there are three books added that were most definitely not done by me:
- 
The Delivery Man: A Novel (Paperback)
-
The Book of Air and Shadows (Hardcover)
seriously! what is going on???? has no one else had problems like this with goodreads? or even just problems? i have it log me out for no reason a lot, and lose comments that i posted, etc. but this is odd…
on this last day in january i guess i’ll finally post this “resolution” post i’ve been working on for a month. it’s not comprehensive–goals can be quite personal, don’t you think? but anyway, this is most of them.
-a new child in the family
-put three more countries on the been-there-done-that list (portugal? spain? england? ireland? greece?)
-no more day time naps except on the weekends (niamh is sleeping through the night—three cheers! i’ve been napping regularly for more than three years, what am i going to do with all this free time?)
-hour long walk at least 4 days a week.
-(those last two goals translate into the prerequisite new year’s goal of losing ten pounds. don’t i always have this goal? doesn’t every female in america have this goal?)
-be able to understand most of what i hear in French, and be able to hold a simple conversation in French
-stop chewing my nails (this is like the losing weight goal. always wish i could accomplish it, but never do)
-be more social (ie-make a couple of good friends here. best accomplished, i suppose, by being social)
-eat less meat
-waste less food
-figure out how to configure /align/whatever these darn blog posts. argh. seriously. when i first saved this post, there were spaces between all my goals. but every other save since then, it won’t recognize the spaces or line breaks or whatever they’re called.
so what are your goals? i know, i know, new year resolutions are cheezy and cliche, but they’re still kinda fun, right? come on people, humor me!
The pastry on the left is called a vermicelle. it is some sort of chestnut/sugar paste. i’ve seen them made a bunch of ways. almost always have whipped cream. sometimes just the whipped cream, and the chestnut paste. sometimes have a cookie/shortbread like thing at the bottom (like the one pictured here). this is the first place that i’ve seen incorporate chocolate (the cookie crust is coated with chocolate, but the cookie itself is…i don’t know. plain and white. and not really cookie and not really shortbread). i do not really like them. i have tested from several bakeries, and the grocery stores, but they all taste pretty much the same.
the green pastry on the right is a caraque. it is delicious! it’s basically a chocolate tart with green frosting. the chocolate is really thick and dense. maybe a ganache? caraques are also sold in every bakery and grocery store. yum yum yum!
these are also really popular over here. several varieties and brands sold in all the grocery stores (cheese flavor, salt flavor, butter flavor, etc), and all of the bakeries sell their own flutes too. i feel like these are something i’ve had in the states, but can’t recall specifics. anyway, if you don’t know, they’re basically like really buttery, crispy, flaky, breadsticks. yum!
as most of you know, yogurt is a big deal over here. a huge aisle in the grocery store, devoted to yogurt, with rows and rows of fun flavors. i have discovered that i really like hazlenut yogurt! who would have guessed, i hate things with nuts! but there aren’t big chunks, and the little bits are really soft, so it’s not like baked goods with nuts. they also have walnut yogurt and chestnut yogurt. those are just okay. but, not disgusting, as i had presumed! hazlenut yogurt is definitely quite tasty though.
has anyone else had problems with this site before? it sometimes seems a bit quirky, but yesterday took the cake! i was in the middle of reading a comment from amy, when rowan needed to be tucked into bed. left the site where it was at, and attempted to resume browsing after rowan had been tucked in. clicked on the “home” icon, and suddenly i was in someone else’s account! i looked around at their account for a bit, trying to figure out what was going on. then i clicked on home again, and i was in a different person’s account. i did this about 6 times, each time, goodreads sent me into some else’s account. on the 7th time it sent me back to my account.
isn’t that odd???
Fly naked on nudist holiday flight
Reuters, updated 8:02 a.m. PT, Tues., Jan. 29, 2008
FRANKFURT – German nudists will be able to start their holidays early by stripping off on the plane if they take up a new offer from an eastern German travel firm.
Travel agency OssiUrlaub.de said it would start taking bookings from Friday for a trial nudist day trip from the eastern German town of Erfurt to the popular Baltic Sea resort of Usedom, planned for July 5 and costing 499 euros ($735).
“It’s expensive, I know,” managing director Enrico Hess told Reuters by phone. “It’s because the plane’s very small. There’s no real reason why a flight in which one flies naked should be more expensive than any other.”
The 55 passengers will have to remain clothed until they board, and dress before disembarking, said Hess. The crew will remain clothed throughout the flight for safety reasons.
“I wish I could say we thought of it ourselves but the idea came from a customer,” Hess told Reuters by phone. “It’s an unusual gap in the market.”
Naturism, or “free body culture” (FKK) as it is known in Germany, was banned by the Nazis but blossomed again after the Second World War, particularly in eastern Germany.
“There are FKK hotels where you can go into the restaurants and shops naked, for example,” Hess said. “For FKK fans — not that I’m one of them — it’s nothing unusual.”
“I don’t want people to get the wrong idea. It’s not that we’re starting a swinger club in mid-air or something like that,” he added. “We’re a perfectly normal holiday company.”
Hey all, I just thought that I should warn you. You will need to being wearing depends or a poise pad during my wedding. Jody suggested that I should let my father pick out our father/daughter dance song. I did and hillarity will ensue. I feel like my life has been highjacked. Ugh!
This came across on one of the expat listserves. I thought some of you might find it amusing.
My four year old is being so naughty. He has always had a naughty streak but I am a bit horrified about what he has done in the last 3 days. Day 1 he emptied his sisters whole bottle of bubble bath into his bath that was a present that she hadnt used yet. Day 2 while during his quiet time in his room he did poo in a toy box and played with it all over the floor rubbing it in to the carpet and such like. Day 3 he emptied a whole bottle of brand new perfume a friend had just brought me back from Egypt.