Spring forward

So Daylight Savings Time kicks in a week earlier in France. The sun doesn’t come up until 7:30 now but it doesn’t set until well after 8:00. And no I don’t know why it changes a week earlier here, it just does.

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Oh, yeah, it’s spring. Put on my headphones, and raincoat (just in case), and walked to the post listening to a new story on my MP3.

At the top of the hill about ¾ of the way to the post office it starts to rain. Not sprinkle, not drizzle, but pour down, feels-like-pebbles-hitting-the-top-of-my-head rain. Run down the hill to the post office where I join a small crowd all hurrying for the door. As we crowd into the hot little room and form a line, I look around. Just looking at the lot of us shaking off coats and assessing the damage, looking like a bucketful of drowned rats and beginning to smell like wet puppies (and worse) in the oppressive heat of the tiny room, I pray for the line to move along quickly. I slowly become aware of the rising steam of the group as a whole and that the combination of wetness and horrendous heat are starting to create a very unpleasant smell. The funniest part is watching the faces of newcomers as they open the door and get a look on their faces like they’ve just been smacked in the face by a two weeks dead mackerel.

Finally, getting out the door I’ve never welcomed fresh air more, I don’t even care that it’s still raining and I have a long walk home. It never even occurs to me to go back into the post and wait it out. That would be just plain crazy.

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I have photos from the weekend in Provence that I’ll post tomorrow. The Blogger service has been having problems and it has been very hard this week to upload anything, including a post. They are working on their issues and promise to be more stable soon.

Mélange…

Hey dummy…

Was chastised by the postman this morning because two letters I mailed out were returned. No, no not for lack or insufficiency of postage, no, it turns out that the machine that reads the addresses read the return address label instead of the mailing address. I was told that in the future it would behoove me to place the return address label on THE BACK of the envelope (read the implication "Like a normal French person would do, you crazy American"), so that this would not happen again. Good grief, I've been mailing stuff from here for a year and a half and this has never happened before. But I'll correct my errant and evil American ways and fly right

French women don’t shave…

No, no of course they don’t. They ‘épiler’, now when you think of epilating you think (or at least I do) of that device you could buy years ago that featured a wire springy thing that you ran along your legs so it could rip your hair out. Ouch!

Well, actually, no, epilating is waxing and I’ve never done that before either. Mags, however, convinced me that it was the way to go. It, supposedly, lasts longer and when the hair grows back it’s, supposedly, sparser. So despite it sounding just plain ol painful to me, I figured what the heck, try it once.

My 'esthetician', Jenny, was British and though she kept up a steady stream of chatter, I was not distracted from what she was doing. However, it all happened so quickly that I hardly had time to react. Gentle spreading of hot wax along the entire surface of one leg. This done slowly and deliberately to spread the wax as thin as possible and then she reaches for a strip of cloth and before I realize what she’s doing, rip, rip, rip. All done.

A week later, my legs are still pretty smooth, we’ll see. Maybe I’ll do my armpits next time. Ooowww!

Weekends…

Last weekend we visited Auch. I would see the signs for it on the autoroute, but had never been there. It’s another typical French town, but this one has a cathedral that is a Unesco world heritage site. It’s massive and the stained glass is cool. Napoleon II is quoted as saying that ‘a cathedral like this should be put in a museum!’. Well, I wouldn’t go quite that far, but it is a nice mix of Gothic and Florentine architecture.

If you head out of the south side doors of the cathedral and head east you’ll come to the ‘Escalier Monumental’ Auch’s 370 step stairway that takes you down to the river. Halfway down the stairs there’s a cool statue of d’Artagnan, you know, from ‘The Three Musketeers’. Fair warning though, if you go down the monumental stairs, you will eventually have to come back up, either by the stairs or the long way around through the uphill streets of town, there is no escape. I tried to get S to go back up and get the car and come back for me, but not even a faked heart attack could convince him. I couldn’t walk for two days after.

On the return home we passed through a town called Geret (?) where we saw a store called Le Contess du Barry (?). Anyway, the store sold fois gras and we bought a couple of ‘Bloc de foie gras de canard à la compote de figues & au porto blanc’. The stuff was fabulous!

Aches in Provence…

Actually that’s what it sounds like, but it’s actually Aix-en-Provence. That’s where we’re off too this weekend. Just to tour the town and get a small pre summer peek at the Provence region. We’ve not spent any time there yet. Of course the second I made and paid for the reservations, the weather turned decidedly nasty. Well, we’ll explore with umbrellas and avoid the sidewalk cafes.

Weather…

Well the wind that is carrying the lovely blizzard of almond blossoms currently blowing past my window is also now carrying other types of pollen and my face is red, eyes swollen, and my nose is running. Ah spring!

Up here for thinking…

I've got a horrid headache. A headache I was well aware I would end up with, but at the time I felt it was worth it. This morning however, I'm not so sure. Too much champagne will do that I guess.

We went out for Paula's 25th birthday last night, Mags, Paula, Claire, Paul (friend of Paula's) and I (S is away). Not a good idea on a Tuesday night, but promises were made about how this was just a perfunctory dinner and that true celebration would have to wait for another night. Mags turns *&#$ on Monday night and we're planning a girls only spa weekend for our real celebration of both birthdays.

Well 'apéritifs' were at Mags place before dinner at Killarneys. These consisted of champagne, fois gras and some 'crisps' for Paula because she doesn't like fois gras. S and I had bought the fois gras this weekend near Auch. It was a 'bloc de foie gras de canard à la compote de figues & au porto blanc' or fois gras with a fig and white port compote. It was heavenly!

Unfortunately, 10pm found us still at Mags, all the fois gras eaten and two empty bottles of champagne staring at us accusingly. It was probably the empty bottles more than anything that got us moving; we're a thirsty group.

We piled into my car and drove to Killarneys. The trip was marked by Mags trying to teach Claire to say 'Up here for thinking down there for dancing', said more like ‘up here for tinkin and down there for dancin’. Think Irish accent. Of course explaining what the saying meant was far more difficult and there was a brief attempt to find a similar phrase in French. None was found and Claire was still confused as to what the saying meant. The rest of the evening the saying was repeated when the opportunity presented itself in an attempt to provide contextual clues to its meaning. I think Claire may have gotten it by the end.

At Killarneys we ate some fabulous food. I had chicken in a cream and whisky sauce with a small crock of baked creamy potatoes. Marie makes the best potatoes. It was fabulous. We shared a bottle wine and we set about getting our daily requirement of laughter. We being a health conscious bunch. Dessert was a fabulous chocolate cake with some coffee ice cream. Maggie tried to convince us that the ice cream was pepper flavored. We decided it was time to cut her off. Marie came over and joined us for a bit and Mags got her to say that the ice cream was pepper flavored.

I started on some water with dinner and by midnight I was buzzless and tired. I was also speaking with an Irish accent and stinking of smoke (gee, I'm glad that Mags quit smoking!!??). Another glance at my watch and I had to remind the now more mature and therefore more responsible 25 year old, of the promise we'd made and she got everyone moving to the door.

A great night was had by all and I was in bed by 1 am.

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In other news, the last few days have seen less warmth and much wind. Outside my window there is a constantly blowing blizzard of almond blossoms, yet the trees do not seem any less full or white or beautiful. And because the house has gaps everywhere, I keep finding little white flower petals in the oddest places.

I'm working on getting S and I reservations at a hotel in Aix-en-Provence. It's in the Provence region (duh) about 15 miles north of Marseille. Cross your fingers for me, I waited until the last minute and they were meant to be getting back to me with availabilities.

Even now, wishing I'd been using 'up there for thinking' last night. Oh well, I've got to fix some dinner for me so...that is all...for now.

Dream On, America

This article ran in the January 31st, issue of Newsweek International. At the time I thought 'Wow, that's a wake up call to Americans'. Today, however, I discovered that the article was NOT published in the American edition of Newsweek. I don't know why the US didn't get to read this essay, but I think, that though it's pretty long, you'll find it interesting.

Newsweek International

January 31, 2005
Section: Cover Story: Reaction

Edition: Atlantic Edition
Page: 22



Dream On, America

The U.S. Model: For years, much of the world did aspire to the American way of life. But today countries are finding more appealing systems in their own backyards.

By: Andrew Moravcsik

With Christian Caryl in Tokyo, Katka Krosnar in Prague, Mac Margolis in Rio de Janeiro, Tracy McNicoll in Paris, Paul Mooney in Beijing, Henk Rossouw in Johannesburg and Marie Valla in London

Not long ago, the American dream was a global fantasy. Not only Americans saw themselves as a beacon unto nations. So did much of the rest of the world. East Europeans tuned into Radio Free Europe. Chinese students erected a replica of the Statue of Liberty in Tiananmen Square. You had only to listen to George W. Bush's Inaugural Address last week (invoking "freedom" and "liberty" 49 times) to appreciate just how deeply Americans still believe in this founding myth. For many in the world, the president's rhetoric confirmed their worst fears of an imperial America relentlessly pursuing its narrow national interests. But the greater danger may be a delusional America--one that believes, despite all evidence to the contrary, that the American Dream lives on, that America remains a model for the world, one whose mission is to spread the word.

The gulf between how Americans view themselves and how the world views them was summed up in a poll last week by the BBC. Fully 71 percent of Americans see the United States as a source of good in the world. More than half view Bush's election as positive for global security. Other studies report that 70 percent have faith in their domestic institutions and nearly 80 percent believe "American ideas and customs" should spread globally.

Foreigners take an entirely different view: 58 percent in the BBC poll see Bush's re-election as a threat to world peace. Among America's traditional allies, the figure is strikingly higher: 77 percent in Germany, 64 percent in Britain and 82 percent in Turkey. Among the 1.3 billion members of the Islamic world, public support for the United States is measured in single digits. Only Poland, the Philippines and India viewed Bush's second Inaugural positively.

Tellingly, the anti-Bushism of the president's first term is giving way to a more general anti-Americanism. A plurality of voters (the average is 70 percent) in each of the 21 countries surveyed by the BBC oppose sending any troops to Iraq, including those in most of the countries that have done so. Only one third, disproportionately in the poorest and most dictatorial countries, would like to see American values spread in their country. Says Doug Miller of GlobeScan, which conducted the BBC report: "President Bush has further isolated America from the world. Unless the administration changes its approach, it will continue to erode America's good name, and hence its ability to effectively influence world affairs." Former Brazilian president Jose Sarney expressed the sentiments of the 78 percent of his countrymen who see America as a threat: "Now that Bush has been re-elected, all I can say is, God bless the rest of the world."

The truth is that Americans are living in a dream world. Not only do others not share America's self-regard, they no longer aspire to emulate the country's social and economic achievements. The loss of faith in the American Dream goes beyond this swaggering administration and its war in Iraq. A President Kerry would have had to confront a similar disaffection, for it grows from the success of something America holds dear: the spread of democracy, free markets and international institutions--globalization, in a word.

Countries today have dozens of political, economic and social models to choose from. Anti-Americanism is especially virulent in Europe and Latin America, where countries have established their own distinctive ways--none made in America. Futurologist Jeremy Rifkin, in his recent book "The European Dream," hails an emerging European Union based on generous social welfare, cultural diversity and respect for international law--a model that's caught on quickly across the former nations of Eastern Europe and the Baltics. In Asia, the rise of autocratic capitalism in China or Singapore is as much a "model" for development as America's scandal-ridden corporate culture. "First we emulate," one Chinese businessman recently told the board of one U.S. multinational, "then we overtake."

Many are tempted to write off the new anti-Americanism as a temporary perturbation, or mere resentment. Blinded by its own myth, America has grown incapable of recognizing its flaws. For there is much about the American Dream to fault. If the rest of the world has lost faith in the American model--political, economic, diplomatic--it's partly for the very good reason that it doesn't work as well anymore.

AMERICAN DEMOCRACY: Once upon a time, the U.S. Constitution was a revolutionary document, full of epochal innovations--free elections, judicial review, checks and balances, federalism and, perhaps most important, a Bill of Rights. In the 19th and 20th centuries, countries around the world copied the document, not least in Latin America. So did Germany and Japan after World War II. Today? When nations write a new constitution, as dozens have in the past two decades, they seldom look to the American model.

When the soviets withdrew from Central Europe, U.S. constitutional experts rushed in. They got a polite hearing, and were sent home. Jiri Pehe, adviser to former president Vaclav Havel, recalls the Czechs' firm decision to adopt a European-style parliamentary system with strict limits on campaigning. "For Europeans, money talks too much in American democracy. It's very prone to certain kinds of corruption, or at least influence from powerful lobbies," he says. "Europeans would not want to follow that route." They also sought to limit the dominance of television, unlike in American campaigns where, Pehe says, "TV debates and photogenic looks govern election victories."

So it is elsewhere. After American planes and bombs freed the country, Kosovo opted for a European constitution. Drafting a post-apartheid constitution, South Africa rejected American-style federalism in favor of a German model, which leaders deemed appropriate for the social-welfare state they hoped to construct. Now fledgling African democracies look to South Africa as their inspiration, says John Stremlau, a former U.S. State Department official who currently heads the international relations department at the University of Witwatersrand in Johannesburg: "We can't rely on the Americans." The new democracies are looking for a constitution written in modern times and reflecting their progressive concerns about racial and social equality, he explains. "To borrow Lincoln's phrase, South Africa is now Africa's 'last great hope'."

Much in American law and society troubles the world these days. Nearly all countries reject the United States' right to bear arms as a quirky and dangerous anachronism. They abhor the death penalty and demand broader privacy protections. Above all, once most foreign systems reach a reasonable level of affluence, they follow the Europeans in treating the provision of adequate social welfare is a basic right. All this, says Bruce Ackerman at Yale University Law School, contributes to the growing sense that American law, once the world standard, has become "provincial." The United States' refusal to apply the Geneva Conventions to certain terrorist suspects, to ratify global human-rights treaties such as the innocuous Convention on the Rights of the Child or to endorse the International Criminal Court (coupled with the abuses at Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo) only reinforces the conviction that America's Constitution and legal system are out of step with the rest of the world.

ECONOMIC PROSPERITY: The American Dream has always been chiefly economic--a dynamic ideal of free enterprise, free markets and individual opportunity based on merit and mobility. Certainly the U.S. economy has been extraordinarily productive. Yes, American per capita income remains among the world's highest. Yet these days there's as much economic dynamism in the newly industrializing economies of Asia, Latin America and even eastern Europe. All are growing faster than the United States. At current trends, the Chinese economy will be bigger than America's by 2040. Whether those trends will continue is not so much the question. Better to ask whether the American way is so superior that everyone else should imitate it. And the answer to that, increasingly, is no.

Much has made, for instance, of the differences between the dynamic American model and the purportedly sluggish and overregulated "European model." Ongoing efforts at European labor-market reform and fiscal cuts are ridiculed. Why can't these countries be more like Britain, businessmen ask, without the high tax burden, state regulation and restrictions on management that plague Continental economies? Sooner or later, the CW goes, Europeans will adopt the American model--or perish.

Yet this is a myth. For much of the postwar period Europe and Japan enjoyed higher growth rates than America. Airbus recently overtook Boeing in sales of commercial aircraft, and the EU recently surpassed America as China's top trading partner. This year's ranking of the world's most competitive economies by the World Economic Forum awarded five of the top 10 slots--including No. 1 Finland--to northern European social democracies. "Nordic social democracy remains robust," writes Anthony Giddens, former head of the London School of Economics and a "New Labour" theorist, in a recent issue of the New Statesman, "not because it has resisted reform, but because it embraced it."

This is much of the secret of Britain's economic performance as well. Lorenzo Codogno, co-head of European economics at the Bank of America, believes the British, like Europeans elsewhere, "will try their own way to achieve a proper balance." Certainly they would never put up with the lack of social protections afforded in the American system. Europeans are aware that their systems provide better primary education, more job security and a more generous social net. They are willing to pay higher taxes and submit to regulation in order to bolster their quality of life. Americans work far longer hours than Europeans do, for instance. But they are not necessarily more productive--nor happier, buried as they are in household debt, without the time (or money) available to Europeans for vacation and international travel. George Monbiot, a British public intellectual, speaks for many when he says, "The American model has become an American nightmare rather than an American dream."

Just look at booming Britain. Instead of cutting social welfare, Tony Blair's Labour government has expanded it. According to London's Centre for Policy Studies, public spending in Britain represented 43 percent of GDP in 2003, a figure closer to the Eurozone average than to the American share of 35 percent. It's still on the rise--some 10 percent annually over the past three years--at the same time that social welfare is being reformed to deliver services more efficiently. The inspiration, says Giddens, comes not from America, but from social-democratic Sweden, where universal child care, education and health care have been proved to increase social mobility, opportunity and, ultimately, economic productivity. In the United States, inequality once seemed tolerable because America was the land of equal opportunity. But this is no longer so. Two decades ago, a U.S. CEO earned 39 times the average worker; today he pulls in 1,000 times as much. Cross-national studies show that America has recently become a relatively difficult country for poorer people to get ahead. Monbiot summarizes the scientific data: "In Sweden, you are three times more likely to rise out of the economic class into which you were born than you are in the U.S."

Other nations have begun to notice. Even in poorer, pro-American Hungary and Poland, polls show that only a slender minority (less than 25 percent) wants to import the American economic model. A big reason is its increasingly apparent deficiencies. "Americans have the best medical care in the world," Bush declared in his Inaugural Address. Yet the United States is the only developed democracy without a universal guarantee of health care, leaving about 45 million Americans uninsured. Nor do Americans receive higher-quality health care in exchange. Whether it is measured by questioning public-health experts, polling citizen satisfaction or survival rates, the health care offered by other countries increasingly ranks above America's. U.S. infant mortality rates are among the highest for developed democracies. The average Frenchman, like most Europeans, lives nearly four years longer than the average American. Small wonder that the World Health Organization rates the U.S. healthcare system only 37th best in the world, behind Colombia (22nd) and Saudi Arabia (26th), and on a par with Cuba.

The list goes on: ugly racial tensions, sky-high incarceration rates, child-poverty rates higher than any Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development country except Mexico--where Europe, these days, inspires more admiration than the United States. "Their solutions feel more natural to Mexicans because they offer real solutions to real, and seemingly intractable, problems," says Sergio Aguayo, a prominent democracy advocate in Mexico City, referring to European education, health care and social policies. And while undemocratic states like China may, ironically, be among the last places where the United States still presents an attractive political and social alternative to authoritarian government, new models are rising in prominence. Says Julie Zhu, a college student in Beijing: "When I was in high school I thought America was this dreamland, a fabled place." Anything she bought had to be American. Now that's changed, she says: "When people have money, they often choose European products." She might well have been talking about another key indicator. Not long ago, the United States was destination number one for foreign students seeking university educations. Today, growing numbers are going elsewhere--to other parts of Asia, or Europe. You can almost feel the pendulum swinging.

FOREIGN POLICY : U.S. leaders have long believed military power and the American Dream went hand in hand. World War II was fought not just to defeat the Axis powers, but to make the world safe for the United Nations, the precursor to the --World Trade Organization, the European Union and other international institutions that would strengthen weaker countries. NATO and the Marshall Plan were the twin pillars upon which today's Europe were built.

Today, Americans make the same presumption, confusing military might with right. Following European criticisms of the Iraq war, the French became "surrender monkeys." The Germans were opportunistic ingrates. The British (and the Poles) were America's lone allies. Unsurprisingly, many of those listening to Bush's Inaugural pledge last week to stand with those defying tyranny saw the glimmerings of an argument for invading Iran: Washington has thus far shown more of an appetite for spreading ideals with the barrel of a gun than for namby-pamby hearts-and-minds campaigns. A former French minister muses that the United States is the last "Bismarckian power"--the last country to believe that the pinpoint application of military power is the critical instrument of foreign policy.

Contrast that to the European Union--pioneering an approach based on civilian instruments like trade, foreign aid, peacekeeping, international monitoring and international law--or even China, whose economic clout has become its most effective diplomatic weapon. The strongest tool for both is access to huge markets. No single policy has contributed as much to Western peace and security as the admission of 10 new countries--to be followed by a half-dozen more--to the European Union. In country after country, authoritarian nationalists were beaten back by democratic coalitions held together by the promise of joining Europe. And in the past month European leaders have taken a courageous decision to contemplate the membership of Turkey, where the prospect of EU membership is helping to create the most stable democratic system in the Islamic world. When historians look back, they may see this policy as being the truly epochal event of our time, dwarfing in effectiveness the crude power of America.

The United States can take some satisfaction in this. After all, it is in large part the success of the mid-century American Dream--spreading democracy, free markets, social mobility and multilateral cooperation--that has made possible the diversity of models we see today. This was enlightened statecraft of unparalleled generosity. But where does it leave us? Americans still invoke democratic idealism. We heard it in Bush's address, with his apocalyptic proclamation that "the survival of liberty in our land increasingly depends on the success of liberty in other lands." But fewer and fewer people have the patience to listen.

Headlines in the British press were almost contemptuous: DEFIANT BUSH DOES NOT MENTION THE WAR, HAVE I GOT NUKES FOR YOU and HIS SECOND-TERM MISSION: TO END TYRANNY ON EARTH. Has this administration learned nothing from Iraq, they asked? Can this White House really expect to command support from the rest of the world, with its different strengths and different dreams? The failure of the American Dream has only been highlighted by the country's foreign-policy failures, not caused by them. The true danger is that Americans do not realize this, lost in the reveries of greatness, speechifying about liberty and freedom.

If memory serves…

Spring is well on its way here, nothing highlights this more than the view from my bedroom window. Not just because the almond trees are in full bloom either. The view first thing in the morning is like something out of Mission Impossible or Oceans 11 or 12 or any one of those ‘big heist’ movies. The scene with the crisscrossing laser beam alarm system. The morning dew highlights millions and millions of silvery strands crisscrossing the top of the grass. It would be quite beautiful if I didn’t know what it meant. Yes siree bob, thousands upon thousands of brand new baby spiders floating on the breezes to seek their fortunes. I have pretty much managed to eradicate them from the house by frequent and injudicious use of spider killing sprays. There is probably a three inch band of death set around the perimeter of the house with additional bands around doors and windows; and that’s just the outside of the house. Every three or four weeks the house gets an interior treatment along exterior leading doors and all the windows. I’m not arachnophobic, I’m arachno-disgusted, which, let’s just face it, amounts to the same thing, doesn’t it. I’m sitting out in ‘my office’, also known as the back porch, warming in the sun like a lizard. The back porch is the only place that has proven to be anti-arachnid resistant…um…meaning I can’t get rid of the spiders here; I lay my perimeter spray just the same as the rest of the house, but the spiders waft in on the breeze and manage to live, neigh, thrive, within the perimeter. The only solution to that would be to drench every square inch of floor and walls with bug spray regularly and let’s face it, that would be just plain crazy. ………………………… Always Blog when you’re drunk….wait…wait, that’s wrong I think… I think it’s supposed to be never Blog when you’re drunk… This is precisely why I didn’t give you all the low down on the St. Pats bash when I got home on Thursday night. Granted, it would have made for a more colorful narrative, but I couldn’t have guaranteed correct spelling and grammar (as if I could do that even sober) and it probably wouldn’t have qualified as PG. Not that I was that drunk, I only had 3 or 4 beers, not like a certain someone I know who shall remain nameless to protect the guilty, but who didn’t quite put in a full days work on Friday. It was like a reunion of sorts, sort of like the bow taken at the end of a play. Well, first in a minor roll was Stacey and her husband Terry (or Todd or Tad or Trevor or something that starts with a T). Stacey has also just been voted onto the board of AIT, she’ll be coordinating adult activities (as opposed to the kids activity coordinator, geez people). Anyway I just met Stacey at the meeting the other day, or so I thought. It turns out that one night when we went out to dinner with Mags and Paula, Mags met Trevor (or Terry…..) while we were waiting to be seated and introduced him and Stacey to us because they were American too. I vaguely remember this event. When they showed up at Killarney, Mags greeted Tad (or Trevor ….) like they were old friends, she re-introduced him to us and that’s when I recognized Stacey. We said hellos and then moved on. Todd (or Tad…) has that frat boy look to him and he was ready to party. Next in slightly bigger role was Dominic. You met Dominic back on March 29th when we met her and her husband Fred. Only in that Blog I introduced her as Nicollette, because I forgot her name. Anyway…Dominic arrived with our friend Claire. When Claire came up to say hello and make the introduction. I recognized Dominic immediately (she has a very distinctive thin face) and said Hi! Then I proceeded to remind her about the night we met. She was impressed with my memory; I did not disclose the fact that I thought her name was Nicolette. It would have ruined the whole second first impression. In other minor rolls were the Frenchman named Patrick who felt he should celebrate St. Pats just because of his name. Boobie introduced me to a British painter named Phil and his violent ‘scandanavian model’ looking girlfriend named Christine. We met Didier who was helping at the bar. He has fabulous English. And of course in a starring rolls were Mags and Boobie. Mags who kept checking in on us to make sure we didn’t run low on beer. She was working the bar with Paula and Roger and Marie and others. And Boobie who introduced us to people and would wave at us periodically from down the street. The good news was that being outside meant that you didn’t arrive home smelling of smoke; though a group near us was smoking something far more pungent than regular cigarettes. The drawback of being outside was that by 10:00 the ‘brick wall’ had seen much traffic and the stream was in full flow (see post from last St. Pats). Unfortunately for the women it’s not so easy; you could fight your way into the bar and reach the back in 30 or 40 minutes only to find that you are the 300th person in line waiting for the one women’s toilet or walk the 2 blocks to the nearest pay toilet. Neither one an ideal solution. So how long you stayed at the party became determined by how long your bladder could hold. Anyway, a good night. I didn’t get many photos though, I’ll post the one good one of Mags and I and a couple of the crowd.

The crowd in the street

Boobie, highlighted just under the Killarney sign.

The crowd at the outside bar service window. That's Rogers car (bar owner) apparently he wasn't aware that last year people stood and sat on the cars in front of the bar.

Two cute girls we saw. No idea who they are.

Have a potato…

Well, we're off to Killarney tonight for some St. Pat's merry making. The weather is fabulous so it should be a good night. I mention weather only because, you may remember, last year the bar was so packed that there were actually more people in the street outside than inside the bar. Last years weather warranted a heavy wool sweater, but this year I'm looking at something much lighter and cuter. It'll be the same group as last year minus the evil and nefarious José. Claire is well shed of the two timing scoundrel and tonight we will all celebrate the official termination of that marriage. I am currently working on hydrating myself while re-watching season 2 of the Gilmore Girls and sitting in a fabulous puddle of sunshine on my bed. I love that the sun streams right in through my bedroom window in the afternoons. I'm also indulging in some yummy creamy yogurt wanna be and frying up some bacon for a quiche lorraine for dinner. Multitasking or ADD, still hard to tell. Well, that's me for today. I'll try to update you on any unusual shenanigan from this evening, tomorrow. In the meantime have a good and safe St. Patrick's day. Hope you remembered to wear your green.

Universal…

Who knew that electrical problems could be solved with a simple snip of pliers? I mean it sounds like a solution I would come up with.

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Are landlords universally the same? I mean our current landlord bears a striking resemblance, both physically and in management style, to a landlord S and I had in Illinois. He seems to have an old crony who used to be or knows a bit about electricity, plumbing, painting, wallpapering etc.

Back on November 16th I blogged about several problems we were having with the house and that I needed to call the landlord. You may recall that he poopoo-ed the roof leak in the garage as not a problem and promised to get the wallpaper and light fixture fixed.

Well, I’m sure it comes as no surprise that these items have never been fixed.

The other day my neighbor came to the door and rang the door bell. The ringing of said doorbell tripped all the breakers and plunged us into darkness. I went out and reset the main breaker and when the lights came back on I noticed that one switch was still off; I flipped it on and was once again plunged into complete darkness. Flipped on main breaker and left the one that was off alone.

Upon re-entering the house I discovered that this breaker covers not only the front door lights and the doorbell but also the front hall lights, the kitchen lights the WC and the dining room. But the living room light and the light over the stove and the outlet the fridge is plugged into, mysteriously, still worked. My point is that there seems to be no rhyme or reason to what things are hooked into each breaker.

Anyway, I phoned the landlord to relate this latest development, and he answered from… his ski vacation… in the Alps (my rent euros, hard at work). He said, upon hearing these developments, that he would send his ‘cousin’ around the next day to check out the problem.

The cousin’s solution was to take a pair of pliers and snip off the offending light fixture. I admit that it did solve the problem breaker tripage, however, we still have no front door light. Aaarrrrgggghhhhh!

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In other news, it actually smelled warm outside today. It’s fabulous! Spring, though it has been dragging is feet, is finally arriving so now I must go and sit in that very inviting spot of sunshine on my bed.

Hmmm…

With church killings and judges being targeted and our citizens being murdered by each other, why are we looking for enemies overseas?

I typed the word 'murder' into the MSNBC search box and it came up with over 4700 stories from the last few months alone (and those are just the ones that seemed news worthy to the news people). Seems to me we need to focus on the problem at home first. Why isn't what we do to each other, on our own soil, described as terrorism?

No wonder terrorists seem to hate us, we seem to hate ourselves.

Uno

How is it possible that I could lose 12 straight games of Uno to a 4 year old? Well, the first two games I lost, sort of, on purpose, but the rest were just purely bad luck.

My excuse is that we were playing with a deck of Dora The Explorer My First Uno cards. This deck has ½ the cards and it doesn’t have all of the bad cards in it. Just wild cards, draw one cards and reverse cards. The kid has no real strategic skills, just lots of luck behind her.

That’s my story and I’m stikin’ to it.

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Today I was voted into the AIT board. I’ll be helping maintain the membership database and send out renewal information. We’ve belonged to the group for almost two years now and have done little with them, so I felt that it was time to do something. It’ll be an interesting time I think.

Not on the Hallmark Calendar? - Or - Well Done Sister Suffragette?

I went to the center commercial today to restock on basics after the trip. Drove round a few times looking for a parking space. Passed up a few potential spaces that looked too small when I realized I wasn't driving the beast. It's a hard transition back.

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It’s 3 am on Wednesday morning and I’m up; another example of the hard transition back. I’m doing a load of dishes, baking banana muffins, drinking some herbal tea (to see if it really does help relax me.), reading the March issue of Condé Nast Traveler and surfing the web (it’s slow this time of night um…morning, hence the reading material).

And yet another example. This morning S left for work without his cell phone. He called me around 10:30 and suggested that if I were willing to drive the hour and half to his office to bring him his phone, he would buy me lunch. I agreed and said I’d leave by 11:00.

In a show of uncharacteristic togetherness I was dressed and out the door by 10:55. I drove the hour and a half to S’s office only to discover once I’d arrived, that I’d failed to actually bring the cell phone with me. Good grief.

We had lunch with a co-worker of S’s named Gwenola. She is a true modern French woman who is struggling with the myth that many American women have struggled with for years and have now discovered to be untrue. The myth being that you can have your cake and eat it too, a family and a career, clearly this is not really true.

In France, women in management positions are not respected and men in their work places treat them poorly; in the male opinion, they have no business in positions of power. There are no harassment laws in France and Gwenola has to put up with a lot from her French male counterparts.

During lunch Gwenola asked me if I’d heard of or participated in any International Women’s Day activities. I hadn’t ever heard of International Women’s Day since it’s probably never made it on to the Hallmark calendar. However, many countries do have International Women's Day activities to highlight the role of women in society and also to highlight the issues facing women today from job discrimination in developed countries to basic survival in war torn countries. If you click on the events link and look for events in the US you will see that there are tons of them; most having taken place ON March 8th, but many still upcoming. Now click on the link for activities in France, you will notice only one entry and that one may not have even taken place.

You think you have a long way to go ‘to make your brother understand’!

Off to bed to test the tea.

Mayo

You would think, given the amount of mayo currently oozing out of my chicken sandwich, that my cholesterol would be sky high. But it's not and I'm grateful for that because the mayo would just have to be the death of me; I love it too much to give it up.

I was making my drippy sandwich and remembering growing up and my mom telling us that the mayo was just to moisten the bread, it was used lightly and sparingly. Of course with 5 kids in the house making sandwich lunches everyday (except for the days we had spaghetti burritos), that jar of mayo had to stretch.

But since I share my jar of mayo with no one, I'm free to slather it on and enjoy the flavor it adds to my day old roasted chicken.

Don’t look for a moral cause there isn’t one.

Home again...

What is the purpose of tea? I mean aside from using the cup of liquid to warm your hands on, I find no real purpose in it. No matter what kind of tea I drink it just taste like watered down twig water; three to four teaspoons of sugar or honey do nothing to improve the flavor. Why is that?

All I gotta say is that tea has nothing on coffee.

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Arrived home from the states to a house that was, well, a few steps above freezing, but not many. It was 44° degrees in the house when we arrived at 1pm. We have been having difficulties with a leaky heating system and we opted to leave the heat off. Unfortunately the water heater is part of this system and we left it on. The buckets that we placed in the closet under the leaks were filled to overflowing and there was a bit of water on the floor. Luckily not too much.

However 6 hours later the house temp is now 54° and it's dark outside. This might sound like whining to you but let me put it into perspective for you:

At some point in a 6 hour period a person is required to use the bathroom...'nough said?

We had a great visit. I spent every conceivable second with J. I even made her late for work a couple of times and managed to get her to skip a class. If she has senior-idous it's all my fault, but it was so worth it. (Unless of course she fails to graduate in May in which case I will take no blame and yell at her, in true 'mom' fashion.)

I got her hooked on 'The Gilmore Girls' by making her purchase seasons one and two; can you believe she’d never watched the show before. She’s Rory (in a not so naïve ‘little birds dress her in the morning’ clueless about boys way) and she’d never seen the show! She watched both seasons pretty much straight through and harassed me continually, for hints of what was coming up next when she couldn’t take the suspense any more. We spent many hours of laughing so hard we almost puddled. We shopped, we ate, we finished each others sentences and we argued of course. It was heaven and I miss her already.

I saw the Ya-ya’s in groups and individually. We went to see the NIU production of ‘The Vagina Monologues’ it was very cool and hilariously funny and sad. I loved it. We ate a lot of chocolate cake from Portillo’s and watched movies. Little Miss Ava is finally at an age where she speaks, J fell in love with her and I wouldn’t be surprised if she begins to pester Shannon for some more face time with the kid. There’s a good reason we call the child Miss Sassy Pants, she takes after her mom, Ms. Sassy Pants.

We had one good snow while we were there and that was enough for getting a taste of what we’d been missing. A couple of mornings of scraping ice from the windshield and several days later when it was brown slush and my car was white from all the salt on the roads, the fun was officially over.

S and I spent a day in Chicago shopping and eating at a cool new place that Ya-ya Mel told me about. It’s called The Grand Lux Café (?) I think. The entrance is on Ontario but really it’s on the corner of Michigan Ave. and Ontario over the Anne Taylor store. It was very cheesecake factory-ish without the crowds and hours of wait, and without the cheesecake too, but to compensate they make your dessert to order (so you have to order your dessert at the time of your meal). It was good.

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The flight back was from hell, but only in that it was a long overnight flight during which no one got any sleep.

Well, we arrived, napped and then we ate and now it’s 8pm here and we’re crawling back into bed to watch a movie and get some sleep. It’s back to the salt mines for S tomorrow and besides that, my down comforter is stridently calling.

I think we’ve got the temp up to 57° now.

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Ok, so stop calling and e-mailing. I’m not dead, or retired or in a coma. I think I was a bit depressed before the trip and it’s hard to write in that state. I’m feeling better and more re-energized now. Hopefully this last trip will sustain me until the next one in May. Love to all and thanks for your concern.