Happy Thanksgiving

I am so thankful that I get to spend Thanksgiving this year with my husband. We've been really lucky to get almost all of our Thanksgivings together, I think we've only missed one.

Other things I'm thankful for:

my crazy parents

my brother and sister and their families

coffee

living in Italy

nachos

my job

PWOC

a working hot water heater

my new shower head

blogs

books

airplanes

music

rugby

being American

I hope y'all have a great Thanksgiving if you celebrate it. And if you don't, take some time to eat some pie.

Juliet, Naked

I was really excited when I saw this book in our little library. I've been wanting to read a Nick Hornby novel for sometime to see what all the fuss was about. I probably should have started with one of the greats: High Fidelity, Fever Pitch or About a Boy.

Quick synopsis: Duncan is obsessed with has been 80's rock star Tucker Crowe and Annie, Duncan's 15 year partner, likes Tucker Crowe as much as the next guy. Duncan is obsessed with Tucker Crowe, even calls himself a Crowologist. When an unfinished version of Tucker Crowe's most famous album, Juliet, hits the market Duncan raves about it on his online Crowe community website. The problem is Annie thinks it's crap and tells Duncan so in an excellently written review on the same website. Her review infuriates Duncan and gets a different reaction from recluse Tucker Crowe, an email.

Annie and Tucker begin corresponding without Duncan's knowledge and Duncan starts canoodling without Annie's knowledge. Then stuff really starts to get complicated...

Juliet, Naked was lukewarm for me. The main characters were excellent and flawed and real and just the kind of characters I love. But the secondary characters were so absent and flat it took away from the good dynamic of the main characters.

Even though this was a character driven book the plot was a major player as well. Hornby had a nice balance of plot and characters so I was invested to see what happened and to learn more about these people.

The thing that disappointed me most about this book was the ending. Don't worry, no spoilers.

This book didn't end so much as shrug its shoulders and stop telling me its story. Usually I love the open ended book. It's one of the things that makes a book stay with me. I think about what could happen after. Juliet, Naked didn't end. It just stopped. Disappointing because of the characters and plot that I thought were promising me so much.

Weekend

IMGP0919, originally uploaded by nikkilooch.

Hello, my beloveds.

I'm spending this weekend with my husband.

See y'all Monday.

xoxo,
Nikkilooch

Weekend

IMGP0919, originally uploaded by nikkilooch.

Hello, my beloveds.

I'm spending this weekend with my husband.

See y'all Monday.

xoxo,
Nikkilooch

art journal love: pretty

I have been being inspired by a new blog Dirty Footprints Studio. Here is her latest video on art journaling which is something that I'm starting to get into to stretch out and try my artistic hand. If you check her youtube account KitchenOfTheSoul you can find a lot of other journaling videos and other fun stuff.



I hope you find something today to make you smile.

My dream house

When in Nurnberg, I found my dream house. From the outside at least.

This is the picturesque street that my house sits on. There are no cars allowed on this street in the old town.

This is a picture from the front. It's pink with vines growing up the side.

It sits on top of a coffee shop. If I ever get to live over a precious little coffee shop like this I think my life might be complete.

The back has a small balcony with window boxes and flowers.

But wait. It gets better.

The house sits on this river and the balcony overlooks it. I could see myself sitting outside in the summer for hours watching people cross the bridge, listening to the river and sipping coffee from the shop downstairs.

One day I'm going to find out what the inside looks like and how many millions of euros it costs to live here. Then I'm going stalk the poor, sweet people inside until they sell me their home.

I'm a firm believer in having solid plans for the future. Achievable goals.

I need to learn German.

More Nurnberg

You can never have too much Nurnberg, right?


This beautiful structure is in the town square near where we stayed in Nurnberg's old town. I have no idea what it's called. But they light it up at night and it's beautiful.

We did hear on the news about it though that there's a ring on this thing. If you spin it three times then you get good luck.

I spun it. Here's proof:


I should only have one more Nurnberg post before you start to get sick of them.