.  Isabelle and I brunched at The Rabbit Hole, another great place to eat.

My homage to Isabelle's photos of coffee at The Rabbit Hole

Croque Madame with fresh fruit and coffee

Best tour guide ever!

 Here are some things I left out about my visit to NYC:

• Met Tolga who owns a coffee shop around the corner of Isabelle's apartment
• Ate a second lunch at Rosamunde's because it was vacation and the wild boar sausage sounded good
• Met Rich, but not Naomi
• Went to Videology, a renovated and revamped video store-turned-bar with moving screenings in the back
• Saw lots of Hassidic Jews in the neighborhood, as well as a school bus with writing all in Hebrew
• Watched the pilot episode of Battlestar Galactica for the third time... and fell asleep during it for the third time :)

Epic Road Trip: Part I

Hello dear reader!  I'm finally back, but as we're moving in a few short weeks, my posts will probably be fewer and farther between until we get settled into our new digs in Atlanta.  In the meantime, over the next three days, I will fill you in bit by bit on what Joseph and I were up to these past couple weeks.

We left for Virginia on the afternoon of June 26 so that Joseph could attend Jamie's bachelor party.  For those of you who may not know, Jamie was Joseph's best man at our wedding, and he asked that we play the music at his wedding.  So in the days preceding our trip, here's what I was up to:

Transcribing "Blackbird" tabs for guitar

Transcribing "Blackbird" for flute

 We were so grateful and excited that Jamie and Hally allowed us to choose the majority of their ceremony music, and as such, we wanted to give them the most spectacular soundtrack for their wedding. I'll elaborate more in my next post, but here's the setlist for now:

• Blackbird- Beatles
• Here Comes the Sun- Beatles
• Ripple- Grateful Dead
• The Way I Am- Ingrid Michaelson
• Suite: Judy Blue Eyes- Crosby, Stills & Nash
• Obladi Oblada- Beatles

You might see a theme...

However, despite our best laid plans, this was The Summer I Got Poison Ivy.  It especially stung since I swore up one side and down another that I'm not allergic, never have been allergic... Ugh.  You live, you learn.  It's finally clearing up, four weeks later... (no picture for this one because it was gross).

While Joseph was at the bachelor party in WV, I stayed with his mom.  It was actually very nice to just relax, do yoga, and we got mani-pedis together <3

And that's all for now!  Next up: Caroline Survives NYC!

I think my cats are lunatics

I watched the sunrise this morning.  Unwillingly.

I shouldn't say unwillingly; perhaps that's too harsh a word.  I was, however, not happy to be awake during the sunrise.

For whatever reason, the cats were acting very oddly last night.    Lucy pounced on Louis multiple times, and we had to spray her at least three times throughout the evening.  Louis scratched constantly on the closet door in our bedroom for most of the night, yowled often, and then walked on me to wake me up around 4:00 a.m. so that I could dig earwax out of his ears.  Lucy, meanwhile, gave small cries that made it sound like she was lost and sad... in our one bedroom apartment. My first guess would be the Super Moon, but as you can read here, NPR quoted LiveScience which quoted two different studies on the correlation between behavior and the moon:

"A 1985 review of research published in the journal Psychological Bulletin found no convincing evidence that full moons spur mental hospital admission uptakes, psychiatric disturbances, homicides or other crimes. A 2010 study similarly found a lack of excess criminal lunacy on full-moon days."


So there was that.

And I have poison ivy, so that certainly contributed to my inability to stay asleep last night.

And I ate junk 30 minutes before going to bed, and I'm thinking that that had something to do with my insomnia.

All in all, it was a perfect storm for sleeplessness.  I laid awake for what felt like an eternity, though I'm sure it was only half an hour, before I finally gave in and started reading articles on my phone (which incidentally gave me the time: 5:07).  Knowing that I only had a two hours to rest before taking Joseph to work, I chose to stay awake and read until his alarm went off.  I boiled some eggs for his breakfast and water for his tea, and successfully drove him to work.

I'm back at home, thinking about how grateful I am to be bored.  Being bored allows me to appreciate things that usually stress me out during the school year-- and especially the unknown that I'm we're facing with this move to Atlanta.  I am grateful to have a job, and even more grateful to have a job that allows me three months of being bored, relaxed, on vacation, traveling...

I am also grateful for seeing the Super Moon this morning, as well as the sunrise, and waking up early.  I've learned in the past two days that sleeping in makes me not want to do anything but lay in bed for the rest of the day.  Even though I'm currently going on 5 hours of sleep, I am less fearful of being productive.

And I'm very, very grateful to have an amazing husband who takes care of me when I'm cranky, itchy, and hungry <3

Sunset on the solstice

Yard Sale!

A few weeks ago, Joseph and I were all set to start packing up our house during the middle two weeks of June, go to a wedding the first week of July, and then pretty much immediately move out of our apartment on July 9.  You can read all about what happened with those best laid plans here.  However, despite being able to put off packing up the apartment, going through needless things that haven't been used, much less looked at in over a year (or more), I was still in the mindset that I needed to go-go-go and pack-pack-pack and sort-sort-sort... which for me means, STRESS-STRESS-STRESS!  Sooooooo I went through our little storage area and found loads of things that we could get rid of, but I didn't just want to give it away.  Plus, we still hadn't put our old TV up on craigslist from months ago...

And then I had a brilliant idea:

YARD SALE!

Now the question was, where to have it?  You see, we live in a 15 story apartment building and I am sure The Beach Company would not have approved of us selling stuff on the front lawn of Broad Street.  And then, really, who on Broad Street (one of the nicest areas in CHS) would go to a yard sale?  OK, who did I know who had a house, with a lawn, and lived in an area that had a yard sale-going demographic?

And then it hit me:

BECCA!

Such a lovely, wonderful friend, she said yes when we asked if we could have a yard sale at her house-- and it even worked out well for her, because she and her husband had stuff to sell as well.  So she bought little sticker price tags and made signs, Joseph put an ad on craigslist, and I drove over to Becca's with Dunkin Donuts coffee and, yep, you guessed it: donuts.  Oh, and I brought all our stuff.

We set up shop at about 7:00 a.m. and by 10:45 a.m. everyone who was going to come by came by.  We were very successful, by yard sale standards, and raked in a combined total of $60.  It's always exciting and a little scary to try something new, especially when you're hoping to make money doing it.  I believe we pulled off this yard sale with aplomb and it was SO much fun!

Today's musings

It's been five days since my last post, and not too many exciting things have happened here.  We are still riding on the euphoria of getting the apartment we wanted while simultaneously settling back into regular life.  I've been studying Latin obsessively, and have noticed that the same quality that I enjoy in learning Latin is in studying music theory, playing Words with Friends, and working certain math problems or stoichiometry.  And it's the same quality that I enjoyed when learning Spanish and later French.  I'm unsure what exactly the quality is, but I believe it's also the reason why I enjoy teaching beginner foreign language classes.  I remember being resistant to the idea of majoring in either Spanish or French in college because I didn't want to learn about the literature.  I like knowing the finer details of a language's grammatical structure, working problems methodically.  Latin is providing a veritable plethora of grammatical structures to identify, interpret, and construct.

The trials and tribulations of studying Latin

Anyway, other than my musings on the finer points of studying a dead language, we went grocery shopping today; picked out paint colors for our new apartment; and I went to a yoga class taught by one of my friends from teacher training.  It was her first class and she did a fabulous job!  I also took a Bikram yoga class downtown, and had my first truly positive experience in a Bikram class.  Meanwhile, Joseph has been practicing guitar diligently as we will be playing a wedding for some of our friends in July.  We're excited to play such good music for such good friends!

Pale green, yellow, and blue

A little idle talk of this and that

Atlanta was a whirlwind!  We arrived at the Michelsen's house at 2:15 p.m. on Monday, just in time for us to put our stuff down while I did a quick "costume" change from leggings and flannel shirt to a cute skirt that looked much more professional since I had to go to a meeting at 2:30.  Oh, a meeting?  Yes.  Because now I will not only be teaching Spanish I and II, as well as French II and III; I am now going to be teaching Latin II.

Don't worry about reading that sentence again, because you read it correctly the first time.

I'll let it sink in a little longer.

OK, so, yes, I'll be teaching Latin II.  But hey, that's cool because I like languages and grammar and jigsaw puzzles!  Aaaaaaand they want me to focus much more on the culture of ancient Rome, so I will get to create lots of awesome projects.

On Tuesday I had my first lesson in Latin and realized that I probably would have loved learning it in high school.  I then started to set up my new classroom (which I chose based on how many bookshelves... there were 5 or 6) with three corners designated to each of the three languages I'll be teaching.  At noon, Joseph and I had an appointment at North Highridge Apartments, our number one choice for where to live in Little 5 Points.  These apartments are in such high demand, there is no waiting list; you have to call daily to see if anyone has put in their 30 days notice.  Of course we fell in love with the place immediately.

French doors.  Screened in porches.  High ceilings.  Wood floors.  Charm.

We had lunch at the café across the street from North Highridge and then walked to our second appointment on Euclid Ave.  It also had wood floors, but those were the only commonalities between the two.  Although much smaller, they were a great fallback in case we didn't get into NHA.  After that appointment, we decided to travel to Downtown Atlanta (honestly not a place I'm likely to visit again anytime soon).

Late afternoon found us at The Porter (back in L5P), where we saw some friends of ours from CBX.  And we ordered frog legs... I almost cried before I ate mine.

For dinner we went across the street to Front Page News, the sister restaurant of Tijuana Garage.  It was a very cool patio setting, and we got to sit immediately next to the fountain in the middle of the courtyard.

Today, I finished setting up my classroom in the morning and then I took Joseph to Julianna's Coffee and Crepes in Inman Park for brunch.  They serve the best Hungarian style crepes you'll ever eat!  On the way there, around 10:30, we called North Highridge to see if anything had opened up.  Nope.

By noon we were on the road to Tennessee to visit Mom and Dad.  At 2:30, my phone started ringing.  Caller ID said "North Highridge Apartments."  Someone had given their 30 days notice for a large one bedroom!  Yes, dear reader, the quest is over!  WE GOT OUR APARTMENT!!!  If there was still any question of whether we had made the right decision to move to Atlanta, I'm pretty sure this sealed the deal for both of us.

We arrived in M'town by 5:30, and Mom and Dad had decided to have some friends over for dinner: a lovely family of 6 who like to sing, apparently!  Here's a shot of two of my favorite people making beautiful music: