Earth to Noelle....

Apologies for the extended blogging delay. When I started this blog, it was all about my experience at IESE Business School and living in Barcelona. Then I finished school and it was still about living in Barcelona and a bit about IESE since Frenchy was still studying there. Then we moved to France and it was about being an American in France, but I had less and less to say because more and more of my time was consumed by work, and work is one of the areas I just won't write about.

Then we moved back to New York, my old stomping grounds, and sure I have loads of funny stories to tell about day-to-day life here married to a crazy Frenchman... but still, most of what I share online these days is about videos or photos I come across that are worth sharing, or about our pup Ellie, or about weird conversations I have with Quentin.

I haven't even written properly about our wedding. Or the process of buying our first home. Or our trips to Turkey, Venezuela, and Tahoe. There just hasn't been enough time.

But truth be told, I miss it. And even more importantly, I still do it. So that's what this post is all about. To tell you where to find me even when I'm not regularly updating the blog. Exciting, isn't it? So here we go:

You can follow my random 140-character musings on Twitter. And check out my photos on Flickr. You can check out my microblog on Tumblr. And if you want to work with me (and really, who wouldn't?), you might want to first look me up on LinkedIn. Need a simpler place to see everything at once? Hop over to my Flavors.me page, where it's all in a tidy package.

And don't be a stranger! Drop me a line.

Mini NYC!

Absolutely gorgeous tilt-shift timelapse videography. I would love to see a collection of these from various cities!

The Sandpit from Sam O'Hare on Vimeo.

Snow Day!

Working from home today as a major blizzard hits NYC, and after 7 hours sitting at my laptop in my underpants at the kitchen table, I decided it was time to get some fresh, snowy air. Not in my underpants...

This. Is. Awesome.

My friend Lauren showed me this yesterday, and I think I've now watched it six or seven times. Can't jam with your friends because they're all in different countries? No problem. Some webcams can do the trick.

I need to remember this when Frenchy and I are sad about our band being spread all over the globe.

Super Husband

Over the past several months, I've slowly indoctrinated Frenchy into the ways of American football. Or, as we call it, football. And I'm impressed by how he has taken to it. He even commented, after one game, "Soccer players are such pussies. They barely get touched and they roll around on the ground. Football players get hit like crazy and just bounce up and keep going."

He also impressed me by cooking dinner one Sunday evening while I sat on the couch drinking a beer and watching the Chargers.

But I digress.

The Super Bowl is this Sunday (OBViously) and, while I'm very disappointed my Chargers got knocked out of the playoffs weeks ago, I will still watch the big game of course. And Frenchy is getting more and more excited about it as well. As evidenced by the email he sent to an IESE friend of ours, who invited us to his place to watch the game:

Hi Sam,

We are very excited to join you for the super ballon! This will be my very first super ballon in the US so I hope that you are ready to cope with my excitement...

Please let us know all the logistic details (where, when, what kind of beer you like, your favorite pizzas...)

Looking forward to it. yeah!
Q.

*Sigh* My husband is the awesomest.

The Truth of News

Back when I was in film school, I did a couple of internships in local news in San Diego. Funny for a film major, I know, but San Diego isn't LA and those were my options if I wanted to be home for the summer.

I learned a lot those two summers. I learned that production and and news crews are pretty fun, the news floor is simultaneously exhilarating and exhausting, and that I never wanted to work in news. Ever. To this day, I can't watch a reporter or news anchor without feeling a slight queasiness. That weird, unnatural way of talking. Those strange hand gestures. The awful, shellacked hair... for both men and women. And, above all, their ability to appear sad or serious while reporting something heartbreaking or devastating and then turn around once the clip starts rolling and joke with the crew or other news casters.

In other words:

New Year, New Resolutions, New Miscommunications

So here we are in 2010. Hooray! I didn't get to write as much as I'd have liked in 2009 and frankly, it bothers me. Eventually I'll get around to writing up all the funny things that happened, as promised, if only so I remember them for the grandkids.

Anyway, I made many new years' resolutions for this year, as usual, and among them were to get back into the blogging saddle and write regularly again. I have missed it, and apparently some of you random strangers have too. Others haven't at all because they read my Facebook status updates or Tweets and feel like they hear more than enough from me. But enough about me and my resolutions. (If you really want to know about them, I suppose I can always write about that later, too.) The point of all of this is that the new year has already brought some fabulous little tales. Most of which, if they hadn't happened to me personally, I wouldn't believe.

Today, for example, I got the following message on my Facebook page from my friend Christele in Paris: "Hi Noelle, received a text from you yesterday... Tu me demandais l'addition... ** Was kind of funny, in a 4th- dimension-y way, as it came out of nowhere, in the bleak midwinter..."

** You asked me for the check.

Naturally, my first response was to freak out and prepare to call AT&T and demand to know why my phone is sending out international text messages. Stranger things have happened in my time with AT&T mobile. Instead, I wrote the following response: "WHAT?! Are you serious? From which number? I definitely didn't send you any texts..."

And Christele responded: "Bizarre... It read "La addition je vous ple?". Thought it was a private joke, sent to me by mistake. The sender's number ended by 0587. Could it be a number u used in La Jolla? I did save it under your name. Then, it might have been your dad's answer to my happy 2010 SMS :-))"

I should have known. My father only knows how to say one thing in French - how to ask for the check at a restaurant. I've told him for years that he should stop volunteering that phrase or he'll end up picking up checks for other people all over the place. But clearly some habits are hard to break.

I guess I had used my dad's phone to call Christele at some point during the week of our wedding, and she saved his number as mine. She then included his number when she sent out a mass "Bonne annee!" text to all her friends as the clock struck midnight in Paris. And my father didn't do as most people probably would, ignoring the message or writing back "WHO IS THIS?!?!?!"

Nope, my dad asks for the check!