Road Trip to the beach in Collioure, France

June 24, 2014 / Matt Talley / Leave a comment

We took a weekend road trip down to a small village near the Spanish border and stayed in a friend’s Aunt and Uncle’s Gite (sort of a B&B). Brodie came along and was fed all sort of yummies and got to pee on lots of new stuff – a very high priority on his list… We had a blast there and made side trips to the beach in Collioure on the French Mediterranean (VERY COOL), went to a local cherry harvest festival, and had many fine meals! Our friend’s aunt even made Stamps-With-Foot chouquettes, a local pastry specialty, for breakfast.

Carcassonne

April 21, 2014 / Matt Talley / Leave a comment

The city, not the game.

My wife really likes castles. Really, Really! Ruins, Chateaus, piles of stone on the top of a lonely hill: they all make her swoon. We visit whenever we are in the vicinity of one and if such a visit won’t land us in jail for trespassing. I set the bar a little high on her 25th birthday when we spent a week touring wineries and castles along the Rhine and Mosel rivers. Now, castle-filled birthdays are are de rigueur and for the third anniversary of Stamps-With-Foot’s 29th birthday, we spent a long weekend in the walled City of Carcassonne and then a couple of days at a B&B in Limoux. Carcassonne was amazing – we were there two weeks before tourist season started in earnest and had many of the streets and restaurants almost to ourselves. Old walls, moats, a huge almost empty church, a high-walled keep, great food… I could go on and on.

Limoux was also a relaxing change of pace from our everyday life. I didn’t turn on my phone once to work and we may have brought three cases of wine and Blanquette (similar to Champagne) home with us. Brodie stayed with a house/puppy sitter while we were gallivanting about and when we got home he and my cute wife immediately snuggled down and took a nap. Below are a few of my pictures and here is the link to her website and more pictures from the trip.

Weekend

February 10, 2014 / Matt Talley / Leave a comment

We had a pretty good weekend:

The house is coming together and I got a couple of small projects done. I hung a hand-tool only built pull-up bar outside to facilitate working out at home. With help from Stamps-With-Foot, I hung what used to be an old rickety wooden ladder in the living room. I sanded, stained, and varnished it into what is now a sweet bookshelf. We also picked up a couple of chairs, a wooden chest, and a large stone BBQ grill from a couple that are moving from France to Spain soon. The grill is moulded concrete and stone, came in 6 pieces, and weights close to 350 pounds. It super sucked getting it moved into place!

Part of Saturday was spent trying to update and setup my new work computer. There was some sort of sync error and all my previous back-ups are gone from the work server so I am starting with nothing. It is somewhat depressing and a metric shit-ton of work! At one point I had to take a break and we took Brodie for a long, muddy walk on a nearby trail. He was all in until it started raining and sleeting sideways on our way backup the house. He WANTS to be a giant farm dog right up until the reality of it smacks him in the face. Then, he wants to go home and snuggle under a blanket…

Saturday night was spent out in Toulouse. We had a Vietnamese dinner with 10+ people from an English speaking group. It was really nice to get out of the house and not think about my computer woes.

We went for a drive in the country Sunday, stopped by a craft market so that Stamps-With-Foot could peruse fabric for quilt pieces. After the crafty thing, we ate very long lunch in a tiny village restaurant 40 minutes north of Toulouse. We were seated at a table with a very sweet French couple who were very happy to talk to us, let my sweet/adorable wife try her new French vocabulary, and the food was Excellent! Brodie went and was perfectly mannered – he sat under the table the whole time while his mommy slipped him slivers duck breast.

Sunday night was filled with more work on my computer and some dirty words and wishes of bodily injury for the person that jacked my other computer.

Our dog is better traveled than some of the people we know

November 11, 2013 / Matt Talley / Leave a comment

Brodie took his first flight this week – a training flight for the Seattle to Toulouse journey that is coming up. Stamps-With-Foot has made the proper arrangements for him to fly in the cabin with us and we wanted to both see how he would do and practice dealing with his needs as well. She packed his bag the night before and included snacks, his sock-monkey bed, sweaters, etc. He looked suspiciously at the luggage tag with his picture on it more than once.

On the day of the flight, he did better than us in the taxi on the way to the airport – I wonder if they teach drivers in Seattle Taxi school the proper break/gas/break/gas/break stomp technique or if you have to take a pre-test for making passengers car sick before you can qualify for a hack license. One of life’s little mysteries….

Brodie did great at the security checkpoint and was fine right up until we went into the jet-bridge: he decided it was then time to crawl into his mommy’s lap and then into the sweater with her – she had to carry him to our seats. Both the flight attendants and the passengers around us liked the shit out of him! Everyone was all smiles, like the ones the ladies in my office get when someone brings in a new baby.

He was a little nervous during take-off, but settled down into the monkey bed and took a nap.. The drugs from the vet probably helped with that. He napped most of the way and a had a little snack of airline cheese and salami – airline food for dinner. Brodie really didn’t like the landing! We came in a little fast and there were some bumps; he was not amused.

Brodie did great in the city, down at the wharf, in City Lights Books, at lunch he sat quietly under the table, and was even OK in Chinatown, but we had to pick him up a few times because of the crowds. All and all it was a successful trial run and we learned not to get him high too soon, to plan airport potty breaks and to get a luggage cart (no matter how much it goes against my grain) as trying to manage a roller bag, a shoulder bag, and a puppy on a leash is somewhat nerve wracking.

Update 12/5/13:

Brodie has now been to Amsterdam and has flown into France to become an official French resident. For Christmas, he is going to Germany. He needs his own travel blog, but it would mostly feature places he napped, food that was handed to him under the table, and good spots to pee on.

Camping in the Plague-free 14th Century

September 3, 2013 / Matt Talley / Leave a comment

Stamps-With-Foot and I spent part of the recent holiday weekend camping in a south-western Washington hay field pretending with a wink and a smile that it was 1340.

We have some friends that are big into the SCA and asked us to come along. At the mention of playing dress up, my wife was all in. I spent most of my time cooking and washing dishes and I made it over to Merchant’s Row for a few purchases. I got way too involved in construction techniques of the different tents and campers (kind of want my own Gypsy Vardo) and camping accouterments and MAY have made a pest of myself at one booth deciphering the geometry of the tent fly. There are times when I am too nerdy for my own good.

Anyway, we had a nice time away from a house full of boxes and projects. It was great to see our friends and it made my wife happy to get to dress me up in pretend pleasant clothes.

Road Trip from SoCal to Vegas

August 14, 2013 / Matt Talley / Leave a comment

Laurel and I took a trip this spring to Orange County, CA, visited some of our old haunts, ate our favorite California-only foods, hung out with some of the people we love there, and then drove across the desert to Las Vegas so I could attend a work related trade show – the following below are mostly her pictures.

Some Big News…

May 1, 2013 / Matt Talley / Leave a comment

So… My J-O-B has made us an offer that is very hard to refuse: a two year stint in the south of France and they will fly us home 3 times a year. We get to keep our house and I get to come back to my job in Seattle when that period ends. THE SOUTH OF FRANCE!! Warm weather, amazing wine, spectacular cheese, lavender, honey, the French vacation plan. We would be living outside of Toulouse – the third largest city in France. It sits at the foot of the Pyrenees Mountains, is an hour from the coast, has one of the 10 best Saturday markets in Europe (so says the interwebs), and has more sunshine in 6 weeks of summer than Seattle has all year. We are so freaking doing this!

There is some red tape that we have to cut through, namely a work permit. Since around 27% of the French population under 30 is out of work, getting a permit right now, even in the aerospace field, is tres difficile. Fingers crossed. If this happens, then The Nana will move into La Maison du Talley, pay the utilities, and keep the zombie horde away. Visualize a sweet grandmother rocking away on the front porch with a shotgun across her lap. Add a Marlboro hanging from the corner of her mouth and you will have an accurate picture of The Nana.

I will miss my shop and my yard for those two years, but I will plug the hole in my heart with Cote du Rhone, Comte, a day trip or 6 to the Mediterranean coast, weekends in Paris/Rome, sunshine, and a yearly vacation to Morocco. I will be taking a chest of hand tools and am planning on making some small detailed pieces while there. I also plan on scouring the flea markets over that two year period for planes, chisels, and joinery tools.

Stamps-With-Foot is not concerned about logistics or housing or much of anything other than “How is Brodie going to handle that long flight?!” She feels that we will be taking Brodie back to ancestral homeland and has spent some amount of time talking to the dog about this possibility – trying to get him psyched about the proposition…

12th Night in Portland – 2013

March 6, 2013 / Matt Talley / Leave a comment

A few weeks ago we drove down to Portland so that I could to do some off-site work for my J-O-B and took an extra day (on or dime) to both visit friends and attend an evening of the SCA’s 12th Night celebration – Being married to a trained costume designer means that one goes to these sorts of evenings. Our friends have closets (yes, I meant to be plural – as in 4 closets) filled with period costumes and accessories. My wife dressed me in a couple of different outfits until she was certain that I looked the part and then I went and waited downstairs for a couple of hours while the ladies prepped and primped like a good little puppy.

I agreed to this foray for three reasons:

Happy wife, happy life…
There was booze promised to me.
There was to be a “huge” vendor area where all sorts of cool stuff like swords, and bows, and armor, and axes and like items would be sold and traded.

Now, the mention/rumor of armor and swords takes be back to being a 9-year old at my very first Renaissance Faire (the REAL Penn and Teller performed that year). I wanted a “real” sword and a chain mail hood so bad that I would have licked the bottom of a Port-a-John seat for them at the time. My son is now enamored with the same period of history, I live vicariously through him and thought that he would get a real kick out of the pictures of armor and swords

I was a little disappointed: no swords, one real armor dealer and sales area was lined with stalls that catered to the ladies fabric, buttons, capes, cloaks, furry hats, jewelry, etc…), but I did end up getting a few good pictures to send to The Ruminator and we ended up watching the fencing melee/tournament. Helmets, steel swords, shields, daggers, very cool. He would have been all in!

The rest of the event was good and the detail of some of the costumes was amazing. Some of those folks put months and months of work hand sewing outfits just for that one night. Our evening ended with a game of Cards Against Humanity – I won – and we stumbled home just after 1:00AM.

London Cycling

January 23, 2012 / Matt Talley / Leave a comment

Many a fine two-wheeled mistress have I, yet I am burdened with an oft wandering eye… Last week in London I spent way too muck time ogling bicycles. Locked up outside a store on the sidewalk, hung in shop windows, rolling down the street… of all the cycles that caught my eye, the Bramptons that scurried about were the most quintessentially English. I don’t think that I have ever seen a folding bike locked up here in the US, but it was common place in london, though that might be due to the killer bike racks…

Glamping

October 4, 2011 / Matt Talley / 1 Comment

On a recent weekend, Stamps-With-foot and I met some friends at a campsite on the slopes of Mt. Rainer, situated next to a clear, cool, rushing river. It was a welcome vacation from my iPhone, computer, the J-O-B, projects at home and was an adventure is truly luxurious camping: glamping. We had soft warm double beds, million dollar views, canvas recliners, teak side tables, flowers in vases, steak for dinner, champagne both nights, a hardwood fueled fire, fresh pastries, good wine, table cloths, linen napkins, and a curtained canopied dining room. There were even antique Japanese pearls presented and worn (thanks for upping the b-day present giving bar Dave… you dick). The only thing that separated it from a Victorian safari was the absence of white jacketed & gloved natives and the whole killing of endangered species thing.

All we brought to this gathering was a family sized tent, an air mattress, a set of cast iron Dutch ovens & griddle, some yummy food, good booze, and very sharp kitchen knives. Our Portland friends added all the rest of the good stuff. My normal camping experience often requires a nasty 10+ mile uphill hike (both ways), carrying all my junk (with most of the wife’s as well) & 25+ pounds of climbing gear. Evenings and EARLY mornings are often spent hovering over a tiny stove to warm up some dehydrated crap-surprise, sleeping in a tiny tent, on a thin short blow-up pad, pumping my own water, and waking up to instant coffee. It might be age talking, but I think that I might prefer the linen napkin approach. I am now plotting my own glamping plush set up. Next time we all go camping together, it is going to look like a Moroccan Pasha has come over for a weekend – walled tents, plush pillows, curtains, chests, and feasting…

I feel the need to mention that the next time I see Dave I am going to hit him square in the taint for upping the ante with the amazing pearls… Stamps-With-Foot is now expecting antique Japanese pearls, wrestled from the jaws of a giant clam by a tiny woman diver who held her breath for like 15 minutes and fought, almost to the death, for the prize… Yep, SMACK!! right in the baby-maker for this one David. I hope your wife treated you well for the thought and originality of your beautiful gift, as you will soon look back on those halcyon nights of pleasure with non-functioning fondness.

Weekend in Portland

April 25, 2011 / Matt Talley / Leave a comment

Stamps-With-Foot and I went down to Portland for Easter weekend… as if we had all the freetime in the world – no projects looming over us – and a pot of money. We have some dear friends there that have just had a baby and we went down to meet him and hang out with them. Holy Pork Chop on a Stick!! The weather was AWESOME!! I am talking 65 degrees, blue skies, sunshine – the works. Saturday found us in a green city park, sitting under a tree, having a picnic, and swigging mimosas! It was a really laid back day and just what the doctor ordered. We spent Easter Sunday with an old family friend who happens to be Jewish – I always imagined the Easter bunny as having Hasidic roots… After a lazy morning, yummy coffee, and a terriffic breakfast, we drove into downtown and went to the Portland Chinese Garden. Our friend is on the Board of Directors there and we got in for free. Although the rain came back, we had a phenomal time walking the paths, finding nooks and alternate views. There was a late lunch at the tea house and the ladies partook of sake and plum wine.