quick thought pulled from text

"Here's to alcoholic brotherhood... more suited to the frail human soul than any other sort."

The Mystery Fowl

T’was the night before Christmas, and all through the flat,

Three creatures were giggling and chewing the fat.

I looked in our oven, hot steam pouring out,

“Still don’t know what it is,” I said in a shout.

“Be it chicken or goose or a fancy French bird

As long as it doesn’t come out tasting like turd!”

In the shop that morning, birds were piled together.

Hard to tell bird from bird, or feather from feather

The labels, no help, all said the same things

“Volaille,” or “fowl,” or “I dunno; it’s got wings.”

By feast time, all agreed: it was of no matter.

All that we wanted was food on a platter.

Veggies and taters and a bird we all chewed,

With grins on our faces, we devoured our food.

The coup de grace came next, our dear dinner ended

A pumpkin pie so scrumptious, I’ll call it splendid.

Lifting a glass of impromptu punch,

“Merry Christmas, you guys, I love you a bunch.”

And so ends the story, the odd bird I leave,

To live on in infamy on the best Christmas Eve.

Eating Rich Foods

I've been feeling a bit inadequate recently. I think Paris is looking down on my Christmas. Christmas to me is so humble, so home-made and so warm. It means cookies and cheap decorations. It means potatoes and roast beast.
Paris has other plans.

Salmon
Lobster
Caviar
Foie Gras
Cheeses
Exotic Fruits
Buche de Noel

"So, you basically eat everything that's expensive?" I asked a class of middle schoolers. They heartily agreed, as if eating cheaper foods would cheapen the character of the holiday itself.

Well, fine, France. Sarah, Jordan and I are going to eat chicken, pumpkin pie and forget the world outside where they're busy eating caviar and foie gras.

Snow stroll

Sarah and I were out for a walk one day, and just WHO do you think we saw?!

I don't know either.
But how great is it that we caught the filming of a music video?

Way to take advantage of a beautiful snowfall.

Jess scones

Thanks, Jessica, for the scone recipe. I finally made it past snowy Sunday morning!

It took a while to figure out that the French keep their baking soda in tiny packets instead of a can.

Note to anyone who wants to know:
One packet of baking soda = 1 tbsp

Awwww...

Voici les valentines en forme de potatoes. Qu'elles sont mignons.*

* Look at the wittle bitty potato valentines. They're so cute.

Dancing like a foo'

It was 6:00 am, and we were on our way home. I could feel my muscles going lax in rebellion, and my contacts were jumping out of my dry eye sockets. And I was so happy.

The evening started when Sarah and I rang the wrong doorbell. Inside the wrong apartment in the wrong building, two quite handsome young gentlemen helped us find the party we were looking for. Did I mention it was a costume party?

It was. To get into the party later that night, you had to be wearing an American stereotype! So, at Mary-Lou's birthday and pre-dance party, I made the acquaintance of many thugs, cheerleaders, american flags, a pregnant teen, and some people even wore a painted box-- a locker. There were delicious, savory tartes, some Brittany Spears booty-shakin', and a little boozin'.

We ate, drank, made merry, sang happy birthday and filed out to the metro on our way to the party. We were the obnoxious bunch of ass holes talking loudly and, hopefully, spreading some joy. Right. Oh well, when you're an ass on the metro, you'll probably neeeever see those people again. They're probably pretty glad for it.

Take a good hard look. The party was on a boat, mother****er.




There it was, a boat on the Seine, ready to party.
It was your average dance party with a little less self-conscious dancing than you'd see at American parties. They were there to have a good time with friends, not just impress everyone there.

Another difference caught my attention. At home, college students want to drink hard, fast, get drunk and go sleep it off. They can't do that here. If a party starts at midnight and the last metro leaves at 1:00 am, then of course you simply wait for the first metro to arrive at 5:00 am. Duh. Can anyone drink that hard until 5 am? Not without throwing up on the boat. So, here they like to pace it out. It was a refreshing take on partying, more fun in mah humble opinion.

So, at 5:00 am, the DJs turned on more low lights, played some Justice, and ushered us out into the freezing night air. There was only one drunk girl throwing up on the stairs, one broken shoe, and lots of sore bodies happily stumbling toward the closest metro.