New Blog!

My new blog: “anything is possible here“ – check it out!  I will reference back to this blog periodically in some of my posts on the new blog, but I won’t be making new posts here.

This is the last post of The Baking Barrister!  To follow my new writing, check out www.anything-is-possible-here.com  I hope to see you there!

New Web Address for Blog as of June 15th!!!

Hi all,

I am planning on retiring this blog and starting a new one.  As such, I will not be paying for the special domain name that I now have anymore, so as of June 15th, 2014, in order to access this blog, you will need to go to: https://thebakingbarrister.wordpress.com/

http://www.thebakingbarrister.com WILL NO LONGER WORK AS OF JUNE 15!!!!!

I’ll update this again when the new blog is set up!!!

Almost There!!!!

The last few weeks have been another whirlwind, what with Easter (a MASSIVE holiday in Greece, which means lots of work in the bakery), my niece & her mom visiting (plus a friend from Athens – 5 people and 4 animals in our 450 sq. ft. home!), and the fundraising campaign for the bookshop, which is a full-time job in itself.  Tonight I was trying to work on yet another e-mail to someone who runs a literary website here in Greece and I realized that the vision for the bookshop, and my accompanying passion, have gotten a bit lost in the rush of things lately.  I had a hard time writing to him about the bookshop because I am so focused on reaching our fundraising goal, and we only have 10 days left!

Lawyer, Baker, Bookshop Maker!!

The official Bookgarden logo!!

Wow, so, ya, it’s been a while!!  As usual, there is too much to catch up on in the past 4 or 5 months, so I will skip to the big news: The Bookgarden is blooming!!  We “officially” open on April 16th, right before Easter weekend.  We won’t have a big grand opening party until early May, but we will be open for business as of next week.  What an adventure so far!!

When the Words Come Crawling…

I have been avoiding writing lately like the plague but tonight it happened – I ran out of excuses. After work we went in town (Ioannina) in the late morning to do a million errands and by the time we got back in the late afternoon it was too late for our daily rest. Instead we ate a very late lunch/early dinner, I did some bookstore work and then, well, then I wasted time on Facebook and the internet for a while until even that seemed “finished.” So then all I was left with were my iPad, keyboard, some candles, a glass of water, and a quiet night. No getting away from it….

Bookstore Updates

Well hello, hello.  It’s been a while, eh?  Wow, actually, I had NO idea how long until just now when I went and checked to see when I last posted.  2 months!  Yeesh!  I blame the bookstore, heh.  A lot has been going on!  Below are pictures from the past few months – starting, and finishing, the painting (some help from friends & Kostas, but most of it by me), setting up a temporary work station until my desk is built, meeting with the craftsman who will be building my desk and the shelves, and doing some minor decorations and things to get the villagers interested. There has also been a LOT of behind-the-scenes office and paperwork, but that did not make for terribly interesting photos!

Cilantro Eggs (?) + Some Thoughts

This is a two-part post – the first is some emotional rambling, which you can skip if you want to get to the fun part below 😉  I wrote this first part in the afternoon, after I had woken up from a much-needed nap (I was under the weather the past few days and my body was still attempting to re-energize itself) and was feeling a bit “off” emotionally.  Now, some hours later, I am not totally “on,” but the heavy thoughts that were clouding my emotional view have partially slid out of my head (to where, I don’t know – maybe onto the floor and I subconsciously kicked them under a rug) and so I am feeling a bit more settled. 

A Greek Moment + Bookshop Photos

Sometimes I forget I live in “Greece,” as in, some crazy, foreign country to which most of the people I know have never even been (but about which people hear a LOT of news, a significant amount of which is over-dramatized or flat-out incorrect – but that’s another subject entirely!).  Most of my days, I am just living, not in “Greece,” not “away from America,” but just, you know, living.  Working, cooking, laughing, hugging, crying, singing, loving – the list goes on.

But then,

Culture Shock, Again?

The sky is inky black – the darkness has enveloped the village from the tips of the tallest trees to the soil underneath.  Lighting cracks open the sky in short bursts, then gets swallowed up again just as fast.  It’s raining, but not heavily – plink, plonk, you can hear the fat drops slowly hitting dry leaves, tile and tin roofs, the street below. I’m sitting on the balcony, no lights save a candle on the coffee table, the muted twinkling of some old, yellowed Christmas lights, and the computer screen in front of me.  On the couch beside me, a cup of hot tea on a coaster, and at my feet, Tsarlie, sitting, uneasy about the weather, pushing up against my leg.

Is This Blog Over??

Someone asked me that the other day – a reasonable question as I haven’t posted anything since mid-June, almost 3 months now.  My instinctual response, which I gave her, was “No!  Of course not!  I’ve just been super busy.”  This is true – I have been super busy.  All of July I did not work in the bakery but instead took an intensive, 4-hours-a-day Greek class at the university and then did Greek homework at night (as well as the usual life stuff), and the afternoons were so very hot that, like everyone else who lives in a hot climate in the summer, I was forced to rest in the afternoons for a few hours because of how the heat saps any semblance of energy out of the body.