Leidt, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness... now playing at a theater near you.

(Credit where credit is due, Kate Jones definitely came up with the title for this post and our eventual feature film...)

A week back in Toronto and the 10 (11?) hour stretch that finally got us to our destination seems so long ago. We drove 2,562.5 miles from Clinton, Connecticut to Kate's door in Park City, Utah. We spotted license plates from 36 of 50 states, (Hawaii plates, and others, are rather thin on the ground. "Thin in the air! Generally pretty trim." We did see Alaska though!) we saw a black bear, drove through the Rocky Mountain National Park and added quite a few new hotspots to our list of Random Cities Of The World Kate Jones And Lady Liberty Have Inhabited At The Same Time.

Our last day we drove from Denver, visited Boulder briefly and then drove the rest of the way through Colorado and halfway through Utah on our way to Park City. We didn't realize at the time, but Route 36 runs right through Rocky Mountain National Park and so Luna huffed and puffed through the mountains and beautiful scenery. At 14,000 feet everything was suddenly "Awesome!" and I can only attribute it to the lack of oxygen. Hairpin turns? Awesome! Freakily tame chipmunks? Awesome! Rocky Mountain High? Awesome! I would have loved to camp out there forever, it was beautiful.

Kate Jones miraculously managed to drive almost the entire day. Definitely thanks to seasons 1 and 2 of How I Met Your Mother.... which was LEGEN...wait for it... DARY. We drove into Utah in the dark and after a slight detour made it into Park City to stay chez my WONDERFUL godmother in her lovely hotel room on Main Street. The next morning we went to go check out Kate Jones' apartment and after meeting Tallulah, the cutest-French-bulldog-puppy-ever, we found her brand-new, ski-in/ski-out, winter-ready apartment not twelve steps from her new place of employment. And yes, of course I beat her up.

We spent the weekend exploring the sights and sounds of Park City, from the resort amusement park where we roller-coastered, zip-lined and sled down the dormant ski slopes to Park Silly which was an impressive manifestation of craft show and farmer's market, and also checked out a few neighborhood eateries and grocery stores. The countdown is on for a certain festival in January, and we'll see if there might be a Part Deux to 'Lady Liberty in Park City.' Holy Sundance, here we come! I left Park City last Sunday and then got to see my aunt and uncle's home and the sights of Salt Lake City before catching a plane to see my Mr. Liberty in Toronto... via Los Angeles, Las Vegas and Minneapolis. (It's ok, I don't even remember the last three flights.) And there he was, waiting for me with a beautiful bunch of sunflowers!

In other news, poutine sales are up, LSATs are swiftly approaching and in Toronto it's cool with a chance of rain... ah yes, the abrupt end to a summer that never truly began. Happy September!

A view of Kate Jones' backyard...

"Hey, remember that day we drove from Chicago to Denver?"

We broke our 2000 miles! At least I think we did, the trip counter started over again and it could have only been me who did it... But we did as much driving yesterday as we did in the first two days combined and it was relatively painless. We hit 1000 miles yesterday as we were leaving Chicago and then crossed through the highly uneventful states of Illinois, Iowa and Nebraska. I was hoping for some giant balls of yarn or something on the side of the road to keep it interesting, but the best we got was the World's Largest Truck Stop. As you can imagine, we passed. The scenery was very pretty, but there's only so much rolling corn field you can take. (And yes, Nebraska is loooong...) However, I loved the fields of windmills--giants gracefully whipping their long arms around and around and giving us clean happy energy in the process! Makes me all warm inside.

The Almighty Skinny B*tch would have been so proud, I denounced diet coke for our longest drive of the trip and instead drank water... and a "natural" energy drink. And she would have been very pleased that we hit up a Whole Foods in Chicago to get veggies and fruit. Munching keeps me awake while driving so I figure better celery than say, the bag of Popcorn, Indiana Kettle Corn that we had earlier devoured. However, the B*tch definitely does not do road trips, eight glasses of water?? How many rest stops do you think there are along I-80, O Skinny B*tch?

We drove into Colorado in the dark. We might have missed out on our first view of the Rockies but the stars were amazing! (We only have a few in Toronto.) The last few hours we kept ourselves alert by discussing some of the more important questions of life. For example, if Denver is the Mile-High City, does that make its residents automatic members of the... Mile-High Club? The jury's still out. It seems like it would be an unfair advantage, don't you think?

Today is my birthday! We're starting with an AMAZING breakfast at Snooze in downtown Denver then possibly stopping off in Boulder before heading to Park City! I'm trying to get Kate Jones on a horseback trail ride through the mountains, wish me luck!

"South Bend... It sounds like dancing."

It's possible that we broke our 1000 miles today! ...but we have to check the odometer. Ohio was a brief but welcome reprise (with nice rest stops) from the expanse that is Pennsylvania--we spent most of the first day driving across it and still needed another hour to get out of it the next morning. After leaving Zelienople we hit Ohio, Indiana, then Illinois.

We stopped in South Bend, Indiana, Macauley Connor's hometown in 'The Philadelphia Story' (clearly more significant than its other associations) and when Katharine Hepburn's Tracy Lord hears this she proclaims, "South Bend... it sounds like dancing!" And we know this... because we listened to it in the car. That and a chorus of "Gary, Indiana, Gary, INDiana, Gary, Indiana..." greeted every other exit sign through Indiana.

Finally, we made it to Chicago and the Central Time zone. Amid much confusion we decided that our time of arrival was 5:30 pm and promptly made it to the first and nearest pub we saw. The traffic was pretty awful on the way in, we were told it might have something to do with Oprah blocking off half the city to celebrate 24 years on television. Our newest driving companion, Skinny B*tch, frowned upon us as we enjoyed a meal of beer and delicious, large and creative burgers with our lovely hostess, but we've decided that she's probably just not used to road trips. (I mean really, how many vegan cookies do you find in the average American rest stop?) I can tell you that the Goose Island Brewery (just across from Wrigley Field) makes an excellent Hefeweizen and black pepper burger with Stilton and roasted garlic on top... It was wonderfully un-skinny.

So, today it's on to.... NEBRASKA! When complaining about the length of Pennsylvania, recent blogger, Pooper McRoadTripperson told us, just wait until Nebraska... Should be exciting. Today we have no set plan and no person to see. So we plan to drive until we feel like stopping. Where will end up? Nebraska? Wyoming? Colorado?? Tune in to find out....

Trains, Planes and Automobiles...

So commences Road Trip: Utah or Bust!

I traveled on trains to get to Connecticut last week (one long day from Niagara Falls to NYC to Windsor), and we just finished our first day automobiling. Kate Jones and I reached Zelienople, PA at 8pm this evening where we are staying with two wonderful friends. Our first 510.8 miles on the road took us from Connecticut through New York, New Jersey and most of the width of Pennsylvania. Zelienople is a small town close to Pittsburgh and from here, we head to Chicago tomorrow. Today's highlight was most certainly Cracker Barrel french toast and that along with one rest stop were our only breaks in the roughly eight hour trip. Onward and upward!


(This is a peacock from El Retiro park in Madrid that I had uploaded months ago... completely unrelated to the current undertaking, but it took so long to upload it seems a shame to not post it!)

Spain! Poutini's! Cooking! AHHH!

A really quick one! So much has happened. The Laliberte women returned from a wonderful Spain trip of Sorolla, wine, tapas and jamon de Serrano to a whirlwind of Poutini madness. ("What do you mean there's ovens and deep fryers and refrigerators in this place?!") The place now has a nice warm woody smell to it and it's ready for people!

Since I began the above, we've had our first poutine and it's fantastic, Chef is hard at work getting ready for our opening night tomorrow!

And another thing.

If I'm Lady Liberty, does that make my husband a Lord?

The Sort of Thing Movie Girl and Mr. Liberty Would Enjoy IMMENSELY But Neither One Is Here

I'm sorry Movie Girl, I keep going to pick up the phone to call you but it always seems to be 1am. And I could call you right now but I have a sneaking suspicion that you would enjoy this more. I'll see what I can do after I return the paint thinner to my brother-in-law.

Two posts in two days? What is this, NaBloPoMoWriMo or something? Let's start with established facts. Somehow when you do something really stupid it feels a lot better when you can own it and laugh about it yourself and with those you love (and who presumably love you). It is a ridiculously windy day today. One should never undertake home improvement projects on a deck the size of an army cot.

That said, I'd like to tell you a story about the time I decided to stain a wooden table on our deck that is the size of an army cot. We'll also be so good as to tie in how this is related to Poutini's... since this is a day in the life of a Chip Girl, after all. It is a truth universally acknowledged that every good herb pot is in need of a fine table to sit on. And that said table must needs be matching the other outdoor accoutrements. (see Exhibit A) And since we happen to be renting a contruction site, said table and wood stain are a piece of cake, right?

Now turn your eyes to Exhibit B. Despite the necessary precautions, (rubber gloves, plastic bags for everything to sit on...) in the very moment I set down the small canister of custom "Poutini's Stain #5" a gust of the aforementioned very strong wind lifted it up and sent it flying across our deck the size of an army cot, effectively re-staining several chairs, our barbecue and the entire floor.

So thinking on her feet, Lady Liberty acts quickly and responsibly... she calls her brother-in-law. He provides her with paint thinner and she spends the next hour on her hands and knees scrubbing "Poutini's Stain #5" out of the outdoor linoleum. Meanwhile neighbors walking past are thinking, What smells nauseatingly of paint thinner? Hmm... Couldn't possibly be that girl on her hands and knees with holes in her pants scrubbing poop-coloured stain off her deck... No way. Home improvement? Smells like paint thinner to me.

In other news, I did have one shining accomplishment today and that was our "coming soon" sign in the window at the store! Now Poutini's is on the lips of every passer-by. Timing was perfect, our website www.poutini.com is also now live. I'm quite pleased. Ok, you have exactly 30 seconds to laugh with me about our schmutzen-covered deck and then we're not talking about it ever again. Yay Poutini's!

The 36-Hour Vacation... and a return to blogging.

36 hours, 5 poutines, 12 hours of driving, 15 cups of tea and 1 crappy hotel all in the name of poutine research.

I have been troubled for a long time thinking, "What do I have to blog about?" Movie Girl has movies/books, but I have... a screenplay? I can tell you that would have gotten old pretty quick... ("Day 231: Completed 5 pages today... onward and upward. Day 310: At page 110, nearly succumbed to diet coke cravings.") Mr. Liberty suggested writing an immigration blog but that wasn't much more interesting. ("Who knew you need a background check from France AND the United States... application pushed back another four weeks.") So I didn't write. But now, I have a new-found profession/reason for living: Poutine.

Yes, in just a few short weeks Lady Liberty will add another (volunteer) profession to the long string that has come before: Chip Girl. Mr. Liberty and his brother are opening Poutini's House of Poutine and I will be their first (unpaid) employee. Naturally, opening up a restaurant requires research so we decided to travel to the mecca of poutine. Montreal, of course. We left Toronto at 1 in the afternoon on Monday and got back at 1 in the morning last night. In that time we managed to eat poutine from five of Montreal's staple poutineries. Honestly? Not terribly impressed. While tasty, (until you've already had three) the poutine was made with questionable fries, packaged gravy and often-unsatisfying cheese curds. Yes, Montreal invented it, might Toronto perfect it? Remains to be seen. But we're more excited than ever about our endeavour... even if by the end we were cursing the very invention. And we might have done better to roll home to Toronto.

The trip itself was wonderful. Our hotel was on the rue St. Denis, a lively area of Montreal that gave us pretty easy access to the poutineries but also to a great number of tea shops! (My other love...) So in between "courses" we had Moroccan mint teas and pu-erh cleansing teas and matcha teas and "wulong" teas as they call them in French (Wu-tang's brother... ha!) and straight-from-the-Indian-tea-farm darjeeling teas. We'd like to think that it helped balance us out. All I know is that I am cured of carbs for life.

In other news, I have a print-out of the infamous Black Sash screenplay and it's thick enough to knock out a boisterous bear. Cletis, the 6-burner gas range, and Debbie, the double-door commercial fridge, have joined the family. (As my mother informed everyone she knows in the most obtuse of ways possible... "Katie and Fred are expecting... A FRIDGE!" minor heart attacks all-around, myself included) The "coming soon" website (www.poutini.com) will go up this week and EVERYONE needs to join the Poutine Lovers of Toronto facebook group, if you don't yet love poutine, we promise you will!

So that, friends, is a day in the life of Lady Liberty... chip-girl.

An announcement.

At 3:07 am, on the 28th of January in the year 2009, Lady Liberty has completed the first draft of her first feature film. She is quite pleased with herself.

Happy New Year... and all that.

Love,

Lady Liberty