In which I promise to have some thoughts

I just realized that the iTunes thingamabob that I tried to put up a while ago actually IS there. I thought, mistakenly, that the Blogger template stuff hadn't accepted the coding and anyway...shrug. But there it is. And I don't like it! I can't figure out why some of my favorite music shows up but others are random albums that I don't really like that much at all. And while the scrolling words are nice for about a minute, they're all grey and boring and repeat over and over. You can click on the artist to see the album, but even that is only interesting maybe the first couple of times you do it. Am I right? So, I will be deleting the iTunes thingamabob.

Also, apologies for not blogging in, like, forever. I promised my grandparents I'd keep it up, and then I slacked off for almost the whole month of September. So here I am, grandpa and grandma! I'll try to blog more so you know what I'm up to!

What I'm up to lately is more of the same, which means: trying to work diligently, studying French, singing in choir, trying to swim more regularly so I don't turn into a couch-shaped blob, and traveling to places like Barcelona (two weekends ago) and Liege (yesterday, to see the opera there--Nabucco--and do a bit of sightseeing). Ooh, and my good friend Amanda is coming to visit tomorrow! Also, I'm doing some work for my brother, which I think I'll have to save for another post because I have some, you know, thoughts on that.

Do, re, mi oh my

So, we bought a piano. It's not, shall we say, something one typically expects to do on a regular old Friday afternoon.

But the Victor Horta House Museum, which we thought would occupy our time until our dinner reservation, actually only took about an hour (being rather more "house" than "museum").

Whiling away the rest of the afternoon meant strolling through the Chatelain neighborhood, and in the Chatelain neighborhood, on the same street as the museum, there is a huge secondhand shop called Les Petits Riens (The Little Nothings).

We had our eyes peeled for a sofa or a coffee table, and didn't see anything. However, we saw a piano. Two, actually.

I should mention here that my mother was with us, and I should mention that my mother is a pianist by trade. We started playing the pianos, and noticing that they were only 200 euros. We also noticed that one was both decidedly more antique than the other AND decidedly of richer sound, tuning, and all around beauty. This is where my mom came in: she knows what to look for (uncracked sounding board? good. a cracked key? replacable. tight tuning pins? good. a couple stuck keys? no problem.) and she helped us realize that yes, we could buy a piano in a random thrift shop on a regular old Friday afternoon.

Then the friendly people at the store started to realize that we might actually take one of these pianos off their hands, and they reduced the price by another 25 euros, while pointing out that they had originally priced it at 500, and had no idea what it was really worth (hinting that maybe it was worth a lot more than that).

Nervously (can one really buy a piano, just like that?), we handed them the credit card and were the proud owners of a beautiful antique piano.

Now, here's the rub: one can't exactly take a piano home in one's back pocket. After a few phone calls the following morning, we discovered that transporting the piano up to our fourth-floor apartment was going to cost us more money than we paid for the piano in the first place. Most companies wanted us to rent a furniture lift, which is very expensive and involves reserving the street in front of our house from the town government etc. etc. We did find some professional piano movers who were willling to CARRY the thing up our stairs (heaven help their backs), and so we paid them to do so.

And then waited. All of this happened, let's see, over THREE weeks ago. And we're still waiting for our piano. After numerous phone calls and e-mails and consternation-ful conversations with the piano people, it appears that at long last, TODAY is the day. The piano was due to arrive twenty minutes ago (the dudes called me earlier this morning), so I am holding my breath and crossing my fingers (you know, to limber them up for the scales I'm going to be practicing shortly).

Our neighbors are probably going to hate us, but I am hopping-up-and-down to have a piano. Last time I was home and played a bit, I could tell I had lost so much of what I had (which wasn't a whole lot to begin with, to be honest), after years of having nowhere to play. I'm looking forward to sharpening up some piano chops, and also to being able to practice my choir music without having to resort to a. awkward solo pitch-guessing, b. singing along with recorded versions of the pieces, or c. attempting to use an "internet piano" by which you click on keys in sequence to get a computery approximation of the melody. (Believe me, it's not worth the trouble.)

So here's to secondhand shops, and piano chops. May the piano be light on their backs, and may it come within the hour.

A mini-tour

I promised a few photos of our place in Barcelona, now that the whole setup can function again, thanks to 1) a card reader, 2) my dad's help in backing up and deleting an unwieldy and hard-disk-gobbling amount of photos, and 3) internet, yay! Credit for most of the pics goes to K., poet and picture-taker extraordinaire.



Our new kitchen! As seen from the dining room (with original corner hutch) and towards the blue living room. The oven still isn't in yet, thus the big hole under the stove, but I love how it all turned out, especially the exposed brick (kudos to M. on that, who is the visionary in this relationship). There will be a marble bar extending from the free-standing shelf over to the counter.





The front, purple room, as seen from the green room, our bedroom. The purple room will be an office/library, thus the piles of books (which we hope to put on built-to-order shelves):





The blue room again, with a chest of drawers built by M's great-grandfather, and, yes, a TV.



A close-up of the bathroom sink. Flowery antique saucer used as soap dish, in contrast to modern slate gray tiles and sleek fixtures.

It will be a long process to complete all of the many details that we left unfinished this summer, with little bits done here and there on weekend visits. Some things will remain provisional for the next two years, until we move some of our favorite things from Brussels to Barcelona, and others will change as we refurbish old furniture and buy new items. Each step will be exciting, I think, even if it takes a long time.

Bruxelles redux

As the Mister and I were falling asleep last night, I whispered, "I'm happy to be home." What I meant was, happy to be in our own, big bed, happy to be alone in our own house, happy to unpack the suitcases (in which we lugged about fifty books purchased during our travels).

I have to admit that it wasn't so thrilling, however, after sunny, breezy Barcelona and the sincere, effortless beauty of Vermont, to return to the gray grime of Brussels. Everything I looked at seemed to be coated in a nauseating layer of ick; cigarette butts and beer at the train station tram-stop, crumpled paper and trampled french fries with neon pili-pili sauce revoltingly spread out over the sidewalk in front of our house. (A not uncommon sight, thanks to the frites wagon across the street.)

The gray skies didn't help, and neither did the knowledge that I would really have to knuckle down to work now that vacation was over. No more days spent being fed abundant mother-cooked meals, no more to-do lists that included such pressing items as "read Harry Potter" and "go to museum" and "play with nephew." I'll miss hearing him say, "Ook, Robin!" and his neverending question, "What's that?" to draw my attention to something, anything: the whole world is AWESOME when hanging out with a two-year-old.

Lest I get completely wistful about vacation being over, there are some things to look forward to: my mom is coming in a couple of days and we have lots of ideas for fun things to do while she's here, French class and choir will start up again soon, we will head back to Barcelona in mid-September, and back to the US in early October for a big family reunion: the two-hundred odd descendants of my great-grandparents are getting together for a big celebration of the centenary of their arrival.

And now, I need to do a little cleaning. Six weeks of neglect has left this house a little dusty.

Inferno, paradiso

To solve the problem with our tickets I spent TEN hours on the phone (this number is NO exaggeration, although the following might possibly be). I heard Pachelbel's canon approximately six thousand, four hundred and seventy-nine times, talked to approximately fifty-seven different Cheaptickets agents and "supervisors" (in quotes due to my suspicion that these were just "agents" who were more skilled in customer evasion), and repeated our "record locator" and our situation the same number of times. Every time I called I was greeted with a cheerful description of our old "confirmed" cancelled flight, which seemed to be deliberately conceived to get my goat.

I lost my cool just a couple of times, M. once shouted threats at the Pachelbel's canon hold music when I couldn't take it any more, and we were told we had new, confirmed tickets three times. I finally thought we had a new ticket at the end of seven hours on the phone on Tuesday, but woke up on Wednesday to find no e-mail confirmation, and BA only had a record of the last leg of our return trip, from London to Brussels. Three more hours on the phone resulted in, at long last, an actual new itinerary, a confirmation number, and what appeared to be a charge of over three thousand euros. Yet another call was required to make sure that we wouldn't be charged for the new flight.

The ten hours I spent on the phone were just about evenly matched to the ten hours we spent in the air yesterday, and British Airways in the heavens at least somewhat made up for the hell of Cheaptickets and the purgatory of Heathrow: we flew first class on our transatlantic flight! (The ticket we were given by cheaptickets was the slightly better "World Traveler Plus," probably because it was the only thing available, and then BA bumped us up to first class.)

Flying first class on a long-haul flight has long been a dream of mine, so I was giddy with excitement when we got on the plane and discovered that our seats were better described as seat/bed/entertainment compartments. Like little kids, we pushed all the buttons, zooming in and out in our fully reclinable seats, and ordered champagne and newspapers (OK, like grown-up little kids). The food was actually delicious, the china was real, the service was impeccable, and the movies were pausable. (We watched Waitress: SO good! Watch it!) It was the best flight I've ever had.

My spirits weren't even dampened by a lost bag in Boston, and after a late-night drive to Vermont with my brother and sister-in-law, all it took was one whiff of the good Vermont air to feel entirely at peace. When we got out of the car, the sky was brilliantly clear, displaying a magnificently populated starscape. I had forgotten how electrifying of a sight it is, this infinity of stars, the way the night sky was meant to be seen. The milky way meandered across the heaven, the big dipper scooped low at the horizon, and as we stood there, both M. and my sister-in-law, who had never seen a shooting star, saw a large one greet us with its light.

Not so cheap

Stop the presses! We are flying to the US on Thursday, or are supposed to be. But when I called this morning to order a vegetarian meal, British Airways told me that our reservation had been cancelled. When? The day after I bought the ticket, two months ago. And who cancelld it? Why, the reserving agent, cheaptickets. This is news to me, because we paid for these tickets (and despite the company’s name, not so cheaply, hoo boy no sir), and because we were never informed of any such change.

Cheaptickets.com, meanwhile, tells me (after answering the phone—in India, I think—“thank you for calling Orbitz”) that our flight is confirmed and there shouldn’t be a problem, and we should call back in four hours when BA offices in the US open. In four hours. Aaack, we just want some answers, and we just want to be able to get to Boston and then back to Brussels, without forking out more money.

This is the second time I’ve had a major problem with cheaptickets.com, so I don’t mind telling the world: DON’T buy your ticket from them! The last time, I was stuck for an extra day in Halifax because Delta told me I hadn’t paid for my flight, when again I most certainly had, and also not cheaply. This is beginning to sound sort of familiar.

Nesting

Where to begin, after so many days and so much work and fun?

Let’s begin with a color. Think of the worst color you can imagine. Specifically, the worst color possible for your new home’s entry, dining room, and kitchen. Then imagine walking into your house, a smile already on your face in anticipation of seeing the completed paint and the trim new kitchen, then wiped off after finding the walls painted exactly that color, that horrid color.

That color for me is a pale electric greeny-yellow, and if you come to visit you can still see it in the little guest bedroom. We could only afford to re-paint a certain number of rooms, so there it will remain until we someday take it upon ourselves to wield brush and paint. Actually, in an enclosed space, and one that I don’t tend to frequent (given that at the moment it serves as a storage warehouse for old furniture and dusty lamps) it’s even tolerable. It was the living spaces, the heart of the apartment, that I just couldn’t stand to see robed in that upsetting, nerves-on-edge tint.

The whole thing was more or less our fault, anyway. We tried to choose paint colors by computer, first carefully narrowing down our Pantone favorites, then through some complicated “translation” programs to get the color equivalent of the “Natural Color System” preferred by the painters. I don’t know how “almond cream” on our computer in Brussels translated to “pale electric greeny-yellow” on our walls in Barcelona, but so it did. (I would point out that the painters didn’t help much; we had described the difficulty we had of getting the color codes, and included a description of the color we wished for, and I’m sure I don’t know how they thought that the two were even remotely related.) To further add to our grievance, M. had actually seen the colors during a quick business trip the previous week, and had very much liked them, although they weren't exact. Turns out it was only the "tinted primer" that the painters had mixed up based on our descriptions, but they never mentioned the possibility that the final color would be different, nor did they remark to us that the color took a drastic turn between "description" and official "code."

The walls were repainted in due course, and are now a nice buttery cream. And in the weeks since that first rather shocking welcome, we have done a lot of hard work. I never expected the house to be as utterly dirty as it was, covered with thick layers of plaster dust, paint splatters (another gripe with the painters; did they not use drop cloths?), and wood particles, all on top of the decades of dust accumulated by the 97-year-old great aunt who lived here before us.

We moved in a couple of weeks ago, but it wasn’t until last Thursday, when the carpenter finally came in to put the doors and trim on the kitchen cabinets, that that things felt like they were coming together visually. (Also provoking another round of wood-dust cleaning.) The cabinet wood, a decision made so long ago I couldn’t remember what it looked like, goes fabulously with the exposed-brick wall, the rustic black stove hood, and the creamy countertop.

Meanwhile, we’ve been doing a million things, from buying curtain rods and doorknobs to dealing with the lovely and tangled red tape of electric, phone, and internet companies, from mopping and washing furniture to unpacking boxes, opening wedding gifts (like Christmas!), and trying to figure out where that box of bed linen went.

We’ve also managed to have some fun in the month since I last wrote; we’ve twice been up to the coast for a quick weekend beach trip, once out to the Catalan interior (the beautiful, sunswept Sagarra), and a good friend of ours came for a stay, prompting welcome respites like paella at the port, strolls in the city, visits to favorite restaurants, an afternoon in Sitges, and a ride on the cable car that sways its way over the water from Barceloneta to Montjuich.

What our quick Costa Brava trip this weekend (to celebrate our niece’s two-year birthday) told me, though, is how much I was looking forward to coming back to our breezy and serene apartment. I already love this place, knowing that it will be a home that we continue to build and live in, a place to come back to from wherever we are in the world.

Summer suitcase, or, la maleta d'estiu

It's one of those pre-departure evenings--you know the kind--of doing last-minute laundry, and taking out the trash, and putting things in semi-orderly piles so that the return view of the house in a month and a half isn't horrific.

Tomorrow we are off to Barcelona to begin, at long last, some semblance of a summer.

Although tonight it is back to pouring rain and chilly air, this weekend we actually did have something that felt summery: a couple of hot days, a bit of sunshine here and there, enough to wear sunglasses and sweat a bit--and a barbecue with friends, to boot. I've never been so happy to sweat.

I'm sure we're going to do a lot more of that (sweating) once in Barcelona, both for appealing reasons (say, weekends at the beach), and not-so-appealing reasons (the back-breaking labor of putting our house in order). But behind the unsavory prospect of hard work in the dog days of Spanish summer, sans air conditioning, is the exciting prospect of having a proper home of our own in Barcelona and getting it all set up.

I'm most eager to see how our house has shaped up now that the kitchen has been put in and the walls have been painted. The wall color question is making me the most nervous, because we had to choose paint colors via e-mail and internet, a process that I would not recommend, and M., who saw the apartment last weekend, is describing the colors as rather different than we had envisioned them. The calming light blue-gray that I wanted, for example, in the living room, sounds more like an energizing vibrant sky blue. Oh dear.

I'll do my best to update the blog with the results, and pictures, if I can get a card reader or magically make my computer acknowledge my camera's existence again. Also, I'm not so sure about the internet connection in our new place, due to Telefonica's notorious slowness in setting up accounts, so it may be spotty for a while. At least, however, I'm pretty sure it'll be sunny while the internet is gone, amounting to a kind of cosmic compensation.

(Un)moving day

I am sitting in the midst of a house full of furniture in various states of disarray: dining room tables with their legs removed, a sofa wrapped in old curtains, a host of bubble-wrap sheaths, a mattress trussed up like a pork tenderloin.

All of this is happening because, some five months after we moved into the place, the previous renter has finally come back for her things. It took her a long time to find a new apartment in Madrid, so we forgive her. But still, we've been looking forward to this for a good long while, anticipating the day our apartment is really ours. Even the things we loved so--and she sure has some beautiful furniture (good bye red-orange sofa! good bye lustrous wood table! we will miss you!)--were still not ours, and thus imparted a feeling of sort of not really living in our own place.

Ever since we found out that this would be happening, less than two weeks ago, we've been feverishly trying to find furniture that 1. we can afford, and 2. isn't crappy. This is easier said than done.

We have mostly resorted to online classifieds, and fortunately for us, Brussels has a huge turnover population, what with people coming from all over to live here for a short stint at the EU institutions. Everybody and their brother is selling furniture. Unfortunately for us, ninety percent of what's available is Ikea furniture. Don't get me wrong: Ikea's great for some things, like odds and ends and decor and decent shelves and tables.

Last weekend we went to see a secondhand Ikea dining room table and chairs and ended up buying a bed from the people as well. They are moving back to Puerto Rico, and asked if we needed anything else, and we said a bed. Well, they said, that's great because we'd like to sell ours! Chagrined, they added, the only problem is that we don't want to sell the mattress. Perfect, we said! Because we have a mattress! And indeed, it worked out perfectly. Our futon mattress fits nicely in the frame, and the frame looks good in our room, and boy were we ever happy to have our queen-sized mattress back! (We had been sleeping on her full-sized bed for lack of a frame to put ours in.) It felt gigantic, like we could have bowling competitions right there in our pajamas!

For a while there we've had the house full: two sets of beds, two sets of dining table and chairs, etcetera. The only thing we can't find is a sofa, because--and here's my quibble with Ikea--all the cheap Ikea sofas that people are selling look pretty crappy. They look like Ikea, you know? Like that extra guest room futon that seems great because it's both a sofa and a bed, but in the end it's not good at being either. I speak from experience: we have a tiny Ikea futon that's the most uncomfortable thing to sit on, and one of the slats broke and a bolt busted loose while we were sitting on it. It looks like it's going to be our sofa for a while again, though, until we find something better.

Anyway, gotta go! The moving truck and its big fancy hydraulic lift is busy hydraulicizing up to the window. Eeeek! Here it is! Kind of creepy, you know? A big machine creeping up and appearing at your fourth-floor window?

If they were pennies, I'd have a dollar

It's, um, hailing outside. Is that allowed to happen? Big pellets of ICE falling from the sky in JULY? Just wondering.

This meteorological phenomenon is probably Brussels' way of celebrating a momentous event: 100 posts over here at chez Cant d'ocell!

I know one hundred is a wee tiny number in the general world of blogging, but I'm actually surprised that I've managed to keep it up at a fairly regular pace these last few months, so Happy One Hundred Posts, little blog!

Ommegang

If you say it fast, it sort of sounds like a teenager's exclamation, but the Ommegang is actually a centuries-old Brussels tradition, which we attended yesterday. (If "attended" includes watching the free parts and craning our necks from the outside to avoid paying for 60-euro tickets.)

A long time ago, when King Charles was in charge of half of Europe (you didn't know that eighties sitcom, Charles in Charge, was really about a sixteenth-century king, did you!?), he deigned to visit Brussels. Everybody turned out in their Sunday best, and put on a show of all their favorite tricks: knightly hoseback parades, peasant jigs, synchronized flag-tossing, and so on and so forth. Meanwhile, the king and his upper-crust buddies munched on tasty snacks in the red velvet-lined pavilion overlooking the Grand Place.

Everybody had such a great time that they just never stopped doing it: every single year since then, they have repeated the spectacle, complete with people personifying the king and his court, munching on snacks in a red velvet pavilion, jesters running around in the crowds to make them laugh and/or uncomfortable, and a couple of guys in sixteenth-century janitor costumes who run out with a wheelbarrow and a straw broom to sweep up the horse doodoo (this we know because we were behind the bleachers and our main view was of these guys and their comings and goings).

Over a thousand people dress up in period costume, a huge array of styles and colors, and they make a procession on their way to the Grand Place in well-coordinated groups. Each group represents some sort of social class, profession, or political fiefdom, and most of them put on some sort of performance once they arrive. We caught the beginning of the parade--the mingling of old and new is quite amusing, as, say, the tram (plastered with fast-food advertisements) speeds past a calvacade of horseback knights and a bakers' guild.

After the parade passed, we took a different route down to the Grand Place in time to see some of the first groups arrive. The most amazing thing that we saw was the flag-throwing bunch: it doesn't sound like much, but huge flags twirled in the air and tossed from person to person in quick succession, all in swooshy color-coordinated motions, is pretty darn cool.

Once the first raindrops started pelting us, we felt luckier than the people huddling in blankets up in the bleachers, and headed to a cozy lambic pub, La Bécasse, to warm up over a beer.

Nothing says USA like the big screen and a jumbo bucket of popcorn

While the fourth of July brings visions of beach blankets and barbecues, spitting watermelon seeds and setting off fireworks, here in Brussels it is raining in a cold, ugly, spit-in-your-face, "HAH! so you THINK it's the fourth of JULY!" kind of way.

So in lieu of any other way to say "rah rah hooray" America, M and I and an American expat friend are going to see the sneak peek of Ratatouille at the downtown cineplex. They have a full roster of previews of American movies today, and I guess it makes sense to soak in Hollywood's fireworks if we can't have real ones.

One year ago on this date, we were on our honeymoon in coastal Maine and we watched fireworks off the pier. The sky was so foggy that they were just soft watercolor smears, but it was very endearing in a small-town kind of way: kids with ice cream cones, hot dogs and lobster rolls, little flags, a bright red firetruck.

That's the America I miss sometimes: the America of towns where there is no gigantic cineplex, where everyone says hello, and where there is a general store on the corner. The America of front porches, lawn ornaments, and--you knew I had to say it--apple pie.

Happy July fourth, everyone!

One year

Exactly one year ago today, the Mister and I became Mister and Missus.

What I remember of the day is all sunshine, flowers, and music, and the happiness--no, the blessedness--of knowing the man I love will be by my side for the best and the worst of life, no matter what.



It's been an incredible year, and has seemed both more than that--our wedding seems aeons ago, and we feel like we've always been married--and less--where have these months gone? It's already July again?

This weekend we took a trip to Luxemburg to celebrate, stopping in the capital for some sightseeing and super Italian food, and then on to the small town of Echternach, in the "little Switzerland" part of the country, on the German border, where there is a wonderful music festival every year. We heard a concert of 17th century popular music that was written for the journey on the Camino de Santiago (The Way of Saint James)--a fabulous performance, and a great idea for a concert!--and the next day we went to an exhibition on the same subject, then touring the town and its surroundings.

Although both days we were there were low-country gray (somebody should market that as a paint color) and sweater-cool, it didn't rain until we were boarding the train to come home, so we can chalk it up as great weather.

In this village, it's possible to rent a medieval tower for your vacation, which looks like the coolest thing ever, so next time we'll bring a group and live like castle guards. It will definitely beat our dingy lodgings that were "recommended" by a friend of a friend, although they ended up being very romantic in a bohemian garrett kind of way.

The concert and the exhibition on the Camino de Santiago got me thinking about the journey metaphor, the road of pilgrimage, which was appropriate as we celebrated our first year of married life. We're only on the first stop at a wayside inn, still eager for the long journey ahead of us, but I know that our path, walking it together, will be a beautiful, joyful, and adventurous one.

In which I complain about the weather again

May I just state, for the record, how indignant I am about Brussels' idea of summertime?

While the New York Times features articles about ice-cold thirst quenchers, web ads are full of bikinis and tank tops, and my sister has to install an air conditioner because it's too hot to breathe, here in Brussels a cup of tea, a fleece hoody, and a chenille blanket sound just about right.

Except they sound WRONG, because it's almost JULY, and I'm ready for a little bit of summer. I have actually been wearing my WINTER coat when I am forced to leave the house, and the bleak, cold rain just keeps coming. It hasn't let up for a week.

I wore a sleeveless shirt for M's party on Tuesday night, and actually got surprised comments about how "summery" I looked, everybody else having come bundled in coats and scarves and bearing gigantic umbrellas. It should not be surprising that one wears a "summery" shirt, it being "summer" and all, but of course here the term merits the ironic quotation marks. I just told people that since I didn't have to leave the house, the party being at our place, I could pretend for a little while that it's actually being seasonal outside.

If there's a silver lining in all of this, it's that in the absence of shorts and skirts I don't have to shave my legs very often, and folks, that is NOT much of a silver lining.

Easy as (apple) pie

I talk on my cell phone for maybe, oh, an average of four minutes per week. I don't own very many videos on iTunes, listen to my iPod for what I'm sure is a below-average amount of time, and I have very little true need for mobile internet and e-mail access.

Yet, yet...

I find myself drooling over Apple's new iPhone. Such is the genius of their beautiful simplicity and design innovations. They find common-sense solutions to problems that I never even realized were stupid, but now do (because they've done it better)!

Just to pick one example, listening to voice mail is annoying both for having to listen to messages in order and for having to repeat the whole message if I missed the phone number at the end. The iPhone lets you listen to messages in any order (without dialing a number or getting a computer voice), and lets you scroll back to any moment in the message.

I love how it uses the widget-look in a situation where the widgets actually are incredibly useful (I love them on my computer, but use them for little besides quick math and checking the weather). Can you tell I just watched the "guided tour" of the iPhone online?

How do they keep making such cool products?

Anyway, sorry for being a little mini-ad today. But I'm actually quite astonished at myself, never having wanted a palm or blackberry for an iota of a second, and here I am salivating over something I don't need at all.

I'm sure I'll be able to wait a few years until the price goes down, AT&T service is better (I doubt the phone is available in Europe, anyway), and I have an actual need for the thing.

Still: drooling!

Happy Birthday!

Today is the Mister's birthday! Three cheers and a hip hip hooray!

We started celebrating already last night, with a nice dinner out. Tonight a bunch of people are coming over to help us par-tay, and I'm baking a big carrot cake with cream cheese frosting. Yum! I made cinnamon rolls (from scratch!) for breakfast this morning, and just in case we haven't consumed enough calories, I'm also going to make that artichoke dip I didn't get to for the dinner party a couple of weeks ago.

As M. pointed out, this year I am as old as he was the first time we celebrated his birthday together, precisely six years ago (although we weren't exactly together; I called him from a Paris hostel in the midst of a backpacking trip with my brother, and we all met up a few days later). If you're clever at math, and that made any sense to you, and weren't distracted by the parenthetical tangent, you can figure out how old he is, heehee!

Happy birthday, my love!

Cupcakes, a castle, and Queen

This weekend's highlights were: 1. watching my two-year-old nephew open his birthday presents in Vermont, and 2. getting locked in a citadel.

How, you might ask, and how?

The first was made possible by the wonders of videocam technology. We got to be there with the rest of the family as he ate the chocolate frosting off of his cupcake and then proceded to open various presents, with wide eyes and appreciative "wow!"s. How did people ever get by with just plain old e-mail--you know, in the olden days?

Then, on Sunday, we traveled to Namur, a city about an hour from here, because my choir performed there as part of the country-wide Festival of Music. Our rehearsals and performances didn't start until late afternoon, so the Mister and I took an early train and visited museums, and then after the first performance we decided to climb up to the large citadel overlooking the town and its two rivers.

Unbeknownst to us, it was well past closing time, and as we strolled through the complex of walls, hills, towers, paths, and stairs, a groundskeeper shouted to us that he was about to close the gate, if we wanted to get through. We crossed a small bridge that spanned a deep moat, walked through the wall via a tunnel, and he locked the gate behind us.

Still unaware of our predicament, we calmly attempted to descend a path winding around a church, only to encounter another locked gate. We climbed back up, and found a group of three girls who were in the same boat (or, ahem, moat) as us, having been ushered through the gate by the same keeper (who was now nowhere to be seen). They had tried an alternate path, which also led to a locked gate. Circling the immediate area, we could see that we were entirely closed in; we even climbed up the mound of an archaeological dig on the top of the escarpment, only to find a long, tall fence with pointy arrows on top of it. The other side yielded a nice view of the scarily deep moat.

I was beginning to get worried I might not make it to my evening concert! We finally called to a passerby through one of the locked gates, instructed her to find someone, and only after she had discovered everything was closed did another keeper happen to pass by. Phew!

After a quick refueling stop at an outdoor table, it was off to the evening concert, which was quite the event: four pianos, a choir, drums, sax, cello, clarinet, and soloists, at the beautiful Theatre du Namur. A rough English translation of the concert's title is "Crazy Pianos!" and it was indeed pretty crazy. We performed everything from the Beatles and the Blues Brothers to Gershwin, Orff, Mozart, Ravel, Fauré, and... Queen.

I have been asked by the editor of the choir newsletter to write a poem about the show. I said yes, and then was instructed that it "must be funny." I have written here before about how not funny I am, but hopefully I can come up with some drivelly couplets.

Swimming, swooning, swaying

Look at me with this whole posting regularly thing! I go, girl!

Sorry. I embarrass myself and others when I attempt to be cool and/or funny.

Today's plans include an excursion to the indoor swimming pool that is ACROSS the STREET, but has yet to be frequented by these particular neighbors. We went in once to check it out, decided it looks good, and then neglected it entirely. I will have to buy a swim cap, which I have never owned or used before. I think I will find it amusing to put my hair into a rubbery bald-head thingo. Question: are you supposed to get your hair wet first, or will it stay in the cap while dry? If dry, what is the correct method for putting it on?

Today's plans also include an excursion to see Ocean's Thirteen. I can't believe they've continued the franchise this long, but at least 11-12-13 is more original than 1-2-3. I'm secretly a fan of heist movies (remember Sneakers? 1992? Loved it. The Thomas Crown Affair? Loved it.), and really rather enjoyed the first two Ocean films, and thus am looking forward to seeing this one. I mean, really, how cool is it when suave thieves plan elaborate infiltration schemes, and just when you think they've been busted, they show up with the stolen goods anyway? Although sometimes the plans stretch the limits of disbelief. OK, so they raised a whole house foundation that was was underneath a CANAL in Amsterdam. But now, I hear, they are going to simulate an EARTHQUAKE. C'mon, really?

I have yet to see the original Rat Pack Ocean's 11, but I did watch Jean-Pierre Melvill's Bob Le Flambeur (1955), which inspired the "original" Ocean's 11 and was an awesome French heist movie where a noir-y, smooth, trench-coated theif manages, with the help of his wily pals, to rob a casino. Sound familiar? Yep.

In unrelated news, I bought an iTunes album yesterday sort of impulsively, but am loving it: The Reindeer Section's Son of Evil Reindeer. Now, I don't get the band's name or the title at all, but I'm really digging the music and have been playing it nonstop. The reason I bought it is because I had heard "You Are My Joy" and couldn't get it out of my head, found the album, and went for the whole thing. (Most of the time, I stingily buy just a few tracks from any one album. Or just download the freebies.) If I were mechanically fancy, I would put the song on this website, but you'll just have to go find it for yourself.

But every time I listen to it, Bush's State of the Union address comes on right after (it was a freebie, and I had cancelled it mid-download ages ago when the address actually aired, and for some reason it finished downloading when I got this album). Sort of wrecks the mood, you know?

Summertime, and the livin' is easy

Happy first day of summer! Although the earth is physically farther from the sun now than it is in the winter, the northern hemisphere is on the end of the earth leaning towards the warmth. Our tilted axis provides just enough of a difference (a 23-degree lean) to warm us up and usher in the shenanigans of sunscreen, tank tops, and lemonade.

Not that, you know, there's any sign of sun on the little gray spot of earth called Brussels.

Speaking of natural phenomena, I've been more and more scared lately by environmental reports of climate change and ecosystem devastation. Most scary are unexplained and swift disappearances of our flying friends: bee populations and bird colonies are being rapidly depleted, and no one knows why.

Not only will we have a major pollination problem on our hands, threatening all of the crops we depend on for food, but with the birds and the bees gone, how will we explain to children where babies come from?

All ye like sheep

The concert I sang in on Friday night went reasonably well, and as expected I got some major spine-chills. The music we sang and the cathedral we sang it in practically guaranteed them. It was a full house, with people even standing in the back, and the response was enthusiastic.

But we had some creative challenges as well, most of them logistics-related. I have never seen greater choral chaos than I did that night while we were lining up in the back of the church. In the green room, the organizers had told us to go out to the church, and line up without talking. You must envision here some hundred-odd people attempting to put themselves in reverse order, and mentally reconfigure the five rows we had been sitting in during the dress rehearsal into the four rows that were in the front of the church on concert night, all while maintaning eight part divisions. We had not practiced entering or exiting, as is de rigeur for choirs in concert situations. It was mayhem, and last-ditch attempts of someone to corral us into correct order resulted in further confusion, and the women marched towards the stage in complete disarray.

When I arrived on stage, I found myself in the front row, which I knew was a problem because of my height. I switched with a short woman, but then found myself in the midst of the second altos, when I sing first. So once again I switched, this time after we had already been seated, causing an entire row of women to jump from their chair to the next one over, musical-chairs style. And this was just me; similar little dramas were happening the whole time.

After the intermission, we marched up again, this time theoretically in order since we had "practiced" once, but somehow an entire row of altos went around to the wrong side, and we all had to sidle past each other on the narrow risers. Verrrry classy.

Oh, and a couple of basses' chairs' back legs slid off the risers when we sat down during the Fauré Requiem, causing some shiny tuxedo shoes to suddenly appear in the air, and also frightening a lot of us. Fortunately, they were fine, but it definitely interrupted the mood, and we also discovered, during the soprano Pie Jesu solo, that the chairs were squeaky as a pile of mice and that some of us are unable to be utterly still so as to prevent said mice from squeaking their version of a duet with the poor soloist.

Alas and alack, I do think our physical blunders must have effected the singing, in part by breaking up the voice parts and resulting in the second altos somehow becoming separated from the flock, musically speaking, during one of the Duruflé pieces. My loyal audience members promise they noticed nothing, and more or less everything else went swimmingly.

After the musical adventures on Friday, M. and I continued to have a great weekend. Post-concert we went to a friend's birthday party, and Saturday we lunched with an Argentinian friend who lives in England and who was here briefly, and then went to another party in the evening with all the Spanish Parliament people, which actually turned out really fun. M. and I danced a couple of salsas, even though we don't actually know how! Sunday afternoon we strolled around with a group of our Catalan friends at the huge outdoor Portuguese festival in our neighborhood, eating grilled sardines and shrimp, empanadas, and lots of yummy egg-cream based desserts, and then Sunday evening we went to a friend's house to watch the three simultaneous soccer games that would determine the winner of the Spanish Liga...although Barça pulled out an amazing game, scoring five goals, Madrid unfortunately also had an amazing game, and thus won the big silver cup. With both Barça and Real Madrid supporters in the room, there were some intense moments. Anyway, that was our weekend!

And coming up this weekend, the choir has another concert, this time in Namur, and with a fun repetoire incorporating jazz, pop, and classical pieces (rehearsing last night, I discovered more intimately than I ever have before just how weird of a song is Queen's "Bohemian Rhapsody"). I just hope we can manage to walk on stage without falling over our "little silhouettos."

Why I don't eat meat

I've been a vegetarian for over five years now, although not a terribly strict one, because I eat any and all fish and seafood. I've been thinking about eating meat again, and while I've eaten a bit here and there--even trying my mom's classic sloppy joe while I was home in May (flavors of childhood! could...not...resist!)--I think not having an overwhelming desire to continue eating meat after doing so means that I shouldn't rush into it.

As part of the process, I've been mulling over how my reasons for not eating meat have evolved over these few years, covering the gamut from political reasons to personal taste to questions of health and lifestyle. Thus, when people ask me why I don't eat meat, the answer is never easy, especially (as is often the case) when I'm explaining it to Europeans and in Spanish or Catalan or French. (Although, hands down, the hardest three people to explain it to are M's grandmother and my grandparents, who live in corn-and-cattle country. M's grandmother has resigned herself to strange food requirements, as our Senegalese brother-in-law and our two nieces don't eat pork.)

While the "easiest" reason to give, and the one people most like to hear, is that I just don't "like" meat (because it absolves the interlocuter of any implied judgement), this is only partially true. I've never been a huge fan of red meat in the form of a juicy steak or ribs, and poultry is all too often a bland white canvas for real flavors (and thus can be abandoned altogether), but I've got quite a weakness for a tasty German sausage, or a flavorful pork tenderloin, or a sweet and salty baked ham. So in many ways eating vegetarian has indeed been a sacrifice, and the smells of cooked meat are often terribly tempting.

The next most commonly assumed response, especially in the US, has to do with "animal rights." Again, this is only true in part. I don't have any problem with killing animals for food, and I believe that if animals are kept in a healthy environment and killed humanely (see the work of Temple Grandin on this problem) then there is no moral obligation not to eat animals. More on this in a moment.

In actual fact, what prompted my somewhat sudden decision to eat vegetarian was the influence of my housemate at the time (I was living in Ipswich, Massachusetts), and a book she had on her bookshelf: Diet for a Small Planet, by Frances Moore Lappé. (You can find information here on the book and the organization set up by her and her daughter.)

One Sunday afternoon, at home by myself, I read the book from cover to cover, and decided then and there to stop eating meat. I remember that I even called some "vegetarian hotline" number I found online to receive information about where to begin. I think I wanted to make it official, and since no one was around, I had the urge to call someone!

At that moment, the decision was a political one, wanting to do my part in re-adjusting the huge and injust imbalance of food distribution in the world, also addressing the environmental costs of food production. To put it very very simplistically, I think it makes much more sense to use acres and acres of wheat to feed a hungry world, instead of putting all of that equivalent energy and fuel into one cow. In other words, eating vegetarian is a more efficient way to eat, especially for fat Westerners who aren't exactly lacking in alternative sources of protein.

I still wholeheartedly endorse this point of view, and support the work of the Small Planet Institute (link above). But I have to admit that I find myself wondering if my unconsumed meat really makes a dent in all of this. I wonder if eating meat that has been produced locally and organically, not as the base of my diet but as an occasional treat, would be just as effective. (Here, of course, the problem is access. It seems easier just to be "vegetarian" in order to avoid what would be perceived as a snobbish insistence on local/green meat, questioning every restaurant chef and market vendor, dinner hostess and mother-in-law who provides my meat.)

But then I go back to some of the other reasons I have for eating vegetarian, the reasons that kept me going after the initial zealous decision. First of all, after meat dropped out of my diet, I felt great! I got more slender (although, ahem, I have certainly gained it back in the intervening years!) (oh, let's be honest: it was this year), and as an added bonus, I really learned how to cook. Because the experience coincided with my first on-my-own apartment, and my first real attempts to cook for myself, I was forced to get more creative with my meals and learn how to make some excellent dishes from my housemate's vegetarian cookbooks.

And then, of course, as I found out more and more about the meat-production industry (see, for example, Fast Food Nation, and any number of exposé articles on the unhealthy practices of feed yards and slaughtering houses), I became more and more glad that I wasn't eating meat. I won't go into any more detail, but the thought of the chemicals and waste products that go into making a chicken or a cow churned my stomach. And they still do.

So if I do start to eat meat again, I will try hard to know where it comes from, and what goes into caring for and feeding the animal before it becomes "meat." This is going to take some doing, as I don't exactly live next door to a farm. And I might have to retain a "vegetarian" cover so I don't have to be quite as pesky when we are guests at someone's home. But I feel encouraged by the fact that Europe in general has stricter guidelines about meat production, and the farm-to-market system in every neighborhood promises better quality meats than the plastic-wrapped supermarket stuff.

I guess I'm a little worried that if I do start to eat meat, it will become harder and harder to maintain these standards, and I'll eventually just end up giving into my bottomless appetite and willingness to try about anything by eating whatever kind of meat is offered to me, whether it is street food or at a cocktail buffet or even--gulp!--a McDonald's sandwich. Because the irony of the self-imposed vegetarian limitation is that I am SO NOT a picky eater, and I always want to try everything. (This was then and is now the principle objection of the Mister--who, by the way, has continued to eat meat all the while. We once had the wide-eyed owner of the restaurant in Barcelona called Organic pronounce our vegetarian-carnivore matrimony true love, because she could never marry across that--in her view--immense gulf.)

Anyway, the question of more easily maintained boundaries makes me wonder if I should just stick to not eating meat. In any case, I'm sure you can see why this already long process will likely continue to be drawn out for a while, and why I'm not even sure that I will go back to the meat-eating ways of my Iowan forebears, or my Iberian--um--postbears.

Po-Mo novel-ties

I know I just wrote a book post, but here I am with another. This time, it's about three novels that on first glance have nothing to do with one another: Umberto Eco's The Mysterious Flame of Queen Loanna, Orhan Pamuk's My Name Is Red, and Murakami Haruki's The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle.

The stories couldn't be more different (I apologize in advance for the absurdity of reducing complex novels to a few book-jacket sentences):

In The Mysterious Flame of Queen Loanna, a man wakes up from an accident with total amnesia of all personal memories, but can remember facts, books, all of his "public" memory. He spends days rooting through his childhood country home in Italy, re-reading old books and magazines, to recapture his family and personal past.

In My Name Is Red, a manuscript illuminator in 16th-century Istanbul is murdered, sparking off both a murder investigation and an inquisition into the nature of art as the Eastern styles are being influenced by the "Frankish" concepts of perspective, portraiture, and individual style. Each chapter is told in a different voice, including the voice of a coin, a tree, the color red, the murderer, etc.

In The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle, a jobless modern-day Japanese man loses his cat and is suddenly deserted by his wife. He meets a curious string of people who might be able to help him get his wife back, including a 16-year-old suicidal neighbor, a psychic and her sister, a war veteran, and a fashion designer. The past and the present, the real and the dream world begin to merge into and emerge from one another.

What do these novels have in common, you ask? While reading them, my enthusiasm changed drastically from the beginning to the end. Reading the first two, I was completely enthralled at the beginning, and utterly tired of it all by the conclusion, almost ready to ditch the book altogether. The third begins "normally," and ends surreally, and is more complex, so my interest was more steadily sustained.

What all three also have in common is that I would characterize them as "postmodern" novels, in the sense that traditional notions of plot, narration, and temporality are violently skewed. I love that about them. Eco's book incorporates many visual reproductions, thus creating a simultaneous visual narrative; meanwhile, we question the narrator's reporting, due to his amnesia, his admitted need to reconstruct the past and thus present personality (an impossible task, of course). I loved the way the novel opened up questions of reliability, of present/past and public/private, of memory and history.

The Pamuk novel also plays with narration, this time using multiple narrators (even of objects, colors, and the dead) to accomplish its instability. The first and second chapters are titled, for instance, "I am a Corpse," and "I Will be Called a Murderer." The whodunnit plot, as well as a love story, drive the exploration of artistic technique and the clash of cultures. We hear from the murderer both in his guise as a murderer and as a respected artist, without knowing which speaker's voice is the same as the criminal's. I was really digging all of this. So clever, I thought!

But what happened in both the Eco and the Pamuk is that the story was abandoned altogether. By the end, the reader is lost in a murky chaos, unsatisfied and awash in the cleverness of the author's philosophical play with plot, narration, and temporality. Finding out who the murderer is somehow is a letdown. In other words, they're too clever.

The Haruki novel takes things from the reverse angle. It starts out as a straightforward story of a sad-sack guy, and descends into the worlds of his dreams, of visitors who explain the past, their letters, computer realities, television personalities, psychic connections, and more. I love that all of this is disturbingly surreal at times, yet is still logically linked to the quotidian details of a regular life, and the surreal seems to be explainable by the real.

What this novel does successfully that the others don't, in other words, is that the plot-drive is maintained, despite all of these flights of reality. The guy wants to find his wife and bring her back. And although the ending does not supply a hollywood scene of reunited lovers, it at least brings us back to that crucial point, recognizing that what the reader wants is not to be left with a big void, a big question mark. Even if there still is one (or many). Does that make sense?

Don't take this as a rant against postmodern novel techniques. What I guess I'm saying is that I think authors should somehow maintain a balance between narrative that questions narrative and narrative that provides a good story. Why do we read, anyway? It is both to find out "what happens" and to find out how we find out what happens, i.e., how the story is told. (There is a reason we read books even when we know the ending.)

Traditional novels, thrillers, love stories: these all focus mostly on "what happens," without drawing attention to the "how," even if the way of telling the story is breathtaking or original. Postmodern novels focus on the "how," playing with readers' expectations, sometimes abandoning the "what happens" altogether. I'm suggesting that novelists shouldn't abandon one over the other.

Singin' in the Rain

Tonight I am singing in my first concert with the BCS, and am greatly looking forward to it. We had our dress rehearsal earlier this week, and although singing in a big cavernous cathedral-like church with mile-long reverb makes us feel like we are singing through butter, and forces us to take everything a notch slower (so it all doesn't become a dissonant mess), it is such an awesome feeling to finish with a big chord, cut off, and let the sound swim around in the air forever.

We're singing five pieces from the Rachmaninoff All-Night Vigil, four Duruflé Motets, Fauré's Cantique de Jean Racine, and the Fauré Requiem, as well as a contemporary piece by our conductor. It involves whole-note scales, chanting things, and big puffs of haaaahhhhh to create a windy effect; it's actually quite cool.

I'm always excited about choral concerts: they are the one performance situation that I don't rather loathe. I'm on stage with a large group of people, so it's not just me, and there's nothing like the synergy of an intently focused group of singers creating something bigger than all of them put together to make chills run up and down my spine.

When I was home, my mom and brother and I were reminiscing about the time when I sang in an All-New England's choir in high school and the choir royally messed up one of the pieces (it was one of these modern pieces, called The Creation, with a electronica tape, and the cue was wrong so the whole entire piece was out of sync with the tape). After the concert, I cried. I was so extremely disappointed that we had ruined the piece and in my mind ruined the whole concert. I remember being outraged that all the other kids were just laughing and gathering their bags to go home, seemingly unconcerned about the royal mess-up. Singing in choral concerts give me a high like nothing else, and that night was a low crash instead.

I hope I've learned not to take it so badly if a concert doesn't go so well, but I am looking forward to that euphoric musical high.

(Oh, and the post title is because we'll be singing, and I'm pretty sure it'll be raining. Yesterday it poured so hard I thought the frites stand across the street might float away.)

Ire

You know that feeling of finding a passage or a description in a book and thinking "that is so me," or "that is so true"?

I had that feeling some time ago, when I was reading Ian McEwan's Enduring Love. I'm a big McEwan fan lately; he's quite brilliant on the subtle motivations, emotions, desires and fears that go into any human interaction. The moment that flashed out at me this time was about anger, the psychology of arguing.

Mid-way through the book, a couple have an argument, a serious one, compounded by both coming home after a terrible day and neither being able to give or receive what they need from the other. Their attitudes towards arguing are described:

"She is especially bad at arguments. She has never been able to accept the rules of engagement which permit or require you to say things that you do not mean, or are distorted truths, or not true at all. She can't help but feeling that every hostile utterance of hers takes her further not only from Joe's love, but from all the love she's ever had, and makes her feel that a buried meanness has been exposed that truly represents her."

"His emotions are slow to shift to anger in the first place, and even when they have, he has the wrong kind of intelligence, he forgets his lines and cannot score the points. Nor can he break the the habit of responding to an accusation with a detailed, reasoned answer, instead of coming back with an accusation of his own. He is easily outmanoeuvred by a sudden irrelevance."

The funny thing is that I saw myself in both descriptions: the cost of uttering untruths or accusations seems far too much to bear (in that it breaks down a relationship that I value, in that I can't stand for anyone not to like me, and in that it might reveal how mean I really am); but I am also horrible at verbal repartee and always feel myself floundering in the flow of an intense conversation, trying to respond to one point when another one has already taken its place.

Friends have asked me, Don't you ever get angry? The answer is that I get angry, like anyone else, but I can't really remember ever having arguments or fights, those of the screaming match and slammed-door variety (mom, am I blocking out anything from the teen years?). When I do get angry, I almost always find it easy to get over on my own, or else bottle it up pretty successfully. I'm far more likely to cry than to yell. So even getting to the point of an argument is hard, and when there, the reasons described in McEwan's book prevent me from being a "good" arguer.

So, what books have given you a "that's me" moment?

American justice

Even if I did believe in capital punishment, which I categorically do not, I think I would have to be swayed by the statistics about prisoners who have been wrongfully condemned, and then proven innocent by DNA evidence. According to The Innocence Project, an organization committed to vindicating the wrongfully accused, "DNA testing has proven that 203 innocent people spent nearly 2,500 years in prison for crimes they didn't commit." And these are just the people whose case has included some kind of DNA evidence, whose evidence has been kept on file, whose files have been revisted.

I am thinking about this because I just listened to an episode of This American Life on the subject, an episode called "Perfect Evidence." It's heartbreaking. The first is "the story of how one tragedy becomes two." In brief, this is how it goes: in 1986, a young, white woman is raped and murdered in Chicago, and the murder is heavily covered on the media, so the pressure to find the killers is great. Four young boys are considered as suspects.

Under police pressure, one of them unwittingly signs a confession that gets him a lighter sentence (the police tell him if he signs, he "can go home"). It later turns out the "confession" is taken directly from a crime profiler's description of what he imagines the murder scene to be like. The police copy the profile nearly verbatim, stick it in front of a suspect, have him sign it, and call the case solved. The confession fingers the three other boys as well, who are all convicted, even though there is little physical evidence, and what physical evidence there is doesn't add up (the blood type of the semen found on the scene does not match the blood type of any of the four: an "expert" witness lies about this in court, implying that the blood type does match). They go to jail, and spend fifteen years appealing their case, while they routinely get beat up because their crime is considered so heinous by the other inmates. One of them is stabbed repeatedly with an ice pick.

One of the (no-longer) boys reads an article about DNA evidence and a lawyer who is working on cases like theirs. They contact the lawyer, who spends hundreds of hours and $50,000 of her own money to prove that these boys did not commit the crime they are in jail for. She is told the evidence had been destroyed, but finds a contact within the police department who retrieves and shows her the physical evidence. Finally, they are released.

The story of these kids is so amazing for several reasons. First, because of the messed-up way in which the police conduct the investigation and the legal system conducts the prosecution of the innocent. Second, and this impressed me even more, because they aren't cynical about it afterwards.

After being released from prison, this is what one of the guys, Omar Saunders, says about his perspective on the American system of justice: "...the concept and principles on which the country is founded has always been on our side." The interviewer, surprised, says that it seems like he actually has more respect for the system since he's been in jail. His reply?

"...it's a lack of understanding the system that caused it. It's like if the police do something to me, I ain't gonna say go blow up the whole Chicago police force, because you got a lot of good Chicago policemen. That's why I always...they, the media said that we got out and that we spoke vehemently against the system. I never spoke against the system. I love America! I understand that the system don't operate itself. It's people. There ain't nothing wrong... America got one of the greatest jurisprudence systems in the world. In some countries, when you do something, they kill you. That ain't nothing to talk about.

"See, so my whole view today is I understand that, if we want to make America a greater place, it's gonna take people like us, to understand what the nation is based on, and do what the founding fathers did, when they thought that their freedoms were being jeapordized, and that their rights were being infringed. You do that by knowing the law. When you don't know something, people can take advantage. This is a beautiful different kind of republic."

This second story on the episode is about a 14-year-old boy who confesses to the murder of his sister. Yet, he didn't do it, and fortunately, is never even convicted because the real killer is found before the trial. Ira Glass and an expert on police questioning listen to the tape of the police interrogating this poor boy. The policeman talking to him, in a slow, kind voice throughout, tells him they have a machine, a "computer stress voice indicator" that registers the "tremors" in his voice and can detect if he's lying (which does no such thing but is a common psychological interrogation tool used on the naïve or ignorant), then tell him that the machine shows he is lying about knowing whether he knows who killed his sister.

There are many references to the "hard cold science" of the situation, saying that "technology is on our side." The computer doesn't lie. (But of course, humans do.) After hours of interrogation, they tell him that they have found his sister's blood in his room. This freaks him out. By this point, the poor boy is absolutely broken, sobbing in the most wrenching way, and instead of believing himself, is convinced that he killed her without his knowing. He has "confessed." It was difficult even to listen to, and according to the academic Ira Glass has on the show with him, these kind of interrogation techniques are perfectly acceptable to the law and commonly used.

While the story of Saunders and his friends, despite it all, left me hopeful, the shuddering sobs of the boy who confesses to his sister's murder will stay with me for a long time.

The episode, first broadcast in April of 2002, can be listened to here on the This American Life webpage. The stories on This American Life--and lately I've been working through my TAL archives--have consistently left me bowled over, like nothing else I read or hear.

Glaieuls du Chatelain

One of the first times I came to Brussels, M. and I decided to go exploring in the city. Friends had recommended Place du Chatelain as a chic, beautiful plaza, so we took the walk. I remember that it seemed very far away, and that when we arrived, it was a big disappointment, because it was basically just a big, oval parking lot, with a few boutique stores surrounding it. Granted, it was a Sunday afternoon, and it was a gray day, but still, we had expected something at least pleasant.

Today, I have just come back from Chatelain, where all of its vibrant magic was in full swing. The thing to know--which we didn't on our first visit--is that once a week the parking lot transforms into a fabulous market, and that the market is open only on Wednesdays. It's not the chaotic, bargain-basement market of Midi, or the quotidian market of Parvis St. Gilles, but an upscale charmer of a market, with expensive, luscious fruits piled carefully into baskets, artesanal breads, fancy olives and cheeses and fresh cookies, stands where you can eat Thai or Morrocan or Japanese, stands that sell glasses of chilled white wine, and acres of opulent flowers.

I met a friend there for lunch, and on my way back I was considering just how sharp the contrast was between that gray disappointment that I couldn't have located on a map, and today's joyful feeling of knowing where I was and where I was going, enjoying the smells and colors and sun. After I had Pad Thai with my friend, we each bought a half-kilo of gleaming cherries, and then she went back to work, while I strolled the stalls. Besides the cherries, I bought a soft mound of chèvre rolled in red and black pepper, a galette to munch on (sort of a cross between a Belgian waffle and a cookie), olives stuffed with garlic, and an armful of hot-orange gladiolas.

Speaking of the gladiolas, on my way home, I stopped in a nearby bookshop, and bought a tiny little book, a short story by Maupassant. I picked it up because I thought it might make a good read for practicing my French. And when I opened to the first page I saw that the first words were a date: my birthday. With that, I knew it should be mine. But back to the flowers: the nice ladies at the bookstore asked me about my flowers, where I had gotten them, and how much they cost. I was thrilled to have not only understood the questions but to have been able to answer. In turn, I asked them a question: what are these flowers called? Turns out that in French they are called glaieuls. I repeated after her, inserting a "d," like in English, but she said it again, and I said, "ah, sans le d! En anglais, c'est gladiola."

I also stopped at a computer store, a Mac Reseller, to ask about getting an iSight and a router. This conversation was also carried on in French! (Which is the only reason I am blathering on about this otherwise irrelevant detail.) Did you know that the iSight is no longer made? I didn't, but it makes sense, since the new macs have an incorporated camera. I'll have to find another webcam. Anyway, I once again managed to have this relatively (for me) complicated conversation in French, and so I am thrilled that a year of classes are showing some results. I have my final exam tomorrow, and the oral on Tuesday.

But the point of this post isn't really speaking French. It's more about the nice feeling of being in a place, of getting to know its beautiful corners, and making it my own. For me, it has been harder to do in Brussels than in Barcelona, where I feel that beauty is always spilling at my feet. Here, I have to look for it, and celebrate it where I can. And when it comes in the form of some hot-orange gladiolas, so much the better.

The running report

Amazingly, I actually managed to get up at seven and go running with M! Not so amazingly, I was rapidly out of breath, and besides I had some mysterious stomach pains that weren't connected to the running, since I had them upon waking up and thought they would just go away. The didn't, so the whole exercise bit wasn't as robust as planned. Maybe I AM allergic to running. Psychosomatic effects? Still, I got up, and that in itself is something. We will try to continue the habit. The park is quite pleasant in the morning, and the temperature was about perfect, slightly cool but not at all cold. (Dare I say that getting up had something to do with making it public to the online world that I was planning to do so? Ah, the power of saving face.)

Today and tomorrow's extracurricular activities involve planning for a dinner party we are having tomorrow night: M's boss and two other European MPs, and their assistants, for a total of 7 guests, plus us. I'm trying to find a not-too-mundane but not-too-fancy dish to prepare, something that can bake in the oven while everyone arrives and we have hors d'oeuvres (cheese, olives, and artichoke dip) and the first course (either asparagus salad or beet salad, depending on what I decide for the main course). Some kind of lasagna? Another kind of baked pasta? Heeelp!

We went to Ikea on Saturday to buy more plates and wine glasses, since we had only enough for five people to eat on real dinner plates at one time. So at least no one will be eating their lasagna off of a napkin.

There were at least five cakes

Is it really June already? Nearly a month worth's of life has gone by, and here Blogger sits, patiently waiting for some input. No complaints, its welcoming blank square just waiting for the words I type--waiting to turn them into the twenty-first century internaut's answer to the captain's log: the blog.

Fortunately, I saw many of my loyal readers (in other words, friends and family) while I was stateside for two and a half weeks, so my whereabouts haven't been too much of a mystery. I got to meet some of my friends' adorable babies for the first time (including one in utero), and the babies are as beautiful as they are. And I got to meet my brand-new nephew! He was born on the day I was flying to the US, and after I landed and my brother picked me up, my parents called to give us the good news.

I feel so blessed to have been around for the first weeks of his life. I know in the future it will be harder and harder to be there when nieces and nephews are born (assuming you're going to keep them coming, guys!), so I am definitely savoring this. It was also extremely fun to spend time with the newborn's brother, the most clever and winsome two-year-year old on the planet. FYI, I am completely devoid of any auntly bias whatsoever.

During those weeks, there was a wedding, and a house-moving, and a birthday, and mother's day, and my parent's anniversary, so we kept busy, I should say. I also attended a conference in Canada, and met some great people and delivered a paper that went over more or less well. I will have to tell you about the moment when they wouldn't let me board the return flight because the computer said I hadn't PAID for the ticket, however.

I'll take a rain check on that story. Right now, I have to go to bed, because I promised the Mister that I would get up with him in the morning and go RUNNING. I imagine those of you who know me may be laughing right now, but I shook his hand and made a DEAL that I would either go with him in the morning or go swimming by myself later in the day. I would rather impress him (he was quite doubtful--more about my early-morning wake-up skills than my running skills, as you yourself may be) than take the easy, watery way out, so I'm going to try to get to bed early. It might be tough, since I still have jet lag, and am not sleepy in the slightest, but where there's a will there's a way. And I need to run off some of the wedding, birthday, anniversary and mother-daughter bakefest-related foodstuffs that were ingested over the last few weeks. I'll give you a full report in the morning.

29

Midnight has rolled around again, so it's no longer my birthday. But it was a very excellent one, the kind that's chock-full of treats and goodies.

Twenty-four hours ago, M. and I were playing Trivial Pursuit (I know, we're dorks), and an alarm started going off. We looked at one another, and then realized the alarm was playing Happy Birthday! Months and months ago, when we got the free picture frame/alarm clock gizmo, I must have set the "birthday" feature in anticipation of this very moment, and then forgotten about it. How cool is that?

And then, in another delightful surprise, I actually won the game of (Spanish) Trivial Pursuit. M. had gotten all six pies, as he tends to do, what with his being a history genius and all, and was circling around the center, while I was agonizingly slowly getting my pies. Somehow (that somehow includes generous hints from my husband, who often grants me a "correct" even when I've stupidly made random guesses and then realize I actually know the answer), I won the game before he managed to get the right combination of dice roll and answerable question. Woot!

When I woke up this morning, I was greeted by a breakfast of freshly-cut fruit, toast, cereal, coffee, juice, and--don't tell anyone--cookies. Then I went to French class, and got more than 100% on the test we were handed back. It said "parfait" on the top. I didn't tell anyone it was my birthday, but I felt like the birthday girl anyway.

I met M. for lunch at the top of the Musical Instruments Museum (or Musée des Instruments Musicales...it's MIM either way). The restaurant has amazing views of the city, and we lolligagged until he had to head back to work. I strolled through the Sablon on my way home, and listened to This American Life on my iPod.

After the Mr. got home from work, I got presents! I love getting presents! Who doesn't! He did a wonderful job, noticing this weekend at the spa that my old backpack was zipperless and falling apart, and so I have a fabulous new backpack to take on the trip to the US and any future hiking endeavors. He also noticed that I always have cookbooks lying around the kitchen, and so I got a great cookbook stand, which I am honestly super excited about. And flowers, and chocolates, and a frangipani tart. Mmmm.

Then we went for dinner at Racontes-moi des salades, a great restaurant specializing in--you guessed it--salads, which was super yummy. And when we came back, we ate that frangipani tart, with candles on top. Well, we ate it after the candles were removed, but you know what I mean.

And then (I told you we were dorks) we watched Lost on DVD, which M. had rented on his way home. You see, friends had loaned us the first one and a half seasons, and now we're kind of hooked, and we had to know what was going to happen, so now we're renting. It's a vicious cycle. A perfect end to a perfect day.

And a perfect beginning for the last year of my twenties! Since every year of my life has been even better than the last, I am wholeheartedly looking forward to this one.

The bride and groom wore white

I'm eating a restaurant lunch with M. and looking around the room at forty other people, all identically dressed, like us, in white bathrobes and slippers. I'm wondering why everyone is acting like this is so normal, but then I remind myself not to ogle and to play it cool. Sure, bathrobes. Right on.

Was I hallucinating? Having one of those weird dreams where the line between public and private is crossed, repeatedly? No, actually this scenario is perfectly explicable, and true: we went to Spa this weekend. Not just "a spa," but "Spa," the town in Belgium where the word spa comes from! And also where they bottle the Spa brand water, which comes in three versions: non-sparkling blue bottle (Reine), "naturally sparkling" green bottle (Marie Henriette), and sparkling red bottle (Clementine). After quaffing several of the green bottles, we noticed that the fountains labeled Marie Henriette throughout the spa? Their marble was covered in RUSTY ORANGE-BROWN GUNK. One assumes that this water has been scientifically proven to be safe and all, given that people have been drinking and bathing in it for, um, centuries, but: orange gunk?

This trip to spa was a wedding gift from one of our friends who had given us a "day at Spa" gift certificate, which we only now finally got around to using. Goes to show how our weekends have been this year--you'd think we'd immediately find a day to spend being pampered and shuffling around in white bathrobes and ingesting spa water. But it took ten months. Still, it was just the right moment, because my birthday is tomorrow, and so it was kind of like a post-wedding pre-birthday thing.

Spa is situated in the Ardennes, close to the German and Dutch borders, and it took us two hours by train to get there. The modern spa facilities are at the top of a hill overlooking the town, so we got to take a cute little funicular that brought us to the top. Once we signed in, we were ceremoniously given the bathrobe and slippers that we were to wear the whole day, plus a little chip that we wore around our wrists--holding it up by the doors gave us access to the areas denied to the regular pool-goers. Our treatments and lunchtime had already been scheduled, so all that was left to us was to show up on time for the treatments and to figure out what to do in between.

First up, I had a "douche thermale." Now, in English, this sounds really scary, I know, but "douche" just means shower in French, so don't worry. Actually, though, it was a bit more unpleasant than I had anticipated. I was made to stand in a sort of round marble alcove like some Venus on a half shell in a bathing suit (and yes, the marble was yet again stained ORANGE-BROWN), and a "spa technician" aimed a powerful hose at my nervous self. The thing HURT! He sprayed up and down my legs (I was sure I'd have bruises), then my stomach, arms, sides, and back. The force of the water nearly pushed me forward, and my arms moved involuntarily when he sprayed them. It only lasted ten minutes, and I was kind of relieved when it was over. He asked if I wanted to repeat the process with cold water, and I emphatically shook my head NO. It was bad enough with the water at its natural temperature of 32 degrees celcius.

So I was relieved to exit the douche thermale and find M, who had been enjoying a "bain carbogazeaux" (more on which later). We strolled over to the "relaxation room" where we first stretched out on wooden chaise longues with panoramic views over the town of Spa, and then entered a pitch-black area with black lights, "soothing" music (you know, the rushing water, twittering birds, swooshing chords, yoga-meditation type) and piped-in aromatherapy (something a bit too piney for my taste). The chairs were awesome, once we figured out how to use them: you could tip back and be suspended in the air, perfectly cradled. Under the black lights, you can hardly see anything except rows of bizarrely glowing bathrobes and slippers, all eerily hanging in the air. Before we knew it, time for our next appointment: massages!

I had been having a sore neck and headaches last week, so I was really amped for the massage. It was excellent, but unfortunately, didn't feel like she really worked the neck area, and also the bed didn't have one of those face-holes, so my neck was twisted the whole time. M. had a face-hole for his, but he had the same reaction to the lack of force of the massage. We concluded that the masseuses probably don't dig in super hard unless directly instructed to, because if they did they would be exhausted by the end of the day. Still, I came out feeling like jelly, and so it was a perfect time for lunch, a really nice soup and salad buffet, and the scene of the bizarreness that is a group of adults refinedly eating in their bathrobes.

After lunch, we went swimming. The indoor/outdoor pools really are awesome, sort of like a water-theme park but without the cheesy fake palm trees and cartoon characters. Lots of different areas that bubble up and splash and do fun things at different times, pipes that pour water over you, or cause waterfalls that you can duck under. And jacuzzis! The water was a perfect temperature (I think the same 32 degrees as the shower), and we had a great time swimming around and floating (was it just me, or was the water more buoyant than normal water?) and dunking and laughing and intertwining.

Then it was time for our last appointment. M had a "bain niagra," which was basically a sort of jacuzzi bath, and I had the "bain carbogazeaux" that he had had in the morning. Have you ever wondered what it would be like to take a bath in your favorite brand of sparkling water? In a gleaming copper tub? With a view of treetops and sky? Well, let me tell you: it's wonderful. All the little bubbles burble up around you calmly, making those cute tiny little splashes on the surface. Behind my back, the bubbles would get trapped, and then come chuckling up all at once. The little pearly bubbles collected all over my skin, so I could trace shapes and letters on my stomach or arm by erasing them with my finger. The water was warmer, at 36 degrees, and boy, those twenty minutes felt like five. I was resentful when the little beeper went off, telling me my time was up, but I also hopped out like hot potatoes because I was scared one of the spa people would come in before I had my bathrobe properly on.

We still had a large stretch of afternoon left, and we still hadn't checked out the sauna, steam bath, and progressive jacuzzis. The idea is that you heat up in a warm bath, take a sauna, hop into cold water (!), then warm, then go into the steam bath, hop into cold water (!), then warm, then warmer, with rest periods between each. Here's what I did: warm bath, check. Sauna, five minutes. (The whole time I was freaking out because I felt like I couldn't breathe and that my lungs were being scorched.) Cold bath: toes dipped in. (EEE!) Warm bath: aaaaaaaaah. M went into the steam room but I stayed put, feeling like I had done my part. You know, for the collective sauna-Northern European thing.

While he finished the whole process, I went back to the "relaxation room," and promptly fell sound asleep. (We had gotten up at 6:30 am to catch our train in the morning.) When M woke me, about forty minutes later, he had to seriously shake me to bring me back to consciousness. Maybe I need a "relaxation room" in our house.

To finish off the afternoon, we had some rosehip tea, and made moon-eyes at each other, all swoony with our day of relaxation. After a hot shower, and dressed again, I felt like I could barely walk. Also, I was quite the internal furnace, what with all the warm waters; it took a good hour or two before my body temperature went back to normal. We took the funicular back down to the town, wandered around and then caught the eight o'clock train to Verviers and then on to Brussels.

I kind of miss the bathrobe.

Ten things I miss about America

Here's the caveat: I think if I made a list of the things I don't miss about America, it would be a lot longer. A lot. Oh and also? My family and friends are what I really miss, more than all of these things together, and since it's not really a "thing," it's not on the list.

I guess I've been thinking about America because I'm going there! In three days! To see the new baby niece or nephew who is going to be born, possibly on my birthday! To deliver a very great, but as-yet unfinished paper at a conference! To attend a cousin's wedding and hang out with the humongous clan that is our family! Ahem. Yes, the ten things:

1. Front porches. I suppose there are places in Europe where people have front porches, like maybe on farms? But mostly, not so much. I miss the big front porch of the House of Love in Bloomington, which had a saggy green velvet couch where we would sit in the fall and spring and read the things we had to read (being English dorks and all), and watch the people rattle by in their muffler-less trucks and motorcycles (being Indiana where there are no car inspections and all) and that scruffy shirtless sunburned guy with a big belly and tiny shorts and a bandana around his neck who would ride by on his bicycle every day, his knees akimbo because it was too short for him. And I miss sitting on the wicker furniture on the front porch of my parent's house in Vermont, which in the summer is just blanketed in my mother's flowers.

2. Cinnamon gum. Did you know that Europeans don't chew cinnamon gum? I bet you didn't! Now you do. Cinnamon Trident is my favorite, and I stock up in the US. I gave some to a friend the other day, and she screwed up her face and wasn't happy about the burning sensation in her mouth.

3. Public radio. Yes, I can stream it online, which is fine and dandy. And yes, I can upload a whole bunch of NPR podcasts and listen to them. All of which I do. But there's something disappointing about being six hours away, and hearing Morning Edition in the afternoon, the morning weather in the evening. Some evening shows will play in the wee hours of the morning. Thus, the podcasts, but they are also sadly disconnected from all of the little bits and pieces that surround them; you can, for example, choose to hear a whole bunch of NPR snippets about food. But what you miss out on is the serendipitous: I love public radio for introducing me to music I would never otherwise hear, to news I would never otherwise know about, to voices I would never otherwise listen to. Self-selection sort of wrecks that.

4. Grocery store baggers. Here, after your groceries come through the checkout chute, they land in a postage-stamp sized area, where you scramble to shove them into bags yourself, and get your wallet out and pay, all at once, because there is barely room for one bag, let alone several. And when the purchases of the next person in line come barreling down the chute while you are still fumbling with your purse or stuffing the bananas into that grocery bag, there is nowhere for them to go, and everything gets jumbled and the next person gets annoyed. I think the unwritten rule in Europe is that you buy five or less items at any given time.

5. Shoes in my size. I have a hard enough time finding shoes for my size 11W feet in the States. But here, it is impossible. The upper limit of what some stores have in stock, and this only rarely, is size 42, and I can only sometimes fit into a 42, depending on the brand. So I guess I am fated to do all of my shoe shopping Stateside.

6. Yard sales. Pop quiz: Q. What do people do with used furniture and used clothes here? A. They leave it on the curb. There are a few thrift store-type places, but they are oversaturated with goods, and I think they are considered to be for "the poor" to shop, not anyone who thinks reuse/recycle is a good thing (or one man's trash is another man's treasure). We had a houseful of furniture in Barcelona to give away, and no one could take it. Where did it end up? On the curb for the trash truck. It's disheartening. There is no such thing as the yard sale phenomenon, because first of all, no one really has a yard, and second of all, the whole concept is quite alien. I think in part, or in the past, people tend to buy and use their things more carefully and keep them longer, but this is changing, what with 5-euro shirts at H&M and 3-euro lamps at houseware stores.

7. Religious freedom. This may sound strange, being that the states of Europe, like America, are democratically pluralistic, and nominally, one can practice any religion one likes. However, I have the feeling that, more than in the US, there is a deep secularism and a real skepticism about religion. This is in part understandable, given, to take just one example, what the conservative Catholicism associated with Franco did to Spain. Those kinds of legacies play out in many ways, but in part results in fewer young people involved in Christianity, and also the embattled stance towards practicing Muslims, as seen in the veils-at-school debate. Increasingly, religion of whatever kind is seen as something belonging to immigrants, to "others," faith seen as something suspect and dangerous, and not something positive, something that brings people together. When in the US, I feel that people who don't share my beliefs are at least respectful and even curious about them, but here, the attitude is more of derision and even anger. Fortunately, we have been lucky to find some wonderful spiritual communities where we are living, but the sensation is that these are fewer and farther between than in the land of born-again Bush.

8. Black beans, decent salsa, refried beans, good tortillas...oh wait. What I mean is, I miss Mexican food! And I miss Annie's Macaroni and Cheese. I discovered a little "American" shelf at one of the grocery stores here. The food that is on it is: marshmallows, peanut butter, marshmallow fluff, barbecue sauce, brownie mix, Hershey's chocolate chips (6 euros a bag!), real vanilla extract, Arm and Hammer baking soda, Old El Paso enchilada sauce, salad dressing, microwave popcorn. I wasn't really excited about any of those things except the vanilla extract and the outrageously expensive chocolate chips, but it's an interesting portrait of someone's idea of American food.

9. Space. Now, generally I think it's a good thing that Europeans have found how to live compactly. It's better for the planet for us not to assume that we can use up as much space as we want, from big SUVs to big houses to lots of trash and the space to bury it, from big box stores to things spaced farther apart so we have to drive to get there. But... I sometimes miss the feeling of openness that exists, even in cities, in the US. I miss not having to squeeze in everywhere.

10. The right to complain. And doggy bags. And free water. These are grouped together because they all have to do with restaurant etiquette. The last of them I've basically gotten over, but it also means I end up drinking less water when we go out, because if a glass of wine is the same price as a glass of water--what am I going to order? The second means that I eat more, because there's no taking it home. Fortunately portions are more reasonably sized. And the first one is related to the fact that waiters are paid well, which I think is a good thing. And not that I'm a regular complainer anyway. But it's the feeling that you could if you wanted to. We ate at a restaurant in Strasbourg with M's parents that we chose not for its stellar menu but because of its proximity to the train station. And after perusing the placemat menu, I announced, "this place is so American!!" What made me say so? Right there on the menu, four clues: 1. a big welcome and a free salad! 2. all-you-can-eat side dishes! 3. a note to the effect that, if your meal isn't ready on time, it's on us! 4. a note to the effect that, if you aren't completely satisfied with your meal, please let us know! It was a little dizzying, I have to say. I had the momentary sensation of what Europeans must feel upon arriving in America. Too ... much ... faux ... cheerfulness... beep beep beeeeep...

Fortunately, these ten things I can live with, especially because there are definitely more than ten things I love about living here, and thus rather tips the balance towards being happy with where we are. I remember having a discussion with my brother when we were backpacking around Europe for a month, back in 2001. He held that I wouldn't like living in Europe, and I maintained that I would. We sort of got stuck at that, and I don't remember what our supporting arguments were, but here I am, and here I will be, at least for a good while.