Well let’s start with the fact that in the last week I’ve been having some severe labor disputes with my left hand. It has spent most of the week resembling one of Howie Mandel’s blown up latex glove balloons. By yesterday though, when the sun came up, temps warmed up and the humidity decreased, we had come to a temporary agreement and it began to work again. I fear that these labor grievances may continue throughout the winter. Current forecasts don’t hold out much hope either.
So… You will not believe it, but today I went to the grocery store and I bought Ocean Spray cranberry sauce! AND cranberry juice! They also had cream of chicken soup, tomato soup and cream of mushroom soup; they were Hunts brand and not Campbell’s, but it’s a big step forward in my opinion. Well no, they didn’t have Hellmann’s mayonnaise but hey things are getting a little better in the grocery aisle and that means that there are that many fewer things that have to come over in my suitcase. (right now would kill for an ‘IcyHot Sleeve’)
This is all I can do for now, but book reviews are coming soon.
Tuesday, September 28, 2004
Tuesday, September 21, 2004
Stupid T-shirt?
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Thanks mom and dad. This is even better than the "My parents went to Hawaii and all I got was this stupid t-shirt" t-shirt I was expecting. I love teddy bears and this one has its own passport and coconuts too! Love you guys and hope your trip was fun. In other news, S and I were outside on Sunday afternoon and he decided to sweep off the back porch. It had collected quite a bit of crud since I hadn't been out there since the 'lizard' incident. We found the remains of that little lizard (skin and bones, literally) so it appears that - to answer your question Ky - less than two weeks. I shudder to think of that spiders offspring since its windfall of food. Have my wine class again tonight, so am hydrating myself just to be on the safe side. Repeat mantra 'spit don't swallow'. Tonight we will be discussing/trying dry white wines, rosés, and wines of the South West. I'll let you know how it goes. That's all for this post. S has posted a few new entries too since returning from his travels. |
Sunday, September 19, 2004
Exposing Myself to French
So I’m currently sitting in bed blogging (god bless wireless modems), watching ‘Pirates of the Caribbean’ and eating some delicious chocolate cake that I baked the other night...
...No I was never actually tested for ADD…
So the trouble all started when my ‘friends’ at ImpaQt decided that I needed to listen to more French. It’s all fine and good to spend 2 or 3 days a week there, but in all honesty I wasn’t doing much outside of class time to move the learning process along.
A list was made of things I could do to expose myself to French (expose myself TO French not TO THE French…pay attention there.) more regularly and taking the wine class was one of those things since it was something I wanted to do anyway. Other suggestions were to spend more time out in the city maybe sitting at Café’s (ho hum, if I have to) to listen to the language around me, to watch French TV and to visit the museums of Toulouse and take the commentated tours. (Yes La, Toulouse has several museums…who knew?).
So first, the wine class. Well, it was interesting and a little fun. The teacher is a woman who is actually an Oenolog? Oenologist? Um…she has a degree in Oenologie. Anyway, the rest of the group consists of 9 Frenchmen who I think, judging by the way they were giggling and horsing around like adolescents, were swallowing instead of spitting.
During the obligatory give-your-name-reason-for-being-here-and-your-favorite-wine introductory phase of the class I explained that I was there for the dual purpose of listening to more French and learning about French wine. This was well received though not a single one of them speaks a word of English. They all spoke slowly and clearly so that I could understand them. Well all except for this one snooty guy near the front who was all about the wine. He was that person, you know the one I mean? There’s one in every class, he’s there to mostly show off what he knows instead of learn anything new. Very annoying!
It all went rather smoothly except for the actual wine tasting part. The first nights tasting was of ‘apéritif’ wines or sweet wines. (La, remember those sweet wines in Bordeaux? ::shudders::) So 8 very sweet wines; one red and seven white. Sniffing (1st nose, 2nd nose), swirling, tasting, spitting, tasting, spitting have some bread and cheese and start again.
I have pages full of notes. By 11:00 we were only on the 3rd of 8 wines and I was tired of listening. I think I caught maybe 75% of it. I had trouble when they would start discussing the wine if they mentioned a proper name. Were they talking about a label, a town, a region, a grape, a vineyard? It was hard to glean any info from those conversations because I’m not familiar with wine regions, towns or geography of the country in general. Though I’m sure these were important bits I was missing it can’t be helped. At least I’ll get a feel for what’s good and how to tell. Through the next three sessions we’ll be tasting wines from specific regions so that should alleviate some of that confusion.
And then there were the museums. Since Toulouse can date its history as far back as the first century AD (and maybe further…), there are a lot of long buried Roman ruins under the city. This is interesting to me. There are several major cathedrals and churches in the city many of which have served the Catholics, the Arians and the Cathares over periods of their history. All are now Catholic of course but they have great histories.
One of the churches I visited was expanded and re-configured many times and during the Napoleonic war it served to stable horses and garrison soldiers. The tour guide very colorfully described how many of the beautiful murals came to be destroyed by horses peeing as high as 5 feet up the walls. She also said, though I find it difficult to believe, that on very warm and humid days you can still smell horse poop in the cloister.
The longest tour, which was of course the most boring, was about the Visigoths and the Francs. Dates and migratory maps and blah, blah, blah blah blah (“to me you are the teacher on the Charley Brown cartoon”) blah blah…
Though I did understand most of it, I really didn’t care. The young woman giving the 2 hour tour (more like lecture) was very enthusiastic though and seemed to have a real grasp and love of the subject. So I nodded in the appropriate places and made occasional eye contact, smiling briefly to show I was listening, luckily I wasn’t touring alone and could from time to time just stare of into space for a bit of relief.
I spent a lot of time this week just walking all over Toulouse. It’s been fun. Plus I don’t know if I mentioned that I’m taking care of my neighbors 3 ½ year old little girl a few afternoons a week. It’s interesting and challenging. She is still testing ‘the perimeter’ but we are having some fun.
S finally arrived home on Saturday afternoon after being gone for two weeks. I always find his return after long absences to be disruptive to my schedule. I get into a regular groove while he’s gone, my schedule, my agenda and only me to clean up after. I miss him of course when he’s gone but his returns take a few days of adjustment again. Sort of like finally adjusting to being able to stretch out across the whole bed at night and taking up all the space and then having to adjust to just may half again.
So that’s me for the week how are you doing?
...No I was never actually tested for ADD…
So the trouble all started when my ‘friends’ at ImpaQt decided that I needed to listen to more French. It’s all fine and good to spend 2 or 3 days a week there, but in all honesty I wasn’t doing much outside of class time to move the learning process along.
A list was made of things I could do to expose myself to French (expose myself TO French not TO THE French…pay attention there.) more regularly and taking the wine class was one of those things since it was something I wanted to do anyway. Other suggestions were to spend more time out in the city maybe sitting at Café’s (ho hum, if I have to) to listen to the language around me, to watch French TV and to visit the museums of Toulouse and take the commentated tours. (Yes La, Toulouse has several museums…who knew?).
So first, the wine class. Well, it was interesting and a little fun. The teacher is a woman who is actually an Oenolog? Oenologist? Um…she has a degree in Oenologie. Anyway, the rest of the group consists of 9 Frenchmen who I think, judging by the way they were giggling and horsing around like adolescents, were swallowing instead of spitting.
During the obligatory give-your-name-reason-for-being-here-and-your-favorite-wine introductory phase of the class I explained that I was there for the dual purpose of listening to more French and learning about French wine. This was well received though not a single one of them speaks a word of English. They all spoke slowly and clearly so that I could understand them. Well all except for this one snooty guy near the front who was all about the wine. He was that person, you know the one I mean? There’s one in every class, he’s there to mostly show off what he knows instead of learn anything new. Very annoying!
It all went rather smoothly except for the actual wine tasting part. The first nights tasting was of ‘apéritif’ wines or sweet wines. (La, remember those sweet wines in Bordeaux? ::shudders::) So 8 very sweet wines; one red and seven white. Sniffing (1st nose, 2nd nose), swirling, tasting, spitting, tasting, spitting have some bread and cheese and start again.
I have pages full of notes. By 11:00 we were only on the 3rd of 8 wines and I was tired of listening. I think I caught maybe 75% of it. I had trouble when they would start discussing the wine if they mentioned a proper name. Were they talking about a label, a town, a region, a grape, a vineyard? It was hard to glean any info from those conversations because I’m not familiar with wine regions, towns or geography of the country in general. Though I’m sure these were important bits I was missing it can’t be helped. At least I’ll get a feel for what’s good and how to tell. Through the next three sessions we’ll be tasting wines from specific regions so that should alleviate some of that confusion.
And then there were the museums. Since Toulouse can date its history as far back as the first century AD (and maybe further…), there are a lot of long buried Roman ruins under the city. This is interesting to me. There are several major cathedrals and churches in the city many of which have served the Catholics, the Arians and the Cathares over periods of their history. All are now Catholic of course but they have great histories.
One of the churches I visited was expanded and re-configured many times and during the Napoleonic war it served to stable horses and garrison soldiers. The tour guide very colorfully described how many of the beautiful murals came to be destroyed by horses peeing as high as 5 feet up the walls. She also said, though I find it difficult to believe, that on very warm and humid days you can still smell horse poop in the cloister.
The longest tour, which was of course the most boring, was about the Visigoths and the Francs. Dates and migratory maps and blah, blah, blah blah blah (“to me you are the teacher on the Charley Brown cartoon”) blah blah…
Though I did understand most of it, I really didn’t care. The young woman giving the 2 hour tour (more like lecture) was very enthusiastic though and seemed to have a real grasp and love of the subject. So I nodded in the appropriate places and made occasional eye contact, smiling briefly to show I was listening, luckily I wasn’t touring alone and could from time to time just stare of into space for a bit of relief.
I spent a lot of time this week just walking all over Toulouse. It’s been fun. Plus I don’t know if I mentioned that I’m taking care of my neighbors 3 ½ year old little girl a few afternoons a week. It’s interesting and challenging. She is still testing ‘the perimeter’ but we are having some fun.
S finally arrived home on Saturday afternoon after being gone for two weeks. I always find his return after long absences to be disruptive to my schedule. I get into a regular groove while he’s gone, my schedule, my agenda and only me to clean up after. I miss him of course when he’s gone but his returns take a few days of adjustment again. Sort of like finally adjusting to being able to stretch out across the whole bed at night and taking up all the space and then having to adjust to just may half again.
So that’s me for the week how are you doing?
Monday, September 13, 2004
Cours d’oenologie
| DOROTHY:
Oh, will you help me? Can you help me? GLINDA: You don't need to be helped any longer. You've always had the power to go back to Kansas. DOROTHY: I have? SCARECROW: Then why didn't you tell her before? GLINDA: Because she wouldn't have believed me. She had to learn it for herself. TIN MAN: What have you learned, Dorothy? DOROTHY: Well, I -- I think that it -- that it wasn't enough just to want to see Uncle Henry and Auntie Em -- and it's that – if I ever go looking for my heart's desire again, I won't look any further than my own backyard. Because if it isn't there, I never really lost it to begin with! Is that right? GLINDA: That's all it is!
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| « Bonjour Madame, je cherche renseignements
sur un cours de dégustation de vin ou un cours d'oenologie dans Toulouse.
» So, since Mark and La were here and we did the tour of Bordeaux I have been obsessed with taking a wine tasting class. I have spent several sessions at ImpaQt dragging Mags or Jane around Toulouse in search of a course. Several internet searches, popping in at every ‘cave’ we saw and finally a trip to the tourist office and it turns out what I was looking for wasn’t even in the city it was in the village right next door. Who knew? Well, not me. So I start a short course (stage) in wine tasting (dégustation de vin) tomorrow night. The course consists of 4 classes 3 hours each for the next 4 Tuesday nights (le stage est réparti en 4 séances de 3 heures, de 20h à 23h, les mardis 14, 21 et 28 Septembre et 5 Octobre, 2004). Chaque séance comporte un exposé théorique présenté par vidéo projection, des exercices pratiques de dégustation et une dégustation commentée de 8 vins. or Every meeting includes a theoretical exposition presented by video projection, practical tasting exercises and a commentated tasting of 8 wines. Of course I also found a ‘cours d’oenologie’ at the local university which is a two year degree program. It would earn me a national degree in ‘Oenologie’ which is beyond just wine tasting. I would be educated in the art and science of wine. I could obtain a job as a sommelier in any French restaurant. This program is, however, VERY expensive and already closed for this year. The gentleman who I approached for information made it very clear by repeating several times (and by several I mean at least six or seven times) that - ‘le cours est très cher’ - the course is very expensive. As he hunted for a brochure to give me he showed me the registration form for the class which listed enrollment fees and tuition in excess of 8,000 €! Now that’s a serious class. The woman at the registration office told me that registration for the year was closed but that I could leave my name and phone number to be added to a waiting list in case someone dropped out. So, no, I’m guessing that that will not be the way to go. But still… |
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And just for fun, happy Monday to all!
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Nonsequitur
by WileyTuesday, September 07, 2004
Outside The Box
You know, conditioning is a terrible thing! (And I don’t mean your hair.) You get so used to things always being a certain way that when things are done differently it completely throws you off.
When you go into grocery stores in France it is not unusual to find things packaged together. Just like in the states. You know, a four pack of yogurt, six packs of bottled water or pop, three packs of juice boxes, six packs of pudding etc. In France, however, it is also not unusual to see these things pulled open.
You know if someone, say, only wants to buy one pudding and two juices or just one can of pop. There is nothing wrong with it; it is perfectly acceptable to do this. Just pay for the number of items you want and not have to buy the whole package.
So it is not unusual that when I go to buy my stash of Pepsi, I have to dig behind a bunch of single cans to get to the six packs at the back of the shelf. Last week though, when I bought my stash, I couldn’t find any six packs and so I grabbed six individual cans, with much muttering and eye rolling of course, and bought them that way.
Today, when I went grocery shopping, again no six packs. So I begin to put my six cans in the cart when suddenly a brain wave strikes. Doh! What a fool! I can buy 8 cans, or 10! I could put 16 damn cans in my cart. Aside from the inconvenience of having to bag individual cans, I can buy as few or as many of them as I want! So I put 5 cans in my cart and then I went over and grabbed 2 cans of Sprite out of a full 6 pack box. Well then complete madness took over and I went over and grabbed 1 each of the vanilla, banana, raspberry and strawberry yogurts. Then I went and tore open a six pack of Evian water and bought 7 bottles!
Luckily the haze of madness cleared before I tore open a box of 12 fish sticks!
When you go into grocery stores in France it is not unusual to find things packaged together. Just like in the states. You know, a four pack of yogurt, six packs of bottled water or pop, three packs of juice boxes, six packs of pudding etc. In France, however, it is also not unusual to see these things pulled open.
You know if someone, say, only wants to buy one pudding and two juices or just one can of pop. There is nothing wrong with it; it is perfectly acceptable to do this. Just pay for the number of items you want and not have to buy the whole package.
So it is not unusual that when I go to buy my stash of Pepsi, I have to dig behind a bunch of single cans to get to the six packs at the back of the shelf. Last week though, when I bought my stash, I couldn’t find any six packs and so I grabbed six individual cans, with much muttering and eye rolling of course, and bought them that way.
Today, when I went grocery shopping, again no six packs. So I begin to put my six cans in the cart when suddenly a brain wave strikes. Doh! What a fool! I can buy 8 cans, or 10! I could put 16 damn cans in my cart. Aside from the inconvenience of having to bag individual cans, I can buy as few or as many of them as I want! So I put 5 cans in my cart and then I went over and grabbed 2 cans of Sprite out of a full 6 pack box. Well then complete madness took over and I went over and grabbed 1 each of the vanilla, banana, raspberry and strawberry yogurts. Then I went and tore open a six pack of Evian water and bought 7 bottles!
Luckily the haze of madness cleared before I tore open a box of 12 fish sticks!
Monday, September 06, 2004
The Call of the Wild
Have returned this afternoon energized after my morning language lesson. I’m beginning to feel better about these sessions and I think that the major portion of it is that I’m a bit more comfortable with the language and I feel like I’m starting to get more out of it. Of course it helps that I get to chat with Mags and Jane over lunch and practice my other accents too. Never underestimate the power of girlfriends. So anyway, I get home and it’s bloody hot outside and it doesn’t feel any better inside. So I figure I’ll sit out on the back porch and read a bit and get some sun on my legs while I sweat. I go out and put the cushions on my ‘chaise longe’ take a long drink from my icy cold Pepsi and get settled in to read. Then as I start to open my book I catch a small movement out of the corner of my eye. I look over toward the large makeshift picnic table in the corner and dangling underneath it I see this:
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Yes, it’s a small lizard dangling by its tail, about 2 inches from the ground, from a spiders web. At first I think he's dead and just twirling in the breeze, but then as I move in for a closer look the little thing moves and flails its little arms. At first I think it’s an attempt to pull himself free, but then another movement catches my eye and I see this…
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…bully spider scurrying away up his web. Of course instead of freeing the poor lizard I go and get my camera. When I come back to take the photo the bully spider has returned and is starting to wrap the lizard up in his web. As I approach for the picture the lizard twitches again and I realize that it's because the spider is stinging him. Then as I go to take the picture the spider runs up the web again. Coward. I am torn at first with the whole survival-of-the-fittest-Darwin dilemma but then I’m so creeped out by the whole thing I just grab my stuff , go inside and leave them to their own fates. You know, the lizard is easily 10 times bigger than the spider and if he can't get away (and was stupid enough to get caught in a spiders web in the first place for gods sake) then he deserves what he gets. Besides that, I hate spiders, and I’m not too fond of the lizards either as they keep trying to come into the house, so I figure let nature take its course. And the funny thing is that hours later, as I type this, I’m still so creeped out by the whole encounter; I’m sitting in my desk chair with my feet up under me. Eeeewwww I HATE CREEPY CRAWLY THINGS!!!. All right then, to go along with todays theme I have this story. On Saturday S and I went into Toulouse to go to an 'open air' market at Place Victor Hugo we’d heard about but had never been to. Well, it’s sort of 'open air' but not. It’s actuall in the ground floor of a downtown parking structure. It’s really rather cool. The market is really several semi-permanent shops all sharing this ground floor space. There have to be at least 8 or 10 different butchers and about as many sausage places, also several wine and cheese shops and three or four small bars strategically placed throughout the market (so you can grab a beer after every 10th shop or so to keep your strength up). Along the outside, actually in the ‘open air’ are about 4 or 5 green grocers where you can purchase just about any fruit or vegetable known to man (except not jalapeno’s, celery or sweet potatoes. [which is what I was looking for.]) On the next floor up there are several restaurants where, we've been told, you can take your fresh purchases and they will cook you a meal with them. We didn't get a chance to try this because we arrived too late. Anyway we stopped at a cheese shop…
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...for a free nibble, and then as we moved on and came round the corner we saw this fellow:
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Actually when I first saw him there was more of him but by the time I dug out the camera his fin had been removed and about a 12 inch length of him had been removed and was being quickly cut into steaks. Can't say the fish isn't fresh. Well that's all for 'Mutual of Omaha's' Wild Kingdom tonight. |
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