A sort of Vacation to Seattle

May 11, 2014 / Matt Talley / Leave a comment

As part of my work contract with my J-O-B, we are flown back to the States twice a year. One of those trips has to be coupled with work travel, but overall not a bad deal. Stamps-With-Foot and I flew in to Seattle last week and stayed with my mom at our/her place. This was our first time back “home” since our move and my mom has transformed our eclectically decorated (books everywhere, Moroccan bits, craftsman furniture, mid-century couches…) home and turned it into your grandmother’s place: ceramic chickens, recliners for TV watching, lace doilies, a tin of cookies ripe for raiding, special soap in the bathroom that is meant just for looks…

We stayed in the basement and by our second day we had trashed it with clothes and books and other stuff to the point that it looked like a staged teenager’s room in a TV sitcom. I felt like I was in high school: mom cooked, did my laundry, made sure I got up on time every morning, offered to pack me a lunch, I played a little music, watched a few movies when I should have been sleeping, tossed clothes about… The only exceptions were the lack of posters on the walls and that I had permission for the pretty girl to share my bed and I didn’t have to sneak her in the basement window. 🙂

I ended up working for 5 days of the 8 day trip, but I got a good bit of other stuff done this week:

Sorted 3 months of mail – we get a LOT on junk mail
Picked up backyard and garden a little bit – long winter
Went to a couple of our favorite restaurants
Made 3 trips to Woodcraft for ~~toys~~ tools to take back to France
Coffee at C&P 🙂
Cut and edged yard
Fixed a few things
Hung out with my mom
Had great breakfast at Easy Street
Moved a room full of boxes into the basement
Painted a mirror frame for my mom
Ate 2 dozen cookies – true story
Snagged treasure at Goodwill: baseball bats, rolling pins, sweatshirts…
Ridded the yard of filthy, dirty, evil dandelions
Treated the yard for moss
Accidentally poisoned my mom’s cat with Moss Out
Spent evening in veterinary ER and dropped $250
Cat all better now
Turned compost pile
Paid some bills
Set up a Skype account for my mom and showed her how to use it
Got a sweet new pair of running shoes
Arranged for professional lawn care – warned them about the cat

Perks of living in France

April 23, 2014 / Matt Talley / Leave a comment

If you happen to follow Stamps-With-Foot or me on Tumblr/Facebook/Instagram it looks a lot like our life here in France is filled with wine, coffee, cheese, baguettes and croissants. There is a good bit of that, but there is also a LOT of time spent at my J-O-B; no 7 hour french work day and 2-hour lunches for me. No berets have been purchased, I am not wearing a scarf, no-one is smoking Gauloises, and neither of us has perfected the “french shrug”

Regardless, we do like to share the shots of the fantastically good and cheap stuff to drink and eat here. More pictures of the same will follow for the next two years or so 🙂

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 Update – 4/14/14

April 15, 2014 / Matt Talley / Leave a comment

Really good weekend with just a couple of bumps…

Out late Friday night in Toulouse
Slept in Saturday morning
Stamps-With-Foot made yummy breakfast – great croissants!
Surfed the Interwebs and lost an hour or two to Pinterest
Worked on a dining table bench for about an hour
Used smoothing plane and made tissue paper-thin shavings 🙂
Drove to Toulouse for 1st outdoor beekeeping class – waking up the hives from the Winter
Warm sunshine, blue skies, perfect weather!
Hives were in good condition and got to split one hive that was doing really well – already completely filled the hive box with pollen and honey.
Stopped by Lumber store on way home to buy some dust masks.
I can’t be trusted in Lumber/Hardware stores…
Bought 60 Euros worth of lumber, glue and screws
Forgot dust masks…
Came home to cuddle wife
Wife accidentally kneed me in the baby-maker and ¼ of a second later, put weight on the same knee, smashing the boys…
Rolled around on the ground in pain for at least a full minute
Limped outside
Mowed lawn and turned the compost
Limped a little while doing so – boys still hurt.
Helped wife make steak fajitas
Was on guard for any errant knees…
Drank a glass of wine and snuggled while watching 6 episodes of the last season of HIMYM
More Pinterest and sleep
Slept till 10:00 and leisurely breakfast
Went into Village to market and found a very nice oak printer tray for 10 Euro.
Immediately bought it without haggling over the price
Spent an hour in shop patching a small section of bench where plane slipped while joining two boards.
Found where a cat had marked some lumber when garage door was open night before.
Said hateful things about cats.
Had lunch with a friend that is healing from a cracked collarbone
Came home and finished putting together the teak patio
Bought wrong oil for the patio furniture – Grrr…
Fixed one of the broken arms (from move) on the Adirondack chairs
Had coffee in the shade
Hung hammock and tested it out.
Place feels like home now!
Sweet wife made dinner and we ate for first time on our new patio table – first of many meals
Snuggled in hammock with wife and listened to birds, neighbors, bees, etc…

Very happy

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.

France – The first 30 days.

January 11, 2014 / Matt Talley / 1 Comment

Still Love France.
My French has gotten SO bad.
I did forget how slow things are to get done here.
You want a buy/lease a car? Three weeks-ish.
You want cable and internet? 1 month.
Want it to work? 1 more week and 14 phone calls
Love my J-O-B
No such thing as coffee to go… even if you get it in a tiny paper/plastic cup, there is no lid.
Really like the house here. The 16″ thick concrete walls and steel shutters give it a homey crypt-like feeling.
Miss our house in Seattle.
There are doctors who speak English, but their receptionists who book the appointments don’t…
You want groceries on Sunday? Nope, not going to happen
I also forgot how amazing the eggs and meet are.
Want to sit and have coffee and talk to my mom, miss that.
Bread goes with EVERYTHING! Awesome bread.
Having a really hard time finding a shop that sells wood lathes – only power tool I want/need here.
The weather here in winter is better than summer in Hamburg.
Miss my furniture. We have been “Camping” since Halloween and I am about 99.9999% done sitting on the floor to eat my dinner.
Want my tools like a junkie wants their cooking spoon.
Stamps-With-Foot is buying enough cheese to make the regional sale figures blip.
Our dog< Brodie, has fully integrated and will cop a squat in the middle of the street, sneering at anyone who dares to question his right to do so. He goes to restaurants with us like he is a little prince. The wife slips him duck breast, cote of Beaof, and aged cheese under the table. I had 2 glasses of $4 wine that we bought at the grocery store with dinner tonight. It was awesome. No, truly. Wish my kids were here. I miss Starbucks, but I have a Killer espresso machine in the kitchen. Can now watch Netflix and BBC One with country specific VPN accounts - sticking it to the man! Miss my bikes. Can't wait for them to arrive next week (insert giddy face) The designer dog food here is sold in breed specific bags - really. It is crap, but it is packaged well. I have lost a little weight because I am not eating crap and started running again. Very, very nice wooded trail near house - miles and miles long. Flying to Florida for work next week and am bringing home coffee beans, dry dog food, and Cajun Seasoning. Packed an extra duffle bag... Went for a drive in the country today and happened by a 16^th century chalet with turrets and a moat about an hour form the house.
The thought of Stamps-With-Foot driving in France scares the Hell out of me!
Life is damn fine on the whole.

Our Temporary House in Toulouse

December 22, 2013 / Matt Talley / Leave a comment

We have a house in a small, ancient (as in Roman) village outside of Toulouse. It is all ready and waiting for us. The only problem is that the house is completely empty. No stuff, no where. Our kitchen things and bed are being sent to us via an air shipment sometime in December and we will be able to move in as soon as that happens. In the meantime, we rented a small apartment in the heart of old Toulouse on a street that was laid out in 1164. Our place is full of hand-hewn timbers and exposed brick archways, and sits in the gate-house of a block of homes built between 1200-ish and 1840. There are two small court yards, two Victorian water-pumps near our door and in the brick causeway, and there are still iron rings in the brick once used for tying up horses. Very cool.

We are also walking distance from most of the inner-city sites and churches, and we have found a VERY yummy bakery just up the street. Stamp-With-Foot stops every few feet to take pictures and marvel. She loves Toulouse!

It has begun..

December 7, 2013 / Matt Talley / Leave a comment

My wife first words in French: “May I have a glass of red wine?”

My wife’s second phrase spoken in French the next day: “I would like a glass of the hot spiced wine.”

First declaration about our temp apartment in the heart of Toulouse: “HA! They have a wine opener!”

At lunch: “What!? I am in France, I can feed my puppy duck breast from the table if I want.”

There is a theme in there somewhere….

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.

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.