More Thanksgiving Shots

Tryptophan Strikes Dopey Girl
Making her dopier than normal...

The Cake....

That Ends the Debate...
My girlfriend complains I don't make her enough cakes. Oh yeah? Well, pow, try this one on for size....

Thanksgiving Shots

Pops, Everything is Backwards
While yours truly was slaving away in the kitchen to produce the apple and pumpkin pies....

Checking In...

On Gavin...
They sure do grow up fast.... The little guy is approaching one year already.

Moved....

Moved, Yet Again
Yes, I have moved offices again. I've lost count, maybe this is the 9th move in 12 years. My team and I are now on Park Avenue South at 25th Street. I've got an office with a view looking south along Park Ave.

Fall....

....in New York
We have a nice fall day here in NY.  The trees are changing colors and it's not so cold.  This is a shot along Gramercy Park.

French Efficiency

All I Want is My Change....
For the longest time, I'd use a 1 Euro coin to buy a soda from the soda machine for 80 centimes and wait for my 20 centimes worth of change. Not once did I ever get my change. It was a minor annoyance - I assumed the machine was broken. After a while, as Paris came to annoy me in other ways, I looked for an explanation so I asked a French person. "You have to use your key." Huh-what? Well, there is a little hole in the machine, as shown below.

Fall in Paris

The Leaves Are Changing and Falling...
Photo from our today's Sunday afternoon stroll.

Just When I Was Feeling Good....

I Hate it Here, All Over Again....
I was just beginning to relax. I was just beginning to be ok with Paris. I hadn't run into any typically stupid French inefficiencies for quite some time. That was until this afternoon when I tried to get to the airport to catch my flight to Amsterdam. There was a strike that affected the train that goes to the airport. I waited in the train station for over 2 hrs and finally gave up. No trains, no buses, impossible to get a taxi. I called Air France when I got home. Their reply "your ticket is non-refundable and non-transferrable - but you can try going to the airport and maybe they'll honor your ticket." Yeah, thanks - drop dead Air France, you suck.

So, I'll wake up early tomorrow and try to get to the airport. Not sure if the strike is ongoing tomorrow or not. Welcome to Paris, the most inefficient, annoying, stupidly backwards city I have ever spent time in (with the exception of Bombay, perhaps....)

A Night at Keiths

Dinner with a Colleague
Some of us went for dinner at Keith's house. He's a colleague originally from Belfast who came to work in Paris a decade ago and pretty much never left. He married a French woman and they had two girls, shown here. They spent the last few years living in New Zealand and recently came back to Paris.

Another in a Series

You Know You're in Paris When...
There is a condom dispenser on the street.

You Know It's Paris When.....

"Fat Electrician" Perfume for Sale
There's a perfume store near my apartment. I never gave it much thought until I saw this new perfume for sale. Fat Electrician, it's called. No idea what it smells like, I'm afraid to find out.

Snausages...

By the Kilo....
We took a bus ride to the 7th Arondissement to eat breakfast. Afterwards, we walked around an outdoor market where we encountered the biggest sausage I've ever seen. One-Hundred Twenty kilos!! That's like 260 lbs worth!

The paper says "I weigh 120 kilos."

The Shot.....

Heard Round My Stomach...
Our last meal was a pork knee. Yes, a giant, roasted chunk of pork, with knee bones, ligaments and other things still attached. I should have known better on this one. It tasted good but looked just a bit undercooked on the inside. I felt fine after I ate it.