Recall the Beginner's Mind

I always promise myself I'll keep my 'vacation brain' when I arrive home. But within minutes, I'm opening the mail, cleaning out the fridge, putting on laundry. Come the next day, there I am, sitting at the little desk in our spare room, furiously plowing through my writing. Getting back into the rhythm of every day life.

I guess that's no bad thing. We don't we want to escape. Still, 'getting away' is an opportunity for expanded perspective. It's a little like the Eastern notion of the 'beginner's mind.' 

Austin definitely freshened up our minds. I remember afternoons outside Jo's Coffee sitting across from the interminable Adam, focusing with absolute intensity on his book in the way that I never can. And the two of us eating spicy tacos under the white hot Texas sun. Swimming in Barton Springs, walking through an art show in the palm woods with heavy sculptures breaking down in the damp earth. 

I remember pulling up at a French food trailer on our drive back to San Antonio. La Boite was done up in corrugated aluminum with enormous, sweeping sun shades. Austin chic. Sweet macarons and iced coffee are enough to get us talking big. Couldn't we see ourselves moving here someday? 

Instead, we're home with beginners' minds, getting fresh takes on our own world.

Austin II

Yesterday, Adam noted he seems to like places that others describe as 'weird.' Portland, Asheville. Cities well-known for quirky culture, creativity and laid-back sensibilities. Certainly, Austin has a corner on these elements.

Here, we have found ourselves with easy access to outdoor art, nighttime bat watching, big burgers, beef BBQ and local beer, shady running paths, palm trees, free hugs, scruffy cats and live music. The area where we're staying is a panoply of Spanish language churches, independent grocery stores, pet peacocks, girls on bikes with dogs in baskets, food trailer parks, homemade dune buggies, vintage Vespas, and streetside domino games.

So, yeah. Weird.

We like it. We like vacation.

San Antonio/Austin

Howdy y'all!

After months of thinking about it, Adam and I are finally in Texas.

We spent Sunday night in San Antonio at the gorgeous Hotel Valencia. We snagged our room for a song (thanks to Adam's savvy work on Priceline) and quite enjoyed the lux amenities: valet parking, cold aqua fresca, dark wood window shutters and a secret view of the lazy river.

Around dusk, we visited the legendary Los Alamos. The sky was spitting rain and hundreds of great-tailed grackles swooped overhead like screeching streaks of indigo ink. Afterward, we walked quickly through deserted streets to an incredible outdoor watering hole called The Friendly Spot. Here, dozens of tables fill a dusty yard and patrons line up at at a bar housed in an old ice house for cold draft and wine served in plastic cups. Dogs, kids, birds and fat gray squirrels share the playground equipment at the front of the property and a middle-aged Latino guy DJs from a laptop and a single speaker. Halfway through our drinks, we started talking about quitting our lives and moving to the South of France to open a cooking school, so I'd say the booze had the desired effect.

Come morning, it was still drizzling and so we ambled along San Antonio's famed 'river walk' to the Guenther House (America's oldest working flour mill!). We were the youngest people there by about thirty years (further evidence, as if I needed any, that I am often drawn to activities that interest women mostly of my grandmothers' generation). The gift shop and cafe are housed in a beautiful nineteenth-century home at the front of the property and it turned out well, I guess, because I picked up a bag of sweet cream waffle mix for Sarah Minor while Adam sampled chocolate chunk cookie bars made from fresh milled flour.

Yesterday, we drove to Austin where the local slogan is 'Keep Austin weird." Our apartment is instantly comfortable, likely owing to its enviable design: fourteen foot ceilings, a raised 'pod' bed and polished concrete floors. Our landlord is an artist and furniture maker who lives upstairs and works in the giant warehouse studio to which our apartment is attached. To my unending delight, there are also three cats and a dog on the property. The friendly Siamese mix often ends up in our private pebbly courtyard, pestering me for food (cats know suckers when they see one).

So far, we're really digging the outdoor coffee houses (dogs [yay] & smoking [boo] allowed), addictive fish tacos, abundant food trailers, overgrown agave plants, Spanish architecture and laid-back vibe. Not to mention gun stores that also 'process deer,' butcher shops that sell ammo, girls wearing pretty dresses with serious cowboy boots, art galleries proffering tattoos, barbershops that serve cold beer while-you-wait and the oddly cloudy sky holding back the coming heat of summer.

Quiet Riot

As for those delicate cherry blossoms, they're mostly white with a faint blush of pink and cover the treetops like soft clouds. But the effect is surprisingly weighty and prompts a feeling of quiet -- in the same contradictory way that softly falling snow blankets the woods with a heaviness and hush.

Perhaps not difficult to imagine if you're Canadian?

Full Circle Evening

Tonight, I came almost literally 'full circle.'

Some of you might remember our house hunting trip here in DC at the beginning of January 2011. Two days before that trip, Adam got maybe the worst flu I have ever seen and I wasn't feeling too hot either. But we really had to come down here and find a place to live! So, we loaded our achy bodies onto the plane and threw down stakes at the Carlyle Suites in the heart of DC's incredible northwest quadrant. For the next week, the Carlyle was our urban hideaway. We were so sick that, besides finding a place to live, we did next to nothing. Our days consisted mostly of watching football on TV and walking to Whole Foods on P Street for lunch.

But, for some reason, it was a magical time. Maybe because things sort of stopped moving for a few days (at a time when our stress levels at home were through the roof). Whatever the reason, in my mind, that week felt like a turning point away from one place and time and toward another here in DC.

After dinner tonight, I nipped out the door to a nutrition class at the Smith Center for Healing and the Arts.

First, I zipped up M Street, past the hotels and condo buildings, turned left at Meiwah Chinese, headed up New Hampshire and crossed Dupont Circle, stopping for a moment to take off my cardigan. The temperature got up to twenty-six degrees today and the whole neighbourhood came out to relax in the circle. Bikers, chess players, people on iPads, even ducks in the base of the fountain.

Past the circle, I passed runners and yuppies with yoga mats, people carrying grocery bags and couples coming back from the off-leash dog park. Then, on my right, a small hotel began to stand out from the colours and rhythms of the street. I noted nothing particularly special about its tidy architecture, but it seemed somehow to possess an extraordinary character. As I walked closer, I was pleasantly surprised to see that it was the Carlyle, my former (albeit brief) stomping ground, and the place where this journey began.

I then smiled as I realized that now I too, have become a quietly extraordinary part of the landscape of the city.

Writing It Out

For a writer, there is no greater way to work things out than by writing them out. In emailing a dear friend today, I realised some valuable insights about our experience in DC.

Here's the final paragraph of that message.

"Our time in Washington is now half over and half is yet to come. This semi-nomadic state of affairs is so exciting...and at times, tiring and, obviously unsettling in a material/practical sense. But for us, it is so worth it. We have, I think, come to see our move not only as a physical relocation, but also an experiment and revelation of self. So, in that respect, this experience has far exceeded our expectations."

As our journey here has unfolded, I've often struggled to explain why we love it here so much. Admittedly, DC has undeniable charms (free museums and galleries and a pool on the roof of our building are chief among them). But, it's so much more than those tangible things. The chance to take chances and grow has been one of the greatest rewards of our young lives. And so, we can't but help but to feel right at home.

We heart DC.

Too Fool For School

Someone in this house has a hard life.

Because I Am My Parents' Daughter

My parents rarely leave the house without a massive amount of food in tow. I think this is a combination of 1) my father having a ton of food allergies and thus preferring his own browning banana and chunks of cheese to being stuck buying stuff that might make him sick; 2) my mother growing up poor and subsequently taking great solace and immense pride in keeping a well-stocked pantry, desk drawer, purse, glove compartment and trunk; and 3) the East Coast's cultural penchant for overfeeding.

Whatever the reason, I have inherited the 'food bag' gene, and so no trip for anyone in this household slips by without accoutrements from my kitchen. So, when Adam left for his two-week adventure in Oz, he was suitably laden down with enough food to get him through twenty-four hours of travel. Pictured below from top to bottom: (Left hand row) Vietnamese noodle bowl with omelet, fresh herbs and raw veggies, curried quinoa and wild rice salad with cranberries and slivered almonds, chicken dumplings with black sesame seeds, three sauces (small enough to go through security); (Middle row) two slices of mushroom pizza from Whole Foods; (Right hand row) gherkins and two kinds of olives, organic grapes, cucumber rounds and carrot sticks, my famous (ha ;-) homemade protein-packed granola bars (one has a love note attached to the front) and dark chocolate laced with almonds.

Take that, bland airport food!

War of Attrition

I came across the phrase 'war of attrition' the other day. I'd heard it before, but didn't know exactly what it meant. I assumed that it meant a war in which each party tried to outlast the other.

Attrition warfare is a military strategy in which a belligerent side attempts to win a war by wearing down its enemy to the point of collapse through continuous losses in personnel and materiel.

Basically ... like doing a PhD.

On one side is my committee with endless requests for revisions, the university and its seemingly nonsensical deadlines, the lack of funding (a fancy word for 'pay cheque'), the long hours working in isolation ...I'm pretty sure these conditions qualify as torture (although not under Cheney's reign ;-). On the other side is me, chipping away at my thesis line by line, reading, wheedling and wearing down my committee's reserves.

Of course, like every perfect metaphor, somebody else thought of it first.

"Doing a PhD may be more like a war of attrition than a single heroic assault; knowledge of the territory and tenacity may be just as important qualities as strategy or intellectual firepower."

- Marshall and Green, Your PhD Companion, p. 151.

Touché and may the best side win!

The Day

Eve of a New Year!

At the beginning of 2011, I told Adam it would be the Year of the Sbinks (that's our unofficial hybrid name). There's no question that the whole year rocked our worlds. We were happier and healthier than we've been in a long time, awed and overcome by newness and novelty and gratified by the good fortune and great planning that planted us in such incredible lives.

Yet ...

... now I feel that 2012, too, will be a Year of the Sbinks. Here's to going two for two!

We rang in the new year in grand style with Kevin and Sarah (two of our dearest DC friends) and help from a big pot of homemade curry, soft Vermont cheese, six bottles of cold stout, Scotch on the rocks, Prosecco, Champagne, G&Ts, rye and ginger, red wine, Adam's new Xbox Kinect, a massive party at the storied Omni Shoreham Hotel, Father Time (on stilts! with a baby doll!), a midnight balloon drop and fat, stinky cigars.

Bring on the big! 2012, we're coming for you.

El Pollo Rico

El Pollo Rico. A Zagat rated Peruvian chicken chain with dozens of locations in and around the District.

We've been wanting to try it ever since we saw Anthony Bourdain hype it on No Reservations. With Jeremiah in town last week, it seemed the perfect time to scare up something cooked on a spit.

Nobody was disappointed, least of all, Elspeth. One of my favourite things about that kid is her insatiable appetite. Love it!

X Mouse

For Adam and I, Christmas isn't necessarily family time. My father hates the holidays and Adam's mother works them (she's an Anglican minister). Not to mention our penchant for bucking gift exchange customs; this can make things hairy with well-meaning mothers wanting to bestow goodies on their grown children.

Still, we always celebrate in style, usually with a big friends and neighbours brunch on Christmas morning at our house or a small gift exchange with the pastiche of family members and food friends who visit around the holidays.

This year, Jeremiah, Sarah and Elspeth joined us for a very yuppie Christmas. There was shaved truffle and strip loin, Adam's rum trifle, a fridge full of microbrew, a visit to the National Archives, expensive cocktails at Blue Duck Tavern (disappointed not to see the Obamas or Bidens), a Warhol exhibit, the jungle room at the botanical gardens near the Capitol Building, sweet potato pie from Ris, cured duck salami and Cork's home made ricotta, late nights and lazy mornings, some knitting, some reading, bacon shortbread, a lunch of Bobby Flay burgers, a rainy day trip to an obscure Peruvian chicken place in VA, and crates of organic raspberries for the baby.

Pour nous, il était simplement parfait.

Canadian Bacon

Adam signed up for a holiday cookie bake-off at work (events designed by women to make their lives, and the lives of the women married to the men they work with, more complicated). As a way of endearing himself to his American colleagues and possibly setting himself apart from his competitors, he asked me to help think of a cookie that would use Canadian bacon.

I tried to think of a palatable way of putting pork in a cookie and came up with the idea of bacon shortbread. Here are three that didn't get sent to work with Adam. Can you imagine anything more delicious?

We're still here.

Since Christmas is no longer 'just around the corner,' but literally dripping from every hotel, office building and store in Foggy Bottom, I should probably catch everyone up on our fall season.

Adam was invited to work in the UK for the month of October, and I was the lucky duck to got to tag along. My parents volunteered stay in our condo while we were gone, selflessly looking after the cats once again. We set off with high expectations - fusty old art museums and black current jam and all that. Upon landing, I promptly got sick, however, and so I had to go see kindly old Doctor Campbell with his pheasant-print necktie and quaint, British euphemisms. Once I was mostly well, we got down to business, touring through London, Bath, Bristol and Cheltenham. Met some great new friends through Adam's work and even ran into old friends from Ottawa. We could have stayed in Bristol forever. The port part of town is filed with modern art, pretty water taxis, wholesome vegetarian food and flat, dry English cider. We stayed in a slick, self-contained apartment (recommended by our friend, Megan) and gorged on bowls of warm curry. What's not to like?

 

Our return to the US felt like coming home. This reminded us, once again, how difficult it will be to leave DC in a year or so. Only having just arrived in February, our short tenure here has forced us to appreciate each day like we never have before. Not an easy task when you're writing a PhD thesis (or, in Adam's case, finishing a Master's degree and working full-time). On the other hand, this is Christmas in Washington. A perfect time and place to be wealthy, healthy and madly in love.