The Most Wonderful Time of the Year

I LOVE fall. I love back to school. I was always ready to get back to a new year in school. The weather turns crisp and warm, but the nights are cool enough to have fires and snuggle up in coats. Everyone starts to talk of holidays and the associated festivities. It just makes me soooo giddy. (Let's let leaves out of the equation for now, I am moving into a house with 6 oak trees. I despise oak trees).

One of the best parts about this time of year is that there is so much to do. Clayton Art Fair, Schlafly Art Fair, Balloon Glow, Balloon Race, Oktoberfests, lots of birthdays to celebrate over long dinners on patios, etc, etc. Yipeee!

On another note, I am 90% moved. Celeste is coming over tonight to continue the motivate me in the last of the little things and help clean up. It's amazing what you can get done when you are fighting jet lag.

Once I have all my pictures sorted and together, I will finally post them. It was a great vacation with lots of things to do, but at a leisurely pace for the most part. All I can say is charming, charming, charming. The low countries are just quaint. I got the posted picture off the Internet, but I took the same picture in Damme, Belgium.

Greetings from Europe

Not that I need to tell you all...but Europe rocks. We have been to Amsterdam, Brussels, and Bruges. Tonight we are back in the 'dam and are heading to Delft, the Hague, Haarlem, and Edam over the next couple of days. Bruges is definitely one of the most charming and quaint cities I have ever seen. We stayed at an amazing b&b. We are now staying in another b&b at the 'dam. This is the way to go. Wonderful homes, lovely breakfasts and they are soooo clean. I almost thought about not using my sleeping bag (but I didn't). I can't speak of U.S. b&b's, but this is definitely the way to travel in Europe.
I would post pictures, but that is a lot of work that I just can't handle right now (converters, adapters, camera's, ipods, and this teeny tiny computer that my parents lent us that is great, but no memory to hold a pic). Besides the fact that I am old and my tech skills are embarassing. I will post when I get home to convince you all to head to the Low Countries.
Interesting things about Europe: capri's and fanny packs are very cool for men/teenage boys. I have seen a lot of mullets (we have pictures). These people have cat-like reflexes to bike, walk and drive here, I am in awe. I have found my food soulmate in Belgium: beer, waffles, and mussels.
I am so sad to come home on Saturday.

Nothing

Nothing to post. Life is packing the house, packing the suitcase, unpacking at Chuck's. Do I have the converter? Do we have tickets for ___? Where is the dutch phrase book? (in a box in storage). Nothing but small details that annoy you in your own life, so I am not going to bore you anymore with them.
See you on the 5th.

SF & BF

I have one small piece of advice: never go to a good St. Louis restaurant after you have just gotten back from food heaven.

San Fran was great. As I have eluded, the food was phenomenal. Too many fish options to count, salads, salads, salads, and hardly a fried option in the bunch. It was refreshing, not to have to search for decent food. Saturday we went sailing in the bay, which rocked. Definitely an experience to remember. The rest of the time, Sarah and I just walked around. I broke in the new shoes for Europe (see photo...and they are environmentally sound). The conference was fab. I learned lots and lots that I won't bore you with except for a 2 things. One is a video from World Wildlife Federation about changing the way you think: http://www.worldwildlife.org/ted/latteflash.html

The water footprint site (did you know it takes 50 gallons of water to make a latte?!): http://www.waterfootprint.org/?page=files/home

This leads me to last night. I returned from SF on Wednesday night and had Bodily Fluids last night. We went to Jimmy's. Yes, Jimmy's, one of my top 10 restaurants. This is why my new rule is in effect. I felt like Monica in the wedding dress episode (on Friends). She had experienced the ultimate and now nothing could compare. I had a very good dinner. Delish, the caprese salad was tasty, but none of the fish on the menu was sustainable. I found myseld continuously comparing the experience to SF. It was unfair to me and Jimmy's. It was great conversation though. The last few dinners in SF were business small talk so I welcomed conversations among friends again. BF Becky showed up and I avoided her as much as possible. At the end of the dinner I did hear the words "poop," "placenta," and "my breast milk smelled like gin," come out of her mouth. Ugh, seriously, she has issues with personal boundaries. Doesn't she EVER stop?! We will see next month.

A Moment of Panic

I am having a moment and I need to release. HOW THE $%&@@ am I going to do this?! I admit it, I am not a multi-tasker. I will lie through my teeth in an interview because I know I am not. Give me a task, let me complete it in its entirety and then I will move on to the next. This is how I function and I come from a LONG line of hard-headed stubborn schedulers.

This weekend was pretty good. I have 2 rooms moved, My very very very generous brother Jeremy offered his spare garage (you have those when you live on a farm in the middle of Ferguson) for me to store things. My green room and spare bedroom are packed up and gone. There are some things I still need to clean out in there and the closets are currently in use, but the 12 boxes of books are gone along with some furniture. Now I am at a kind of a stand still. I don't want to live in a house for a month with the bare essentials and echo's, so I don't know what else to pack. Chuck had the obvious idea that I missed and told me to get all of my needed stuff over to his house and then move the rest of the house. OK, I admit that works. Now I am at the issue of vacation. Yes, Anna is stressing about going away for pleasure (see where I fail at the multi-tasking?!). On Friday I leave for San Francisco. I am so excited about going and can't wait to visit one of my favorite cities and trust me, I will have a good time. It just puts off packing and moving for 6 days. After I get home from SF, I am home for 6 days and leave again. Besides having plans the majority of those nights, packing still wouldn't get done because I can't move in to Chuck's AND try to pack for a 10 day vacation.

That puts me to September 5th. Let's face it, I am not going to pack up my house immediately when I get home. I am gone 2 days that week for work. Hopefully, I will be able to do it the weekend of the 12th juggling the other things going on (it's United Way campaign time and there are some volunteer events, many I am missing for vacation, so I can't miss these too). My goal is to be completely out of the house by September 20th. That leaves me with 3 whole days with nothing planned at this point. I realize there are days after work, but that's another 3 days (of things I don't have already scheduled). It will get done. It's amazing how many stolen moments you can find when you need them.

So that leads to the next panic...what do I need right now? What do I need in 6 months? I have to move into a full house that needs to sell. I have to immediately tuck everything away and choose carefully what I do bring so that I don't clutter the house. You may say pack everything into storage until you realize that you are moving in to a boy's house and are expected to host Christmas this year. Then you realize you are hosting Christmas without a back-up house to detox in. What am I doing? I am way to much of an introvert to ever live with people. Holy crap.

OK, update on the panic. Tuesday, Karla and I had to get the occupancy permit, which took seconds to complete (I thought: government agency=hours of waiting). I got home on Tuesday with a few hours to "pack." It was more of an excercise in making my house more of a disaster, but some things were accomplished. Then last night, plans fell through so after the United Way meeting, I went over to Chuck's and we unpack some of my boxes I brought over. I am not as busy as I think I am. This will work out. Chuck isn't going to San Fran with me anymore so he gets to stay home all weekend and work on some things done. Whew. It's still going to be tight, but managable. Stay tuned for the next panic attack.

Well, it's official

So I am moving. I have rented my house. I have to be out by October 1st. There are a few repairs to be done and some paint to be sloshed, but I am out. It's bittersweet, but good. This is what I want, but I will say I am a little sad to move my house that has been my fortress for the last seven years. Through thick and thin, good times and bad, she has been good to me, but let's face it, it's a house. It's time for someone else to love this house.

So here is the plan. I am moving in with Chuck (yes, right next to the devil house). We will put his house up for sale and then find a place together (most likely in the city).

That's the plan. I am excited to move. I am excited that there is only one house to sell at the present moment. This is the first step of many, many, I will keep you all updated!

Bodily Fluid Dinner Club: Summer 09

I am on a roll this week, lots to say or the lack of TV is making me think more...
Last week was Bodily Fluid Dinner Club and I realize I am behind in the Bodily Fluid news. For June, we went to the new Chuy's. It is right by SLU now and I am pleased to say, it's pretty good. I don't usually like Mexican food. Why go out and spend money on bland meat, cheese and rice when I can stay home and spice it up myself?! Then a typical Mexican menu list 23 dishes that are essentially the same thing in a different order, but yet very overwhelming to me, so I tend to avoid Mexican. At Chuy's I got a salad that was a little more texmex (which I love). It was good. It was a small group for June and very limited fluid talk. It was mainly talk about summer plans and the heat (that's when we were having the obnoxious heat wave). The restaurant was nice, the bar and restaurant area were one open room and unfortunately, there was a happy hour going on so it was REALLY loud. Our waitress had also happened to be very very hoarse, which made it interesting because she didn't really act like it was a problem that she had no voice and there was a constant boom of voices coming from the bar. Every time she came around we just nodded and said yes. We were very lucky we didn't end up with more drinks or dessert or an agreement to invade Mexico. We had no idea what she was saying. The happy hour was for single gay men, so it was full a very well-groomed, well-dressed men that smelled wonderful as we walked through them when we left. It was nice eye candy for the night. It was an interesting and amusing night with a small comedy of coincidences.
For July, the plan was to hit Drunken Fish for a light dinner and then over to the Cupcakery for dessert. I loved this idea because 1) we are all women and have a tendency to the sweets, and 2) we have quite a few members that are either pregnant or nursing. Great, they get to really indulge this time since we sit around guzzling cocktails in front of them all the time.
I strategically placed myself away from Bodily Fluid Becky. I have pinpointed her as the leader of the fluid conversations, so I wanted to stay away from her just for my own enjoyment. We had a great dinner, talked about vacations, summer camps, and choking (which isn't a fluid; it's an emergency, so I was interested). A couple of the girls actually had the Heimlich performed on them. I was fascinated. I was never experienced or witnessed the Heimlich (and I hope I can always can say that) so it was interesting to hear. After dinner, we walked over to the Cupcakery. As we walked up, we noticed people mopping. It had closed 15 minutes earlier! Jamie claimed she had checked the time and it closed at 10pm (but that's the weekend time). Luckily, we were in the Central West End and more calories are just around the corner. We decided to walk over to Bissingers. I had never been there so I was happy to get another place marked off my list. Wow. It was very cool inside, a modern and sleek coffeehouse where the predominant ingredient was chocolate! Everyone's dessert looked heavenly, but I have to say, I made the best choice: a dark chocolate torte with blackberry sauce. It was decadent and rich and I was in love. Sorry, Cupcakery, but I was glad you were closed.
Next month, we are heading to Jimmy's. If I can stay away from BF Becky, I think it will be the best one yet (although it will be tough competition against Bissinger's).