Insider

Fending off a cold, and still recovering from week after week of travel, I’m looking forward immensely to a weekend of chicken soup on the couch as rain pitter-patters on my apartment’s windows.

It doesn’t take much to make me happy.

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Recap

How was the trip? Well, long.

But also, fortunately, good. Despite the stress of hosting twenty-something people for Thanksgiving, of introducing Jess to my parents and then having them all spend nearly a week together, of generally trying to align all the disparate spheres of my life, everything went about as smoothly as I could have probably hoped.

Still, as I often feel after time away, I think I need a second vacation just to recover from the first.

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Thanksgiving

“We can only be said to be alive in those moments when our hearts are conscious of our treasures.”
– Thornton Wilder

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Meet the Parents

Far and away, Thanksgiving is the most important day of the year. Or so it would seem from the weight placed upon the holiday by my mother. Skip heading home to California for nearly any other event, and she won’t bat an eye. But my brother or I miss Thanksgiving dinner? That’s a hanging offense.

So, per usual, I’m off to San Francisco to eat turkey. This year, however, I’m dragging Jess in tow. Because while I’ve met her parents a few times (due to their proximity in nearer Boston), she’s yet to meet mine.

I’ve gone back and forth between thinking that this week is a wonderful or a terrible time for that first meet-up, unsure whether the collective preparatory push of cooking and cleaning and table-setting will give us something to focus on other than the inherent weird awkwardness, or simply leave everyone even further on stressed-out edge, compounding the mess of it all.

Whichever it is, however, we land in SFO in about an hour; it seems I’ll soon find out.

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Eat This

As much as France is regarded the culinary capital of the world, and as much as I’d consider myself a foodie, I must admit I’m not a huge fan of French food. At Italian restaurants, I often find I’d happily eat anything on the menu. At French, I often find there’s hardly anything on the menu I’d happily eat.

The bottoming out of this occurred at a cute little brasserie overlooking the Seine, where Jess pointed out something being eaten at the next table over, and I deduced from side-dishes that it was likely the Jarret de Porc.

Fortunately, the expression of the waiter upon my ordering led to a sign-language conversation in which I deduced that I was actually on the verge of eating pig knuckles. And though Jess was people-watching, rather than observing that silent exchange, which led to a Laurel and Hardy routine of her explaining in French that I wanted the Jarret, and me explaining to her that no, I most certainly did not, I eventually avoided that cartilaginous fate in favor of something far more tame.

On one evening, however, on a friend’s strong recommendations, we headed over to Le Reminet, a New French bistro on the Left Bank. And while one or two menu items were, indeed, terrifying, the vast majority looked exactly like something I’d actually want.

And when they arrived, want them I did. The food was excellent – amongst the better meals I’ve had in my life – and we left after countless courses stuffed to the point that we could barely even walk.

Maybe the Frogs are on to something after all.

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Touche

“Wherever there’s injustice, oppression, and suffering, America will show up six months late and bomb the country next to where it’s happening.”
– P.J. O’Rourke, Peace Kills: America’s Fun New Imperialism

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Je Ne Comprends Pas

Any time I’m outside of the US, I inevitably worry that I look like an American. Sure, on balance, I love this country. But so do fat, middle-aged men on bus tours, who roam the streets of Florence or Barcelona in sweatpants, white sneakers, and “God Bless Kansas!” t-shirts. And, as a result, nearly everyone in the rest of the world looks down upon my fellow countrymen enough to provide us noticeably worse service in their cabs, hotels, shops and restaurants.

So, it was some small relief that Jess and I, while in Paris, were able to more or less blend. At least until midway into any given conversation, which inevitably went like this:

Clerk: Payerez-vous par l’argent comptant ou la carte de credit?

Me: Oui.

Clerk: [Confused pause] Payerez-vous par l’argent comptant ou la carte de credit?

Me: [Blank smile]

Clerk: Je suis desole?

Me: [More blank smile]

Clerk: Ah. [Raised, disdainful eyebrow] You are not French.

Which, as Jess pointed out, likely meant that through the (often rather lengthy) first, one-sided half of conversations, people were assuming we were French, but simply deaf or retarded.

Interestingly, they still liked us better at that point than when they deduced we spoke English.

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Over and Out

On the Metro North right now, headed up to Connecticut to deliver the aforementioned Extreme Entrepreneur Tour keynote. As I pulled the slides together mainly last night, the whole thing admittedly lacks the polish I might have hoped for. But, as readers of this site have doubtless already deduced, if I can do anything, it’s talk out of my ass for long, relatively articulate stretches even when I have pretty much nothing to say. Fingers crossed.

Then, more excitingly, I head back to NYC, retrieve Jess, and subway out to JFK, to hop on a flight to Charles de Gaulle. I haven’t been to Paris for several years, and I hear the croissant calling my name.

And while I’ll (unusually) be leaving the laptop behind, I’ll still be bowing to the demands of Cyan’s current surprisingly ongoing success, and carting along my BlackBerry Pearl. If nothing else, it should give me something to do as I wait outside the dressing rooms in Bon Marche.

Flickr users, keep your eyes peeled; if the technology cooperates, I’ll be photoblogging the (mis)adventures while they’re still underway.

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