Well, I got the job.

Notice there's no exclamation on that sentence. I mean, don't get me wrong... I'm happy that I will be making some money... and happy that I'll have something to do. But the job is at an embarrassingly low level and I'll be commuting roughly 6 hours a day back and forth between my home and Amsterdam. (I'm currently on the hunt for a temporary apartment.)

On the bright side: it's work, the pay is actually not too shabby, and if I get a place to live, I'll be spending the spring and early summer in a GREAT city. :)

So... I still want to tell all about Turkey but methinks it might be a few days before I get to it. But here's a nice, cheesy picture M and I had taken on the beach. Feel free to laugh.

So, I know I'm supposed to tell you all about Turkey... and I promise pictures and fun stories of our holiday are soon to come. However, I've just spent the past 2 hours collecting quotes about love and marriage for my friend's upcoming wedding and I thought I'd share my favorites with you today. Enjoy!


We come to love not by finding a perfect person, but by learning to see an imperfect person perfectly.
-- Anonymous

Love is like pi - natural, irrational, and very important.
-- Lisa Hoffman

(Um, am I a geek because I like this one?)

To love someone deeply gives you strength. Being loved by someone deeply gives you courage.
-- Lao Tzu

Love one another and you will be happy. It's as simple and as difficult as that.
-- Michael Leunig

Love looks not with the eyes, but with the mind; And therefore is winged Cupid painted blind.
-- William Shakespeare, A Midsummer Night's Dream, Act i. Sc. 1.

Love does not consist in gazing at each other, but in looking outward together in the same direction.
-- Antoine de Saint-Exupéry

(The above quote is, perhaps, the one that comes closest to explaining my philosophy of marriage.)

A good marriage is like a casserole, only those responsible for it really know what goes in it.
-- Anonymous

Marriage is not a ritual or an end. It is a long, intricate, intimate dance together and nothing matters more than your own sense of balance and your choice of partner.
-- Amy Bloom

I told my wife that a husband is like a fine wine; he gets better with age. The next day, she locked me in the cellar.
-- Anonymous

If ever two were one, then surely we.If ever man were loved by wife, then thee.
-- Anne Bradstreet

Anyone can be passionate, but it takes real lovers to be silly.
-- Rose Franken

Now join your hands, and with your hands your hearts.
-- William Shakespeare, King Henry the Sixth

A successful marriage requires falling in love many times, always with the same person.
-- Mignon McLaughlin

May my heart be your shelter, and my arms be your home.
-- Marianne Williamson

Married couples who love each other tell each other a thousand things without talking.
-- Chinese proverb

When you make a sacrifice in marriage, you’re sacrificing not to each other but to unity in a relationship.
-- Joseph Campbell

Success in marriage does not come merely through finding the right mate, but through being the right mate.
-- Barnett R. Brickner

Don't smother each other. No one can grow in shade.
-- Leo Buscaglia

Only choose in marriage a man whom you would choose as a friend if he were a woman.
-- Joseph Joubert

When a match has equal partners then I fear not.
-- Aeschylus

Marriage is not a noun; it's a verb. It isn't something you get. It's something you do. It's the way you love your partner every day.
-- Barbara De Angelis

Be to their virtue very kind; be to their faults a little blind. -- Matthew Prior

This day I will marry my friend, the one I laugh with, live for, dream with, love
-- Anonymous

The four most important words in any marriage..."I'll do the dishes."
-- Anonymous

Hello Folks! I'm back from Turkey!

I'd like to say I'm all sultry and deeply tanned after my beach vacation, but really, I only got enough sun to make me look like a normal person with actual pigment in their skin. Those first few days on the beach were rough for my fellow beachgoers. Some of them wandered over to my beachchair to request that I stop flashing them in the eyes with a mirror. Of course, once they saw me, they realized it was just the sun reflecting off of my blindingly white skin.

M and I had a great -- and utterly mindless -- time on our vacation. There was absolutely no reason for us to take our brains along as there wasn't a single thing we had to think about while at this resort. Food, booze, entertainment -- it was all there and free. The closest I got to a thought that required higher reasoning was "Do I want a beer right now or a gin and tonic?" And let me tell you, that decision nearly wiped me out. I had to go sit on my beach chair and rest afterwards.

Oh and there's lots to tell. So much so that I can't possibly fit in all into one blog entry. Let me just give you quick glimpse of the past week or so and the next few days to come. (yes indeedy I actually have real live "stuff" going on here in Holland.)

1) The people who opt for all-inclusive, off-season vacations are a smidge different than M and me. Let's just say that, in comparison, we had too few tattoos and too many teeth. Also, we were sorely lacking in gold chains. However, as most of them were German, M did get to practice his skills in that language all week. Part of me was impressed by this. Part of me listened to him blabbering on in German and thought "Oh, damnit, he's becoming fluent again. There's goes my chance of moving back to the US. Now, he's gonna drag me to Germany so he can work for Mercedes."

Of course, this thought was immediately followed by "Hmmmm... I could drive a Mercedes. Must rethink this whole moving-back-to-the-US idea."

2) Dandelion leaves are my new favorite food. No, really. SO tasty. (and apparently, as Google tells me, highly nutritious.) And I know exactly what my father is thinking as he reads that sentence: "Great Ang! When you visit this summer, we'll just put you in the backyard and you can graze."

3) M and I spent two days in downtown Alanya to hike into the 13th-century wall ruins surrounding the city and also to simply soak up a little Turkish culture. (Just because our resort had olives at every meal does not mean it was Turkey. It was Germany/Holland on a piece of Turkish beach.) On the first day we were there, Islamic prayers sounded out over the city from loudspeakers mounted on minarets. M and I both noticed that nobody paid the prayers any attention and nobody stopped to pray. Of course, now that I write that I'm wondering... if you're Muslim, are you supposed to stop and pray when you hear the prayers. I actually have no clue.

4) More Turkey to come, but a brief note about here. The weather is MUCH nicer now and the trees and flowers are finally starting to bloom. (apparently, spring is a month late this year...)

Anyway... let me just tell you... this is a TOTALLY DIFFERENT PLACE NOW. I have to put that in all caps because the 180 I'm witnessing here is nothing short of bizarre. Dutch people who were horribly grouchy and stern just a few months ago are actually smiling at me on the street and saying hello. At first, when they bared their teeth at me, I thought "Oh no, I pissed off the Dutchie by looking it straight in the eye! It's about to attack!" But just as I was about to flee for my life, I heard a friendly "hullo!" I soon realized the unthinkable had happened. I had been greeted by an utter stranger on the street.

5) I have a job interview in Amsterdam tomorrow. Yeehaw! It's for a job that I'm WAY overqualified for. The pay would suck. AND I would have to commute 5 hours every day. But I SO do not care. Not that I don't love that my current job is this blog, but let's face it. You people don't pay very well.

Wish me luck.

Goodbye all!

And since my only taker on the guest blogging was Anonymous, I guess this space will remain blank for a week. Sorry Anon... I'm not gonna just post my info out in the open.

See you in a week!

The other day I sat down on the floor to entertain the kitties with the "food game." This is a highly enjoyable activity -- for both me and the felines -- where I flick dry cat food across a slippery floor and watch them "hunt" the prey down and kill it. Sometimes I'm even rewarded with a kitty sliding head first into a coffee table or other stationary piece of furniture. The resounding thud is very satisfying.

No, they don't get hurt. They LIKE it. Stop dialing PETA.

And even though M is still unsure of his level of affection for my fuzzy little daughters, he does enjoy watching chubby house cats pretending to be lions pretending that pieces of dry kibble are juicy antelopes. Often, he joins in on the fun and tosses pieces of food out to the kitties. (His technique is a little off, but I do appreciate the effort.)

But, on this day, M decided to experiment. I looked up to see him tossing a piece of cat food into his mouth. (specifically the beef and rice formula from Purina One.) Then another. And then ANOTHER. "Mmmmm... good stuff," he says, "pretty tasty." After he registered my look of horror, he said, "No, really. Here, try it."

My first thoughts were 1) Ewww, no I don't wanna try it. Have you ever smelled my cats' breath? 2) I've eaten in CHINA where they eat chicken's feet and pig intestines. I'm not afraid of a little kitty food. 3) If I were a good mother... the kind that maybe I'll be one day with human children... I'd try the food so I'd know exactly what my little darlin's are eating every day. Good mothers try the strained prunes and mashed peas... and this is just beef and rice, right? Right?

So, I popped a piece into my mouth. Crunch, crunch, crunch... and at first taste, it's not too bad. It's not filet mignon and risotto, but it's not disgusting either. However, the finish -- to steal from wine tasting terminology -- is... let's see, what word am I grasping for here... oh right... revolting. Think old fish topped with rancid meat garnished with a side of moldy bread and you have an approximate understanding of what I'm talking about.

But, this was not all some evil joke on his part. He truly does think it's tasty.

At least he has good taste in women. :)

(okay okay, I had to go there before someone beat me to the joke.)

So we're both living off of a PhD salary (think the US standard for poverty level) and we're so poor we can barely buy food... and M even has his car up for sale... but... BUT...

We're STILL gonna go on vacation because that's what you do when you live in a dreary European climate. You escape the absolute first chance you get and go to the sun! We're withering here... our leaves are brown and there's not a single bud on us and so we must go to the Turkish coast where there's copious amounts of sunshine, warmth, sea and sand. (not to mention all food and drinks included and as much Turkish coffee as I want. bzzzzzzzz.... bbbbzzzzzzz)

We leave this Saturday and return the next.

And I have no idea if I'll have access to a computer, so would anyone like to be a guest blogger here? Just one entry to keep the masses entertained? (you know, all 10 of my readers)

The never-ending saga of my hair... Me, darker, shorter... (at least the curtains match the carpet now... wink wink, nudge nudge... know what I mean?)

Just wanted to let you all know I'm still alive. The "crazy pill" is starting to kick in, so I'm feeling a bit better. Not great, but better. In fact, I think I've set a new personal goal -- one that will be sure to wow and astound my friends and family. Are you ready?

I have not cried in 2 weeks! TWO WEEKS!

Let's all take a moment to offer up thanks to the glorious pharmaceuticals industry. Oh thank you Pfizer.... thank you GlaxoSmithKline... Though you do not create products that taste as nice as chocolate and red wine (my usual drugs of choice), I do appreciate that your wonderful little pills have the ability to even out the rollercoaster that is my normal emotional life. Thank you for putting me on the merry-go-round. The horsies are pretty and I find the music to be oh so calming.