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Teacher Delivery Man

Today just before noon, I was deep in thought at my computer — you know, conceptualizing and shit — when a voice behind me broke my reverie: “Excuse me, I’ve got a food delivery here.”

It’s not the first time that a delivery person has tried to transfer their wares to my cubicle instead of to the reception area. I sit next to the secondary entrance to the company space. The door displays a prominent sign saying “Our main entrance is across the hall,” yet maybe once a week, someone will stumble through the door, see me, and assume that I know what the heck to do with their catering order.

But rather than revert to my trademark huffiness, I smile as if I am sitting at the reception desk. Who said technical writers can’t have a helpful disposition? This particular man came bearing Bertucci’s pizza and some bags of salad and condiments, so I helped him transport everything across the office as we searched for the office manager.

The deliveryman spied a marketing collateral poster featuring kids amid various educational scenery. “Are you hiring teachers?” he asked. “I was a private school teacher for 12 years in Lincoln until last May.”

“No, we don’t hire teachers,” I said gently. I was a little surprised that this man was once a teacher, for I would have totally pegged him as a career pizza delivery man based on his scraggy facial hair and too-casual jeans, but I guess those are adaptive attributes. If I spent all day ferrying pizza in my car, I probably wouldn’t groom either.

“Oh, so you’re an education consultancy or something?” he said, a little shine of hope still lingering in his eager voice.

“No, we make software that teaches people how to read,” I said, a little distractedly, for I spied the office manager in an office and was signaling for her attention.

“So you replace teachers!” he muttered, and I was about to give a long spiel about how we don’t replace teachers, we support teachers and supplement existing reading curriculum, but the office manager appeared and whisked him and his pizzas away.

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By Meredith – January 12, 2010

Joining the Community Orchestra

Last week, Mr. P lugged his cello and I my viola to our first rehearsal with the local community orchestra. We had been talking about joining this orchestra for over a year, but it only came up at inopportune moments — during the summer hiatus, or right before a performance. The impetus for this timely decision to join after their holiday concert came because we were discussing how I’d amuse myself after Mr. P began his MBA classes on Monday and Tuesday nights.

“I should join that orchestra!” I said, only to discover that the rehearsals were on Wednesday nights, when Mr. P didn’t have class.

“I should join that orchestra with you!” Mr. P said, deciding that a weekly musical respite would have a therapeutic effect on his esprit while undergoing his soul-strangling business coursework.

In preparation for our first rehearsal, I dusted an actual cobweb off of my viola, which had not been seriously touched in over 14 years since my senior year in high school. I spent 20 minutes tuning the strings back to consonance, bought a new bow, dug out some old music, and spent a few tortured hours reminding myself of the notes and sounds. Mr. P, who played cello at a much higher level in high school (his mother was a music teacher) did even less than that. After all, this was a community orchestra that welcomed all string players without auditions. We were picturing some light Mozart pieces, with strong familiar melodies and relaxed bowing. We thought it would be cake.

The rehearsal started off well. The 6 or so other violas welcomed me and I found everyone to be pleasant, including my standmate, a kindly woman about my age. Us violas divvied up the sheet music, the conductor appeared and welcomed everyone, and then the orchestra began sight-reading the five pieces of music for the next concert.

You know that expression “It’s like riding a bike.” There are many things to which this saying can be validly applied. Swimming, for example, or kissing, or singing, or blowing bubblegum, or playing skeeball, or jumping rope, or eating with chopsticks. But on Wednesday night, I discovered that there is one thing that is absolutely nothing like riding a bike, and that is playing the viola.

It didn’t help that all five pieces of music are beyond the level of anything I ever played in high school, especially Bedřich Smetana’s The Moldau, in which the viola part consists of 16 minutes of scale-like sixteenth notes with few patterns and no melodies. “Goodness,” I said after the first run-through, and my standmate assented her agreement that this piece was pure murder despite having played admirably throughout. Me, I was completely lost for an entire page.

Some of this comes from musical disuse, but I’m convinced that even at the height of my youthful viola powers in high school, I could not play the Moldau. I’ve been practicing all weekend, and though I’m improving with the notes, I still can’t play it up to tempo.

Mr. P is finding the cello part as equally challenging, but he’s a little more relaxed about it. His standmate assured him that this is a very “forgiving” orchestra. I hope they are forgiving enough to accept a viola who only plays every other note.

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By Meredith – January 11, 2010

Alping in the New Year 2010, Part 3

So I talked about the lovely little French village of Montchavin where we go (click here for Part 1), and I talked about the skiing and other activities in which we participated (click here for Part 2). So there’s really only one thing left to talk about: The food!

Two years ago, while perusing t-shirts in Montchavin’s souvenir shop, I saw a t-shirt that glorified the primary three attributes of a skiing vacation in the Alps. It said Ski, sex, et tartiflette (no translation necessary, although tartiflette is a regional dish, a casserole-style conglomeration of the mainstays of French Alpine cooking: Potatoes, ham and cheese.)

“That’s the best t-shirt ever!” I screeched, and would have promptly bought it had the design not included a crude illustration of two stick figures engaged in vertical lovemaking. Of course, it wasn’t the sex bit that made the t-shirt so great. It was the tacit acknowledgment that, along with sports and leisure, food is an essential part of the skiing vacation. And because France is so tied to this notion of regional cuisine, there is not a single bit of, say, seafood to be found in Montchavin’s restaurants or markets. Even the most chic Parisians do not come to the mountains and expect haute cuisine. No, in the cold and rigorous Alps, even the most sophisticated palate craves little more than potatoes, ham, and cheese.

The majority of our dinners were with my in-laws, but the most memorable meal was in a restaurant with some friends. We ordered a raclette and were amused to be presented with an extremely antiquated contraption that used burning hot coals instead of electricity. Mr. P was tasked with scraping the melted raclette cheese onto a plate for each of us to spread onto our ham and potatoes. It’s a very slow, very involved meal that is totally focused on cheese.

Raclette has definitely usurped fondue as my favorite cheese-overload meal. I almost bought this place mat but decided a photo would suffice.

We had fondue, too… a regular cheese fondue, plus my first ever meat fondue. Meat fondue is grapeseed oil heated in the pot, with diners spearing raw meat to cook in the oil. My proclivity for rare beef served me well during the meat fondue, as I had much higher meat turnover than those who can’t tolerate a lick of pink in their steak.

Midweek, we went to Montchavin’s farmer’s market. The farmers lure prospective customers by distributing glasses of home-brew wine. Honestly, it was probably the nastiest wine I’ve ever drank in France, but we bought their sausage and cheese anyway.

On New Year’s Day, we had a la galette des rois. This is a cake with a trinket baked inside, and the person who finds the trinket is king for the day and gets to wear a paper crown not unlike the one at Burger King. It was the first piece of cake I’ve eaten in over 6 months, so I was in such sugar bliss that I scarcely cared when my brother-in-law came upon the trinket.

Traditionally, the trinkets are of a religious nature, but obviously we got a secular trinket.

So that concludes my culinary review of my trip. Also memorable but not pictured: the tartiflette on Christmas night; the slabs of braised ham on New Year’s; and the fancy restaurant meal in Geneva with some cousins, the night before our plane returned us, alas, back to the US.

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By Meredith – January 9, 2010

Alping in the New Year 2010, Part 2

Click here for Part 1. Click here for Part 3.

Four years ago, when Mr. Pinault first brought me to the French Alps for the winter holidays, I was a total snow sports novice. But only a total lame-o would spend a week at a ski resort without pursuing some snow-related endeavor, so, on that very first day, weary from jetlag and the stress of meeting my then-boyfriend’s family for the first time on Christmas Day, Mr. Pinault strapped me into a pair of Alpine skis and released me onto a slight snowy hill in back of the condos. It quickly became obvious that I lacked the requisite balance needed to stand unwavering in a pair of skis; in two minutes, I managed to fall about a dozen times, often with stunning velocity. It looked like my snow sport for that week might have to be sledding.

I decided that a more sensible route to gaining solvency atop of skis would be to start with XC skiing, which would effectively remove most of the pitfalls of downhill skiing (speed, steep slopes, my own spazzy fear) while enabling me to hone my rubbery sense of balance. And then, maybe, someday, I could use that bodily knowledge gleaned from those twiggy XC skis and transition to Alpine skiing.

And that time is nigh. During last March’s trip to Montchavin, I put on a pair of Alpine skis and found that I could not only stand, but maneuver quite comfortably, if not with the ideal amount of control that should govern a pair of downhill-pointed skis. And with this most recent ski trip, I got a solid 5 days of Alpine skiing to further develop the all-important technique of turning down a slope, rather than the straight, potentially lethal line of XC skiing.

Caution! Alpine Skier

And you know what? Alpine skiing is pretty freaking fun, a lot more fun that laboring on a XC track with burning arm muscles and constant motion. I can see why there are thousands of people on the Alpine trails, and less than a dozen on the XC trails.

The sun is hurting our eyes

I quickly figured out that alpine skiing is little more than controlled skidding down a mountain. And once you can control the skidding… hell, yeah, that’s a good time.

Cool Dude on the Slopes, with the Sun in His Eyes

Now that we’re back on the slopes, Mr. Pinault has dusted off his snowboard, which is inscribed with the word Rage (“Rage? You’re a 37-year old married IT professional in a part-time MBA program,” I pointed out. “And I’ve got a lot of rage,” Mr. Pinault sniffed.) Here’s something cool that I bet you didn’t know about my husband: Mr. Pinault was the first person ever to snowboard at Montchavin. Several people have reminisced to me about a teenaged Mr. Pinault and his wooden, primitive snowboard, with which he purported to slide down mountains while swaying from side-to-side. At the time, the cutting-edge French ski community was experimenting with an ill-fated contraception called the monoski, similar to the snowboard except the monoskier faces forward and carries poles. Mr. Pinault instantly grasped how much cooler, safer, and more pleasurable the snowboard was compared to the monoski, and became Montchavin’s original snowboarder more than 20 years ago. Says one witness, “We all thought he was crazy.”

Rage Against the Snow

Since Mr. Pinault’s simply insane snowboarding pants aren’t showcased in their full glory in the above picture, here’s another…

Pants

So we went downhill skiing 5 days. 3 other days were for XC. On one day, we XC-ed over 30 kilometers, a daunting distance that was the result of a totally unplanned diversion down a snow-covered road to the Olympic bobsled track, which was closed but still pretty awesome to see, if only for…

Le Bobsleigh!

Any excuse to present my butt to the camera

And one day, we didn’t ski at all. It was raining, warm, and foggy, so we simply took a walk down into the valley. We could have joined all the fanatics on the slopes, but the pleasure of skiing is heavily dependent on the conditions. Walking, on the other hand… my motto has always been “When life gives you rain, go for a walk in it.”

Walking by a stream of melting snow.

Cabbage in the garden

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By Meredith – January 7, 2010

Alping in the New Year 2010, Part 1

Click here for Part 2. Click here for Part 3.

I accrued such an immense number of stories and pictures while in the French Alps for the past two weeks that it would literally take another two weeks to compose a blog post to neatly sum everything up. So, over the next couple of days I will randomly chunk non-chronological prattle while trying to maintain some semblance of narrative continuity. That being said, let’s start off with some nonsequitur cheese porn!!
When we go to the French Alps, we go to a mountain village called Montchavin, where Mr. Pinault’s family has vacationed for more than 30 years. Montchavin is entirely dependant on tourism; most of the residences are second homes and/or rental property, and the businesses (bakery, markets, skiing shops, etc) are open seasonally and operated by people who live in the valley. The week between Christmas and New Years is a bustling time in Montchavin, and the tiny downtown hops nightly with games, activities, and complementary shots of alcohol (really.)

Evening in Montchavin

On New Year’s Eve, Montchavin plays host to the descente aux flambeaux — dozens of ski instructors descending the main slope while holding torches.

Descente aux Flambeaux

This year, no one wanted to go see the descente aux flambeaux with me, so I went alone. I get a kick out of it; there’s something primal about the way the skiers roar down the hill, brandishing fire like heroes returning from a conquest.

Descente aux Flambeaux

A large crowd awaits at the bottom, cheering in eager anticipation of their arrival, for afterward, there are more free shots of alcohol.

Descente aux Flambeaux (Beverage Tent)

This year, Montchavin actually had fireworks on New Year’s Eve at midnight (normally, we have to gawk across the valley at the fireworks at other ski resorts). After kissing all 15 of the assembled guests at our New Year’s dinner, we ducked out on the porch into the freezing cold to watch the blissfully short fireworks display.

Fireworks in Montchavin

Montchavin is within La Plagne, an immense ski area consisting of almost one dozen other ski resorts. Our condo is within walking distance of a telecabine that connects Montchavin to the rest of the domain.

View from Telecabine

Here is our condo’s view of the telecabine on our last day (very snowy that day, allowing for magnificent skiing in fresh powder with surprisingly good visibility! Unfortunately, the weather was not always this cooperative, as there were some days of rain and extreme cold. And unfortunately for the kiddies, the sledding park was unusable until this snowfall.)

Snowy Day

Skiers can buy passes for the entire La Plagne domain and then ski freely from resort to resort, finding reprieve in any one of the dozens of restaurants or bars along the way. We frequently found it necessary to stop for vin chaud, a spiced hot wine drink that can really help carve out some turns by keeping the knees nice and loose. Whenever we stopped for vin chaud, the tables would be swarming with high-class English folk, downing beers, cheese plates, and french fries. If the British take two-hour lunches during a day of skiing, what do they do on days when (if?) they actually go to work?

Vin Chaud & Snow

I did mostly Alpine skiing, with a 3-4 bursts of XC skiing when the conditions were too cold or foggy for Alpine skiing. Here’s me, taking a break from XC for some vin chaud.

I Break for Vin Chaud

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By Meredith – January 6, 2010

Home, Intact, with Goodies

We returned from our Alpine holiday today, unhindered by a snowstorm in Geneva, a luggage handler strike in Paris, or the Department of Homeland Security (though a DHS agent sternly reminded Mr. P that his “Permanent” Resident card expires next August while giving him the ole’ hairy eyeball that authority figures like to pull on supine innocents just to make the day go by faster).

Even more miraculously, our bounty of foreign liquor, cheese, and foie gras remained unmolested — indeed, unnoticed — by US Customs. “You’re all set,” the youthful Customs representative said, waving us through customs while scanning our declaration form. His eye snagged on the box in which we admitted to carrying meat. “Wait, you have kind of meat you got?”

“We have four tins of foie gras,” I admitted.

“What’s that?” he asked.

“Ummm… it’s duck, but it’s USDA approved and it’s in a can,” I said, not sure exactly how descriptive I should get about the supreme delicacy that is gavaged duck liver.

“That sounds okay, you’re all set,” he mumbled, and we rushed through to the non-secure area of the airport, happy to have held onto the foie gras and the 2 pounds of raw-milk Beaufort cheese in my duffel bag. Strangely, I was under the paranoid assumption that the US Customs operates solely to prevent travelers from bringing back un-approved cheese from foreign lands, but apparently their best men aren’t busy securing the border from dairy and meat products.

Wowza, what a long day. The clock says 8pm, but my body says 2am.  I will abscond to bed and grab as much sleep as I can before the inevitable 4am rousing by jet-lag. Vacation pictures to come…

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By Meredith – January 5, 2010

2009 Farewell

This is my last post of 2009. I’m too busy packing to think about blogging… unless I blog about packing. So, now I’ll babble on about my lip-biting indecisions about whether 3 pairs of pants is enough for 12 days of vacation, or if 4 pairs of heavy socks is enough for 8 days of skiing, or if this shirt is too casual for l’heure de l’apéro, or if I can make due with one pajama top for 12 days. And don’t even get me started about squeezing all my personal hygiene products into little bottles while fretting over the amount of moisturizer that I should bring. What if Mr. P dips into my stash? What if I require twice-daily total-body slatherings to prevent my tendency to develop maddening itchy-dry skin in dry snowy climates?

And then I realize that I am actually stressing out by trying to quantify the amount of moisturizer I need to bring to France. I mean, in France, the skin care lotion flows as freely as the wine. If I really need to stock up on something, it’s the jumbo butt-covering “grandma” underwear that I like to wear when I XC ski (warm and wedgie-free). In France, grotesquely oversized underwear for women is as foreign and vulgar as peanut butter. I suspect that most of the other women on the slopes are wearing lingerie.

While it would be easiest to just cram all my clothing into my luggage and not have to worry about forgetting anything, we will be staying in a studio apartment with 2 other adults and space will be tight. Mr. P and I will most likely have to share a closet… every wife’s nightmare. So unless I want to incur his wrath by packing all 5 pairs of long underwear, I should just prepared to smell a little bit. It is France, after all, and that’s why they have a thriving perfume industry.

So… pray for me. Pray that I get there safely. Pray that I won’t have my own personal helicopter tour of the French Alps (as they air-lift my broken body to the hospital). And pray that I won’t run out of underwear.

A final Happy Holidays and Happy New Year to all my family, friends, and Internet weirdos who are reading this…

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By Meredith – December 23, 2009

Swapping Cookies

Today my office had a cookie swap, where each participant brought in 3 dozen cookies of a single varietal that we exchanged until everyone had a veritable cookie cornucopia for their holiday table.

To foster goodwill with my new co-workers, I participated even though I don’t eat cookies. Mr. P will eagerly pick up my cookie-eating slack, though methinks he can’t eat three dozen cookies before we leave the country in 3 days, even if he eats them for breakfast, as he’s threatened. And my normal solution for food over-abundance — “I’ll just take it to the office” — might not work in this situation, as people may be insulted to find their cookies relegated to communal pickings in the kitchen. If he doesn’t finish, we will just have to toss the cookies.

I choose to make almond biscotti, because if I were to eat a cookie, this is a cookie I’d want to eat: Crunchy, nutty, and the perfect shape for easy nibbling. Two weeks ago I did a “practice run” of my biscotti recipe and they were unbearably dry and lacking in taste. So I found a new recipe that used more egg and more almond and vanilla extract. I substituted some of the almonds for dried cranberries to add a bit of holiday color, and voila! My almond biscotti turned out wonderful (again, according to Mr. P — like all French, his body language will betray his feelings towards a food. When he doesn’t like it, he’ll grow silent, almost sad, with pursed lips; when he does like it, he’ll chew vigorously and his eyes will open wide. And despite the notions of French as slow eaters, in my experience, they will inhale a beloved food; they will only dawdle over a merely adequate dish, focusing instead on the conversation.)

Anyway, isn’t it amazing how 3 dozen biscotti can be magically transformed into 3 dozen assorted cookies in less than 15 minutes? The power of cookie community!

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By Meredith – December 21, 2009

The Shine of 2009

As Boston is currently being hammered by a lovely storm of snow and wind, this seemed like an excellent time to compose a navel-gazing year-end blog post that so neatly ties a bow on 2009.

For me, 2009 was an enlightening year. I overcame personal stagnation by embracing new interests, talents, and possibilities:

I got a new job at a company that I can see myself staying at for many years to come, working with terrific people for a noble cause: Literacy. I mean, fuck yeah! I love literacy, and here I mean, helping people attain it through software. It makes getting out of bed at 6am almost worth it.

Because I got a new job, I had to get a new car, and my crazy husband made us buy one with a manual transmission. I’ve dabbled in stick-shift before — my father taught me once, and in college I was in a student film that required me to drive some kid’s stick-shift car while yelling at a passenger — but here I bought a shiny new car and had to learn how to drive all over again. And after about two months, I can now drive without freaking out every time I come to a red light. In 2009, I have mastered the stick-shift!

In 2009, I stopped jogging and started yoga. And my body is stronger and more bendy for it.

After a 14 year hiatus, I picked up the viola again, and in two weeks I’m joining the community orchestra. (Cover your ears, Boston!)

And after a 19 year hiatus, I dove into a swimming pool again to start swimming regularly twice a week.

Way back in March, I learned how to downhill ski. Given the four years of preparation with cross-country skiing, this was more a mental feat than a physical feat, but still, one’s reluctant mind is no small obstacle to overcome when contemplating descending a snow-covered slope with blade-like sticks strapped to the feet.

Yes, 2009 was a great year, with my only real goal failure being my French language acquisition. Well, it’s progressing. I haven’t forgotten any words, at least. And since I’ll bring in 2010 surrounded by French people, I have high hopes for my French in the next year.

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By Meredith – December 20, 2009

Pre-Christmas Snow No-Go

This weekend’s planned trip to Pennsylvania was hastily aborted by the region’s first real snow storm in years. So we will not be driving south to celebrate the holidays with my family, though we are leaving next week for France to celebrate Christmas proper with Mr. Pinault’s family and to ski, eat, drink, and luxuriate (guiltily, on my part) in the Alps.

The snowstorm that is currently pummeling the Mid-Atlantic (and is expected to move into Boston tonight) came out of nowhere; the weather reports were clear until Friday morning, and then Mr. Pinault and I began Skype-ing back and forth about the fate of our planned journey. Maybe we could leave late Friday night and make the whole 7-hour trip overnight, and then return on Sunday night when the roads should be cleared. Maybe it would be okay. Maybe it would be a nightmare. After scrutinizing the radars, the weather maps, and the increasingly dire news stories that warned of anywhere from 6-12 inches of snow, we had a “Go or No Go” meeting (a term culled from software development process, when everyone gets together and decides if the software is ready to be released… an event so token they are nicknamed “Go or Go” meetings.”) And we decided this weekend’s trip to Pennsylvania was a No Go.

Now I gaze at the pile of Christmas presents so carefully accumulated for my family and friends with unerring sadness. The assortment of gift bags sits in my living room, destined to remain unopened by their recipients over the holiday. And within my heart, a little packet of holiday cheer stagnates, unable to be expressed, unwrapped, and revealed to my loved ones. Boo hoo.

My Yankee Candle flavor of choice this year was “Home for the Holidays,” and the irony, well, it burns. Perhaps they should manufacture a “French Alps for the Holidays” candle that smells of molten raclette cheese and smelly ski boots.

candle1

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By Meredith – December 19, 2009