Even More Vignettes

Greetings everyone, apologies for the prolonged absence from blogging. After much travel and many visitors (all enjoyable but a bit tiring), Sara and I are looking forward to a long summer of…not much. We’ll have good “quality time” together in July and August, enjoying the city and each other, until the next batch of visitors arrives in September.

I have another blog in progress that will be a bit more…coherent, but for now, here are some more vignettes I’ve been sitting on. As we all know, “vignette” is how a Russian mechanic would respond in the negative when asked if there’s a Vehicle Identification Number on file for a certain customer.

· More photos are available for viewing. You’ll see pictures from Andorra (People, Artsy, and Touristy), plus if you look at the three sets of Paris photos, you’ll see our most recent shots, including pictures from Sara’s brother David’s visit (the newest photos are always the first ones you see in each set): Photos: http://www.flickr.com/photos/7531775@N04/sets/ If you have any trouble accessing these, just let me know and I can easily fix it.

· Speaking of Andorra, given that we’re already essentially on vacation here in Paris, you have to wonder how we have the gall to take a vacation from our vacation to go someplace like Andorra. A vacation-within-a-vacation is like a ship in a bottle; you just have to wonder: how did it get in there?

· Also, here’s a progress update on Sara’s and my prolific walking: Sara’s just over, and I’m just under, 2.5 million steps since we got here in January. We’re both well over 1,100 miles walked in that same time.

· Sara and I had a brush with celebrity the other day. We were meeting up with two of my mom’s friends in the lobby of the tony Plaza Athenee hotel, when out of the corner of my eye, I saw an older man with curly bleached hair and white sunglasses slip out of a hidden elevator and through a side door. It was unmistakably Michel Polnareff, arguably France’s best-known singer currently (http://www.rfimusique.com/siteen/biographie/biographie_6058.asp). He was famous in the 1960s and 1970s, then exiled himself to Los Angeles for decades, making only periodic appearances, before staging a comeback this year. A few days later, Sara and I joined over 600,000 people who saw Polnareff play by the Eiffel Tower on Bastille Day. He’s really a cult figure, it’s a bit like Elvis coming back to perform after decades of…exile.

· Not much more than a year into our marriage, Sara and I continue to learn things about each other. Here’s my latest upsetting discovery: in our six months in France, Sara’s used up a kilo of fresh sea salt, several liters of various vinegars and olive oils, cases of sparkling water, bottles of Martini rouge…and approximately one half of one tube of toothpaste. And to think, I kiss that mouth! (Sara points out in the way of explanation that she does brush twice daily, just using very little toothpaste...)

· A few musical items: first, during our recent Alsatian trip, Sara and I were sitting in the first car of train, awaiting our departure. The conductor got on the train and walked into the cabin, all while very clearly whistling… “The Final Countdown.” Perhaps that’s not surprising, since it’s appropriately by…Europe.

· Second, during a recent cab trip, I saw that my driver had one and only one CD in his musical collection…Shalamar!

· Third, a forgotten and overdue musical vignette and iPod update: while watching a Good Friday procession just blocks from Notre Dame, Tina Turner’s “Private Dancer” came on the iPod. Even I felt sacrilegious. And later that day, when the “Golden Girls” theme came on the iPod, I just felt…icky.

· Not far from our apartment, there is an enormous, truck-sized vending machine that sells everything from milk to sandwiches to vibrating condoms (you may remember there was once one of these machines in Adams Morgan). The other day, I bought a camembert cheese from the machine (mainly because I could). I also bought a can of lychee juice, only noticing later that it was “Cock Brand” lychee juice. I’m guessing it’s a translation error.

· When I got the camembert home and opened it, I saw this funny “we’re not in the US anymore, are we?” disclaimer on the wrapper: “The fat percentage listed on our cheeses is now calculated taking into account their water content, as is the case for other milk products…Only its labeling has changed, to better inform you and permit you to more easily manage your diet. This means that your President camembert, which was formerly listed as containing 45% fat will now list 20%, without changing recipes or ingredients.” In other words, they were apologizing for having to “downgrade” their cheese from being 45% fat to just 20% fat. You can bet that in America, someone would have figured out the “water content” game a long time ago, and would have been selling the camembert as “diet,” due to the new “just” 20% fat content!

To close, a few recommendations:

- We may have found a new house wine, called Fitou. See if you can find it, it should be available in the US.

- For two enjoyable and hysterically funny French rap videos (by a guy named Kamini who’s the one black resident in a small rural town), check out http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wPJ-xRaw2l8 for and http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6gV5rsO2u_o

- For a funny video of new French President Nicolas Sarkozy, possibly drunk after a meeting with Vladimir Putin at the G8, see http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zzPEH-Ea3DI&mode=related&search=

Hope all's well,

Josh