Hello
Ruers. I hope you will forgive the long, long time between posts. I do have a unfortunately-good excuse, though.
Do you ever wake up on a Monday morning and while fighting the urge to remain in bed all day start to think of things to add to the week's to-do list? So, there I was, bedhead and all, thinking that it was going to be a fairly busy week PLUS I was just remembering how I needed to get my bangs trimmed up before the end of the week because we'd be traveling here soon and I really only like Dino to do my hair. So I grumpily put "Call and book Dino for bang (franges) trim," on the mental list and I grumpily rolled on out of bed.
This glimpse into my pajama-clad morning does have a point, and it's this -- just when you think the only thing to add to your list for the week is a 15-minute bang trim with Dino, you walk into your living room to find out your apartment has been burgled in the night.
Awe.Some.
It was more like a snatch-and-grab, and the basic lowdown is that I left a front window open and somebody climbed in and snatched my laptop that was sitting too close. Yes, I'm dumb for leaving the windows open, a fact I was told several times by the Frenchie police. Yes, I'm lucky nothing else was taken, I wasn't hurt (Marc was gone), and there don't seem to be any residual problems on the credit cards, etc.
So, I've been left laptop-less smack in the middle of the semester -- not cool -- and smack one week before leaving for Spain for a week -- Spain is cool, but traveling smack dab in the middle of the semester without said trusty laptop is not cool. Luckily, I get by with a little help from my friends and am plugging in now in the lobby of our Madrid hotel thanks to a loaner laptop from Josh and Katherine. Given my laptop reputation it was bold of them to let me abscond across the border with it but I'm definitely closing all the windows now.
SO... that made last week even nuttier, given that Marc was traveling State-side and at a large time difference, which meant I got to tell him the great news just before he boarded for an 8-hour plane ride from D.C.. There's nothing like trying to convey rather scary news between incessant airport announcements. It also meant that all of Monday was wasted trying to use my French to communicate with the police, which resulted in one conversation that I'll translate for you like this:
Police: "So somebody broke in to your apartment and stole your laptop."
Kirstin: "Yes."
Police: "Do you live on a boat?"
Kirstin: "What? No."
Police: "Then we can't help you."
Click.
Okay, he didn't hang up on me like that, but he wouldn't help me because, that's right, I don't live on a boat. See, the information I had said to call the closest police department in cases of non-urgences. So I called geographically the closest one because we happen to live geographically close to the lake. But it turns out I don't live close enough -- read
on -- the lake.
So, suffice to say, the day went on in this fun fashion and I eventually filed a report for a laptop that has probably been sold twice over on the black market.
And that was only Monday.
Tuesday morning Mr. M returned bright and early from the last place we had checked in together -- the DC airport -- after spending a week State-side for conferences and meetings and other lawyerly things.
Tuesday night I let Marc work out the jet lag on his own and attended a planning party for a fundraiser that is coming up next week. If you're in the area -- and American -- come by the
Democrats Abroad 45th Anniversary cocktail party on Oct. 14th. There are raffle baskets that include anti-matter (one of the upsides to being so close to CERN) and I volunteered my bartending services so there will be some world-collapsing going on in one form or another.
The rest of the week flew by in a flash -- we had a celebration dinner on Thursday with friends who just found out the sex of their expected baby... BOY... and on Saturday we went to a fab dinner party at Gina and Trevor's where Trevor put us through our paces with about 8 courses and bottles of wine to match for each. We could hardly move to drive home, but had to get our asses in gear, as ...
Sunday morning we headed to the airport for this week's travel: Madrid, Spain.
Marc has a week-long conference and neither of us had been to the city before, so despite the hectic-ness leading up to the trip we've been so excited to come.
Of course, I'll regal you with Madrid stories for posts to come, but suffice to say it's been a little crazy. This conference has 5,000 international lawyers and while Marc is in seminars/presentations all the days, it turns out the real action happens at these outlandish soirees during the nights.
Let me just give you a little example: Sunday evening's welcome festivities were opened by the
King of Spain. Uh-huh, I was seriously at the same party as the king, Juan Carlos. No, we didn't meet him -- he was actually gone by the time Marc and I got there, but we saw pictures on BlackBerries. So that was one of the craziest parties I've ever been to because it was so over the top. There were about 3,000+ people there and all sorts of traditional Spanish goings-on. Sword fighting, pottry throwing, dancing, etc., not to mention the food and drink.
I had no idea, though, that as wide-eyed as I was on Sunday, Monday night got even wilder as we were allowed to take over the Real Madrid football (soccer) stadium for another cocktail party. I mean, we were on the pitch (field) of arguably
the most successful football team of the 20th century and it was so cool. Especially since we had all the Champagne we could drink.
Last night was a reception at
Lavinia, a wine shop, then Marc and I snuck away for a real dinner (reservations at 10p) at
Ramses, an uber-hip little restaurant where the door people look you up and down upon entering their sacred little hole. We, of course, are Americans and walk right in because hey -- isn't America always in fashion?
The days aren't as glitzy but I've managed a few museums -- the Prado and Thyssen -- and am on a personal dork quest to eat at a few of the places Ernest Hemingway frequented while in town.
Words often fail -- usually because I'm writing them -- and only pictures will do for some of these explanations, but I won't be able to plug in the camera until the new MacBook arrives in a week or so. Until then, I'll try to improve my vocabulary and keep you better updated. Now, however, I've got to do some schoolwork before tonight's festivities -- a Young Lawyer's Pub Crawl through Madrid --all in the name of networking.
Be good, thanks for checking in here at the
Rue!
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