Getting into the groove

I don't feel like talking about the saga of my apartment. It is still going on, re: the rent money and all, but I have only negative thoughts about the guy who subleted my apartment - negative thoughts in manner of "I want to strangle him", so I shall not say anything about it at all. For now.

Anyway, things are moving along. Except maybe our funds, from HSBC France. Supposedly HSBC France wired our money to our HSBC US bank account but it's been almost a week now and we still haven't received it. I am willing to bet that the delay is coming from France, and is not a US problem.

The great news is that we discovered a great little restaurant about 2 blocks from my apartment (which means delivery! Holla!) called S'Mac. It's tiny, and they serve all sorts of fancy mac 'n cheese varieties - and the best part (you knew this was coming) is that they serve GLUTEN FREE MAC N CHEESE!!!!!! I had the "Cheeseburger" mac n cheese yesterday for lunch, which consisted of cheddar and ground beef. It was SOOOOO good, but it was quite heavy, especially as I haven't eaten THAT much cheese in awhile, so I didn't feel so great afterwards, but I got better as the afternoon wore on.

Today we went to Mozzarelli's, a pizza place that serves GLUTEN FREE PIZZA and it was SOOOOOOO GOOD. Mozzarelli's is a little farther away, on 23rd between Park & Madison, but it was SOOOOO GOOD. They have all sorts of different GF pies, and you can order by the slice, like everyone else. I got a pepperoni slice and it was SOOOOO GOOD. It was almost just like a real pizza.

(BTW, shout out to Celiac Chicks for all the great GF restaurant reviews).

H is adjusting, slowly but surely. He never fails to be surprised by how friendly people are here, and how customer service oriented people are in stores and restaurants. Yesterday we headed over to explore the Whole Foods on Houston Street (we usually go to the one at Union Square) and it was like, so much better than the one at Union Square - it is much bigger and there are way fewer people, plus they have a special beer shop attached to the main store, and offer cooking classes! Anyway, I have been having major issues with my hair these days - I had recently noticed that my favorite Aveda Rosemary & Mint Shampoo listed "grains" as one of their ingredients! This unfortunately coincided with a massive attack of eczema on my body, and now not only do I have patches everywhere, but my hair is oily and my scalp is freaking out - it's all dry and itchy and weird. I figured Whole Body at Whole Foods would have something for me but I looked at all the labels on all the shampoos and almost all of them listed something along the lines of "wheat", "barley", "wheatgerm oil", "hops", etc. The only one that didn't have any of these kinds of ingredients was the Whole Foods 365 brand of shampoo. I figured I'd buy it, but asked the saleslady if she would know if their brand of shampoo contained gluten. She was quite perplexed, and said she wasn't sure, so she advised me not to buy it, but to call her at her direct line (she gave me her number) next week as she would send out an email to the Corporate Headquarters for me to make sure if it was gluten free or not. "Wow," said the H, "that is like, REALLY nice of her. Salespeople are very nice here." (I didn't really say anything, but I had a look of extreme smugness on my face).

Anyway, as I pointed out to the H, France is never far away - and then I showed him the ultimate thing - that we get Le Journal de France 2 (the 20h edition) on channel 25 here in the NY Metro area. (Luckily they still show it every evening at 19h, and it hasn't changed since I first started French classes at the age of 8). So now he can keep up with the news back home - which tonight included clips of people arguing about working hours (something about some unions and people who are mad about working overtime or something) and the importance of the month of May in terms of vacation days (apparently there are many vacation days in May and the best way to take advantage of them all is to get your RTT's in between all the official Catholic holidays, which means you can get up to like, almost 2 entire weeks of vacation for only like, 5 RTT's). Oh yeah, and something about the Tunisians being all annoyed at Sarko's visit (big surprise).

If anything, it's vaguely comforting to see that nothing really changes much in France.