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Monday, August 28th, 2006
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4:07 pm - Alpage Sunday
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Yesterday I got the opportunity to join in an alpage picnic. The annual end of summer alpage picnic for a mountain near here. It's open to cattle breeders and their close relatives - of which I'm not, but I got there all the same (no great feat, it hardly qualifies as party-crashing !).
"Alpage" is the name given to high mountain pastures here (different name where I come from, I wonder what they say in the Pyrenees). Every year, quite a few breeders relocate their herds from their valley farms to higher pastures.
In the case of that alpage, the breeders' association hires one shepherd who's in charge of about 800 cows all summer long.
Rather disappointingly, most of the cows aren't local breeds but dull Charolais, or ugly Holstein-Friesian milk machines. I knew what to expect, because I went with a friend whose mum breeds Abondance cows (she runs one of the few organic dairy farms in the valley) and is rightfully proud of her herd - one of the last such herds in the area. Even so, I'd hoped the ratio was better.
The local breeders' association provided apéritif, heaps of barbecued sausages and chops, massive amounts of cheese, lovely fruit tarts and the nastiest coffee I've ever tasted. No bread or greens : looked like the Atkins diet had eventually hit the mountains. This too reminded me of the Auvergne (but planning a picnic without bringing bread would be considered a major faux pas there, we're the biggest bread eaters in the whole country).
( Other pics are hidden behind this cut, I remember my dial-up modem summer. )
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| Tuesday, July 25th, 2006
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8:50 am
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Signs it’s been too long since you last visited your grandmother :
Though maybe it’s precisely because she’s using it for her cat that she remembers my name when much of the rest is deep in an Alzheimer’s fog.
******
I'm using a dial-up modem, and have been for two weeks, which is why I didn't update or comment on my friends page (load time would probably be close to a quarter of an hour). I had forgotten how slow it was, and the locust-like noise.
Current book : Philip Roth’s The Human Stain. The best thing I’ve read this month. Since I’m still feeling rather down, I’ve read so many books that this is as good a compliment as some more enthusiastic stuff you may have seen on this lj.
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| Friday, July 7th, 2006
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2:06 pm - Ringing in my ears / ringing on my mind
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Here's how I keep myself busy in order to hush this annoyingly loud inner voice of mine that keeps asking questions in pure lj angst style.
I wish I could speed that so-called "healing process" up.
I used to be able to achieve that through a combination of drunken ramblings and one-night stands with whoever was fanciable and willing to play that game, but I really can't be bothered.
Here's what turning thirty did to me - I take into account new considerations (getting up at five tomorrow / guy smells like an ashtray / can I afford a hangover given how hot the weather is these days ?).
Have to devise new solutions not to feel too sorry for myself. In the line of my previous post, I find divertissement in the outdoors.
Watch me convert to a new, holier-than-thou, "care more for animals than humans" version of myself (or not).
Good news is I might have found a challenge to keep me busy for the decade to come.
Last Sunday I was invited to give a hand at a ringing outing, and I think I'm hooked. New ambition - I'd like to qualify as a bird ringer - but when I say ten years, I mean it, because before I even start training for the permit I need to know much more about birds than I do.
I hope I'm not too old for this. Really knowledgeable birders have often learnt to read from ornithology books. And is it just me or is this a male thing ? Among the birders I know, the female/male ratio is rather depressing : it looks as if women were fit for a basic garden birds knowledge, and the serious, scientific stuff was a male prerogative.
Most likely, I'll get bored with it before the year ends, unable to keep up with the studying or show more than a transitory interest in it. Story of my life. Of birds and men, hmm.
Anyway, here comes a series of photos I took on Sunday ( hidden under a cut because amazingly enough, you may not want to see your friends page flooded with bird-geek stories. )
Current book : Jonathan Coe, The Closed Circle.
Someone tells me why I keep buying every book Jonathan Coe writes.. didn't really like The Rotters' Club in the first place, yet here I am, finishing its sequel which I don't like either (it's full of tired novelist's tricks). I guess I'm waiting for a book I'd enjoy as much as I loved his What a Carve-Up !, but no luck so far.
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| Thursday, June 29th, 2006
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10:53 pm - It's that time of the year again.
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The time when I post about human study skeletons.
The school year is basically over. On Monday and Tuesday, 3ème students sat their Diplôme National du Brevet (which would probably translate as a kind of leaving certification for.. lower secondary in the States ? Somewhat similar to the GCSEs in England, but easier).
Some schools have asked the kids to come back after the exams. In ours, the Head decided to let them leave early (school officially ends on July 4th this year), and I'm bored as hell, because this demagogical generous decision doesn't apply to teachers. So basically, I'm spending two hours a day on the road to my school, only to sit around and bitch about the Head, her management style and the pointless meetings she wants us to attend.
I've already reorganized my cupboard twice and my pigeonhole is spotless. I've eaten too much candy, chatted for hours on end with the cleaning ladies, now all I want is to be allowed to go home. I know very few things as depressing as an empty school (except maybe a split up, which is exactly what I'm going through these days, so the last thing I need is having to idle away so many hours).
Today I helped some friends tidy up the science lab and found Sigismond's missing bits and pieces.
We've left him looking at the courtyard with another skeleton, to give the twelve year olds something to talk about when they arrive next September.
I eventually managed to get home after this waste of time, and the heat is sweltering.
Grenoble is spread in a Y-shaped valley surrounded by mountains, so the heat and pollution seem to get trapped over our heads.
And - the last straw - it's the world cup again.
It sure doesn't feel like I've had four years of respite.
I wouldn't mind it if I lived in some isolated spot in the countryside, but some of my neighbours are completely insane. On Tuesday the French team was playing Spain and won - it seemed like the whole building was shouting everytime the French scored and after the match, some guys drove around the neighbourhood and honked their car horns until well past midnight. I was getting up at five thirty.
Next game is on Saturday, and I'm meeting a bird ringer at 5 a.m. on Sunday. If the game is in the evening I must find a quiet spot where to take my sleeping bag.
Either that, or if they score I can already see the headlines in the local paper - "Frigid Cow Refuses to Partake in Great Football Communion" or "Spoilsport Loses it and Bludgeons Innocent Fan with Scope Tripod"
Last Sunday I went to the Lac du Vallon. It was a good place to forget the heat - the lake is still partly ice-covered and the hike up there was demanding enough to lift a bit of the weight of all the shit that's pressing down on me. We saw eagles, chamois and the like, and I learnt quite a bit about some mountain plants. Trouble is, I can't spend all my time keeping my mind off things like I did on Sunday.
Tell me if you mind my current local landscape pics habit, I wondered about putting them behing a cut before I posted this.
Current book : Graham Gibson, All Tomorrow's Parties
(which has a few interesting insights but really isn't as good as the ecstatic book cover quotes would make you believe. Not that I take them into account when buying a book - I hate book cover quotes, hate them hate them hate them.)
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| Wednesday, May 31st, 2006
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12:07 am
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Either I posted something, anything tonight, or I closed down this lj altogether. It's been so long.
Every time I look at my shelves, I wake up and see letters and cards I've been meaning to answer for months. I'm on a guilt trip as far as lj is concerned - the lj nudges made me want to bury my head in the sand (but thanks all the same).
I guess I need this space. I loved ranting in here. These days, with the end of term rush and the immense backlog of fatigue I have, I find myself ready to bite someone's head off. The only time I felt truly like myself lately was last week, when I spent two days looking for a bird on the Hauts plateaux du Vercors reserve. Didn't find the bird, but we slept there :
Falling asleep with a Tengmalm's owl calling above my head, and waking up to the grumble of a black grouse (given my crappy sleeping bag, better last week than tonight - I've heard it snowed there today).
I sometimes wish I could change job and find an outdoor one.
Highly unlikely for the time being, because I've just spent a year studying my arse off. A year teaching and getting ready to sit that exam I mentioned two years ago.
It's just another teaching qualification, but it means getting paid more for teaching less hours. Best deal ever, as far as I'm concerned.
I took a look at the reading list for 2005 and gave up. I started to prepare for it last year, and luckily passed last month. Pass rate of about 5% this year for the one I took, aren't I glad I'm in. But that means I'm even more unlikely to quit my job than I was before. You probably won't see the logic behind what I'm saying unless you're French or read what this Australian girl wrote about our system.
Fifteen hours a week, that will leave me plenty of time to learn about my new friends : I think I'm starting a love affair with snakes. Isn't this Aesculapian snake cute ? She looked so sleek I decided to post this in spite of my ongles en deuil (dirty fingernails we call 'mourning' fingernails) .
I hope I'll get the energy to post regularly. And find things to say. Because I think I've missed it.
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| Wednesday, July 20th, 2005
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12:01 am - Haven't updated in a mere ...seven months.
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I've even considered deleting this lj (on the rare occasions when I remembered I had one, that is) but ljs don't die easily, this one persistently tug at my sleeve.
And there were your postcards and mails, which I haven't been any better at answering than at updating this, even though several belated postcards are on their way as I've decided to make amends and catch up with neglected friends.
What helped me to take the plunge back into this blog is a sewing project prompted by Angry Chicken's "Tie One On". Let's quote the Tie One On info .... "make aprons to show and tell ! Every month there is a different theme."
July's theme being ... pink lemonade. Pink lemonade. Like, I'm currently sewing an apron, and it is pink.
Like a puppy on a trampoline - what do you mean ?
Bewildered
One of the reasons why I was no longer very comfortable with this lj was that an increasing number of people I know "extra-internetally" had found out about my page (*). If they've bookmaked it somewhere, my writing about pink aprons should be enough to convince them this lj belongs to a dead ringer of mine who happens to live in a disquietingly similar flat.
Let's forget about this apron for now, I still have to work on it for a few hours. Seriously, I've started teaching myself how to sew, and after making a few totes I wanted to try something different - but still easy. Aprons also spare one the measuring of one's rump, a rather depressing activity in swimsuit season.
By the way, before this lj turns into a crafts blog and you overdose on pink, I might as well get what pink things I've made recently out of my system now. I guess many potential readers are either on holidays or hiking in "mon pays ce n'est pas un pays, c'est l'hiver" ;), not mentioning someone WWOOFing somewhere in Scotland, so here's a ruby/pink baby cardigan for a friend's daughter.
( Information overload. )
I've also sewn up a tote for another friend who loves everything pink, and gosh, pink it was.
( Information overload 2 )
All the while listening to Noël Akchoté's drone guitar sounds or Bill Callahan's latest album, because il faut pas déconner non plus, there's only so much pink I can take before my forehead breaks out in cold sweat.
Otherwise, meet Sigismond, my new friend :
At the end of the school year, teachers stay on for a few days and endure endless meetings (the kind of meetings where you painstakingly plan back-to-school activities and tasks repartitions that as a rule will never be carried out the next September). I usually tidy up whatever piles of worksheets have sedimented in my cupboard and biology teachers do the same (actually, they're called Life & Earth Sciences teachers now, or something to this effect). The friend who's in charge of the lab said she'd found something I'd like and she dug from the bottom of a wooden crate this skull, taken from an old classroom skeleton. She told me it was resin and would be great for a Halloween classroom theme (I dislike Halloween and my classroom is of the cluttered walls variety, but couldn't resist this skull).
I was in a hurry, dumped it on the passenger seat of my car and more or less forgot about it until the evening drive home. Then I gave a ride to a hitchhiker who wouldn't believe me when I swore it was resin. Which in fact it wasn't, as I realised when I gave it a closer look.
Now, I started typing this post just after lunch, and left it unfinished while I went climbing this afternoon and drinking beer this evening, so I'll round it up in a few words but let's say I went so far as to search through forensic courses in order to see whether my skull was a man or a woman's. This site can give you a euphemistic taste of the sort of significant cranium features I considered, and I think it was a he. A friend of mine called him Sigismond. It all started as a joke but I find myself quite sentimental about it - maybe the poor guy gave his body to science with hopes of furthering human enlightenment, and where did he end up ? In a musty case at the back of a dusty cupboard. At least, now he's got a view. He's on some shelves I put up last week. Perhaps I should leave my Shakespearian tank top on a coat-hanger near those shelves so as to get Sigismond a mate while I'm birdwatching in Brittany ?
I'll end this with a view of my classroom. Not that it's much different from any other, but hey, I 'm too tired to write anything else tonight. The photos were taken at the end of a class with some of the youngest kids. They thought I was crazy because I told them I did not want to see their faces on these pics.
(*) Among other reasons, I had lost the knack of light hearted nothings. Not saying I'm going to post regularly or be witty/funny/whatever but at least I feel up to giving it a go.
current music: Vic Chesnutt- What do you mean ?
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| Friday, December 31st, 2004
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3:37 pm - A la demande de Sophie
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| Thursday, December 30th, 2004
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7:44 pm - Random postprandial thoughts
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and unseeming levity, but I need to unglue myself from the world news.
Here's what I found today at the Grenoble Emmaüs community shop :
Prophet snap fasteners ! Did the bearded guy foretell the advent of The Snap ? What revelations were inspired by The Snap ? Which 1950s designer came up with this sun-god snap idea ? So many questions and no answers in sight.
I spent Christmas in Brest, gradually getting better at grasping the subtle differences between a dowpour and a cloudburst, pelting rain and steady drizzle, mizzle and sprinkle and scattered showers ..
I gave handknit scarves and the recipients made the right noises upon opening their parcels. I don't know whether this should make me completely certain that they liked them, because I myself looked quite enthralled when I received this glass bowl :
It's a perfectly functional salad bowl, it's actually a very fine example of a luxury salad bowl, because it's blown glass and probably cost more than most of my plates and dishes put together, but ( And here I'll hide my comments behind a cut in case you're reading this while eating ... )
I almost forgot, you'll have to wish me luck, because once again I'm going for the new year's resolution to quit smoking. This time I've found a trick to keep my hands busy, I'll be the girl knitting socks at the tramway stop.
( I've already made a pair )
current music: boards of canada - twoism
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| Monday, December 13th, 2004
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1:56 pm - foggy
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If you were expecting a mail from me, or an answer to a comment you'd left, here's why I didn't write earlier : we had no Internet at the school where I teach. They changed the school server and that took them an entire week - might even take longer because the guy in charge didn't sound very confident when he said things should be back to normal on Monday. He hasn't got a clue how to do it anyway, but I waste enough time trying to work out whyever he was put in charge in the first place without bitching about it in here.
I do have an Internet connection at home but guess what ? I seem to spend my life at work these days. I leave here at 6.45 a.m. and am lucky when I'm home before 9.20 p.m. Blame neverending end of term meetings. I'm knackered and sick of never seeing the light of the sun. The days are short and to make things worse, I work in an area where every field has its pond, which is great for spotting herons but means fogged in roads all winter. Fogged in and frozen.
I tried to take some photos last Wednesday because there was at least some light, on Wednesdays I only start at 9 a.m.
I confess I've adjusted the contrast because you couldn't see a thing otherwise. I've already driven past an impressive pile up and several minor looking accidents (no pics though, I'm not that sick). I guess it doesn't mean much, statistically speaking, because I "only" spend between eight and nine hours a week on these roads. Still rather scary.
I suppose taking photos while driving wasn't the cleverest idea when safety is concerned, but I get so bored of commuting I even listen to recorded Shakespeare plays in the car (probably an attempt to make up for the fact I've dropped out of the agreg exam race). I'm glad I haven't got the kind of cruise control + automatic gearbox car we rented in Florida, I bet I'd fall asleep at the wheel.
So here you are, no news except rather boring work stuff. I'll even spare you the most depressing ones - just to give you an idea of the atmosphere, a pupil I tutored last year and who was in my class again this year has been such a rude and violent brat around the school that his case will be brought to the school's Discipline Commitee tonight and it will most likely end in an expulsion.
There was a hearing two weeks ago and he didn't show up (nor did his parents, that's how involved they get in his education). As far as my class was concerned, he kind of behaved himself so far, so I didn't realise the Discipline Commitee was looming ahead. I can't say he worked seriously or didn't get on my nerves with all his slouching and not throwing away his chewing gum before I had to ask him to do so, but that would be an accurate description of a good third of the students I saw in the French class I attended at FSU. Anyway. He well deserves to be expelled given the sort of things he's done to others, but I feel kind of sad, because I foolishly thought he'd changed. I was appointed to speak on behalf of the teaching staff tonight but refused to go, I know I would only have had to read the various reports he earned himself but I feel as if they were about another kid altogether. And could you think of a worse timing ? "Merry Christmas, my boy, now go wait till you turn 16 in some other school !"
Sheeesh.
So basically,
this end of term is hell,
but at least I know why.
I looked up the official school board data for the collège where I work :
(name of school erased but I swear it's mine)
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( The news are a bit brighter on the knitting front. )
current music: Tanger - La mémoire insoluble
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| Wednesday, November 24th, 2004
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4:38 pm - Overworked.
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I'd meant to update this blog much sooner than this, but you'll have to forgive me. This has been a harrowing time, and not just because we're deep into the end-of-term rush.
I know I said I would tell you all about Tallahassee.
Back to the grind for a fortnight,
- with days so short it feels like getting up in the middle of the night and then driving back from a late meeting when it's only 6 p.m.,
- with something like 160 school reports to fill in,
- with the usual parents who start pestering me for individual parents-teacher meetings when they actually don't give a shit (the ones who never come to organised parents-teachers meetings and only seem to wake up when they realise the grade council meeting is coming up)
- with such a bad cold that I go through a family size pack of tissues on an average school day,
no wonder my Florida trip seems like something I've dreamt about and vaguely remember.
I think I won't write the one post that would say it all, but rather pull whatever thread crosses my mind when I post. Otherwise, I'll keep postponing Ze big post I wanted to write until I eventually forget about what it was I had wanted to say in the first place.
What constantly reminds me I have indeed been there are a few recent additions to the already too many useless things that clutter my too-small flat.
If you're American, have you ever wondered what a tourist would bring back from a stay in the U.S. of A. ?
 | I bought several books.
Novels, yes, but then I don't think I've ever been any place without bringing books back, and they usually are novels.
What's special this time is that there were also birding guides (opened on my hairy chair is The Sibley Field Guide to Birds, this Sibley guy apparently wrote and illustrated his books on his own, I hope his wife likes bird-watching or has a time consuming hobby of her own - presumably not migratory bird hunting).
I opened it on the hooded mergansers page, because those buggers purposedly waited until the week after I left to migrate to Northern Florida.
Given that the monarch butterfly migration has never been smaller than when I was there, and all manatees seemed to have left the week before I arrived, I'm tempted to make my own conspiracy theory.
I'm not saying there would be no point in buying a traditional tourist guide to Florida, but even when I visited an old plantation in Georgia I was mostly interested in their Audubon prints.
It was my first trip to a country with such a recent history (I'm aware of the fact I'm completely overlooking the Native American heritage here, but please bear with me) in terms of centuries old buildings, layers upon layers of Celt/Roman/medieval/you name it remains. And I liked that. It felt uncluttered and hum .. free ? I don't want to fall into the worn-out cliché, and I love the patchwork of different architectures and mementos I walk past during the few minutes it takes to go into town for a drink here, but it was amazing to be in an area where everything was so .. straightforward? I absolutely don't mean to sound patronizing, it's just that no matter how enjoyable the old quarters of the average European town are, it gets a bit overwhelming sometimes to be constantly reading a palimpsest of a street. As if it weighed one down. I guess most people don't notice or care, it's probably just another idiosyncrasy of mine.
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 | At last, this is the end of my conversion nightmare.
Here is what your Grenoble tourist did - went to walmart, bought a measuring jug and a measuring spoons set. Because worse than the DVD zones curse and the VHS standart hassle, cookery books are a real pain. It was bad enough getting sort of used to British measures (they say they've gone metric but they haven't really gone all the way), so cups were just the last straw when I'm concerned.
And cinnamon chewing gums, because unlike all my French friends who developped a cinnamon aversion a few months after having moved to the States, I'm still at the "yummy and interesting" stage. The same happens in Montpellier, they can't seem to bake anything without adding a drop of orange blossom water.
The lemon pepper I bought because the box looked funny, and that's also why I picked the baking powder box (all the more stupid that you can get baking powder anywhere in France). The Cajun seasoning ... well, it tasted great while I was in Florida, and I've used it once since, but I'm starting to thing it's a bit like some Savoie wines that you find wonderful when you drink them after a four-hour hike in the mountains and much less so when you uncork the bottles you've brought home afterwards.
edit I think boiled peanuts fall in this category.
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Right. Once more I haven't told you much about what I did in Tallahassee, but I've already spent longer on that computer than would have been sensible today, because I really should be working.
Under a cut, because there is a constant lack of knitting content for my secret pal in here,( a few pics of the pre-Christmas scarf-athlon. )
current music: Joy Division - Substance
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| Sunday, November 7th, 2004
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4:01 pm - Beverages and random air flight comments.
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There would be so much to tell that I don't know where to start, so the Paris to Cincinnati flight strikes me as a chronologically sound topic.
Air France and Delta airlines belong to the Skyline partnership. I was hoping to get an Air France flight (only because they serve free booze), but mine was operated by Delta.
Delta flights make up for the lack of free wine and champagne by providing a copy of the SkyMall catalogue in the seat back pocket - a dizzying experience.
I was a SkyMall virgin.
I remembered an old post of mine about what I thought were silly items but felt suitably chastised when I realised how SkyMall is the Mother of all catalogues.
  
A Wine Rack Extraordinaire !
Our très french floor model Henri holds up to 14 bottles of your favorite vin, plus 4 stem glasses and towels (not included). (I have a plan - design a very Americain "Awesome Coke Rack" complete with hunting cap and shorts, and target French travellers)
EXCLUSIVE The Only Putter that Returns Your Golf Ball.
Our regulation putter has a fishing reel, so you never need to scramble after your practice putts again. (I would pay good money to get an opportunity to see it used.)
EXCLUSIVE The Pet Staircase.
Sturdy, lightweight pet stairs help pets climb to furniture otherwise difficult for them to reach. (You know, beds, sofas, and the like ... enough with the anal retentive pet owners, on with muddy paws on the schintz armchair ! I looked for a TV remote control for dogs but couldn't find one.)
Enough to make one grab the sick bag.
I did get a free glass of champagne to make up for the fact my tv screen was dead.
Not that I minded, but my Ohio neighbour thought it was a disgrace and pestered the stewart on my behalf. That was my first gratuitous display of kindness from a total stranger but I could list scores of them, I kept meeting amazingly friendly people. Said neighbour managed to gulp down seven glasses of coke during the flight. I bowed to this display of American resistance to the well-documented in-flight gas overload. Seven glasses .. that's more coke than I drink in three or four years time.
My other neighbour was a French guy who works in aircraft maintenance - a troubleshooting specialist. Nice guy, but I could have done without a discussion of the frequence of take-off crashes and intake/ignition problems.
Another thing about Delta is that their crew aren't very foreign language savvy. Consequently, they handed out Italian I-94W forms to all the French passengers (*). Given how nunplussing these are, I don't know whether the language barrier made much of a difference. If you're a non-EU lj user, maybe you don't know what this form is - let me enlighten you :
I don't know what to make of this. I guess it isn't meant as a joke. Could someone please explain ? I mean, do you think the real baddies tick "yes" when asked if they're seeking entry to engage in criminal or immoral activities ?
I just hope I won't have to answer yes to question F in the future, because this form is in two parts.
The top part you hand in when you go through customs on arrival, and the bottom part is your "departure" record that you give when you leave the country. Problem is, the Air France crew didn't ask for it, nor did the custom officers. Now it seems that I have to send it to some office in the States, along with evidence that I'm back in France (I thought a ripe camembert cheese would be proof enough, but then got my Headmaster to write a letter saying her ever so reliable teacher had not decided to quit and jump on the American Dream bandwagon).
The TSA and agricultural customs took so long we missed our Tallahassee connecting flight. It gave me plenty of time to take in all the novel sights :
- disposable styrofoam cups ! Even when you don't take away your drink . .. They were all over the place. I tried to use my crappy maths and make an estimate of the size of the mountain of styrofoam cups Cincinnati airport produces over a month but jet-lagged me couldn't compute it.
- huge fuck-off cars ! While waiting for the hotel shuttle I fleetingly thought I had shrunk back to toddler size. Lots of SUVs - just the one driver, no passengers to clutter his space.
- webs of overhead power lines. In French towns they tend to be buried. It's not always the case, but a lot of telephone and electric lines run underground, or tend to blend more in the surrounding landscape. Seeing so many reminded me of Eastern Europe.
Cincinnati airport is the place where I started indulging my renewed cranberry juice addiction. It was fairly easy to get some when I still lived in Paris but I hadn't had any in ages (except for a bottle Mr Rossbywaves nicely brought back from Southampton a few weeks ago).
The whole trip was a constant game of feeling subtly unbalanced, because my surroundings were at once familiar (the developed Western countries thing combined with all the American films and books and references I'm constantly breathing in) and unsettling. As not many things felt completely "foreign" I was all the more surprised when something unexpectedly different came up. I'll give you examples of what I mean when I describe my stay in Florida, but for instance, it took more than one car honking at me before I realised that in Tallahassee, red lights didn't always mean you had to stop - not when turning right unless stated otherwise. Until I was told so, my mind stubbornly refused to contemplate the possibility that these drivers may have wanted me to run the red light. Well, this kind of brain-freeze happened on several occasions - as in, this can't possibly be so ?
I had a great time in Florida, but you see, it has already taken me a lot of your friends page space only to write about how I got there. I think I'll wait for a few days before I try to sort out all the things I'd like to post about.
(*) When I asked for an English form, the hostess looked at the one she'd just handed me and apologised for having given me a Spanish one.
current music: Chicks on Speed - Will Save Us All !
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| Wednesday, October 20th, 2004
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5:58 pm - Elise goes to Florida
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"Dirty Tricks Return to the Sunshine State".
I read that title and thought hell, hope it isn't me they have in mind - know that feeling ? When you walk in a record shop and the gate alarm goes off - total panic even though I know I'm as innocent as lambs get. Blame those library books.
Then I remembered I've never been to Florida so it can't possibly be me "returning".
Then I read the article. Don't get me wrong, the US presidential elections are a big issue in France, but somehow the notion that I'd be going to Florida at such an eventful time hadn't quite sunk in.
I was - I am more concerned about silly things. For example, what should I pack ? Here it's all scarves and raincoats and even gloves when I ride my bike around town. I've been told to bring a swimming costume but I look at it, spread on my sofa with a pile of tank tops and light cotton sweaters and it just looks completely ludicrous. Checking the weather forecast didn't help, I've been too lazy to convert from fahrenheit to celsius and I've no idea how to understand the humidity levels.
Looking for Tallahassee related website brings so many hunting pages that I reckon I'll end up packing my horseriding/bird-watching kaki clothes to make sure I can blend in ! (No way I dress up in camo, though).
(that's my uncle's arm in there, I was scared shitless when I felt the reeds and nearly ended up in the river, which would no doubt have made for a better photo).
Seriously, I'm surprised at how little there is about Tallahassee on the web in terms of giving potential tourists a general view of the place. I've been told it's a really nice place to live in and the countryside around it is breathtakingly beautiful. Well, most of what I'll see will be a complete discovery when I get there, because there isn't much to read for a guidebook maniac like me.
I think I'll wait and do my usual last-minute packing thing.
One thing that's already inside my rucksack though is the best alphabet book ever (a present for a kid there) - so unPC I wonder if it won't be on the TSA prohibited items list.
I've chosen a few very mild ones to show you :
  
Given how excited the kids I teach get before the holidays, my personal favourite is the Electrocuted pupil.
I have to stop before my image hosting site goes 'pop', but I'm still giggling at the "Enorme Embryon" (enormous embryo, the pregnant mother looks like she's about to burst), "Ecureuil Ecrasé" (run-over squirrel, its tail still sticking out), "Fakir Foireux sentant le Faisandé" (clumsy fakir starting to rot on his bed of nails), "Nietzsche au Nouvel an" (Nietzsche celebrating New Year's Eve - oh, he's also pictured in a Santa Claus costume for "Nietzsche à Noël" !).
I know my letters but I'm considering buying a second copy for myself.
current music: WVFS Tallahassee 89.7fm
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| Sunday, October 10th, 2004
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10:02 pm - Everything you've ever wanted to know about walnuts but were afraid to ask.
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Look at this.
If you were riding a horse on this road, wouldn't you die for a canter under those trees ?
Well, do so and I give you five seconds before a very angry farmer starts throwing stones at you (if he hasn't had the time to fetch his rifle, we're right into the hunting season).
That's because walnuts are mechanically harvested and the machines are too dumb to find them if they've fallen into the holes the horse's feet make. Also, freshly fallen walnuts have fragile shells. And walnuts here are an almost sacred crop, the Grenoble walnut is the only AOC walnut in France (AOC certifications are a set of regulations). All the same, I'm itching to push my horse through those trees everytime I ride past.
Walnut trees have a reputation for smothering any plants that try to grow in their shade in a big cloud of juglone. Old wives' tales even warn you against taking a nap under a walnut tree. Mild ones say you'll catch a cold - don't care, I already have one. But Pliny the Elder thought their shade dulled the brain (or so I was always told, because I've just spent quite a while browsing through his Natural History and couldn't find that quote - me dulled already ? QED).
Now, I know for sure some stuff does thrive under walnut trees. The picture above shows walnut orchards as they should look. As most of them look in the area, in fact, because I took that pic earlier today.
My uncle, on the other hand, isn't a farmer. He just happens to own nine walnut trees that need harvesting, in a field desultorily grazed by an old horse with a small appetite and an inner knowledge of the noxious effects of walnut trees - not the kind who'd mow the areas we were interested in. So we spent all morning combing through annoyingly healthy grass in the search for the few walnuts said horse had not tramped on yet.
Here's one small basket to give you an idea of what fresh walnuts look like - these are of the franquette variety, it takes something like 15 years before you get a decent crop - fifteen years of respite, if you ask me !
See, it wasn't too bad, we had taken along a bottle of white Abyme wine (another AOC, actually).
( Three more pics, that horse once was a famous one. )
Speaking of horses, this is a very horsey entry, because I wanted to write about my first real attempt at homeopathy. No offence meant, but I've always thought homeopathy was bogus and only worked through some placebo effect.
The thing is, I suffer from psoriasis (click here to get psoriasis explained by a severely moustachioed physician) and I cope with it thanks to various cortisone based medicines. And everytime I complain about it, my mum tries to badger me into trying a homeopathic cure (she's quite the believer). Last time she went on about it, I said alright, give me a break, I've just taken an appointement. Which was a lie, but I then phoned the best-known local homeopath. Very good looking guy, I must admit, but I don't think my psoriasis will take this into account.
So, as I'm a good girl, I'm currently taking three granules of castor equi, three times a week. Even if it wasn't refunded by our national health service, I wouldn't really complain, these sugar granules are downright cheap. I can't really see any difference but I guess water has a long term memory ... that must be it. What's funny is that being the Google addict I am, I looked up that substance as soon as I got home. Well, it's horse chesnut ! Not the fruit, rather the little brown thing that grows on the inside of horses' legs (also known as the "rudimentary thumb nail of the horse", aren't you glad you asked ?). Not sure this is really vegetarian. For once I'm glad homeopathic dilutions are so ridiculously high because I'm not too keen on the idea of ingesting horse nail clippings.
This got me thinking. My horse has skin problems too. If this thing eventually works, I must remember to make him a decoction next time I trim my nails. That's a whole new perspective on the laws of symmetry.
<td> </td><td>Otherwise, it's a week that feels a bit like Christmas. My parents came with a car full of chanterelles preserves, beetroot preserves, parasol mushrooms preserves and so on they'd made for me, plus a huge box of my favourite apples.
Mr Rossbywaves is currently working in Southampton, and spent his Saturday afternoon in a supermarket with a shopping list of British goodies I miss from my Sheffield times.
What's more, my secret pal sent me an awesome dictionary of Aran stitches and some birchwood cable needles (the small stick you can see on this jumper). I could wax lyrical for hours on end, but shan't - the knitters will know what a change these cable needles make !
Just for the record, that's my start on this phildar jumper.
There's a knit-along for it and the girls who've started it have named this pattern 'potiron' (pumpkin).
Not a 'proper' aran because it has very few cables and is rather mindlessly repetitive, but I wanted a quick feel-good project I could pick up for a few minutes at a time and still know where I was in the pattern.</td>
current music: Bill Laswell - Oscillations 2
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| Monday, September 20th, 2004
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2:54 pm - Grenoble update
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Still quite summery here, which doesn't help when you need to get down to work.
Definitely not too good at updating regularly. I'm always overbusy at the beginning of the school year but having lost so many files in my June computer crash is making things worse than usual.
I'm feeling a bit blue today. This weekend we had the European heritage days. They're a must for voyeurs like me, because you get to visit places you'd never be allowed to on any other day (or get free entrance to museums and the like, complete with guided tours through the storage and conservation rooms).
So I visited a stained glass studio near the train station.
I walk past this workshop everyday. Last winter, when it got dark early, I'd sometimes linger on the pavement and watch them work behind semi-opaque glass - I couldn't really see what was going on, only their shadows, but I could tell it was quiet and slow. I missed the restauration workshop badly.
I guess I could go to one of the painting restauration studios in Grenoble and ask if they'd find a use for a factotum like me, but the relationship I had with Maria was special, she was pleased to have me around so it didn't matter if I came everyday for a week and then couldn't make it for ten days. And she'd trained me so she knew exactly what paintings she could trust me with - including the occasional museum piece. What will I tell them here ? I have no formal training whatsoever and I don't suppose they'll have room for some dilletante girl.
Visiting the stained glass studio was great and made me yearn for that atmosphere again. The smell of skin glue and wood, the high ceilings and glass walls ... I like my job but these places make me feel I've found where I should be.
Anyway, no need to waste time whimpering.
Two weeks ago a Canadian oceanographer came to the Grenoble lab for a few days, and as I instantly liked his wife a lot I suggested we went for a walk in the mountains on my day off - which was great - and visited the Palais Idéal du Facteur Cheval on the following Wednesday afternoon. Which makes me think I could temp as an "escort-wife" for single guys who don't know what to do with their colleagues' wives during conferences and the like, so cliché it was to realise that the blokes were at work while we enjoyed the sun and local countryside.
In case you've never heard of this Palais Idéal, I've found an article in English. Basically, it's a mad "palace" painstakingly built by an excentric postman who'd pick up pebbles and stones on his daily round. It's now one of the most famous works of outsider art but at the time everyone thought he was plain barmy. I can't remember when I heard of this place for the first time, but I had never visited it. I call this the Paris syndrome, when I lived there I kept meeting born Parisians who'd never been up the Eiffel Tower. .. I'm sure you can find plenty of pics of this Palais Idéal on the web, but nothing comes close to actually going there - it's at once disappointingly smaller than you'd imagine and unbelievably moving. This pic isn't the best I took : we were there on a quiet day and I could have posted plenty of pics on which the place looks empty, but I chose this one for scale.
Now, I'm often called stubborn but I bow to this Cheval guy. I could never stick to a single project for such a long time (33 years !).
Which reminds me that I promised I'd post knitting related stuff for my secret pal. I know most of you couldn't care less about knitting, so here's a pic of a shawl I made that will also provide the curious among you with a sneak peak inside my kitchen mess.
The "everyone is making it so why wouldn't I" Birch shawl.
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In case you were wondering,
it isn't typically French to brush one's teeth in the kitchen sink.
What's typically French, on the other hand,
is having sent multiple registered letters to your landlord about the leaking bathroom sink over the last eight months
and still not having heard from him. |
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| Tuesday, August 31st, 2004
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10:33 am - le bonnet rouge
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I've joined the Secret Pals exchange minutes after I stumbled upon their webpage because I so liked the idea of it.
Now, I don't often mention knitting in here. This blog didn't start as a knitting blog and I'm quite happy discussing yarn and needles as I've always done, i.e. long distance phone calls to my friend Sophie or drinking hot rhum toddy with my great aunt (though better not be working on something too demanding in that case).
Yet now that I've joined, I guess I should write at least one knitting-related post - don't want them to think I'm a fraud !
I could have waxed lyrical about my black Rogue pullover or the Aran jumper I've already mentioned in here, but when this last item is concerned it ranks very high among things I'd like to erase from my hard drive (I hadn't heard then of the dreaded sweater curse).
I love cables, the more intricate they are the more interested I get, but I give away virtually everything I knit and don't think of taking photos (though I'd love to get one of a certain pair of green socks modelled by ![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif) yarahu and joy_joy's cute Lucie ... *nudge nudge*) and the thing I'm most pleased with this year is a hat so basic I could have knitted it when I was six years old.
Here it is, modelled by bulgy-eyed me before I gave it away : (gosh I hate that pic, please log in if you're on my friends list to see it on the head it was designed for)
There's a story behind that hat.
Mr Rossbywaves spent last June on a boat headed for Greenland. June is so nice in Grenoble - not scorching heat yet, only the perfect weather for spending lazy evenings on café terrasses - that I thought I had to make a little woolly contribution to his Greenland trip. And to the average ignorant girl, physical oceanography is rather dull. Marine biologists get all the glam in France : whenever the word oceanographer pops up in a conversation people start asking about killer whales and sea cucumbers (well, I do). Many people my age must have watched one too many episodes of "The Undersea World of Jacques Cousteau", and most can't really understand why of all towns, Grenoble would host an oceanography lab (we're nowhere near the sea). A lot of couples share lame private jokes and my constant jeering about talking to dolphins is one of ours, I'm ashamed to admit. So I thought I'd take the risk to make Mr Rossbywaves the crew's laughing stock and design a hat inspired by our dubious national icon :
In fact it was an instant hit, I've seen photos of other crew members taking the pose with my silly-yet-warm hat on. And look, here's where my hat went !
So far my northernmost piece of knitting. If you're reading this and live above latitude of 60°, please apply here for your very own red hat.
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| Thursday, August 26th, 2004
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6:58 pm - dilemma
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Today I brought my bike back to the shop because it came with a free bicycle service offer. Now it's all adjusted, lubricated and whatever these guys felt what is after all still a brand new bike needed doing.
(By the way, if by sheer internet magic the moron who knicked my saddle on rue du Drac last Saturday reads this, may you suffer from piles till your bike rots to bits.)
While I was waiting to get my bike back, I went to a nearby junk shop. I'm always on the lookout for bamboo needles or second-hand books and knew I wouldn't fall for an unaffordable piece of furniture since the bike itself barely fits inside my car.
I had never been to that particular shop.
Well, they really know what junk means.
Broken ice hockey sticks, mouldy mattresses, foul wardrobes with balky doors, mostly things my local Household Special Waste depot would only accept after chatting the warden up for a quarter of an hour.
Sometimes this junk is funny, though (see opposite picture ..)
I can't imagine why someone with canvass and oil paint at hand would chose to paint, of all things, a dog holding a pheasant.
How they would decide to go on, varnish and frame it when it must have become very quickly obvious that they couldn't paint also puzzles me.
That they would eventually put it up for sale, even at a bargain price of €8 ... the dog looks like it has no illusions about how long it's going to gather dust in that warehouse before someone forks out said €8.
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But after rummaging through their mess for half an hour (tips on how to waste time when you're meant to be working, anyone ?) I found an old advertisement ashtray that I decided to buy as a present for Mr Rossbywaves, who has had this thing about piggies recently. This is what it looks like after a much needed dip in fairy liquid :
The hand-painted address in there reads "Etablissements Charbuis, 77 rue de Mouveaux, Roubaix".
I'll never know whether it was a butcher's shop or a firm that delt in livestock feeding because googling brought nothing. No matter what exquisite promotion gifts they teased their customers with, they must have shut the shop down at some point. What's more, number 77 no longer exists in rue de Mouvaux. Knowing Roubaix a little and after a look in the phone directory, it looks like the street has totally changed. Roubaix is in the formerly industrial & mining North of France, and has gone through a massive demographic explosion - now it's all tower blocks where the little piggies used to frolic (or be turned into sausages, more likely).
Problem is .. even though I tend to dislike knickknacks, this pink piggy is quickly growing on me. Now, will I be a nice unselfish girl and give it as I had intended, or keep it for myself ? For someone who has sworn she'd make an umpteenth attempt at quitting smoking anytime soon, an ashtray is pretty useless anyway. And if I keep it, I might be missing out on a very nice present after all, because even though it cost me €3 I've always had an eye for this sort of things (proof be a very tacky 1925 ashtray like these, that I discovered sells for over €150 in every antique shop where I've seen one ever since I got mine free when someone was getting rid of his junk).
Mr Rossbywaves isn't back from the lab yet and will be busy making noise music with a friend for a while after that, so I've got the whole evening to make up my mind.
current music: Einsturzende Neubauten - Dingsaller
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| Thursday, August 19th, 2004
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11:34 am - De la pluie et du beau temps - j'en bâille.
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I really should be studying for my exam but Thomas De Quincey is doing my head in today.
Or maybe not. Better keep poor old verbose Thomas out of that (I was sort of glad to see his name on the 2005 syllabus - there's such a shortage of distinguished junkies nowadays). I know where to point my accusing finger : Max Duperray. This guy wrote the most infuriatingly botched up essay I've had to read so far. mayflour, if you bump into him on la Canebière, please stick your tongue out on my behalf, or even better, give him un pied de nez magistral. These CNED people won't stoop to proofreading or spellchecking their lectures, and right they are - distance students are such sitting ducks.
quack quack
I’d meant to tell you about Barcelona but although I haven’t been back in France for long, the contrast is so strong it feels as if I had run a format brains: /u command. Because I'm now in Brest.
For those of you who aren’t familiar with either Catalunya or the westernmost end of France, let's try a close-up comparison.
| Barcelona | Brest | 31°C - 87.8°F
sunny | 15.4°C - 59.72°F
bucketing down | 1,510,000 inhabitants
- and teeming with tourists in some areas | 150,000 inhabitants
- most of whom are on holiday somewhere sunny err Barcelona ? | Architectural jewels all over the place,
and not just Gaudí, I mean Gothic churches,
Mies Van Der Rohe,
Richard Meier...
beautiful everyday buildings built upon and around archaeological remains ... | Completely bombed out by US raids during WW2,
hastily rebuilt straight after the war
(rigidly rectangular Hippodamos style streets),
no decent pedestrian area.
Looks bleak bleak bleak
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Feels like having landed on a different planet.
Greatest bars ever in both places, though, which might explain why I find it so hard to concentrate on old Thomas's opium rants today. Also, Barcelona and Brest are home to some of the nicest people I've met this year. And I'm not saying Brest sucks(*); in fact I'm growing very fond of this ugly grey town. It's just that my Barcelona days seem so distant I can't really remember what post ideas I had when I was there.
Imagine telling you about the Montjuic pool when my view on the Brest roadstead is all cloudy and yesterday (August 18th) I went out and bought a bloody raincoat.
Hopefully, when I go back to Grenoble the heat will trigger a Proust's madeleine effect and then you'll get all those Tàpies Fundation, Sagrada Familia, omelette sandwich and commuter trains tales.
(*) Does this sound silly or is it just me ?
current music: Nouvelle Vague (nice CD, poor gig)
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| Thursday, July 29th, 2004
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1:52 pm - Potentially back to lj
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One day I'll take the time to tell you what I've been up to since last April, but today I just wanted to thank kronx, steveeeeeand dizietsma for their help when my computer died on me.
I've made do with a makeshift machine lent by my favourite neighbour for a few months. I'm now the official screwdrivers, jumpers and IDE cables Queen. This beast was so unreliable and noisy I only ever used it for emergency end of year lesson worksheets. The old screen I'd found was so green I felt queasy just looking at my desktop. It looked sort of cool, I guess, with all its guts hanging out on my desk, but all the S&M sounding slave/master shit so got on my nerves when I tried to get my CD burner to make friends with what was already in there.
And now, ta-da !
What's more, it's a gift. Bliss.
***
The street round the corner to the one where I live offers a rather weird shopping experience.
It has the highest concentration of butcher shops, beauty salons and computer shops in Grenoble.
Butchers ... they don't know me.
Beauticians ... they'll pretend they do. Everytime I try a new one she'll chat away as if we'd always known each other and wouldn't I be interested in a €79 mud face mask ?
Computer shop salesmen ... they now say Hi when I bump into them in bars. I've spent the last few months pestering them for hints and tips, I've enjoyed spontaneous phone helpline and free second-hand cables, and my conclusions are, when dealing with computer stores, being a girl really helps. Same with online help forums. They all seem to think that barocline is some wonky anagram of Caroline. I've tried using old-fashioned blokes names like Didier or Marcel thinking I'd get more straightforward comments and it didn't bring a third of the answers I otherwise got. Don't know what to make of that.
***
As my reward for having removed layers upon layers of wallpaper, patched scores of plaster cracks and struggled with over-cheap painting, kept a straight face through my sister's ordeal (for me, not so much for her I hope) of a wedding, I'm going to Spain for a week or two, Barcelona and then the Benicassim festival.
I'm leaving tomorrow or the day after tomorrow. If you know of any nice restaurants or bars off the beaten tourist track .. I'll spend the afternoon digging out my old Catalan notebooks but will remained logged on lj in case you've got any suggestions.
current mood: glad to be back
current music: Oslo Telescopic - Short-Range Luv (for Hurry-Spider)
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| Sunday, April 25th, 2004
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4:25 pm - Informatico-dépendance
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I can't believe what has just happened.
I was working on an exercise sheet for tomorrow's class when my computer made a bang noise like a small firecracker, and then pssshew .. nothing. Black screen. Desperatly empty 'click' sound when I tried to restart it. Burnt plastic smell. Everything else seems to be working (I mean, the light is on)- screen, printer, scanner, modem, but the hard drive is as good as dead.
I've got FOUR years' worth of lesson worksheets, exercise banks, tests, carefully and time-consumingly selected pics and home made flash cards in that bugger !
Let's not even mention addresses and mails, photos and music and and and ... or I'm going to start sobbing.
I don't know how to work without a computer. I'm using someone else's right now but where are my documents ??
And no money to buy a new one.
It's Sunday. I'll try to find a computer shop next week, see whether they can fish this data back out of my comatose hard drive.
Quelle merde.
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| Friday, April 9th, 2004
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6:38 pm
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I haven't updated in months ...
I work an awful lot. When I don't, I'm barely ever at home. This is the first time I've ever had a cable modem and I'm never online. I'm posting this but tomorrow I'm off to Bretagne for a week, so it isn't as if I was getting a new start in the lj mood.
Maybe I'm getting old. I've got clues :
- At Christmas I noticed I was losing my hair. I looked at some photos my dad had taken when he'd brought a hay-from-home Christmas present to Iorga, and the line where I part my hair was unusually wide. Talk about sinking feelings... My horse's mane is so thick I'm considering starting on a hay diet.
 </a>
Blokes mention receding hairlines with dread, which I used to find kind of funny (don't they look sexy ?). When my hair started to get thinner, I got an inkling of what it feels like. Horrible. Thyroid problems, iron deficiency, I was given plenty of perfectly sound explanations but it apparently boils down to being quite stressed out.
It seems to be growing back *keeps her fingers crossed* so I've got these ridiculous antenna like new hairs that stick out in the light.
- Old bookworms in my family told me that the older they get, the more they prefer essays (especially historical) to novels. When books are concerned, I'm still deep into Jeanette Winterson and Jeffrey Eugenides at the moment, but when it comes to films my choices have been weird.
Over the last fortnight I've been to the cinema five times and three films out of five were documentaries (Andrew Jarecki's Capturing the Friedmans, Wim Wenders' The Soul of a Man and Rithy Panh's S21, The Khmer Rouge Killing Machine).
All three were great but the one about the Khmer Rouge torture centres was err.. tough viewing. Not that learning so much about the Friedmans was funny.
The other two were Tim Burton's Big Fish and Alejandro González Iñárritu's 21 Grams. Normal me would have deemed Tim Burton's latest film a monument of cheesy, lame, oh so cute and loving anecdotes. Given how dark the rest of my selection was, I actually enjoyed it.
There must be something in the water here.
Last week I went to the opera to see an excellent production of Offenbach's "Doctor Ox". This is an opérette, for f**'s sake !!! Where's my former would-be Goth self ? Is that what listening to too much Neil Hannon does to me ?
And guess what I've been doing on the train ... knitting my way through a good third of Zoë Mellor's 50 baby bootees book. Many of my friends are expecting April or May babies. They should have planned it better. Too many baby bootees on too short a time, my brains can only cope with so much pink cuteness, I must be brainfried, watch me join the Barbie doll fanclub next week.
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current music: The Herbaliser - Something Wicked this Way Comes
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