Fine and Full - What’s up with Jay and Anastasia

I do this thing whenever I add a tip to receipt like this. I like to make interesting numbers and do a little math.

This is a good example: the interesting numbers are often wonderful to me!

I’m now posting a photo-a-day over at anastasiafuller.com. I started about 3 weeks ago, and plan on posting one a day through 2010; after that, we’ll see what I do with them!

So far, the photos have been from my archives, but many I’ve never shown anyone before, and throughout the year, I plan on posting new ones as well. Hope you check them out!

in London (photo by Chris Dent)

On this eve of a new decade / year, here’s a retrospective of 2009 with some of my favorite things. (This is a personal post; check out this blog post for our 2009 biz/Juxtaprose thanks!)

places visited:

• Myvatn Nature Baths, Myvatn, Iceland
• the chocolate stores, galleries, and museums of Paris, France
• wandering through London on a beautiful fall day

concerts / live performances:

• Leonard Cohen (Coachella)
• The Flaming Lips (Marymoor Park)
• Akron/Family (Bumbershoot)

album(s) (in no particular order):

• The Avett Brothers: I and Love and You
• Bill Callahan: Sometimes I Wish We Were An Eagle
• Amadou & Miriam: Welcome to Mali
• Built to Spill: There Is No Enemy
• Yo La Tengo: Popular Songs
• Wilco: Wilco
• The Flaming Lips: Embryonic
• St. Vincent: Actor
• Rodrigo y Gabriel: 11:11
• Mr. Smolin: Bring Back the Real Don Steele
• Akron/Family: Set ‘em Wild, Set ‘em Free
• Taken By Trees: East of Eden
• Animal Collective: Merriweather Post Pavilion
• Neko Case: Middle Cyclone
• Grizzly Bear: Veckatimest
• Leonard Cohen: Live in London

movies (note: I didn’t check the dates; I think these were all 2009; or at least I saw them in 2009):

• Inglorious Basterds
• Man on Wire
• Up
• The Fantastic Mr. Fox
• Extract (just saw this last night; so funny!)

tv (basically didn’t watch any live tv this year; all tv shows were via web streaming / DVD; we’re still 1-2 seasons behind on some of these; shhh):

• Dollhouse
• Damages
• Mad Men
• Battlestar Gallactica (maybe not the ending, but the rest of it was very enjoyable)

books I read this year (not all from 2009; I rarely read books when they first come out):

• Revenge of the Spellmans: Lisa Lutz (the exception to the 2009 pub date; I also read the first draft of The Spellmans Strike Again (coming March 2010!)
• The Girl who Fell from the Sky: Heidi W. Durrow (one of our clients, I got a manuscript version of her book, coming February 2010—definitely keep an eye out)
• What the Dead Know: Laura Lippman
• The Maisie Dobbs series: Jacqueline Winspear
• Innocent Blood: P.D. James (I picked this up at an “English Pub” in Paris, where they had a wall full of English language books)
• The Road: Cormac McCarthy (I don’t think I’m going to ruin the book by seeing the movie)

food / dining:

• Chez Omar, Paris
• all the fresh food from our garden!
• weekly fresh salmon from the Farmer’s Market during the summer, grilled on our grill with freshly picked corn, and a bottle of wine
• John Henry’s, Palm Springs

chocolate (yes, it gets its own category):

• La Chocolaterie de Jacques Genin, Paris (no website, but check out this article)
• Chocolate Mussy, Paris (8 rue du Bourg Tibourg, Marais)

art:

• André Kertéz photography exhibit at the Reykjavik Library (Iceland)
• Ara Güler photography exhibit, Paris
• Ferdinando Scianna photography exhibit, Paris
• Photoquai 2009, Paris
• visiting the Louvre, the Rodin Museum, and seeing all the amazing art in Paris

chance meeting:

• meeting and talking with the fine art photographer Tim Rudman and his wife, Ingrid Rudman, at Lake Myvatn in Iceland; then running into them again, two days later, in a totally different part of Iceland and having another great conversation

spa experience(s):

• Olympus Spa (Lynnwood, WA) – where I spent 6 hours of my 38th birthday!
• all the hot pools of Iceland: Myvatn Nature Baths and the “swimming pools” of Husavik and Reykjavik

None of these things would have been the same had I not shared them with friends, family, a cranky cat, and “strangers” met along the way. Mostly none would have been the same without Jay (I love you!). Looking forward to more adventures in 2010 and beyond.

We had an interesting and generally great year. We thought it’d be nice to post something about how that was true for our work at Juxtaprose, and so we just published a goodbye 2009 / thank you post on our Juxtaprose blog. That post includes a photo we took today of us sitting with some of the nice swag we’ve received from clients in 2009.

Some of said swag includes the “Free Schmidt” t-shirts we received from cousin Lisa (the “Free Schmidt” t-shirts will make sense once you read The Spellmans Strike Again, which is out in March 2010). And we wanted to do a second, Spellman Files-themed, photo with just Lisa’s books from ‘09 and the shirts, for her amusement. And, voilá! That’s the photo above, now included here for your amusement too!

If, after that, you’re still in a Fine & Full mood and want to read something new I’ve written on Wrong Notes, check out On Music Appreciation, which I also published today .

We are back in Seattle now, and have a few more photos to post (and stories to tell) from our unplanned extra trip to London and Brooklyn on the way home from Paris.

Our stop in Brooklyn was super brief (less than 24 hours), but we got to hang out with our friends Jonah and Nancy, which was really great.

We were totally wiped out from the extra travel (and lack of sleep required to plan it), but we had no trouble enjoying slices of pizza our morning there, before catching the flight back to Seattle—as illustrated in this photo:

Our final week in Paris, so nice, a taste of it in our Paris, week 3 photo set:

Also, Yes, we did see the Eiffel Tower (it’s even got its own photo set):

The beginning of our photo set from Versailles.

The sound of the police sirens here in Paris is really distinctive, and is to me, one of the many iconic sounds of this city.

The following sound recording captures the sound of a passing motorcade (the main car was a tiny, unmarked, Smart car—that it was a motorcade made no obvious sense to me, unless it maybe was a police escort for a woman about to give birth, on the way to the hospital).

Listen to Paris Sirens

Part of the Paris, week 2 photo set.

Just a quick update: we have some new photos up, check out:

Paris, Week 1 and Paris, long photos (hold your nose on this one).

We bought a six-day museum pass, which gives you access to a lot lot of museums, so we’re trying to squeeze in as much as possible before it expires on Monday. We’ve been trying to go on somewhat off-hours (in the evenings) to miss the crowds.

Bonne nuit! (Tired, as are my feet.)

So the other evening (10/7), we thought we’d hop the Metro over to the Eiffel Tower, and get a nice look at it. We got pretty close, but then, for reasons obviously beyond our comprehension, Jupiter, god of lightning and thunder, decided to stop us short. First there was a terrific downpour, and then the following went on for 30+ minutes:

So, ok big guy, we got the point. Rain, thunder, lightning—very impressive!

Now, we’re still looking forward to getting over to the Eiffel Tower—and getting all the way there, in a few days.

For our three weeks here in Paris, we’re renting a small studio (about 250 square feet) on the 5th floor (4th floor as they’d call it here) in a building from the 1600s. We have views out on other buildings built around the same time here in the 3rd Arrondissement (the Marais area) of Paris. When they were originally built, they were mansions for the aristocrats of the time. This is one of the few neighborhoods in Paris that didn’t get drastically changed in the 1800s, so it’s got a lot of small cobblestone streets and alleys.

The inside of the apartment (photos soon) doesn’t really have much of an older feeling to it, but looking out the windows—you definitey feel like you’re someplace old! And the walls are super thick (i.e. quiet) which is really nice when you’re in a city.

We just posted photos of some highlights from our last two days in Iceland (October 2 & 3). We drove on the Ring Road from the Gauksmyri horse farm (about 30 minutes south of Blondous), to Reykjavik. We lucked out and had a beautiful (but cold) sunny day in Reykjavik for our last day there.

View photos

If you know Nikita (the cat) or Rube (the fish), you know there’s a lot of chillin’ that happens at Fine and Full Manor. Even when we’re not there, of course.

Fortuitously, Ian (Anastasia’s cousin) is chillin’ at Fine and Full Manor now—and so there’s like a power trio thing going on, except, since it’s all chillin’, it’s not really so much a “power” trio, but like a quantum counter spin / looks like you’re going backwards but it’s really so fast it’s time travel thing—as seen is this most excellent picture:

chillin' with the petz

Thanks to Ian for sending the picture!

I just posted the next batch of photos from the last two days:

View photos.

We’re heading out now for a 2-3 hour drive to Reykjavik in the blustery weather (light rain/snow). We’re looking forward to being in a city again!