Merry Christmas!

The Batman of Sheffield

This is British news, rather than French, but it's just plain cool for the holiday season:

Mystery surrounds "Batman of Sheffield"

Direct article link
(from the UK Telegraph)

By Matthew Moore
Last Updated: 12:18PM GMT 13 Dec 2008

The identity of a Sheffield benefactor who hides behind a Batman mask and a fake American accent remains unclear

Dubbed the "Christmas crusader", the real-life superhero has been spotted lending a hand at a soup kitchen, charity job and children's hospital in Sheffield.

But despite his good works and charitable donations totalling £10,000, the Yorkshire Batman's identity is as mysterious as his Gotham City counterpart.

He is known to be a local entrepreneur, but wears a mask at all times and speaks with a fake American accent.

"I don't want to reveal my identity because it's more important to highlight the charities," he told the Daily Express.

"I don't care if some people think I'm bonkers. If I inspire others to give their time and money to good causes this Christmas, it's been worth it.

"My message is that you don't need to be a superhero, or super wealthy, to give to deserving causes. If you can give cash, or toys, that's fantastic. The most precious gift of all is your time."

Batman helped stack shelves and man the tills at Bluebell Wood Children's Hospice charity shop in the city, where staff said that his presence sent takings through the roof.

"At first we thought he was a joker, but he turned out to be a true superhero," said one shop worker. "We're thinking of getting a Bat light installed so we can send him a signal whenever business is slow."

A Christmas Trip Slideshow

Today's photo is another shot of the standing stones at Carnac, taken (obviously) with the still-photo feature of our videocamera (This translates to, "It looks tolerable in miniature but the full-size image quality is straight from Blair Witch").

I have a little treat to post today. My father has been working hard on a picture slideshow of their trip to Brittany for Christmas, and I've posted it to our website server. It's about 62 meg, so it's broadband-only for download. It's a really nice display, with text describing the various photos, though some of the shots have already been posted here during this past month. This is a Powerpoint file, so you'll need to have a Powerpoint viewer on your system to watch it. A free viewer can be downloaded HERE direct from Microsoft, and dad's picture slideshow presentation can be downloaded HERE. I don't know anything about Powerpoint and have never worked with it myself, so if anyone has viewing problems, you'll need to figure it out on your own, sorry.

Mom's Thoughts on France, Conclusion

Today's picture is a view my parents did not get to see while they were here - The inside of the Herbignac church. Our village church is a pretty large affair in its own right, especially for a town of 4,000! We stopped by but the doors were locked when we visited. Emily and I snapped this photo years ago, in the summer of 2003 if I recall correctly, one day when we were walking through town and noticed that the doors were open.

Now, on to my mom's final words about her visit to France:


We found their personal friends most gracious and kind. They welcomed us with open arms and tables full of French cuisine. Most of our fears of French food (planted in our minds by our son) were dismissed. The meals were absolutely wonderful. Different is a word I used quite often in describing the food. I didn’t mean that it was bad, but a taste I’d not had before, one that was new and undetermined to my palette. I gained five pounds.

The day after we arrived came the day of our departure – or so it seemed. It was unbelievable. Time was up and we must leave our babies in their new world. We still could not believe they had made it without us for three whole years. We were leaving home to go home. We would be a world away, but only a heartbeat apart. We left knowing they were where they were meant to be – perhaps from the very start.

Making this trip was my dream come true. I thank God for allowing it to happen. I thank God for our children’s ability to hold tight to each other during the rough times; for the passion to move beyond their dreams and for the strength that sustains them. I believe all things are possible if you have faith, love, and a little help from your friends – even moves to the far side of the world.

Mom's Thoughts on France, pt 5

We are winding towards the end - I think just one more of mom's posts after this one and then it will be back to my gibberish. When we left off, we had visited the Chateau du Suscinio, and mom was talking about the various castles and ruins all over our area:

Castles stood on hills surrounded by moats. Churches stood in the middle of each village. Everything in the villages was tiny. The homes were like little monopoly houses. Most were cream colored and a little on the sparse side. Homes in the US have adornments. Here the yards were small (if they even had a yard). There were no porches, no shrubs, no walkways, and no pink flamingos. Most residents cover their windows and doors each night using crank down metal shutters that latch tight. I wondered about this practice, especially since Herbignac had only one policeman and almost no crime to speak of. Perhaps some monster from the sea had long ago cast fear into these little hobbit inhabitants.

Which brings me to the sea. The beaches are in no way like ours. Their beaches have rocky cliffs, almost gravel like sand, and not much shore. You can crawl into caves (and be drowned there when the tide comes in). No tourists push by you; there’s no noise, and no planes flying over with streamers announcing free beer at Bernie’s. You could walk for miles and not meet up with another person. There were pig paths wrapping all around the cliff sides with lots of nooks and crannies to explore. I loved those bare beaches. They were clean and void of man’s mess.

(Well, we do still have our share of litter and trash, but thankfully you can play in the sand without much fear of stepping on someone's old hypodermic needles...)

As we walked high and low, most folks we passed seemed friendly. That’s not to say we didn’t get a few stares. There’s no hiding our southern accents and our southern ways. We have no qualms about asking questions in public or even pointing a finger at something interesting. Of course these characteristics (in France) made us look like idiots according to our children. Still they did not abandon us. They walked along with us, glad to have us embarrassing them again.

Mom's Thoughts on France, pt 4

This is how we traveled in Nantes- by tram. It was exciting. Nantes is a very busy place, full of romance and high energy. It’s a mix of old and new. The cathedral Saint-Pierre marked the high point of this destination. Never had I seen such an enormous structure. An ice arena was set up just outside the gigantic cathedral doors- a clash in time as young skaters glided around to the sound of Reggae.

Then there was the walled city of Guerande. Oh was it cold there. This was another huge giant step back into time. We walked on cobblestone streets. We peered into shop windows. We looked at unique stone shop signs and ornate stone statues. In fact, we liked it so much that we made two trips to Guerande.

We toured many castles. Some were in ruins and some were as if you could move right in and set up your kingdom. Castle Ranrouet, on the Guerande peninsula, is within walking distance of Herbignac. Standing in ruins, surrounded by what was once a moat, it inspires you to wonder about what life must have been like in the Middle Ages. As we walked around the structure, I imagined residing in such a fortress. It was here that we saw our first gypsies. We were told that gypsies are a common site and roam freely throughout the country. They travel in painted wooden wagons pulled by horses.

(Mom got a more romantic picture of this than the usual! The gypsies we saw really were in painted, horse-drawn wagons - very pretty and very unusual. Most of the "drifters" we see in Brittany travel in modern campers and are a huge annoyance. They trash up parking lots, bother the locals, steal and vandalize as they go... and they always seem to haul along several noisy, yapping dogs that you can hear howling from across the village every night.)

We visited the Chateau de Suscinio. This magnificent castle was in pristine condition, as if patiently awaiting the return of the Lord and Lady of the Manor. I wished we could have had more time to explore its vastness. There were grand halls leading from room to room. In the open arena inside the castle walls you could almost hear the sound of horses clashing as jousting took place, with veiled ladies waving and cheering. You could hear the echoing voices bouncing from wall to wall. There was a well in the center of the arena. We wandered through passages surrounding the entire chateau.

Mom's Thoughts of France, pt 3

And now for our next installment:

Herbignac was just as I had imagined. It couldn’t have been more exact. My grandcats greeted me with open paws (really). I missed these two fur balls terribly. Scanning the kitchen floor, I saw the remnants of homemade cat toys scattered about; all had been made by me and shipped across the big ocean to their precious awaiting paws. I had fifty more assorted playthings packed in the bags.

The house was exactly as I had imagined. I had seen it so often in the email pics and web cam shots that I felt as if we’d been there a hundred times before. I can’t accurately explain this feeling. It was surrealistic. I got a quick tour (the full inspection would come later), and then we were off to find our gite, far off in the countryside, yet within five minutes of their village. As part of our trip pre-planning, Trev and Em had trekked around their area critiquing various gites. They emailed pics of gites galore, in hopes that one would suit my fancy. All the gites looked divine, and it was a difficult choice. After much consideration, I latched onto the only one that had a donkey as part of the décor. Raoul, the donkey, greeted us each morning with his powerful bray. What more could we have asked for. Being an animal lover, I knew that anyone who had a donkey would surely be kind to Americans. Henri, the owner and innkeeper could not have been more gracious. His wife prepared the most sumptuous breakfast each morning. We consumed all kinds of breads, jams and jellies, juice, fruits, and of course, lots of deep dark rich café. We always had breakfast near the warmth and glow of the open fireplace. After the meal, we presented ourselves fortified, alert and ready for our day’s adventure. Trev and Em picked us up promptly each morning with map in hand, a full tank of gas, and nerves of steel. Everything was timed strategically, every daylight hour filled with something new and exciting. We saw so much, so quickly, that I hardly can remember it all. France was everything I thought it would be and more.

Serving as our driver, guide and translator for all adventures was our feisty Emily. The traffic circles were frightening, but Emily was an expert in maneuvering. Our heads turned back and forth as we tried to comprehend the road signs and pointed directional arrows. The road maps showed hardly any marked streets, but still, getting lost was almost impossible. If you exited incorrectly, you could always loop around the next circle and end up where you started. Those inside the circle had full power- those entering the circle did so at their own risk (and yours). If you weren’t capable of mastering the stringent driving requirements or just chose not to, you still had no trouble getting to where you needed to go. Thanks to a transportation system that ran like clockwork, buses and trams were located within walking distance and were always at your beck and call.

Mom's Thoughts on France, Pt 2

Here we are again with another installment of my mother's impressions of her trip to France. And without further ado:

I had planned ahead. Each piece of four bags was packed to full capacity. We each were responsible for one bag- my husband’s piece required the strength of two oxen to pull.

Trev’s required only one and one half oxen. Emily and I had the two smaller pieces, which compared to each of us carrying about a well-fed Rottweiler. After carrying this poundage through two airports, and now onto the TGV train, I pondered the fact that I could have left out a few pounds of popcorn.

(Trever's comment - No, she couldn't have!)

Sailing along on the TGV, everything so far had fallen right into place, perfectly. We finally exhaled our fears. We were ready for adventure. Then it happened, adventure showed up. The train exploded, skidded to a stop and smoldered. The knot in our stomachs that had accompanied us from North Carolina to this point once again took up residence in our intestines. The conductor came on the intercom and began muttering in tongues. Since our train was dead, other trains were dispatched to pick us up. In all, four train connections were made, linking us to our final destination, which was Saint Nazaire, where their tiny car awaited.

(For my version of this story, see my post TGVictims)

Emily, being the only fluent French speaker of this family foursome, quickly turned into Wonder Woman. We walked, ran, and jumped from train to train joined to her hips.

At last we arrived in Saint Nazaire, a bit weary and a whole lot hungry (some things never change). We packed all our monumental pieces of luggage into their tiny car. Then we opened the doors of the wee vehicle and crawled in. We realized at this point that Americans do indeed eat too many Big Macs. The little French cars were meant for little French people, and certainly not those over six feet tall, like my husband. Packed tightly inside, we were now on our way home to Herbignac, the newly adopted home of our children. We were about as excited as two middle-aged people could be. We looked forward to seeing their village, their home, and our grandcats, Loki and Freya, who we had also missed deeply.

Mom's Thoughts on France

Here's my mother all bundled up for the bitterly cold winds that whistle through our stone-and-concrete streets. She was nice enough to take some time and write down her impressions of her trip to France, which I will post over the next day or two in chapters. To kick things off:

As we began our journey to this foreign land, we packed heavy- very heavy, for this was after all a Christmas trip. We carried not only our personal needs, but also quite an assortment of gifts.

We were the Santa delivery service for Emily’s parents, all relatives, and friends.

Having never flown abroad before, we tried to prepare ourselves for the unexpected- assuming the worse scenario. Our main goal was to land safely in Paris, find our luggage and meet up with the kids at the appointed spot (that being McDonald’s, a familiar landmark to all) we accomplished this without difficulty and sure enough they appeared right on time.

Our babies were right there before our eyes. It’s an awesome feeling being picked up by your child and swung around. Then you notice that your baby has shades of gray in his beard.

Suddenly the 15-hour flight had caught up with me. My husband and I breathed a sigh, and realized that at this moment we were now the ones needing to be babied – to be hand held in public. How could a trip abroad have aged us so quickly?

Cracks

The funny thing about stress is that you often don't realize just how tense you are about something until some time afterwards - Well, at least I do not. Emily and I spent the duration of my parents' visit on high intensity alert, a state of constant watchfulness and wariness, trying to always stay one step ahead of any problems that might arise to spoil their holidays. My consciousness was a lot like our home videocamera movements, always jerking hard from one item to the next like a gnat on too much sugar - Keeping one eye out for pickpockets, tramps, and other accosters, another eye on potential travel stumbling blocks (strikes, gas, vehicle malfunctions, etc), a third eye on planning our spending and eating schedules so we could actually find food on an American timetable (We usually eat dinner at 6 instead of the European 9-10pm), a fourth eye on our surroundings, and, well... that's a lot of eyes! On top of this, some portion of my brain had to spend time processing an amusingly endless stream of questions. I've just finished assembling our DVD video of our travels, and it is particularly funny in that half of my parents' recorded dialog is, "What is..?", "How did they..?", "Where do we..?", "How is the..?", "What do we do with..?", and, "Why is this..?"

About five or six days into their visit, we are at Chateau Suscinio, and the first stress cracks show. We found our way here OK, Emily driving and me navigating our crinkled French roadmap, and we pull into the parking area under a bleak grey sky with the huge stone castle squatting on the horizon. Everyone exits and starts the trot in, when Emily realizes she's locked the keys in the car. It takes a second for this to sink in - Emily never does this, never, in normal circumstances, but there they are, taunting us from the steering wheel ignition and seeming to jeer, "See? See? See how easily your day can be wrecked?"

Because it isn't like locking your keys in the car back home...

My brain is still feeling numb to the potential enormity of the problem as small bits of data start to sprinkle in, as if from the grey clouds above. How will we explain to the staff that we've locked our keys in the car, in French? I know "voiture" but not "lock" or any variation thereof.
Lots of pantomime looms. It is two days before Christmas and we are the only visitors in the lot. Even if we can explain our situation, will there be a locksmith available, and not on holiday? How long will it take to locate someone who can help, and can they locate someone who can help?

In my mind's eye, I see the arrival of a locksmith like the electrician that our friend Lesley once described to us. Her house was half-wired, and the electrician had promised to finish the essential work on the weekend, even though it would be the day after a holiday. He did indeed arrive, so drunk he could barely stand, and after he'd vanished into the back room with a large power drill for a few minutes, she heard a loud crash. What she found was a ragged hole in the wall, and the electrician lying on his back, fallen over his own toolbox, feet in the air, gripping his running power drill in both hands at his portly middle - bit augering at the ceiling - and the man in a state of catatonic alcoholic delerium. In a blurry fast-forward of images, I see us there, waiting for three hours before anyone arrives, our precious vacation day ruined, only to end up with our window broken by the local "handyman" in clumsy attempts to jimmy the lock... riding home with freezing wind in our faces, the car unusable in the Brittany rain, and unfixable for the Christmas weekend.

Eegah.

My parents have walked on ahead and are blissfully unaware of this, as Emily and I stare at the car in dumb horror, both slowly realizing that the crushing "Thing Gone Wrong" that we've been trying to protect my parents from has indeed happened. Emily wonders, out of jittery curiosity, if the hatchback is open - We have been using it a lot for bags and luggage. This is one of those hopeless hopes that you think of to put off the inevitable collision with reality just one second longer, akin to, "Hey, maybe if I look away and look back, the keys will not actually be there in the ignition". We always lock the hatch. Emily pushes the button and it pops open freely, left unlocked for who knows how long.

It takes us a good two seconds to mentally process this new input.

I feel, ridiculously, unfazed - The reality of having to wrestle with key retrieval hadn't even sunken in yet, so the reality of being surprise-saved seems totally casual. Emily, by contrast, stares for a moment in blinking shock and then bursts into tears, sobbing on my shoulder after the crisis is averted. I know I have been stressed for the past several days, but so has she, and apparently this has just blown an emotional tension safety valve. Thirty seconds of intense crying ensue, after which she floats away in a giddy state of endorphine hilarity, emanating relief like grinning sunshine.

After walking halfway to the castle and realizing we aren't with them, my parents come back in time to see us taking the hatchback cover and seats down to enable anal entry into the car for key retrieval. Arriving after the fact, they have blissfully missed the trauma and only have to experience the annoyance of waiting an extra five minutes before we can all go see the big landmark. Emily and I look at each other, more conscious than ever of the level of secret tension we share in trying to ensure my parents have a Perfect Christmas in France.

Parent Opinions of France

I am trying to convince my mother to write a blog entry about their impressions of France. I seem to have gotten emails or calls from virtually every French friend we know recently, all wanting to know what my parents thought of France. This morning I wrote a reply to our friend Sophie, and thought I would copy it here as well, just for a quick rundown of what seemed to be the basic impressions:

My parents had a great time, and already want to come back. They liked it here very much, and though they were happy to go back home, they said it also felt like leaving "home" too.

They really loved the bakeries here, and the chocolate shops everywhere - every place we went walking, they always had to go stare through the windows of the chocolate shops and smell the bread shops (An entertaining recurring theme in the video we shot). I think they got quite addicted to having fresh bread for breakfast every morning. It is just a shame that we can't ship chouchettes by mail!

It was funny seeing things through "new eyes" again. We got very frustrated with them when they seemed hesitant about EVERYTHING... We kept saying, "Just try it, eat it, it won't kill you" but they seemed convinced that every food dish was secretly made from snail testicles. (Probably they take too many of my jokes about French food seriously)

They were really impressed by the TGV (despite it breaking) and the tram lines in cities. One (if a European reader) must understand that we don't have much public transport in the US, and what we have is usually so god-awfully bad that it just makes you want to drive your own car that much more. We even nicknamed our own high-speed train Amtrack "the Death Train" because it crashes so often.

My parents were horrified by the medieval toilets in villages, and thought that new French houses were frighteningly conformist (they all really look identical) but they loved the tile roofs and dad was impressed by the widespread use of hot water heating. Mom thought all the "tiny cars" were cute. I suspect they both had an eye-widening experience at the cost of gas here. Oh, and there was much amusement about the miniature sizes of everything - the showers, the fridge, the stove, the washer & dryer, etc. Yes, we live in an HO scale house.

More to come, if I can convince my mother to write it herself...

Je suis malade

First, I must pass along my apologies for not updating the blogs more this week. Right now I am typing this with a 104 degree fever, and am pretty dizzy and loopy, so I will probably be absent for at least a couple more days (Doctor visit is tomorrow).
In the meantime, here is a photo from my parents' trip - a magnificent view of the Passage Pommeraye in Nantes, decorated for Christmas.

Excavation Time

We have spent the last day digging in our house. Well, perhaps "stashing" might be a better term, as the task of finding homes and storage space for the hoard of stuff my parents brought has been quite a job! I'm going to make today's entry brief since I wrote such a long tale yesterday (TGVictims), and instead just post this quick pic of Emily and my mother and father all relaxing in our now-familiar living room. I suspect that pipe buyers are going to find their boxes packed with lots of wrapping paper filler for some months to come.....

TGVictims

(Photo: AFP - And note that this is an older photo of a different accident. I sadly did not have our camera along to take pictures of our experience)
So there we were on the train. We'd picked my parents up at the Charles de Gaulle airport without hassle, and hadn't even had to do a last-second race to our train thanks to some early scouting around for the right platform. All is going well, and we are on the TGV blitzing happily through the French countryside and looking out the windows at the green grasslands.

Suddenly, the entire train shudders slightly and the side window is obscured by flying gravel and dust. For the first second we just think we've hit a dust cloud, but the gravel seems to be striking the windows awfully hard and should normal bits of dirt cause large starred cracks in the shatterproof windows? Outside, the green view is gone and there is nothing but opaque grey dust cloud for several very long seconds as the smell of burned electrical components fills the cabin and the train continues to shudder. For a brief half-second as I look out the window, I very calmly think, "I wonder if this is a bomb? We may be about to die in a 160mph train wreck." It's funny just how detached one can get in the middle of something potentially life-threatening.

Fortunately, nothing so dire has happened - We are not in a disaster movie nor a Steven Seagal train hijack movie, we are in "Planes, Trains, and Automobiles". The train grinds slowly to a total halt in open countryside.

We wait.




We wait some more.

Eventually someone comes on the intercom to announce that the train has a "problem" and we should all remain in our seats (Possibly to avoid all those nasty dramatic news photos of flaming passengers leaping out the windows, but more probably to give the conductors time to assess the damage without being followed around by hordes of angry passengers demanding answers). Looking out my battle-scarred window, I see a railway employee walking the length of the train, peering up at it in disquieting consternation, and talking a lot into a portable phone. Eventually we are told that our train is dead, mort, pushing up the daisies.... In short, it is an Ex-train.

At this point we are all having John Candy visions of dragging our five bulky suitcases across miles of open fields in search of the nearest road, all so we can be met by a guy in a rusty pickup truck who will let us ride in the back for the next four hours into Herbignac. My parents brought an incredible orgy of Christmas gifts for us, including roughly forty-seven new outfits, board games, puzzles, toys of all sorts, and enough microwave popcorn to fill a lawn & garden bag. Suddenly this rich hoard of goodies is taking on a distinctly ominous air of menace as we wonder just how far we will be hiking.

Fortunately for us, we are not in flames, nor about to explode, nor under attack by generic foreign terrorists - It seems an engine has blown apart somehow (We are never given the exact details of what happened, at least such that we can make out from the all-French intercom announcements which are as intelligible as Jacques Clouseau singing through a helmet full of Jello). We sit tight and enjoy the excellent French approach to the situation ("Please remain calm and do not try to open the outside doors. The bar car is open for business. Enjoy!").

Eventually, another TGV, already full of puzzled passengers, arrives from somewhere else to pick up We Stranded Many. The switchover car is up at the front (The trains are side-by-side, with passengers hopping across the gap) so we get to haul our fifty pound bags of luggage the entire length of our train.... and then the entire length of the other train, all while the previous passengers look on in a combination of pity, wonder, and smug contentment that they already have their seats. For we refugees, the lodging is more adventurous - Every joiner section is piled floor-to-ceiling with luggage and people, and we are packed shoulder-to-shoulder. Emily and I are trying to do double-duty as we watch bags, listen for the garbled announcements, and then translate every bit of news to my worried parents who are learning just what we've meant when we've described past experiences as, "We had a French Travel Adventure".

After four stops and several train changes, we are finally on the way to our home station via some wizardly re-routing of the lines. It wasn't all unpleasant - I got to share standing room crammed into a train toilet compartment with an attractive young lady, we met a few friendly fellow TGVictims, and I got a good story out of the experience. Eventually we rattled our way into the St. Nazaire station straddling our bags in the joiner compartment, three hours later than scheduled, hungry and frazzled but victorious.

It was December 18th.

My parents had officially arrived in France.

Closing for Christmas (Mostly)

Today will be 100% housecleaning and tidying. We are closing the business for vacation from now until the 27th - During that time, I won't be answering business emails unless they are urgent for some reason. Since we only have one pipe in stock right now, I doubt I will have reason to get much email, but we will still ship if somebody buys our last pipe. Other than that, it is relaxation time! I don't know if I will update this blog during next week or not - I probably won't have time, though I suspect that there may be some entertaining posts to make about my parents' visit. There will certainly be plenty of fun new stuff to post after they've left, including lots of new videos of our area, so don't forget about us and be sure to check back here after Christmas! This is Trever, signing out.

What We Want for Christmas

Every once in a while I feel like I've blinked and technology has run right past me. I knew robot tech had accelerated a great deal in recent years, but I was unaware that such sophisticated devices as the Roomba Discovery existed. (For some entertaining videos of this thing in action, see the Amazon page - click the "Watch it in action button - and the iRobot descriptive pages - click the little movie blackboard graphic) I see Switzerland even offers them for sale in Europe. Now if I could just find some friendly Swiss guy willing to send us one of these things for a pipe! (US prices seem to be around $300-ish, so a nice Talbert Briar would be a good swap...) With two cats in the house shedding all day every day, our cleaning problems are not big (We are not in the house that much ourselves) but are instead constantly annoying (Not wanting to have to constantly haul out the whole vacuum just to handle the drifting tumbleweeds of cat hair). I can't begin to imagine how handy and fun one of these things would be.

Though strangely, I also feel really old now...

Crepes and Christmas

I realize I haven't been posting as much lately - Alas, the impending holiday season has taken its toll, and it seems as if most of our time has vanished into gathering fits and Christmas cards and making lists. Bleagh! And people ask me why I hate Christmas... You never have to do this sort of time-devouring crap for Halloween!

Our relation to Christmas has changed from when we lived in the states, though, and in many ways it is much more peaceful here. Christmas season in the USA starts sometime in middle October, and once past October 15th it was hard to find a store not chock-full of Christmas junk, with jinglebell holiday muzak playing in every grocery. Here, the toy aisles are out, but I haven't heard "Winter Wonderland" yet. In general, the whole marketing assault is turned way down in France, allowing a pleasantly cozy and understated Christmas - unlike my memories of Christmas in the US, which were like having someone screaming into your ear and hitting you on the head with a Tickle-Me Elmo for two months straight. I want to bring all my American friends here for December to see what it really can be like, just as I want to take all my French friends to the US for Halloween to see how it ought to be.

Today's pic has no connection to any of this, though - I just had no idea what to post and it looked like a good choice. That's a "fruits de la mer" (mixed seafood) crepe served at La Saboterie, one of the better creperies in our area. Like most of the best restaurants here, it is tiny, tucked-away, and unassuming, but deliciously good. The seafood pile is eaten atop the handmade buckwheat pancake - Delicious!