One of the nice things about taking over 2,000 pictures when we were in Paris is that we've been back almost nine months and I'm still going through and finding neat pictures that I had no idea I took. 

I was deeply into the planning of my next scenario which involved borrowing Chinook helicopters from nearby Redstone Arsenal to airlift the pizza to our balcony, when the knock at the door came.  I was surprised to see a delivery guy holding two very normal pizza boxes, in which were two very averaged-sized (16") large pizzas.  Hmm.  At the very least I was hoping to hear the *beep* *beep* *beep* of a GIANT delivery truck backing up in the parking lot, but no.  I was extremely disappointed by their deceptive marketing plan.  Maybe something like "Our pizzas are a GIANT value!", but not the line of blatant lies they spread. 

It was weird in there.  Like some trendy punk rock shoe store with funkily dressed employees who were literally running to the back room to fetch shoes...only to run back onto the floor and jump over the benches to deliver a box of shoes to someone.  After a few minutes of looking my eyes got fixated on this one pair of shoes and I couldn't stop staring at them.  I'd never heard of the brand before (Grinders), and they were twice as much as I normally pay for shoes...but they looked really cool.  Amazingly the zoomy shoe guy found my size, and a few minutes later I was walking out of the store with some spiffy-ass shoes.

Today was picture day!  Nope, I didn't take any new ones.  Instead, I poked around in my seemingly endless folders of pictures and came across a bunch that I forgot about.  I was able to post somewhere around 20 new pictures to my Flickr account.  Ok, so they weren't new, and most of them were over a year old and all, but still, when I haven't seen them in a year, and you've never seen them, well, it means they're kinda sorta newly new.   

  

It's kind of funny (just to me, I'm sure), that I have a framed picture of one of my guitars sitting on my desk, while the guitar itself (and its buddy) are sitting in their stands right next to my desk. 

Today Kari and I went out to buy a copy of this book, then went across the street to get a late breakfast at the Atlanta Bread Company.  Afterwards, we dropped of some library books which was where we saw this strange sign. 

After the library, we headed west on Route 72 and ended up finding a flea market.  Besides the obligatory t-shirts, belt buckles, cell phone pouches, baby jumpers, and flags that proudly proclaimed "The South will rise again!", this Alabama flea market had something wonderfully different.  It had ZOLTAR!  Good thing I was too afraid to leave my camera in the car, so I was able to take some pictures of it since no one would believe me.  Kari put a dollar in the slot and he came to life, his hand moving in circular motions above the mysterious, light-emitting, crystal ball.  He spoke in a vaguely Hispanic accent, telling Kari that many people will experience bad luck...but not her!  Good things will come to her this year.  It also told her to make sure to visit Zoltar again soon for more advice. 

Zoe's been a bad bad cat.  She was begging Kari for food when I got home tonight and she got all kinda of angry when she didn't get get her canned tuna right when she wanted it.  There was an orange blur as she jumped up onto the sink, grabbed half of the wishbone that was behind the spigot, landed on the floor, and tried to swallow it (!!!!!).  Kari tried to take it from her, but Zoe hissed and tried to claw her (very unusual)...but wasn't quick enough because a second later Zoe was running down the hall, empty-mouthed, away from Kari's yelling at her.  Silly cat, didn't she know she could choke?  She's a sneaky one, that Zoe.

Oh!  In 2005 I visited 25 states, 8 of which I'd never been to before.  Here's the map of every state I've ever been to:  

In February, Kari, me, and our friend, Connie, drove down to New York City to see The Gates and spent the rest of the weekend walking around and seeing the city and the amazingly rude inhabitants who live there (except for Kari's aunt, who was really nice and showed us around Greenwich Village).

Late in April, we flew out of Boston and begun the previously seemingly unattainable dream trip to Paris we had both been wanting for most of our lives.  We checked into a hotel in the St. Germaine section of Paris and began scouting out the city.  On our second day there, we had a beautiful picnic in the Champs du Mars on a postcard-pretty day.  With the Eiffel Tower as my witness, I read a poem and ended it by proposing to Kari (she said "Oui!").  After those two perfect days were over, we hopped a high-speed train and zoomed across Belgium, and through the beautiful, multi-colored, tulip fields of the Netherlands. 

We spent the next few days walking around the packed streets and getting repeatedly lost amongst the canals.  Everyone there was super friendly and spoke perfect English which was helpful for when we were directionally challenged (the Dutch language looks remarkably like how the Swedish Chef speaks, only you can sort of make out the meaning of the occasional written word).  One overcast afternoon was spent on a boat lazily drifting around the canals.  Another was wisely spent at the Keukenhof, which was about 40 minutes outside of the city.  While Amsterdam is a nice city, we discovered that four days was about two days too many.  We went back to Paris and spent two days in Montmartre admiring the beautiful views from the Sacre Coeur, watching the artists paint, and finding the locations from the film Amelie.    

After Montmartre, we moved into the tiny apartment we rented for a week in the 11th Arrondissement and spent the next seven days seeing and doing everything we could, including a long morning on the Eiffel Tower, a twilight boat tour of the Seine, going to the flea markets (which are a lot fancier than the name implies) on the outskirts of the city, seeing the puppet show in the Luxembourg Garden that David Sedaris told us we should go to, eating crepes, and non-stop walking, and picture taking.  Most nights we ended up hanging out at the Cafe Absinthe, a neat bar that was a couple blocks from the apartment.  The nights were warm, so it was nice to sit at tables on the sidewalk, enjoying Picon biere, talking, listening to the low-keyed trip-hop, and watching people walk by.    

On the second to the last day of our final week in Paris, we went on a day-long Fat Tire Bike Tour of Versailles.  I was a little nervous since I was 13 the last time I rode a bike.  I was a little more nervous as we left the Fat Tire office and we were zipping through the streets of Paris on our way to the RER station and had an angry little Fiat behind me, honking.  Once our train arrived to the village of Versailles, it was absolutely amazing day spent peddling over the centuries-old cobblestone roads, buying parts of lunch from the different vendors in town, biking down miles-long shady roads, through the intricate gardens, having lunch at the far end of the Grand Canal, and seeing the interior of the chateau itself.  Wow.  After we had returned to Paris and our group was biking through the streets on our way back to the Fat Tire office, I felt an odd sense of freedom (a far cry from the "oh shit, oh shit" fear of tipping over I felt in the morning) and happiness as the hustle and bustle of the city blurred by, the wind whipped through my hair, knowing I was on a bicycle, speeding through the street of Paris. 

Our last day was spent catching up on all of the touristy things we had avoided, like the museums, and then we met up with Kari's friend, Amory, who was attending a university in Paris for a semester.  A very nice way to end such a great trip by hanging out in a dark, yet full-of-character sangria bar in the Latin Quarter.

After such a big trip, we took it easy for a while and didn't venture out too much until we headed down to Charleston, South Carolina for a long weekend in July.  We met up with Kari's mom and had a great time. 

The end of September found me flying to Las Vegas for a hotel conference.  I had always wanted to go to Las Vegas, not to gamble (I bet and lost $1.00 the whole week I was there) but to see the hotels.  For the most part, they were nice, but a lot of them reminded me more of blatantly cheap tourist traps.  The day after the conference ended, I flew to the Bar 10 Ranch and went on a day-long ATV trek into the Grand Canyon.  It was incredibly fun, feeling the rush of speeding along through the desert, dirt kicking up in large clouds, with some of the most beautiful natural scenery surrounding me.

As for short regional trips in the Southeast, I went to Atlanta for a week-long training in September for work.  In October and November Kari and I went on a few day trips to places like Decatur, Nashville and Chattanooga.  At the end of October I went up to Lynchburg, Tennessee for the Jack Daniel's World Championship Barbeque Contest. 

So yeah, all in all, it was a great year, packed with awesome things.  Back during Christmas of 2002 I told myself that I was going to live every day, week, month, and year like it was my last.  Living no longer meant just going through the motions of work, home, tv, sleep.  From that point onwards I told myself that I am the sum of my experiences so I better start adding like mad because when it's all over, and I'm looking back, I want to have lived the most amazing life possible.  I did that in 2003, 2004, and especially in 2005.  It's so cool to think that this past year had me at the top of the Eiffel Tower to the bottom of the Grand Canyon, and so much cool stuff in between.  One big thing about this year is that if it weren't for Kari being in my life, I wouldn't have done a fraction of it.  So, thank you Kari for making it such a wonderful year.  2006 is going to be even better.  

                                                                    © 2006 Eric Nixon.  All rights reserved.