Let's Recap 2007

I've been in the same position on my couch since I woke up at 1:30 this afternoon - I need to bake a cake for my friend who's birthday was yesterday but I don't have baking powder. Which seems awfully suspect to me - how can I not have this key ingredient? Anyway, I digress. 2007 was a banner year, I was just thinking (which is less painful for my head then baking). In 2007 I:

-Traveled to Hawaii with Bub, stayed four days, saw two islands, and made the killer Kuaui-Honolulu-Oakland-Dulles flight in one day and went to work the next morning.
-Visited Bub four times in San Francisco/Palo Alto, including the weekend in January when he found out he matched for residency at Columbia.
-Flew to Hotlanta for a weekend with Bub and friends for an insane re-wedding of a crazy former Maxim cover girl and her baseball-playing husband with a wandering eye. Great shellfsh bar and chocolate fountain!
-Went to Miami for the Winter Music Conference and stayed up all night eating Cuban food and dancing to Goldie.
-Flew to Miami and then Barbados to see a friend get married on a lovely cliff and went boogie boarding and dressed for dinner.
-Went to Los Angeles for a gorgeous wedding in a friend's backyard and spent the day on the beach in Santa Monica.
- Traveled to Malta with my crazy grandfather to chase an opera star.
-Ran around Istanbul with Bub and shopped till our suitcases burst, then flew to Ephesus and got a tour from Ernest Hemingway.
-Stopped in Paris on the way home for a marathon eating and shopping tour of a beloved city.
-Went to Israel and blew through Jerusalem and ran down the beach in Tel Aviv at 6AM. Oh, and ate a ton of cheese.
-Visited Santa Fe, the Four Corners, and Mesa Verde and made Bub speed through the desert in our Corvette.
-Drove down to Big Sur and marveled at nature.
-Drove to Philly on a lark for cheese steaks and to be berated by Eagles fans.
-Countless trips to New York to see friends, family, and an in-resident Bub.

Happy 2008!

Now you see Bub, now you don't (but I do!)...

...some co-workers who read this blog have asked what happened to Bub, who used to feature prominently in my posts. He's still my guy but some things have changed - the least of which is that he's no longer called Bub, his nickname evolved into something that is now a secret, and so even though calling him Bub feels like calling him Pete or Jackass, I'll call him Bub here.

The second thing is that his residency, as expected, has taken up a tremendous portion of his life. It's fascinating to watch a person undergo a transformation, and a little sad --but mostly incredible, as he shifts priorities and takes on challenges, and while certain things I loved about him take a backseat to new responsibilities, the essential Bub is always there. In some ways he was born to be a doctor - for one, he doesn't need much sleep; he also has this uncanny gift with people, any kind of person, that is a revelation to watch, he just always connects. Three, he has no problems with blood or poop, which I'm sure will come in handy someday.

But the insane travel and wild weekends have slowed and the weekends together usually involve a night in which he's working and I'm out with other friends, which is fine because they tend to be friends I love and don't get to see very often--but it stinks because he's still my favorite person in the world. And if someone is that important, you just learn to work around all the other little things like his profession and yours and enjoy the time you have together. He continues to make fun of me for needing more sleep on an average night than he does after working an 18-hour shift, but still.

So when we do manage to cut up a little, I figure it shouldn't go by without recounting it. Two weekends ago he had--gasp!--an entire weekend free, so he jumped on the train to DC. Amtrak being the wasteful, government-subsidy-ridden crapfest it is, it took him 5.5 hours to get from NYC to DC, so Friday night was shot. We went straight to sleep (he'd worked since 6AM the day before; I'd...gotten up as usual at 6:30 AND had an afternoon nap and I was exhausted) and the next day, we headed to brunch at St. Ex and then to Arlington Cemetary, which neither of us had been to. We saw all the "famous" graves including Joe Louis (who knew Joe Louis was buried in Arlington?) but couldn't find Oliver Wendell Holmes, sadly. After that we headed over to the Frank Lloyd Wright Pope Leighey House which is now my favorite Wright house, it's amazing how little space he used but still managed to convey a sense of privacy and quiet. It was getting dark (around 5PM) and so we were heading back to DC when I mentioned that I'd never been to Mount Vernon, which was right across the way. We turned the car around and rolled up to Washington's house and Bub went in to see if maybe there were any tours on Sunday, because it was pitch black outside and likely closed. But no sir, they were doing their evening holiday tour, so we quickly parked and managed to not be at the absolute end of the line. The tour was fun, if a little rushed and hokey (Martha Washington handing out her recipe for Great Cake) but we got to see the bedrooms, that are usually closed to the public.

We left Mount Vernon about an hour and a half later and headed back into the city. Now you're thinking - I bet they had a nice quiet dinner and a drink at Tabaq and called it a night. Yeah...something like that.

Sometime on Saturday we started discussing a trip to Philly to see an Eagles game, eat cheesesteaks, and eat some more cheesesteaks. "no time like the present" seemed appropriate, so we hopped in the car and while I napped, Bub got us there in just under two hours. We caught a late dinner at Buddakan (great food, epic portions, we couldn't finish) and in the morning, went down to South Street to grab Jim's steaks, which were awesome, if quirky -

So I can't eat bread, yada yada yada, and in a place like Jim's, they tend to give you that "hey, pretentious yuppie, we're not exactly big on the ol' calorie counting phenomenon, so maybe you could just pull up your big girl panties and eat a hoagie this one time" look, at which I quickly explain intestinal cancer at the worst and a lot of time in their restroom at the very least. So they're on board with the whole "no bread" thing but they have nary a plate in the joint. Nada. So the solution is to take a piece of bread, layer four or five pieces of wax paper, and then proceed as normal with meat, onions, mushrooms, cheese, etc. Hyper celiacs will tell you this is a problem because of the danger of cross-contamination but I counter that hyper celiacs were not standing where I was, with the tasty smell of meat wafting across the counter.

So I'm eating, and I'm loving, and Bub is loving and wants to make sure I'm loving so he's all, you love? and I'm all, yeah, but it's awfully chewy in places. And then Bub realizes I am eating wax paper, and a lot of it. We laughed all the way to -

The Eagles game! What is with you Philly fans? I loved the berating that every player, coach, and hot dog salesperson gets from the average fan. Woe unto you if you happened to be wearing a Giants jersey, hat, or the color blue that day - you were automatically subjected to chants of "Assssssssshoooooooole" over and over as you returned to your seat from the bathroom. The highlight was a- kid you not- 10 year old kid screaming "hey McNabb you f**king asshole! Learn how to throw!" and all I could think was, "gosh, I'll take that comment a lot more seriously when his voice drops". I loved the cold, the shouting, the fights, the spitting, and the overall hostility for the Philadephia Eagles displayed by their season ticket holders. Bub bought me an ear warmer and we ate fries and screamed at the Eagles along with all their fans. What a game.

Best time ever...

...the NYC-DC trip: 3 hours and 18 minutes. Completed Saturday night, 12:45AM departure time from the Upper West Side; arrived at 4:03AM to 14th Street.

And just a few more from the beach, cause she's so cute

...the little monkey, burying my feet, and...
When we were driving home from the sitter's after dinner, she climbed into my lap and I stretched the seatbelt across her and I pointed out the moon nestled in some clouds and told her the moon was getting ready for bed and he was waiting for sophie to get home before he went to bed and when she went to sleep he would know it was okay to go to sleep too and she recited Good Night, Moon while our big car rolled by barns and trees.

More on Israel...

Some photos of Yad Vashem, the Holocaust museum in Israel. I was based in Tel Aviv and went to Jerusalem (on an all-too-short trip) but this museum was the highlight. The one is DC is great, I think, but doesn't come close to Yad Vashem, mainly because of the attention to detail, the physical layout of the museum, and the Hall of Names (where all the names and information about victims is kept in a huge circular room). The artifacts they have assembled are incredible-- Torah scrolls burnt during Kristallnacht; artwork and stories from underground art communities in the ghettos; personal effects, including diary entries, from untold numbers of victims and survivors; the actual train tracks and train stop from Auschwitz and similar pieces of this history; horribly chilling photos of executions in Poland and Czech, woman and men and children being forced to strip and climb into ditches to be shot; and the overall sense of the world at that time the museum provides--you don't actually get to the camps exhibits until you are about 2/3rds of the way through. I think there is a tendency to gloss over the events leading to the Holocaust, or to look at it through the prism of the war, when in fact there are decades of tangentially-related but important events, trends, and cultural shifts that led to the Holocaust.

The visit to the museum made it all too clear how intractable the Israel-Palestinian situation really is. Being someone whose academic interests touch but do not focus on the Middle East and certainly not this conflict in particular, combined with my sometimes-strange nature to sympathize with the underdog, my feelings would go back and forth depending upon the latest suicide bombing or settlement development. Being there and walking through this museum, you realize very quickly that while Israel may militarily, at the moment, be the stronger of the two, there's no real underdog here. And you can talk about carving up the area---but then you go to Jerusalem and see that not only are these religions co-existing, they're literally on top of each other. Witness the Stations of the Cross which weave through the old Muslim quarter - here's a poster congratulating a family member who made the Hajj literally across from one of the Stations:

It's fascinating and troubling at the same time, because this will outlast the next summit, the next intifada, the next peace process. All I can say is I have less of an idea of how one would go about solving it then I did before, which really only indicates that the posturing and blowhard-ing that surrounds so much of this problem does not even begin to explain the histories, the well-meaning errors, the missteps, and the absolutes of the situation that led us to today.

Israel Photos

Some pics from last week's trip to Israel. My heretofore non-existent allergies flared up a few days before departure, disappeared while in the Holy Land, and promptly returned when I de-planed. So I am red-eyed and looking like Bub broke up with me five minutes ago...all day long.

But enough of that! Some photos of the most beautiful conundrum in history...

I forgot to mention....

in the haste to publish photos of edible kids and annoying cones and people sticking their fingers in their ears, the following information was nearly lost:

Columbia University School of Law: Application submitted
Fordham University School of Law: Application submitted
Georgetown University Law Center: Application submitted
Harvard Law School: Application submitted
Yale Law School: Application submitted
University of Pennsylvania Law School: Application submitted

My stomach will be in knots for, say, only the next three months or so, as I wait to hear confirmation that I am, in fact, completely unqualified to set foot on these campuses.

PS: Off to the Middle East tomorrow! Holy land, here I come! Yippeeeeeee!

Long Day

I was in North Carolina this weekend, visiting my best friend Shmoopy and her two precious kids in their house by the beach near Camp LeJeune. Although the drive absolutely bites --unlike heading to NY from DC where you can, if you completely flout any sense of responsibility towards your fellow drivers, the accepted laws and norms of about five states, and the worth of your own small life, get there in waaaay under the 4.5 hours everyone says it takes, this drive was loonng. Like nearly 6 hours long. And I didn't bring my ipod charger into the car, but I did bring CDs. Oh, I forgot to finish that long sentence - although the drive was murder, it was completely worth it to see these two scamps and catch up with my friend, who is doing a phenomenal job of raising them and keeping it all together while her husband is in Iraq. Photos to come, but damn, I'm tired.

More Turkey photos

Views of Istanbul and the Bosphorus, including the Blue Mosque (with scaffolding) and Hagghia Sophia...

And some of the ruins at Ephesus...

Some Malta photos...

...that didn't come out as well as last year's, probably because I was always on the move, chasing my grandfather down. For 86, the old devil is pretty spry, although to be completely honest, I really could've lived my life without the tales of all the women who succcumbed to his charms. Seriously, there's nothing like taking a walk down memory lane with your grandfather describing what a ladykiller he was. Best was when we ran into random little old ladies and they'd be batting their geriatric lids at him, going "oh, hel-lo Feliche!" and then babbling on in Maltese and I'm all, I really don't want to know how you two know each other.

I had so many funny stories to share and I couldn't wait to blog, but it's been two weeks and they seem to have all left me. I wrote them down in my moleskine but also can't be bothered to get off my chaise. So, some very blurry photos - no, you're not drunk. Or at least you can't blame the gin.
1. First off, we went to this crazy wedding with 1600 people in attendance. I initially thought the number was just my grandfather's Maltese penchant for exaggeration, but there was seriously a representative sample of the population at this thing. And an excessive amount of skintight Roberto Cavalli. Oh, and lots of ice sculptures. And fruit...carvings. Someone put a lot of effort into these details.

2. My cousin's adorable kids - one of whom, Emma, is pictured to the left. She called herself Claudia Schiffer all night and showed us how to do cartwheels. She and her older sister Sarah (all of age 10) and I ate fruit and played with our hair and talked about boys who tried to kiss them. And we talked about the Great Siege of Malta in 1575 (I'm not kidding).

3. The famous floor of St. John's Co-Cathedral that entombs (is that a verb?) many of the Knights of the Order of St. John (pictured right). It's really spectacular, huge rectangles with painted skeletons dancing or holding scrolls written in Latin. An amazing sight. Don't wear heels.

4. St. John's Co-Cathedral (pictured left). It looks deceptively simple from the outside and inside is a riot of color and sculpture. Each of the Orders - the French, Spanish, Italian, German, etc of the Knights had their own vestibule that they decorated with nationalist and religious symbols and tributes to their patron saints. The Caravaggio, St. Jerome, no longer hangs in the Italian vestibule but in a separate room, alongside the Beheading of St. John the Baptist. Incidentally, Caravaggio hated Malta. As did most of the Knights when they arrived. Hey, to be fair, they'd just been kicked out of Rhodes, which sounded pretty sweet.

5. The Mdina Cathedral (pictured right) lit up for the outdoor opera concert...the orchestra was seated right in front of those doors. A gorgeous night, incredible singing, Calleja did Nessum Dorma (but shhhh, I still think Licitra beats him out on the ending) and a host of other lesser-known but really wonderful songs. His wife, who is Moldovan, blew him out of the water - a really gifted soprano.

6. To the left, the empty seats after the concert. Those doors and windows all around are houses, and people were standing in their windows and on their balconies for the music, lucky ones.

7. To the right, a street in Mdina - the contributions of 400-odd years of Arab rule include most of the Maltese language and the name of their former capitol, Mdina - which, like most streets in Mdina, is like something out of a movie...very narrow, very quiet, all stone, and it's as though life doesn't exist there, it's jarring when you actually see someone, as though the city has a presence and people upset the balance. It's my favorite city in the world.

Malta, here comes baby!

Wish I could've blogged more frequently recently...lots of fun things going on and a lot of silly observations about the world I would've liked to capture - of course, they're all gone now. But things have been hectic - a wonderful weekend last week in NYC with Bub and our friends from high school, a day that started as a walk in Riverside Park and ended at 1AM with about 20 rounds of drinks, a mariachi band, and an Aerobie rally in between. Bub starting his residency and practicing suturing. Started running two days a week with friend Marian on the many many running paths in DC, which was the perfect antidote to the feeling of nostalgia and a twinge of despair I had the week before while driving on Skyline Drive. The grass had just been mowed and I caught a whiff of flowers, something I remember smelling every single day of summer as a kid and thinking "the entire summer will pass and I'll not see or smell or feel any of this". And then all of a sudden Marian and I decide, rather spontaneously, to start running and we are watching the sun set over the Potomac and feeling the heavy DC air shift through the trees regularly, and I think of the line Jordan says in Gatsby, right before everything falls apart when they're driving "into town" about how there's something so sensual about the air, like overripe fruit. That's DC in the summer, if you can appreciate it. I also have pollution- and exercise- induced asthsma, so I can only appreciate to a certain point. So if you see two girls running suicides on those stairs near the water on which everyone likes to take cheesy wedding photos and one girl looks like she could use an artificial lung, just beep and wave, you may see me nod my head about half an inch in return greeting.

But enough with all that - leaving for Malta tomorrow! I've been so busy at work and outside work as well, it's surreal - I'm even blogging when I should be packing. We've always gone with a big US family contingent and met up with the big Malta family contingent, but this time its just me and my grandfather- as much as I wanted my dad to come with us, I think it'll be really fun, just the two of us. He came up to NY to see Joseph Calleja debut in Rigoletto last winter and I invited my friend Dana over and he had us all in stitches, telling stories from Malta when he was young. I have this vision of us in a beat-up jeep, my legs are resting on the door and my feet are sticking out the window, and he's singing Italian war songs from the Mussolini era and explaining to me how the Italians used to strafe Malta and they had to go and hide in the catacombs. Both of you who read this blog may remember that my Italian grandmother (other side of the family) died a little over a year ago and there are so many questions I can't believe I never asked her, so maybe there's a little atonement here, we'll see.

Speaking of Atonement, it's one of the 10 books I'm bringing on my trip. The others include A Savage War of Peace (about the Algerian insurgency of the 1950s), The Adventures of Auggie Marsh (Bub recommendation), The Adventures of Kavalier and Clay (so I can read the new Chabon when I get back), Interpreter of Maladies (Jhumpa Lahiri, who also wrote The Namesake), and I Didn't Do It for You, about Eritrea by Michela Wong. I think it's a good mix and hopefully I'll finish at least half of them. I don't know, I'd like to think I'll have a lot of downtime to sit on the benches by the water and read, but we'll see...

Again, will try to blog from vacation but both of you know how well that's gone in the past. See you on the back end...!

Seriously, let's all move to Iowa...

...but I'm not driving. You may wonder, why, 14th St Girl, are you busy blogging away at 12:45pm when you have a long day at work ahead of you plus you have to go sit on the Beltway after work to pick up your car and then go for a run with your friend Marian? Glad you asked. Left early (like, 4A-bloody-M early) on Friday to head to SF for Bub's graduation (he's now Dr. Bub! No, he doesn't know what that rash is) on a Southwest flight that was like Greyhound with wings - we made two stops along the way and I thought I'd never get my ears clear - but then had a fantastic weekend with the Bubs (parents and brother) at a lively graduation ceremony with perfect graduation weather, northern California style. Then on to Restaurant Gary Danko for dinner (comments to come) and then this morning - Sunday - okay, yesterday morning - we headed our separate ways. Southwest put me through only one stop on the way home and I made it into Baltimore a little early - 10:45. I usually take the Baltimore-Washington parkway home, but in some moment of blatant insanity, I thought, hey, why don't I try 95? Two hours later, I arrive home - bumper to bumper, most of the way. At midnight. So now I'm thinking, all three of you who read this blog, let's move to Iowa - I flew over it today (I think - okay, I have no idea) and it looked like it had a lot of roads with not a lot of people on them. We're not flying Southwest to get there, though - we'll have to go by way of Fort Lauderdale and Austin, I bet.

My procrastination skills save me again!

As much as Bub will hate this post, because he usually has to clean up after my procrastinating (case in point: he just had to give me Southwest credits to fly to Stanford for his graduation because I didn't book it in time - I'm now insisting he take my True Blue flight in return), even he will have to acknowledge that sometimes they really save my butt. Such as....my dad has been on me to book Malta, and about a week ago we browsed sidestep.com and all the websites looking for a good deal. While we found a sale on Air Malta to get me from Heathrow to Luqa for $200, the UK flights were not cheap. We finally settled on a British Airways r/t for $1200. So my dad and mom went to the Berkshires this weekend after pop's instruction to please book this flight.

And of course, with studying and hemming and hawing and rising annoyance at a $1200 British Airways flight, I didn't. Okay, it slipped my mind. The phone rings about 30 minutes ago and it's my parents from home and I know my dad's calling to make sure I booked. So I hustle over to 'puter - and the flight in question is now $500 more. And I'm cursing my stupidity (Bub is right now nodding his head in sympathy with my pops, I know) and thinking of a way to scheme myself out of this. So it looks like if I leave a full day earlier, in the morning, no less (who flies from the east coast to London in the AM?), it'll only be $200 more expensive. Oy.

In a last minute act of desperation as I'm about to click "purchase" I open another tab and check out sidestep one last time. You know this never works, the flights are even more expensive than the ridiculous one you're about to shell out for...and THEN. AND THEN. $756 bucks round trip to Heathrow on American!!*#&#)%&_%*#(*_#(*%#^*$( ^%^ (this is the dance I was doing)

So, being the total sneak I am, I ring up pops and crow about my shrewdness in not booking the flight because I wanted to "shop around" a little and doncha know, I'm saving 400 smackers. He was suitably impressed with my carefully-thought-out strategy. So I am on my way to Malta! And Bub is shaking his head and rolling his eyes...

Some adorable photos of my grandfather with Joseph Calleja last winter backstage at the Met - I have no idea who the little Sopranos-looking-guy in brown is, he was another Maltese groupie:

Rainy Days and Sundays

Unlike Karen Carpenter, do not get me down...however, there's some serious rain hitting 14th St (and, I presume, the rest of the city), so after I finished today's (increasingly annoying) LSAT practice, I took off my cute new Urban Outfitter yellow sneakers and put on those J Crew boots I spent all winter breaking in (no, I do not have a pair of Wellies - an omission I clearly must rectify) to walk to Whole Foods.

Slight diversion, but it all comes together: the other night LSAT was ticking me off, so I took a break and meandered over to ITunes, always a bad move when one is drunk or in a self-pitying mood - and I went through all the Hot 100 charts from like 1939, which was a very fun walk down memory lane of songs from the car with my parents, or high school parties, or songs that came out when my cousins and I were in Malta for the summer. But I got into this 80s mood and like a drunken sailor, started downloading songs without thinking.

So there I am, walking to Whole Foods in the pouring rain with a crappy umbrella someone left at the last party and I'm going through all my new songs and I realize this is my list of 80s songs:

-Tainted Love

-Oh, Sheila

-Africa

-Raspberry Beret

-Take My Breath Away

All classic 80s, sure, but I have absolutely no idea what I was thinking when I hit "purchase" - this is the most random 80s collection I could've accumulated. Where is "Bette Davis Eyes", for one, or "Boys of Summer", or any Duran Duran whatsoever?

But as I'm listening to Toto wax poetic about wild dogs and Kilamanjaro rising like Olympus over the Serengheti (who came up with that line? genius) and the really awful cockney accent that opens "Oh Sheila" and I'm smiling like a damn fool and so these were actually brilliant choices, clearly, despite the fact that even the homeless guys are like "weirdo - not asking Smiley over there for change")

And it's pouring, and that made me think of this day at the Imperial tombs in Hue and then I remembered that today has nothing on that day, when we got caught in what must've been a monsoon, drenched everything we owned and lost my friend Steens for a while after she veered off the road towards a bridge:

And then I thought of this day in Phnom Penh, when Steens' little brother made me carry him through the market so he wouldn't get his feet wet:

...and I was in such a good mood when I got to Whole Foods I spent a fortune on a bunch of items I'm sure I don't need, like grapefruit body lotion and these organic sponges (just because I didn't know they existed) and on the way home, kept grinning and watching people run through the rain on the way to late brunch or to spend their own fortunes on organic who knows what and I'm thinking, how on earth can Sundays and rain not be fun?

A beautiful LA wedding

"you have the loveliest eyelashes, dear..." the woman in sky high black mules with a dramatic flower pattern is saying to me, and I'm smiling, "where did you get them?" And with the Gary Coleman look on my face, I'm thinking, um, in the mirror with a few coats of Maybelline? But I stop and look around - I'm standing next to a pool which has lilies and candles floating strategically in it (prevented from congregating over the filter with fishing wire), to my right is a lush grassy area with a looming lilac tree under which we've just seen two people get married in a sweet and poignant (and funny) ceremony; while to my left is the tennis court on which we'll sit for dinner at white tables with purple accents and mojito martinis. And I remember, I'm in LA, nothing is real. I'm at the home of the bride, where I've spent many hours lounging in this space and hanging in her parents' 8-headed shower (they weren't in it at the same time). And sure enough, I look closely and the woman's eyelashes are like daddy longlegs, and purple. And they are wicked cool, they make her eyes look green, and they are totally fake. And she may be dans un certain age but she's kicking it. "Oh, these old things? These are mine - I left the heavy duty ones at home!" And we laugh, and within minutes are talking about how fat can be injected into the balls of your feet to make it easier to wear stillettos, and I find myself considering whether I should have this done. And then I find myself referring to "my orthopedist" who, from the two times I saw him certainly seemed cool, but I doubt he'd like to hear me refer to him as I would a puppy. We're having a blast.

And the women are in perfect shape and you can't tell anyone's age and the men are tanned and all have hair and this is a scene to be remembered. But more importantly, we are at this fun and lovely wedding that isn't stuffy, mainly because the bride and groom are too offbeat to do this seriously - no one's freaking out about the purples coordinating. And Caro's mom officiated at the ceremony, making us laugh and think back to their first encounter a million years ago (she set them up). And then I think back to Caro, my Paris roommate, and meeting her at the salad bar in school in Cannes and when I was thinking about how when I was chatting up this cool girl picking at the tomatoes I couldn't have imagined that 9 years later, we'd be standing here, and how we have so many good stories to regale each other (and crowds) with, and that's really the point of friendship, knowing someone - in our case because we were far away from home and living in a small space without a lot of money and sharing a room that was like the Bat Cave, it was so dark - so you can tell funny stories about them and they about you which other people hear and exclaim "that's so true!"

And the party went on and the music shifted from Harry Connick Jr to dance music and we were perfectly chilly so sometimes we stood under the heat lamps, and so we ate a lot and danced a lot and then, whoops, the bartender left his post for about a minute so I took the liberty of bringing a few bottles of champange back to the table so we didn't have to walk the whole 10 feet to the bar. And the bride danced and her mom danced and we danced and all of a sudden, it was 1AM and we're cheering on the groom's rendition of "White Wedding" and there is no one else around. And we would've let them take away the heat lamps and kept dancing, but I'm sure a neighbor somewhere did not appreciate hearing that Dre song "California" (she played it for me, I used to play it - on tape, I think - in Paris) and we stumbled back to the Beverly Hilton, briefly considered crashing an Indian wedding, and unfortunately decided against it, and instead crashed in our very fluffy beds. And somehow made it to the airport the next morning.

All photos courtesy of 14th Girl friend and fellow wedding traveler, Lori, whose birdseye view is way more artistic than 14th Street Girl's. And she never puts her finger in front of the lens.

On the road again....

this time to LA for another friend's wedding. I'm just so tired and don't plan to do anything but hang out by the pool and wear an awesome BCBG dress to the festivities...

When I said "just a few more" I was totally lying

really, the last few...

Just a few more...

...pictures from Barbados and the wedding...our friend Lori, who I had been told takes the loveliest photos, just sent hers out. I couldn't not post them because they look just like the images I saw in my mind when looking at the wedding and the whole weekend and have unsuccessfully been trying to evoke in simple words. So, let them speak:

Tuesdays with (Maltese) Morrie

Lest I let my tan begin to fade, it looks like I will be on the road again soon (fingers, toes, and eyes crossed)... my 87-year-old Maltese grandfather, who like me is a huge opera buff and an all-around cool guy, calls me the other day to let me know this up-and-coming Maltese tenor, Joseph Calleja (who we saw at the Met in Rigoletto in January and he ended up coming to dinner at our house - we did not make him sing for his supper, which I thought I was nice of us) is singing in Mdina, Malta in early July and do I want to go? Oh, and, gee, Jose Carreras is giving a concert, too and we're going to go to that. So then my dad calls and asks me to do him a favor and go to Malta for two weeks with my grandfather. I guess everyone is worried about my grandfather getting around at his age, although I have to say (knock on wood), the guy's a champ for 87, he's probably going to beat me on the swim out to St. Paul's Island. Also, my cousin Charlie (70+ year old cousin at that) who is the most fun will be hanging out with us, so it'll be all the people I love there and I'll have them all to myself.

Full disclosure - there is no full disclosure, there is no question that I am going to be in Malta faster than you can say old guys who love La Traviata. Oh, and I'm driving.

I'm so excited, I dug out these pictures from our trip last year:

GF-style in the Islands

...one thing I forgot to mention in all these beautiful pictures my friends took is that we found a gluten free cafe in Barbados! Amanda and I spent the first two days at the adorable Southern Surf apartments across from Rockley Beach, Christ Church (in between Bridgetown and Oistins) - which I recommend, right in the middle of everything. The second day we decided to walk a bit and find a place to eat, and walked from Souther Surf towards St. Lawrence Gap to an area with shops and restaurants, and stumbled across Verde, a little cafe next door to the Colombian Emeralds store (I'm giving so many details because they're not listed on the web and I don't have an address - never fear, though, it's easy to find if you're in the area).

As attuned as I may be to GF anything, I'm still my same ditzy self and Amanda actually had to point out that the menu had gluten free wraps, gluten free pasta, and gluten free muffins! It's essentially anything on the regular menu with a $2 bajan ($1 US) charge to make any entree gluten free. We went back three times, I had the gluten free wrap with grilled chicken, sun-dried tomatoes, and goat cheese each time, it was so good. The day we left (at this point we had moved from the Southern Surf to the Crane and it was a bit of a hike to the cafe but I didn't care) I also ordered a pasta, chicken, and garlic dish to take on the plane and it was delicious and I was so happy not to have to eat ice cubes because I couldn't find anything at the airport that was GF.

What I found most interesting is that there were never any GF muffins, they were sold out every day by noon! I didn't know celiac was prevalent in the Caribbean, but the regular muffins looked excellent and I was sad I didn't get to try the GF ones.

As if the beaches and the waves and the run punch weren't enough to get me back to Barbados...