A Full House

Oh dear, this is from the beginning of September! I just noticed it was still in "draft" mode and not published. So, sorry to interrupt the trip story, but here's some family stuff.
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Last weekend we had a full house. Friday evening we went out for our annual dinner with the Lebelles home for the summer from China. It was about time because P-F had to return on the Saturday overnight flight back and the rest of the family followed on Sunday. It's also become a bit of a tradition to have these dinners at Chez Clément, a chain that has nice spaces for parties of around 10. This time there were 9 of us at the table and Sacha parked nearby where we could all admire him. It's always great to catch up. The food is nothing to get excited about; we can count on it being decent; the profiteroles are good.
During the day, that Friday, I made some banana bread to get rid of some overripe bananas and froze it. I also made the birthday cake for Sunday and froze the two parts so that all I would have to do on Sunday was the frosting. I bought a lot of food at the market and there was no room in the refrigerator for anything more. I put the chicken into a bag with the marinade for Sunday.
On Saturday morning I made some tuna salad and some egg salad and put out some ham and cheese with a loaf of sandwich bread, something we hardly ever have around here. The invasion occurred at about 1:30 p.m. -- Geoff and Claire with Aurelia and Charlotte and Valérie with Noah and Daniel, although that's not how the kids were distributed in the cars. After having their sandwiches, they all went off on bikes to meet up with friends in the Bois de Vincennes and came back just in time to give the kids a bath and have dinner. The kids were exhausted and went to bed with no problem.
Sunday morning I had to go back to the market to get some more last-minute stuff and Louis, Gwen, and Sacha came before noon and Anne followed. I let the cake thaw and then made the frosting and frosted it. I managed to rearrange things in the refrigerator to put the cake in. Louis manned the barbecue and we were able to eat outside. The kids played in the yard and we managed to spend the whole afternoon outside. Emma and Gabriel arrived from Ginals, where they will be settling some time in the first half of 2013, just as we were finishing up lunch, before the cake, so with them, we had a full house until the Parisians left.
Monday morning, the English group left early to catch the shuttle. Emma accompanied Gabriel to the train station and it was back to just the two of us and a lot of laundry.

Yesterday, Paul and I got to babysit Sacha the whole day. I'll put up the August pictures on Picasa.

Short vacation in California

Most of you know this by now: Emma won a week-long trip to California some time ago and chose to go now, end of September-beginning of October and asked me to accompany her. It's a really short trip, with lots to do and people to see.

We arrived in San Francisco last Saturday afternoon and got to the Hotel Vertigo just as night was coming. Good thing because all we wanted to do was sleep. That meant we got up very early on Sunday morning and waited patiently until just after 6:30 and set out to find a bank ATM and breakfast. The hotel is on Sutter, Nob Hill, and we found Lori's diner open at Sutter and Powell, where we had breakfast. From there we continued over a block to Post and Union Square, quite deserted at 7:30 on a Sunday morning. Down Post to Market, Financial District. So we took Montgomery and then saw that it was a rather steep climb up Telegraph Hill, so we took Pine up to Grant and walked through a charming, sleeping Chinatown, so different from what you usually see with tourists swarming all over the place. Anyway, we continued on Grant all the way to Fisherman's Wharf and walked around there a bit until we walked back up Powell, with a slight detour at the end, to Sutter and back to the hotel. That was about 5.5 miles (8.7 km.) and it was just after 9!

Emma had a friend pick her up and at elevenish, Psylvia picked me up and took me, first, on a little hike to the beach and then on to her house. We talked and talked, and talked some more. And we walked. It's a beautiful walk, Tennessee Valley! And it was hot! She lives in Fairfax, up on the side of a hill (her vegetable garden looked like it was three flights of stairs below the deck!) on a two-way, one-lane winding road -- beautiful and shady. Although it was really hot out, the house was comfortable. Paula managed to come -- a four-hour drive in from Nevada, where she's been working on a voter-registration campaign! Rachel, unfortunately, was not able to come down from her place as she had hoped to. A baby decided it was time and a midwife can't ask the mother to put it on hold! She did manage to call when we were all together, so that was nice. It was all too short because just after 5, Psyl and Paula drove me over to catch a bus back to the city. Pablo, Psyl's husband sent me off with a supply of books. (Today, I finished the first one and traded it with a British lady at the pool at the hotel, who had just finished the book she was reading...). Pablo was very much like Paul in his patience with all the gabbing going and and took pictures of the three of us high school friends together.

I got back to the hotel just before 7 and Emma got back at about 7:30. She, too, had gone to the Pacific, a bit higher up on the peninsula! They drove through Fairfax on their way back. If only we had known, they could have picked me up! We went to a Thai restaurant, Lers Ros, that Psylvia had recommended and just a couple of blocks from the hotel. And it was well-recommended. There was quite a crowd, so we had to wait a bit for the second seating and it looked like there was going to be a third sitting when we saw the people waiting as we left.

On Monday, yesterday, we got up early again, but we had picked up some bagels, cream cheese and yogurt on our way back from the restaurant, so we had breakfast in the room and headed down to the Embarcadero and then to the rental car agency, where we had to wait forever. We finally got the car and picked up our bags at the hotel (by the way, it's a fine hotel, very comfortable and with a very friendly and helpful staff) and headed off for Monterey. We drove through the park, past the conservatory and I took a picture. This will go with the one I took in 1967! Scenic coastal CA 1 all the way to Monterey. We stopped for a light lunch at a taqueria -- excellent and cheap. I hiked to the Monterey Bay Aquarium, which got top scores in the guide book we had. They do great work and you pay for it. There's got to be a better balance between research and entertainment. It costs a fortune to visit. I can't imagine a family visit. Emma hadn't been tempted and went on a walk on her own and found me at the exit of the aquarium. We walked back to the fisherman's wharf, where, you are told, you must try the clam chowder. Well, every restaurant was giving out samples of its clam chowder, so after a few samples, you've had dinner!

Today was the drive from Monterey to San Simeon. It's a beautiful drive. One minute you're along the ocean, the next in a redwood forest or a eucalyptus grove. It's a windy road, so, although, this is not where I would have chosen to stop (there's nothing but the Hearst Castle to visit), it's nice to have the time to relax by the pool, read, and now, do some blogging. We're going to go down to the next town for dinner, soon. I was going to see another high school mate in L.A., but she's not going to be able to meet me after all, so we had a nice chat while I was at the pool. That was good.

Ahhh, a Heatwave!

France is having a heatwave. It happens at least once a summer. I'd say it's a bit late this year, which is not a bad thing because the days have gotten considerably shorter since the summer solstice. That means that we can open our windows a little earlier in the evening when the temperature outside starts cooling to where it's a cooler than in the house. Today, it's supposed to be about 41°C (over 105°F) today and down to 32°C (almost 90°F) tonight. Last time I checked it was 30° C in the house, but that was earlier and it feels warmer now. I'm sure Jon and Tobi remember going to the movies during a similar heatwave when they were here a couple of years ago. We haven't gone to the movies, but we did go to an air-conditioned restaurant last night.
The TV and radio stations are full of heatwave warnings and recommendations. France was so traumatized by the death toll during the 2003 heatwave, that they go overboard. During the Olympics, news led with that; now the lead story and the next two or three are all heatwave connected. Nothing else is happening in the world. This should be old news by tomorrow -- at least old news in the Paris region.

On this very big pumpkin vine, only one flower has produced a pumpkin. The tomato vines have recovered a bit, so we've got a few ripening tomatoes and new flowers for later in the season. We've already eaten two cucumbers and I think there will be one ready for tomorrow. We can forget the carrots, beets, parsley, zucchini, and radishes.

We got to babysit Sacha on Wednesday. Four months old, blond, very happy, good appetite and good company (meaning he doesn't complain much, is easily calmed down when he does complain, eats, and sleeps with great predictability and all night).

Experimenting with layout -- and the Olympics

I've just applied the "dynamic layout" to this blog. I'm not sure I really like it, so I'd like you to tell me in a comment or an email message.

Other than that, the past week has involved a lot of Olympics watching. I've been having a discussion about the commentary with a friend on facebook. And we've been complaining about the commentary at home, too. In fact, we've gotten so sick of the commentary that we've taken to watching with the sound off. I'm pretty sure that commentary is almost the same in any given country, but I only know France.
The star commentators have been doing this forever. I've actually been in France long enough to have seen these guys since they started out and they can't be too far from retirement now. I remember the icons that preceded them. French TV loves icons. Eventually they will go and be replaced by a fresh new crew, all the same age, of which two or three will remain in place for 40 years. It means that those who are about 30 or 40 now won't make it. They'll be fill-in between the icon generations. For me and my facebook friend, another American in France, this is really boring.
The commentary is nonsensical blabber. They just don't shut up and let you watch what's going on. They don't really explain the lesser-known sports, either. Also, there are so many events that just as you get settled to watching whatever it is, they switch you to another sport and switch you again just as you've gotten interested. Between telling you what you are watching, what is coming up, what the results were 4 or 88 years ago, you get completely confused. Turn off the sound and you figure it all out faster.
Yesterday, there was a new kind of cycling event and a young French kid -- just turned 20 in April and went to the training center at Pont-Château, bla, bla, bla,.... -- was in it, but we were told nothing about how one scored in this event, how it became an Olympic event or anything else about it. We're intelligent and we figured it out (based on decathlon or triathlon events, this has six cycling elements of endurance or speed and one is ranked for each event and then there's an overall ranking). We turned off the sound after the umpteenth reminder that this young kid has a great future, had just turned 20.... He did get the silver medal.
Another thing is that, since these icons have been around so long, comedians have been imitating them for years. And they do great imitations of the voices, idiosyncrasies, and inane commentary. They do such a good job that watching the real thing makes you want to start laughing immediately.
Eurosport has voice-off commentary and it's much more restrained. EquipeTV does not carry the events, they just do sports news, so it's commentary after the event is over and off-site interviews.
All complaining over, we've been really surprised by the team sports: handball, basketball, and football -- especially the women's teams.