Category Archives: Nonsense

I’ve never cared for the word “engaged”. It makes it sound like, for some length of time, you’re just too busy for anything.

“Want to grab a drink after work at that new place that got written up in that thing?”

“Nah, I’m engaged.”

“Hey I was thinking we should go to a spa and have all our body hair rubbed off with sugar or river rocks or tiny fragments of BBQ potato chip or whatever it is they use now. Friday?”

“No can do. Engaged.”

But we are!  Engaged, that is. Nic and I are getting married next summer. Here are the decisions we’ve made about it so far:

– We’re going to have a wedding.

– Probably in the Pacific Northwest.

– There will definitely be hot dogs there.

– I might sing my vows, ideally while wearing a gold sequined bow tie. Maybe red sequins. Either way there’ll be jazz hands. (When I told this to Nic, he didn’t immediately see the genius in it, so I said “UMM…SHOW CHOIR???” as though that would explain everything, but instead he gave me a look identical to the look I give him when he talks to me about computer games.)

this is a picture nic took of me in gig harbor. you can clearly see that i am sleeping, and you can clearly see that i am in the middle of the bed. as we have an ongoing disagreement about JUST WHO is always taking up all the room, this was damning evidence. also, we don’t have any cute pictures of us together as a couple that would be appropriate to post with the news that we’re getting married because we only take pictures of things like jars of pickles, weird art and sneaky pictures of the other one WHILE SHE IS SLEEPING LIKE AN ANGEL.

Cat has officially taken her longest vacation in over half a decade. Yes, it’s only been a week. Her work ethic is the kind of thing Europeans furrow brows and shake heads at. You can tell she was nearing burnout by this picture I snapped of her during a work videoconference just before our break:

Business up top, party down below.

In an effort to help recharge her batteries, I’ve been a most gentlemanly traveling companion. I’ve been doing all the ordering, asking, talking, paying. I mean, I speak French. She doesn’t. She’s been making up for that by repeating that she speaks some Spanish from the SEVEN YEARS she studied it.

I’ve even been mostly carrying all the heavy shit. With ice cream as fuel, of course.

So we arrived in España after a beautiful few days in Collioure, maybe my favorite town in the world. We had a couple hour layover until the next train left. That’s when I realized that in her seven years of Spanish, she learned how to conjugate dozens of irregular verbs, but not how to ask for the bill at a bar. We ended up with an extra round of beers, which in hindsight wasn’t such a bad thing.

It reminds me of the month I spent traveling around Mexico with my dear friend, Matt Acosta. Matt is mustachioed and half-Mexican, but never learned a lick of Spanish. Every single person we met would go off on tirades of Spanish toward my unsuspecting comrade, after which he would awkwardly point to me and somehow nonverbally communicate that my Franco-American ass was their best chance at getting a few words across.

It goes to show that a bit of conversational spanish followed by practice can be a lot more helpful than years of rote learning and testing. I found this reddit AMA from last year about learning languages fascinating. Alas, I digress. We made it to the Teatro-Museo Dalì in Figueras, where we saw some wonderful art.

Fairly tame, but a bit weird.

Getting weirder…

As we walked through the museum, as the weirdness reached a mind boggling crescendo, Cat stopped and asked me seriously, “Do you get it?”

“I don’t think I ever ‘get’ art, but I like it.” I replied. This turned out to be the best joke I’d ever told, as Cat actually laughed out loud. The best I’d ever gotten before was slightly a stronger exhale through her nose. I can’t express how gratifying that was.

Weirdest. Seriously. What the fuck.

Thankfully, after a couple days here in Spain, Cat’s Spanish has been coming back, and mine is even improving a bit. People actually smile at our efforts before immediately reverting to English!

Get it?

So, Nic is bilingual. As in, he is a fluent French speaker. He went to high school and college in France. He has introduced me to many people in France who say “you don’t speak ANY French?”, like the unfortunate affliction it is; akin to watching reality television, or not liking seafood . “Not unless you’d like to come to bed with me tonight”, is the joke I’d say if there were anyone to laugh at my jokes.

I defended my lack of speaking any French by saying to people, who, by the way, mostly speak pretty good English* “I took SPANISH in school, if you can believe all the rotten luck! If only I’d met a handsome half-SPANISH American, but I guess there aren’t as many of them in database development.”

*Point you, schools in Europe. America is still too upset over losing to Asia at math to worry about teaching kids languages, I think.

But then Nic and I came to Spain, upon which time he said “ok, we’re in Spain. Now you be in charge of talking.” AS THOUGH THE THINGS I HAD SAID ABOUT TAKING SPANISH IN SCHOOL INDICATED THAT I SPEAK SPANISH.

this is a picture of nic every time i don’t speak spanish.*
*actually i made him stand in a grotto at parc guell so i could take pictures of him and THEN i made him take his sunglasses off and his eyes burned out of his head because it was so bright. but isn’t the first version funnier?

As it turns out, I don’t speak Spanish. At all. Today I remembered how to say “can I pay the bill, please” and it felt like discovering fucking penicillin. Also, after thinking about it with as much concentration as I’ve ever used in my life, I remembered that the word for ice is hielo. I felt like I’d birthed a child.

Unfortunately, speaking a language does not just consist of vocabulary. Sí, EL HELADO. Sí! LA ABUELA! Not good enough. Rarely, if ever, when traveling in a country, do you get to reference both ice cream and someone’s grandmother in one sentence.

Not never, but rarely.

seeing as this post isn’t really about anything, here is a picture of the ceiling at parc guell for some actual content. the place needs to be this epic and huge to hold up the weight of 12810 fat tourists. sorry, 12812.

My dad asked for more posts. HERE YOU GO, BRYAN. (I love you!)

We are in Domme, a fortified village in southwest France. I will not say anything about it, because I am now living here permanently. I’m never leaving ever.

So here is a picture of Nic cutting off the cast of a guy who lives in the village, who came by this morning to say hello and invite us to dinner. They did end up getting the cast off.

After this we did a blood letting

and here are the things I am currently worried about:

1. Not being funny in France
2. Not having enough reading material on the plane*
3. Nic being frustrated with my incessant questions**
4. Never in my life finding shoes that are comfortable AND attractive***
5. Being the potato in the blog title****

*Nic and I have an ongoing argument about real books vs. e-readers. Nic, ever logical, argues that e-readers provide convenience and portability, not to mention expunging the fear of not having enough reading material on flights. BUT. They gots no soul.

**This fear is not specific to France.

***Is there some kind of conspiracy among the manufacturers of athletic shoes to make it a strong possibility that if you wear them, no one will ever sleep with you again, ever?

**** :(

Duck and Potato. Cute, right?

We’re going to France together for our first big adventure as a couple, so blogging about it seemed appropriate. We are children of the internet, after all. We can’t have an experience and not record it!!

Our first trip is to France, so a blog called Duck and Potato seemed appropriate, because duck and potatoes is 70% of the French diet (how are they not fatties? Just one of the many fascinating mysteries to be uncovered here at Duck and Potato).

Additionally, the name corresponds very well to the two people behind the blog. Though Potato has some serious reservations about it.

*The following conversation has been embellished for humor.

C: Duck and Potato is an adorable blog title, but I’m not being Potato.
N: Why not??
C: POTATO??? That’s horrible!  Who wants to be Potato? Potatoes are like rocks that happen to be semi-edible. And not even pretty rocks.
N: Fine, you can be Duck, I’ll be Potato. Do you have to argue about EVERYTHING?
C: Thank you. And yes.

<some time later>

C: I am Irish and Polish so I guess I should be Potato. Potatoes aren’t so bad, they make an excellent vehicle for BBQ sauce.
N: And ducks are my favorite animal, this fact has been established.
C: That’s true. You love ducks.
N: So you’re Potato and I’m Duck.
C: Arg.

So here we are. Expect jokes, a lot of photos (Duck bought me an amazing camera for my birthday, look for lots of pictures of castles and cheese), and a lot of writing about things we eat and cook.
Duck and Potato, a blog about food and travel.

But mostly jokes. :)

I’m glad I asked. The potato originated in the New World, just like me and Cat. Once discovered, it quickly traveled across the globe, expanding the culinary experience of those it encountered. Such is our hope for duckandpotato.com

When the potato was having trouble gaining popularity in 18th century France, Louis XVI planted a plot of potatoes and set his most elite guard to watch over it. The local peasants, thinking their king must be keeping something good from them, stole some of the plants and started to grow them themselves. I actually employed a similar strategy when Cat and I first met. Anyway, from that point forward, the potato spread across the French countryside like wildfire.

This might be Louis XVI receiving a potato.

“In the course of human history, the potato has been a much greater treasure than gold.”

– Michael Pollan

“How many potatoes does it take to kill an irishman?” I asked Cat as we discussed the name of our blog.

“None,” she quipped, “and I already know that joke. You already told it to me. Why can’t you be funnier?” she asked rhetorically for the hundredth time.

So be it. If my sense of humor isn’t going to pull my weight on our shared blog, then I’ll have to make up for it elsewhere. Technology skills. A computer brain that can remember everything except where I left that damn coffee mug. The ability to speak French in a land where people really don’t speak anything else. And if those don’t cut it at some point in the future, the ability and willingness learn new stuff.

The duck, a migratory water bird, has always been my favorite animal. The word duck comes from the old english duce, which means to dive. Ducks can dive underwater, fly long distances, float happily, and even waddle from place to place. Some ducks are nomadic, seeking out rain. I happen to enjoy all of those things.

Also, maybe even foremost, ducks are delicious. If there is but one passion I have found in this life, it’s cooking and sharing food. And if there’s anywhere in this world that knows how to cook duck, it’s the the sud-ouest of France.

So it seems appropriate for us to kick off this site with a month long trip to this duck adoring region of the world. One week to go, and more to come, so please keep checking back!