Fun with antibiotics

My medicine bottle has a notation, twice as large as any of the other type on the label, "Take With FOOD." In addition, in case you don't understand what "food" is, there's a little pictogram of a piece of bread.

Simplicity is best

I was watching a road work crew (no, this isn't a hobby, I was a a red light) and was impressed that they had one vehicle digging a trench, a crew laying pipe in the trench, and another machine burying the pipe, all in a line about 100 yards long. It seemed amazingly efficient to me. It reminded me of when I drove cross-country with friends and I marveled as we drove through Iowa at how straight and even the rows of corn were. My friend, who had grown up on a farm, replied, "Easiest way to plant them."

Preschool Part 1 - Setting the shopping scene

It occurred to me that I am doing myself and anyone interested a disservice by not in some way chronicling the run-up to my daughter's starting college. Drop-off is in about 84 hours, give or take. I'm going to try to take care and express only my own feelings and not share things that are not mine to share.

This is one of those times in my life when I kind of wish I was the clueless dad. I could come home from work and, depending on which kind of scenario I care to imagine, either put on my slippers and retire to the library for a dry martini and a smoke while my wife made dinner and my kids did things that I was unaware of, or I would strip down to my undershirt, open up a beer and park myself in front of the TV ignoring everyone until dinner. Instead, I've managed to place myself in the middle of everything going on in my house, sometimes intentionally and sometimes not. I am a caretaker, in that I spend much of my evenings taking care of stuff for other people.

This week has brought an avalanche of new stuff into the house. Since it's bound to rumble out of here as quickly as it rumbled in, it is all sitting in a 72 cubic foot (something like 6x4x3) pile in the front hallway. Only a few of the things, the rug and shelves, for example, are visible. The rest lie snuggled in plastic bags from Target, Staples, Bed Bath and Beyond and beyond. This is prior to the trip to the mall, which is set to take place tomorrow and which I will thankfully not be part of, except perhaps to answer a phone call from either my wife complaining about my daughter or vice versa.

My neighbor, who has a son, tells me that he packed most of the things that were in his room, along with some new sheets and towels, and that's it. Living in a houseful of girls, this is inconceivable to me. For girls, every transition is a shopping opportunity. "I'm going to ______ so I need to buy ______." Or ______, _________, ___________ and ________. And for the linguistically challenged among you, in this construction, the word "I" means 'you" and "buy" means "buy me." It's a subtle but important distinction. My daughter, who can be kind of dramatic, enforces this process by being pretty much impossible except when she is in the state of having something bought for her, at which time she is soothed.

Just in case everything is not bought on a timely basis, the college runs shuttle busses to BB&B all day on move-in day, so I am not worried.

Family vacationing

There's nothing better than a family vacation to convince yourself (confirm?) that you live with a pack of loonies. I love my family dearly, but I am by nature kind of detached. It's something I work to overcome in order to have close personal relationships. But I like that the detachment is still there, because it allows me to both adore my wife and kids and still sit back and think, "Wow, these people are weird." I've always done that, when I was growing up and we all went somewhere, even when I spent extended time with friends later in life. It's like the way words start to sound weird if you repeat them often enough.

Today I dropped my older daughter at the train station. A lot of her friends are leaving for college, and I think she's pretty well had it with all of us, which is pretty natural for an 18 year-old. Last time we left her, she had a party and had 8 or 9 people sleep over. This was against my expressed wishes, but she was so open and responsible about it, and did such a good job cleaning up (and didn't drink any of my beer, though apparently someone else's beer was consumed) that we didn't get mad. The only thing she did that upset us was that she let people sleep in out bed without asking permission. Is that unreasonable on our part? I'd never let anyone sleep in her bed without asking her first. In any event, she said she specifically made sure that she had people who we know well sleep in our bed. That's better? I guess.

Today we went to what they call the sliding track a bit outside of Lake Placid. It's the premier track for bobsled, luge and skeleton in the US, by some measure in the world. We were given a tour by a cranky old guy who was knowledgeable and glad that it was just the 3 of us and not a huge group. He took us to various points of interest on the way to the top, where he left us at the track to walk down to the bottom. In case you watch this kind of thing on TV and wonder how they get going so fast, you get no conception on TV of how steep the track is. It drops 500 feet in a mile, and some of the sections are relatively flat, so the others have to be 12-15% grade. That is seriously steep and you cover it with ice and put a half ton of riders and sled on it and it's amazing that they can even control it. The guide said nobody's ever flown off this track in 10 years, though. It was fun to walk down.

This is probably a stupid question, but my teacher told me there were no stupid questions

I just realized I used something called clarifying shampoo. Is that going to make my hair clear? Because that would be pretty peculiar-looking. And if that's not what it does, what does it do?

And I didn't even need to wear special glasses

Today I was walking through town and I suddenly realized that everything around me was in rich, natural color, in 3D, with crystal clear surround sound, and as an added bonus, everywhere I looked was like that, so it was in 360 degrees too!

Vacation tidbits

I've now been on 3 kinds of trips in the past few weeks- one to a nice hotel in Cambridge, one to a super fancy hotel in Paris, and now in a rental house in Lake Placid. As we've gone along I've been assembling a kind of shadow packing list as we've gone along and I'll share it with you here.

It is impossible to pack too much underwear. It doesn't weigh much or take up much room, and having the freedom to change whenever you want for whatever reason is very freeing. Socks are small and light too but you can re-wear socks if necessary.

Hotel rooms are funny things, bedrooms and bathrooms and dens all rolled into one, and require a peculiar set of supplemental objects. For me, the most important thing is a spoon. I take a fiber supplement that needs to be stirred into water and unless you have really long fingers you'll need something to stir with. Informal hotel might let you take a spoon from the coffee shop, but the nicer the hotel, the less likely that is. And if you're like me and prefer having some cereal for breakfast instead of a $10.95 continental breakfast, you'll need both spoons and bowls. Other handy items include plastic bags and a power strip if you have a typical assortment of electronics. And if you like watching TV from anywhere except the bed or the desk, bring a comfortable chair, a surprisingly rare item in hotel rooms.

Staying in someone else's house is a convenient thing to do if you're going to be staying someplace for a while. I've done it a bunch of times and it's pretty consistent what you'll need to bring.

Most of the items are kitchen-related, but many houses, oddly enough, even houses up here in the Adirondacks, do not have throw blankets (is that last sentence punctuated correctly?). I find this odd because even during the summer it gets quite cool in the evening in may places. You would also be smart to bring WD-40. I've never been in one of these places that didn't have at least one creaky door.

For the kitchen, first of all you must bring a sharp knife. I forgot this time and lucked out, because I found the one sharp knife out of the 25 assorted knife-like things in the drawer, so I use it for everything. Other kitchen utensils you should bring are a vegetable peeler, an ice cream scoop (if you have a good one) and a cheese slicer.

Foodwise, all you can count on in one of these places is salt and pepper. Rental houses do seem to accumulate a surprising variety of non-perishables. This place has several boxes of sugar, many, many teabags, 5 different kinds of vinegar, 3 jars of honey and several dozen barely used spice jars. All I can say here is do a thorough search before you go to the market. Nothing more frustrating than buying flour when the people from the following week left and unused package in the pantry.

Leaving Paris

Wednesday morning I got up early and walked around the neighborhood. That's one of my things. Whenever we travel I use at least some of the time that I'm awake before anyone else (a minimum of an hour, usually more- I need much less sleep than anyone else in my family) to walk around whatever area we may be staying in. I like to know where I am and what's around me. I always say it makes me feel like I really am where I am. The level of interesting that this provides varies. The low point was probably when we were laid over in Chicago once and had to sleep at a motel in some anonymous suburb near the airport while waiting for the next day's plane. This consisted of walking up and down a long straight 4 lane road that seemed to go on unchanging for miles. I walked for over an hour and saw nothing more interesting than a supermarket, which was a perfectly fine thing to find. 

Paris, of course, is much more interesting than that, but the area where we were staying is not among its most fascinating. It's too commercial and governmental to have the charm of the smaller neighborhoods. But not so bad to walk up the Champs Elysees to the Arc de Triomphe and back on one of the other grand boulevards. I need to learn more about the history of Paris and what it was exactly that Haussman did to renovate the city. Our friend was talking yesterday about one of the reasons the Marais was so interesting was that Haussman hadn't gotten over there, so the buildings were smaller and older.

Back at the hotel we finished packing and then went down to breakfast. About halfway through we saw a couple of kids and then later I noticed a older fellow pouring orange juice for everyone at a the table where the kids were sitting. He turned back toward the buffet and sure enough it was Woody Allen with his wife and kids. Guess the concierge wasn't kidding. On the way out we finally tasted the chocolate dome. Delicious.

The airport experience in Paris was no better than in Newark. Check-in was done by a human being at least, and we got up to the floor with the gates and then proceeded to stand in line for almost an hour at Passport Control. We experienced this on the way in last time we came. There were several booths but only two agents. Halfway around the circular terminal and then back and forth 4 times until we finally got through. At least there was nobody left to be in line at security. We zipped right through there. The plane boarded on time but left late, probably because checked in passengers were still in that line- we'd gotten to the airport 2 1/2 hours early and didn't make it with that much time to spare.

This airplane is totally newly renovated. It has 15 inch video touch screens with on-demand entertainment. It has seats with controls so complicated even the seat doesn't understand them and so responds erratically or not at all when you push the buttons. The good thing is, once you figure it out, you can get the seat to lie completely flat. This is very pleasant for trying to sleep, though sleeping in a 31-inch wide flat seat doesn't allow you to stretch out in any kind of idiosyncratic way. The most comfortable thing to do is lie flat on your back with your arms folded on your chest. The effect is kind of coffin-like, but in a nice way.

Everything went smoothly from there and we were home by dinner (!) time.

Last night in Paris

The third day began with a food tour. We're not really foodies, but we do like food. We made sure to eat a small breakfast. Our guide was a Canadian woman who recent wrote a cookbook in French, partially sponsored by Maille mustards (she confided that the pistachio-infused olive oil that they sold was not good). She was pleasant and knowledgeable. We went to two places to taste macarons, to compare the styles. They were very tasty, even if they do look like strangely colored hamburgers. There's apparently a great competition among bakers in Paris for who makes the best macaron. We also went to a mustard shop, a truffle shop and a super fancy food shop, where the gift wrap staff will need a bit of additional practice before the holidays. Then we got on the Metro and went to the Bastille area and walked through an indoor and outdoor food market. During this we learned that "rabbit is the new chicken." Not sure why we needed a new chicken, but okay. We tasted oysters from a fishmonger she knew. 

We then went to this little wine shop, owned by a 30-ish Dutch woman who'd lived in the US and a bunch of other places and had a wine and cheese tasting. The wine was very pleasant and the woman was excellent company. She was one of those people who you really wished you could be as cool as. She had a great little french bulldog who was perhaps the most responsive dog I've ever seen. Her wines were carefully selected from smaller vineyards and I was pleased to see something I had in my collection on her shelves. The woman was realistic about the prospects for another wine shop in Paris, but she seemed fearless and energetically upbeat.

We left the shop and walked back to the Marais, where we met up with a friend of Ronnie's from high school- one of the people we'd seen in Boston with a couple of weeks ago. We had coffee and ice cream (Berthillion, best ice cream in Paris or maybe anywhere and priced to match- $10 for 2 little scoops). Then spent a couple of hours walking around and window shopping together. It was a very nice time, helped by some of the finest weather one could hope to experience- mid 70's and sunny with a light breeze and no humidity. My birthday plans could not have been treated better by the weather gremlins.

Back to the hotel, where I first went to get cash, only to find some small kind of entourage outside, with someone I didn't recognize signing autographs. Then back to nap and then for our final dinner at le Jules Verne, the Alain Ducasse restaurant at the mid-level of the Eiffel Tower. On the way out I asked the concierge, who can only be described as having a twinkle in his eye, who the entourage was for. I'm not sure, he said, it could be for Woody Allen or for Prince, both of whom were current guests. Or, he said, it could be for you. For the rest of the evening we joked occasionally about what we thought Prince and Woody were doing for the evening or if they were out together.

This is a much more pleasant mid-level than we'd experienced at Newark airport. Ducasse apparently has the most Michelin stars total among all his restaurants of anyone in the world, and I was sort of amused to hear that he was planning to make Jules Verne a 2 star restaurant (3 is the max and I think there's only a hundred and something of those in the world). Most chefs would kill to get 2 stars, and he's holding back. Before we ate we bumped up against the whole aperitif thing again. This time we had champagne, which is actually listed in the aperitif section of the menu.

 First we had an amuse bouche, which looked and felt in your mouth like a little parfait covered with nuts but it had a mild savory taste, maybe a slight hint of liver. It was hard to tell, but it was delicious. Ronnie's appetizer had egg and sea urchin and I can't remember what else- maybe chanterelle mushrooms. Mine was a a bisque (though they didn't call it that) with shellfish and mushrooms. Certainly the best bisque I've ever had and Ronnie's food was good too, whatever it was. For an entree I had langoustines with summer vegetables and Ronnie had a saddle of lamb with potatoes and vegetables. The bread, by the way, featured a kind of cross between a croissant and a brioche and was terrific. One of the reasons that I ordered what I did was because I'd never had either shrimp or lobster (and a langoustine is kind of halfway in between) that I'd felt was perfectly cooked and I wanted to taste what it was like. It was actually quite special- tender and moist but firm enough that it felt cooked. Ronnie's lamb was fine. Nothing special. 

By this time, all of these huge, wonderful meals were beginning to fuse into one. We still has a chocolate dome that the hotel had sent on Ronnie's birthday sitting in the room untouched because we were always too full to eat it. My dessert was a raspberry tart with chocolate/vanilla sorbet, which managed to taste like both at the same time. I can't remember what Ronnie had. As at our other meals, dessert is followed by a selection of little post-dessert desserts. I'd call them petits fours, but there were way more than four of them. One was a little parfait that looked remarkably like the one we'd had as an amuse bouche, but this one was sweet and fruity. We also had chocolate truffles, more macarons, and passion fruit marshmallows. Marshmallows are also a trendy-competitive food in Paris these days. I have to say that the passion fruit ones were delicious.

Afterwards, we went out on the platform and took a look at Paris at night. A boat had sunk in the Seine and there were emergency crews there. The city is, of course, beautiful at night. Then we descended to the mob scene that is the base of the Tower in the summer. Tons of people waiting on line, hanging out, picnicking. We got a cab back to the hotel and packed. I am never eating again.

Birthday in Paris

After the Marais, the shops in St. Germain seemed kind of tacky. There were a lot of chain stores and even though the Marais was full of tourists too, this just seemed more touristy. And our feet hurt. So we went back to the hotel and slept for a bit until it was time to go to dinner. At some point the hotel staff showed up with a birthday dessert, a chocolate dome with gold leaf, and a candle, which we were too full to eat at the time, but set aside for later.

Our dinner the second night was not at a restaurant, even one on a ship. Ronnie does not love going to restaurants and gets tired of looking at menus. So I tried to arrange a cooking class for the evening. Turns out, none of the fancy shmancy French cooking schools do afternoon or evening cooking classes. So our choice was Cordon Bleu at 9AM or nothing. The travel agent came up with the idea that we could go to one of the agency's guides' home and have a personal cooking class and dinner with a chef. That sounded like fun, so I went with it.

We drove out to this pretty suburb with a big castle in its middle, and went to the woman's home. It was an attractive little place, with a nice yard and a cute dog. The kitchen was small and functional. We helped prepare appetizers and a first course, assembling sundried tomatoes, shaved parmesan and parma ham onto pieces of crusty bread, turning baby artichokes to expose the heart, making a julienne of lemon zest for a risotto, and baking cookies for a mille feuille. It was fun, and then we sat down as the chef finished cooking the food and we sat with the owner of the house and talked and ate. It was really nice. The food may not have been the best we've ever had, but it was fresh and made with good ingredients (homemade parsley juice!), and so even if the preparation wasn't great, everything still tasted good. The highlight was the chef and host singing "Happy Birthday" in French. It was very sweet and then we went back to the hotel, still too full to eat the chocolate dome.

First night in Paris

The travel agent gave us this 8 page itinerary, which would have been about a quarter that length without the flowery descriptive language. You would think that something of this length would have the location of our dinner reservation. Nope. All it says is that we're going for a cruise on the Seine and eating a fantastic meal. Anyone who's been here before knows that there are about 100 different boats cruising up and down the Seine at any given moment, leaving from several dozen different locations. Here's where staying at a great hotel can help, because all I have to do is tell the concierge that we want the gastronomic cruise and we're all set. Gastronomic is a useful word here. It has nothing to do with giving your stomach a name, though I suppose that would be okay. It means that bestest fanciest meal.

We go to the dock and get on this pretty boat. We sit on top of the boat (I think it's a ship, technically, but ship sounds pretentious to me) and they ask us if we want an aperitif. I don't know how that's different from asking if we want a drink, but it sounds much more intimidating. I don't want to order something that's a stupid, classless aperitif. In Italy we always ordered Campari and soda, which we didn't even like but it sounded good. Here we just had some white wine.

The boat started to move and they call us downstairs to begin to eat. Here's the menu:


Duck foie gras with daikon confit and miso bouillon
Great mix of substantial traditional and light asian    


Summer lobster with spicy tomato juice
Yum!


Canette infused with agrumes, fine tart with figs and mozzarella
I have no recollection of this, but I'm sure it was great. I've eaten more figs in the last week than in the entirety of my life until then.


Selection of cheeses
Eat the cheese with a knife and fork


Chocolate bonbon with cherry sorbet
Anything mixing chocolate and cherry has to be worth trying


Macarons and chocolates
What they call macarons here are nothing, nothing like the greasy coconut macaroon things. They look like little hamburgers with a kind of chewy meranguey/marzipany thing on the outside with something sweet and gooey inside and they're wonderful. More on them later.


Kind of nice having Paris pass by as we ate. Very pleasant way to start the trip.

Hotel silliness

We're staying at le Bristol Hotel. It's a very very nice hotel. Here's an example of the kind of place it is. When we first got here I went out to get a snack. I bought a takeout (or take-away as they call it here) quiche and brought it back. This hotel as a world renowned, 3 Michelin star restaurant, but they also have an informal place, where you have breakfast. I went there and asked if I could borrow a fork with which to eat my quiche. The hostess disappeared for a moment and came back with another woman who says, no we should call room service. I say, I don't want room service. That will take too long and all I want is a fork. She responds by calling room service for me. They're not handing me a fork, so I go up to my room. Fifteen hungry minutes later, room service shows up with a table with 2 full place servings (I guess they didn't want my wife to be forkless or for either of us to be lacking a knife or spoon as well) and a vase of flowers. So I took the fork, pushed the table out of the room, and ate my quiche.

Continental Awfulness

We left out of Newark, which now has my vote for the world's worst airport. Readers of this blog may remember my saying that too many signs is just as bad as not enough signs, and that's definitely the case at that airport. I'm pretty smart and I've traveled a lot, but I had no idea what was going on.

We finally get to the Continental terminal and I presume everything will be alright because Newark is Continental's big hub so they should have it under control. Nope. We wandered through 2 different levels of the terminal (most air terminal have upper and lower levels, Continental adds a bonus middle level, and that's where we needed to go, not that there was any sign that said so. Once on the mid-level, we looked for the right place to check in and kept getting redirected. Finally we got to the check-in and there were about 20 passengers and 1 airline person. No problem. Airline people don't check you in, you do it yourself. I stand at a computer terminal and swipe my passport and all that stuff. It spits out a baggage ticket and the one airline person comes and puts it on. Does she then put my luggage on a belt? Nope. I don't think there even is a belt. She points at a very young man standing across the corridor near a cart with a few bags on it and says "Give it to him." I'm serious- "Give it to him." So we drag the bag over and give it to him and hope for the best. It didn't get any better after that, but I'll spare you.

The next morning we arrived in Paris. It all went very smoothly. I thought they had customs in Paris, but if it was there I missed it. I used a tour company to arrange the details here and they sent a guide with the car to the airport. We have been to Paris several times and are not in need of a guide. I think the guide knew that, but being a guide still felt the need to talk the entire way over to the hotel. It actually got annoying after a while and we were glad to be left to ourselves.

My one travel tip here is to take the latest flight you can, because if you take a 6PM flight to Europe, (1) you won't sleep, and (2) you'll get to your hotel at 8:30 AM and your room won't be available for at least 4 hours, maybe more. We took a 9:30 flight, slept a bit, and got to the hotel and into our room at noon.

Because this is a short trip, we had to do the quick and dirty route to overcoming jet lag. That meant taking a 3 hour nap and then trying to stay up as late as we could to overcome the fact that midnight here is 6PM at home. This is not a reliable method but it kind of works sometimes. It took us about an hour to actually wake up, but we managed and set out. The hotel is near the President's palace. He apparently lunches at the hotel frequently. Many of the other building in the neighborhood are government buildings, so you can imagine how exciting it was on a summer Sunday afternoon.

We figured le Marais, the young/gay/Jewish/upscale shopping neighborhood would be out best bet and it was. We even ran into two sets of people from Philadelphia at one store. Bought some stuff. Walked around and then went back to the hotel to get ready for dinner. This is getting too long so I'll do dinner separately.

Annoying pattern

I've noticed that cheap hotels are enthusiastic to offer free internet access, while expensive hotels still charge hefty fees. The place we're staying right now costs 21 euro per day, at $1.30 per euro. Absolutely ridiculous, but maybe it makes my words seem more valuable.

Greetings from Paris

All summer I've felt like I've had nothing to write about because everything was either too boring or too personal or a secret. This is because the focus of the summer has been on my wife's impending 50th birthday. I guess that no person, and especially no woman, is thrilled to turn 50. I can understand that, and there's already been too much written about this country's obsession with youth at a time the population is steadily aging. A coincidence? I think not.

There's no escaping the effects of a major milestone on a person and their significant other. I said to Ronnie last year that I didn't want this to be a surprise and that I did not want sole responsibility for planning the birthday. It was too emotionally loaded. Somehow we never discussed what she wanted to do. This is my fault, even if it really isn't.

So somehow we got a single digit weeks before the big day and the time for collaboration had passed, even if it really hadn't. (I know the last two sentences sound kind of cryptic. Welcome to Marriageland).

It wasn't incredibly hard to plan something. I had a good idea that was possible to actually execute. This still meant that I had to do all the planning and make it all work, and to it kind of in secret, which is why I didn't write about it.

So here's the plan:

1. Rent the nearby movie theater and screen Ronnie's favorite movie- Alfred Hitchcock's Notorious, for a bunch of our friends the Saturday before her birthday.
2. Have said friends over to the house afterward for brunch.
3. Shoo the friends out, pack a bag and fly off to Paris for the birthday itself.

Simple, eh? I even knew how to do all of these things. The problem is that I'm not very organized and there were several details that made it harder than it should have been. I also have what you might call a completion phobia. I'm afraid to finish things. I presume this is some kind of deep-seated psychological thing that had something to do with my mother, who maybe was too good at finishing things. It can be annoying to the people around me when I almost but not quite finish things, but I'm generally pretty functional in spite of this and it's mostly annoying an frustrating to me. It's probably the thing that I'm most dissatisfied with about myself.

So as the day draws closer, I find I haven't tied up all the loose ends, so I'm tense, plus because it somehow ended up being an actual surprise I have no idea if Ronnie was even going to like it. Plus I want to have the brunch outside, which offers me the opportunity to stress out over an uncontrollable variable, the weather. It had been viciously hot outside and the garden was fried. I'll pause now because I like the necessary talent to describe the feelings of anxiety this kind of thing provokes.

Fast forward and it's morning of and everything is still a surprise. I have no idea how this happened- it was never my intent. I trust that everything will work out and miraculously it all does. The weather is spectacular, Ronnie comes downstairs looking beautiful, the caterers not only stop on their way to buy coffee because I forgot to but they get coffee cups which I forgot I forgot. My daughter runs to the store to get aluminum foil. Almost everyone who says they were coming actually shows up and it makes Ronnie very happy. The movie is fantastic and everyone loves it.

We head back to the house and it's a perfect party. The garden has recovered and it stunningly pretty. The food it good. The indoor-outdoor thing works well. Our various groups of friends mesh well. And most importantly, Ronnie has a great time. There's a song by Talking Heads (btw, not the Talking Heads) called "Heaven". In describing heaven, David Byrne sings "There's a party. Everyone is there. Everybody leaves at exactly the same time." It was kind of like that.

We pack and get in the car and I finally tell Ronnie where we're going. No more surprises. Everyone is happy and we're on our way. I feel like my summer vacation has finally begun.