Planes, Trains and Cranes

Road Trip! This time the Parisis take Paris. Schedule of Fun:
12:30 am (friday night) finish packing, stress out for keeping it under 10 k, last minute jones for dlisted.com and finally go to bed
3:30 am wake up
4:20 am make sure everything is locked up and tight because of scaffolding surrounding house
4:30 am get into CAR and leave
5:00 am look for one very hidden airport parking lot Park and Fly (Max researched, got 'internet discount' had to be that specific parking lot)
5:40 am arrive in front of ryan air
5:45 wait for airplane, cant believe sophia is still awake
5:50 'line-up' for boarding...cowherding style.
6:10 everyone bunches up tries to get in front/pass each other/us. apparently no one in italy has heard of SINGLE FILE!
ps ryanair has mega cheap flights and... you get what you pay for. you must have bags that weigh less than 10k and smaller than 50 x 40 x 20 cm. anything over you will have to check-in/pay for. thats 50 for the first 11 kilos. we had 3 people and 3 of these bags and a stroller...standing in line was stressful, but apparently foreshadowing our future).

6:15 finally aboard hooray! (so this would be PLANE)
6:30 take off (sophia finally sleeps some)
8:00 am land
8:10 am deboard, search for bathroom...stand in line
8:11 am search for bus ticket area, stand in line (at least we played it smart, we went outside where the line was shorter)

8:34 am BUS leaves
9:34 am bus arrives in Paris at Porte Maillot, search for METRO.
9:40 am find Metro, stand in line for tickets. 3 day pass is $25 euro or $1.60 per ride, kids under 3 free. Not knowing our future, we went for the pass...who knows could come in handy.
10:00 am Jump off the 1 and onto the 8, jump off,
10:20 am search for hotel (even brought the GPS), luckily it was close.
10:30 am find hotel, check in is not til 2. (the room isnt cleaned, but they told us to put our luggage inside anyways....ewww it was stinky and yuck and i had to pee! luckily had the antibacterial hand foam unholstered and ready to go!). (BTW they are reconstructing the outside of the hotel...help!)
10:50 seach for some where to eat...apparently hardly anywhere will let you sit and eat something
11:10 am make big giant circle our our hotel and eventually find somewhere to eat. have omelet with cheese and ham...mmm, think it must have had a ton of butter, yum!
12:30 head back to hotel to see if hotel room is ready, hooray it is!!! but no towels or tp. dang. we try to sleep. sleeping arrangements are 1 double bed, one single...of course sophia ends up sleeping in the double and then so do i, so lucky max got the single all to himself. too bad he didnt fit. but of course that didnt seem to matter, he slept soundly. i dont think i slept more than 10 minutes, as soon as i put my head down, there was hammering, some french girls running up and down the stairs and shouting at each other, and the radiator turned WAY to high. Naturally I opened the window and the hammering gets louder and paint fumes get stronger and now i can hear the babies on the street crying, the motorcycle repair shop across the street trying out engines. fword fword fword fword! close window, turn down radiator, reconcile with the fact that im not gonna sleep.
4:20 ish they're here!!! CRANES
5:00 ish off to explore the area, find park, kids play.

So much to do, So little time

and yet i find myself wasting my life doing lame internet things. thanks to LAB i am totally addicted to dlisted.com, i cant pull myself away from it. it is a blog of a horrible, self induldged, surly gay man who talks smack about any and every celeb and i find it shishi-in-my-pants funny. when i am not FB'ing or Dlisting, i find other ways to not approach reality. oh, the hours of fun one can have with yearbook yourself:

This is Max if he graduated the year I was born.

1976

...if Max went to JLHS and graduated the same year as me,
let's just say I'm pretty sure we wouldnt have dated.

...and just for giggles, this is max as a girl in 1974, sort of like a lori partridge who forgot to shave.

Mommy, Daddy, Pia and Tyler

Latest and greatest in Pia's art gallery:
In order from tallest to shortest:

Daddy, Mommy, Tyler and Pia (i dont know who that pea-head belongs to).

ready, set, raclette

broke out the raclette set for the first time this year. leo and francesco came over for dinner and chit chat and it was lots of fun.

Merenda In English Please

Okay with a title like that, what would you expect? By the way merenda means snack. i thought it was going to be a fun social for kids with some english intermingled. Let me just say, set your target low and you will never be disappointed. i sort of had the idea that maybe they would be selling english lessons, but since it was snack and english, i also thought there would be some interaction having to do with the snack. sophia could have gone there to interact with the kids and teacher. NOT. It was chaotic, there were lessons with flash cards and boring songs downloaded onto a computer that had bad speakers and low volume.lf i could hardly keep my eyes opened, in fact the teacher looked bored herself. during the lesson, the kids were starving and kept asking for snack and the teacher said after the lesson was over (it started at 5 and didnt end til after 6). and to top it off, on the way home (just hundreds of feet from our house) sophia vomited all overherself. it leaked down the carseat and all over our friend's car! ugh! (and no i didnt take a foto of it, that would be waaaay OTT!) She didnt have a fever or vomit again so i think it was something she ate. i totally owe my friend bea one now!!! am i still riding the bad kharma of the train ride in stuttgard??

Chloe Sevigny and David Duchovny

Maria (Laura's friend when she worked at the UN) , Laura and I cheer drinks that are larger than life!

Doesn't Maria look a bit like a pretty Chloe Sevigny?


After Laura stole chips from this cute guy's table, she realized that he was alone, so of course she invites him over to sit with us. Doesnt he look like David Duchovny?

Ahhhhhhhhhh! Why the heck did we take a picture with our mouths opened? Are we catching flies?

A-Laura, she's here!

My friend Laura Bagnette from high school and i reconnected this summer after the reunion. I had heard through the grapevine she lived in europe and happily for me, she confirmed it - France. Max had to go get Sophia from school and so I went to pick Laura up from the airport - scary (and far!). We had dinner with our other single european friend, Greta.

We're having a great time. I've discovered she tells a story like a Billy path, you know that kid from Family Circus: it's long and winding, lots of diversions, takes forever, but she will eventually will get there and you will have lots of fun and laughs along the way.