Warranty

I've looked back at my life recently due to some healthy issues that have cropped up. Nothing Earth-shattering or anything, just a quick review of my recent health or unhealth as the case may be.

I joked with M that my parents should have gotten more than the 30 year warranty on me since it seems like as soon as I hit that venerable age everything started falling apart. Let's recap shall we?

- Torn meniscus requiring surgery
- Diagnosed with migraines (to be fair these had affected me prior)
- Diagnosed with IBS

Worst part about this? It's only been a year and a half since I hit 30. Okay, so maybe it's not a lot, but for a person who was in relatively good health for his whole life, it was a lot. Oh well, I guess I need to take better care of myself.

Aux Bonnes Choses

We arrived in Geneva and one of the first things we did was grab a snack. We checked out a few places and decided on Aux Bonnes Choses (which I think means "good things" in French). It was located in the railway station that was connected to the airport and had various snacks and pastries (croissants, quiches, sandwiches) that all looked good.

We picked up a peach iced tea, which in Europe, tastes sweet just like gummy peach candy:


For snack, we split a tomato mozzarella focaccia sandwich. I thought they were going to give it to us cold, but they put it on a panini grill before serving it, so we got a warm and toasty grilled sandwich:


It wasn't a very thick sandwich, as you can see from this side view, but it was tasty:


The sandwich tasted rich and buttery (probably from the bread). It tasted like it was lined with a pesto before the tomato and mozzarella were added. Once melted together, it all tasted really good. A snack in our bellies is what we needed before heading out to explore the city!

Next: More airport exploration and then we take the train to the city center!

Potter Again

I vividly remembered my dream this morning when I woke up. That hasn't happened much recently, since we've either been traveling or sleeping really late. (I think I'm still jetlagged and on Pacific time.)

In the dream, a group of my college friends and others had gotten together. That's a big deal on its own, since we are spread around the country/world. We walked to a movie theater near where we were staying; it was someplace sunny, spacious and relaxing, so maybe it was in California. It was called the Rainbow Cinema. (Not sure where that visual/name came from...)

Even though Captain America was opening that weekend (it was apparently a very current dream), we went to go see Harry Potter. I had already seen it (true in real life) but happily went to see it again because I love all things Harry Potter (also true in real life). Our tickets had one theater number on them (I think 8) but we were told to go to a different one. It was an "overflow theater" concept, where they send everyone for a movie to one place until it's full, and then fill the next theater. (This has happened to me before but I can't remember for which movie.)

The theater did not have stadium seating. I was stuck behind a tall woman with blond feathery kind-of-80s hair (kind of like Ferris Bueller's mother). And the 3 tall people in front of her. That kind of sucked. A wasn't there either. He had been but then I think he got caught up talking to some people from work and then maybe didn't see Potter with us. Not sure.

At some point before the movie, I left to get a snack. I was thinking of a hot dog. Then I decided to go to the bathroom. Unfortunately, after I got there after walking through a giant complex (and it looked like the bathrooms were at a hotel connected to the theater), I found that the toilets were all not flushed and it was gross. But if you have to go, you have to go! Then I woke up.

The end of that dream was no doubt influenced by our last AMC visit. We went to see Harry Potter at an evening showing (around 7:45) so it was after 10 when we got out of the theater. Our first stop after a movie is usually the bathroom. However, all the bathrooms were closed/closing already! There were still so many movies in progress, so why would they do that?! Before I realized they were closing, I had gone to one bathroom where a girl was complaining to a friend/sister that none of the toilets were flushing. So not only were they closing, but you can turn off the flush? She was right, as the toilets held contents that were yellow, yellow, yellow, red, yellow, yellow and yellow (TMI?). I ran out of there and waited until we got home, because that's really just gross. I'm glad we stick to matinee showings...

I guess I have movies on the brain because we are trying to make it to Captain America this morning. But where is Rainbow Cinema?

Eating from EWR to GVA

As we mentioned before, we weren't sure how good the food would be on our flight from Newark to Geneva so we got a snack from Smashburger before leaving. That turned out to be a good idea because the food was mediocre.

A and I got different entrees (there were two choices). But otherwise, both dinners were the same. They each came with a salad:


As you can see, it's a rather boring salad. Mostly iceberg lettuce, with some tomato, cucumber and carrots. The only thing that made it less bland was the dressing. But the only dressing option was an unhealthy caesar dressing. Neither of us really thought too highly of the salad.

The meal also came with a cold boring dinner roll and a package of milano cookies. A likes milano cookies, so I gave mine to him.


A's entree was chicken with tomato sauce and green beans over rice. It wasn't too bad. Relatively healthy and way better than mine. At least it had flavor.


My entree was not very good at all. I got spaghetti thinking it would be a safe option. It shouldn't be that difficult to make a good pasta (or at least a decent one). I also figured that, since the meals were probably sitting for some time, pasta might be a better choice since the chicken could easily dry out. I was so wrong.


The dish was flavorless. There wasn't much tomato sauce at all and what was there didn't have very much flavor. It felt like eating just for the sake of eating, without enjoying the actual food. The meatballs were dry and didn't add much flavor either. How can meatballs have no flavor?! I ate the whole thing because I was hungry for dinner but it was so bland.

Throughout the entire dinner, I just kept thinking about how our last flights had much better food. The last time we left NYC for Europe, it was on KLM and we had this fantastic and healthy chicken curry meal. I was not impressed by Continental's dinner. A had a better meal, but was still not that impressed.

If I was not impressed by dinner, I was even less impressed by breakfast.


Breakfast consisted of a croissant, some canteloupe and honeydew, and a little packet of strawberry jam. Not healthy at all! We already have such a reputation in the US for eating complete crap, and the airlines can't even serve a healthy container of yogurt? (That's what we had on KLM last time.) It was mid-May and the height of allergy season, so I couldn't eat the melons either. All I ate was the strawberry jam. Woohoo, that's a great breakfast. Although A didn't have as many issues with it as I did, he still thought it was nothing special.

This flight, combined with the next 4 flights on non-US airlines, confirmed what we had already been thinking about flights. The food on the non-US flights is so much better. Lesson learned!

Next: We land in Geneva and explore the airport.

Continental to Geneva!

So here began our honeymoon to Greece. After our first little meal we boarded our flight from Newark to Geneva. Our first airline out of five was going to be a bit of a challenge to enjoy. As soon as we got to our seats, we knew we were in for a long flight figuratively and literally.

Don't be fooled, we were plenty unhappy with the seating
We did what we could to sleep, but the conditions weren't the most comfortable. We sat in the middle and aisle of a 3 seat section, and when all three seats were crammed into each other, I knew it would be an issue. I'm 6'5", and I have broad shoulders. In fact, my shoulders are wider than the seats, and, sitting in the middle seat, life was unhappy. So M and I finally sat down, and if I didn't think this flight was going to suck then I sure realized it quickly. Even after pushing myself back as far as I could into my seat, my knees were still pressed into the seat in front of me.

Not all was bad, though. Continental offers a nice in-flight entertainment system for international flights. I'm not sure about their domestic flights, but it's a nice distraction to have on really long flights. I know I fell asleep a few times, since I had put on some music through the aforementioned IFE, and I would wake up to having missed about 90% of the album. I think this may have happened 3 times. Not sure how much M slept, but it couldn't have been that much more than I did.

Many movies were watched
Eventually we reached our destination. It was a long, uncomfortable flight, but we were in Geneva, and it was all worth it.

We're in Geneva!
At some point they fed us some dinner and breakfast, but that's a story for a different time.

Smashburger Snack

The first "official" meal of our honeymoon was at Newark Airport. We weren't sure how good the food would be on our flight so we decided to get a snack at the little food court by our gate. Luckily, in addition to the free bites of Auntie Anne's Pretzels, the food court had a Smashburger, a Denver-based burger chain that we've been wanting to try.


We didn't want to get a full meal since we were fairly sure we would be fed by Continental, but there were so many options to choose from. Do we share a burger? A salad? Get a bunch of sides? So many things sounded good.


A left the decision up to me, so I picked out 2 things to share for our snack. First, the sweet potato smashfries:


I thought about the regular smashfries, the chili cheese fries and the haystack onions, but decided to go with the "healthier" option and got the sweet potato fries. The fries are tossed with rosemary, olive oil and garlic. I like seasoned fries and these were pretty good. (In fact, I went through a phase for a few years where I didn't eat fries other than seasoned fries. That probably helped me not gain as much weight... so much for that.) They were nice and crisp, and we didn't have to add anything to them because they were well-seasoned. The rosemary also made them a little bit different.

Second, I didn't get the chili cheese fries, but got the chili cheese dog:


This was a beef hot dog (apparently made by a New Jersey company) topped with grated cheddar cheese, onions, fresh jalapenos, and beefy chili. I like chili dogs but skipped the jalapenos because A said these actually had some heat. This was pretty good, but it was a complete mess. Not really easy to eat sitting in uncomfortable chairs by airport gates.

Between the two, I preferred the fries and A preferred the chili cheese dog. But they were both pretty good. It was a fairly successful Smashburger visit for our first time, and now at least we weren't completely left in Continental's hands for food.

Next: We fly to Geneva!

Cross-posted at our food blog where you can follow along on our other adventures!

Habits

They say it takes 21 days to make something a habit that you'll keep (or at least, have a better chance of sticking to it).

21 days ago, I began what I call "Project Life Improvement." I felt like I was simultaneously stuck in a rut (other than our awesome vacation) and that life was just flying by without me being able to appreciate it. There were so many things about everyday life that I wished were different and I wanted to finally take control. But, as I've learned from my new years resolutions, doing too much too soon is a recipe for failure. One small step at a time and maybe I can make this work. June 1 would be the day that I begin to take back control of my own life.

So I started with 2 small things. (Well, really, 3, but I decided 2 was more manageable and I wanted to succeed.) First, I would drink at least 4 cups of water (or equivalent hydration) each day. This sounds so basic, but there were days where I would barely have 1 cup of water by the end of the day, and that is not healthy at all. Second, I would record our expenses in our budget book at the end of each night. Although I always intended to do this, sometimes weeks would go by and then I'd play catch up. Inevitably I would miss something.

How did I do? I'm happy to report that on the water front, I haven't missed a day. I've been vigilant about making it to 4 cups of hydration. Once I finish 4, I don't pay any attention to how much I have total. I just need to make it to 4 since it's not something you can "catch up" on. This seems to be working, so now that I've hit day 21, I hope I can keep it up for good.

On the expense book front, I did miss a day or 2 but I always made it up within a day, which is good enough for me. As long as the reporting is somewhat timely, that was what counted. On the days I didn't do it, I was always conscious about not having done it and needing to do it when I had the opportunity, and that's the mental shift I'm looking for. I'm hoping to keep this up for good also, at least at the same frequency I'm doing it now.

So now... 21 days in, I need to start thinking about 2 more actions to try to implement beginning tomorrow. 2 more small things that, in the aggregate, can go a long way toward improving our lives. There are so many options, since office and home are giant black holes of clutter, my health certainly needs improvement and there are so many tasks that need to be done on a daily basis, but what to choose?

On Our Way

It's time to recap our European honeymoon adventure! All posts will be labeled "Aegean Honeymoon" so it will be easy to follow our journey.

I've started this post about four times. It's so difficult to start writing about such an awesome adventure. But before we can get to the "good stuff" we have to start somewhere...

We left home on a Saturday in mid-May. It was the weekend of the Ninth Avenue Food Fair so our neighborhood was busy. We usually visit the fair since it's in our backyard, so we grabbed a quick lunch there before finishing our packing and heading out to Newark Airport. We were so happy to finally be on vacation. It had been a tough few weeks (months, really) at work, and we hadn't taken a vacation day in about eight months, so we were SO READY to get out of town.

We were running late. It was my fault since I got stuck doing last minute things for work (shocking). We jumped on the subway to Penn Station to catch a NJ Transit train to Newark Airport, which is the quickest way to get there from where we are. It's not worth taking a cab or car service to the airport in weekend afternoon traffic and taking the risk that you won't make your flight because you're stuck in the tunnel. Although we usually aim to get to the airport 3 hours in advance for international flights (since we can't check in online), if we made all of the connections, we were looking at only 2 hours before our flight. We hoped it would all go smoothly.

Our tickets out of Manhattan that we got while racing through Penn Station - finally!
Once we were on the train, we settled in for the short ride. We were relieved that we made the train and now just hoped the lines at the airport wouldn't be too long.

The "view" on the way to the airport
No luck. Even though the trip to the airport had gone relatively well (made the train we hoped to make at Penn Station, didn't have to wait too long for an AirTrain, etc), the line to check in was long. My history with Continental at Terminal C was mostly negative (short version: flight 7 years ago cancelled due to weather, I was rebooked with a confirmed seat assignment, they had no record of it because they bumped me involuntarily, refused to look at any of my confirmations or paperwork and I never made it on my trip to see A for the weekend during our LDR summer) and I was anxious that we wouldn't make our flight.

This time, Continental came through. One of their reps was at the end of the line asking everyone for their destinations. As soon as we said "Geneva" she directed us to the mostly empty line to the side. We were in the middle of a group of latecomers, and we all looked relieved to get through check-in quickly.

Security lines were decent but going through security itself was a bit chaotic and disorganized. We both almost lost our passports in the middle of the whole mess. The panic that sets in when you realize you are about to go to your gate for an international flight with no passport is really not welcome when traveling is stressful enough. In my case, some combination of my passport, boarding pass and passport case was setting off the alarm so the TSA people took it from me and put it through the scanner separately. Not only separate from our bags but in the middle of other people's stuff much later on the conveyor belt. After I finished packing up, I realized I didn't have it and started frantically searching for it. It would have been really easy for someone to steal it - either before it went through the scanner or afterwards when it was in the middle of other people's stuff. They searched A's bag when he was putting his stuff away, so he didn't have time to put his passport away and it ended up on the floor. What a mess. Now having gone through Athens airport security, we know there is a better and quicker way to search everyone. Why can't we do that?

After going through the security debacle, we wanted to relax. We saw this sign at Starbucks and made a pit stop on the way to the gate.


The passionfruit iced tea lemonade looked good, so we relaxed at (the wifi-less) Starbucks for a little bit before heading off to our gate. It was a nice break and we were so excited, relieved and happy to finally be past security and one step closer to Europe!

Next: we have a snack from Smashburger in case the airplane food sucks.

Chipotle and Sprinkles

It's tough remembering dreams. You have so many of them throughout the night, sometimes connected and sometimes not, and when you get up - poof, they're all gone. Especially because of the violent nature of alarms. I try to recall as many as possible, and luckily, this morning, a few details persist.

These were all parts of dreams I had shortly before waking up. I don't know if they were connected, but I do have some idea of where they originated (for once).

First, I was at Chipotle. But this Chipotle had more options. It wasn't like Baja Fresh or Qdoba with their options, as they still stuck to the same formula (pick your base, pick your protein, pick your salsa, etc). It wasn't like they added soup or something. But instead of the cilantro-lime rice, there were rice options! There was the regular rice, a "Mexican rice" (which was a white rice with onions and peppers mixed in, as well as tomatoes) and a guacamole rice (which looked exactly how it sounds).

In addition, they had chorizo. I guess regular locations are starting to get chorizo now, but before we only had it at the test kitchen. When I was getting my order (which was at some store located in the middle of a big warehouse-like building), the worker mistakenly gave me chicken instead of chorizo. She asked if I wanted her to do it over, but I didn't want to waste food, so I asked if she could just add some chorizo to the top so I could at least try it, instead of redoing the whole thing. She had no problem with that, and I went on my way. Sometime later, I was obsessing over finding the receipt to see whether or not I was charged extra for that since the burrito bowl seems a little expensive. At this point in the dream, it gets a little fuzzy.

My thought is that this part of the dream came out of a few things: (a) I like the Chipotle test kitchen, (b) the guacamole v. guacamole + chips discussion we had last night at dinner over our receipt (maybe we will write this up later) and (c) I really don't like wasting food. It was also so realistic, other than Chipotle having rice options.

Sometime later in the dream, or in the next one, I was in the grocery store, a place I love. I was picking up products I couldn't get at home, yet somehow simultaneously visiting my parents. I guess we don't live near each other at this time in the dream. Clearly, this was influenced by our layover in Munich, in which we stuffed as much Haribo (my favorite candy brand) as we could carry into our carry-on bags. (It's not that crazy when it's all stuff you can't get at home! Have you ever seen sour mango gummies in the States?) In the dream, I wasn't picking up Haribo though. I was looking at all sorts of food, including boxed sets of assorted sprinkles. This was definitely related to last night's visit to Holey Cream (which we also need to write up) where we got a donut ice cream sandwich with rainbow sprinkles as a topping.

Outside of the food, I only have snippets of other dreams, but they involve running from bad guys, a van, and possibly some espionage. That must be from watching TV and movies. Maybe it was from last night's Star Wars and LOTR viewings?

But for now... off to the movies, not Chipotle. But I'm sure I'll pick up Chipotle sometime this week if it's still floating around in my dreamworld!

UPS Fail

Very short post, but I had to write something about this. Today I received a box from Amazon delivered by UPS. Being Prime members, M and I order from Amazon here and there to take advantage of the free 2-day shipping. Most of the time we don't run into any issues. Maybe it's a day later than it's supposed to be, but whatever.

However, today I received this:

WTF?!
It looks like someone stepped on the box at some point during the delivery process. I mean, really, WTF. Thankfully I was just getting a pair of flip flops, but can you imagine if this was something easily breakable? Terrible...