One Month!

On October 24th, my neice became one month old (and according to reports, rolled over!) Let's have a little look at how darling she is:



And then to show that she can span the genres, here she is being hilarious:



And then on October 26th, my time in France reached the one month mark also! In that time I have been to the following "big attractions":

Notre Dame

The Eiffel Tower

Sacre Coeur Basillica

The Louvre

The Bastille

And the following "smaller atractions":

The Parisian Pet Cemetary

The Markets

The Point of Ilse de la Cite

Jardin des Tuileries

Shakespeare & Company bookstore

The Seine River

I've made a friend, indirectly. Jayne is a girl in Jenny's school who stayed with us for a couple of days when there was a transit strike. She lives outside the city limits and as such would not be able to get in for school, so she stayed with us. Just yesterday Jenny, Jayne & I (Steph's in Sweden as I type) went for a picnic on the point of Ilse de la Cite, which was very nice. We waved at the tour boats, saw three couples kissing (right next to us) and enjoyed sandwiches and cous-cous with a little red wine.



That ranks up there with the best moments of the month so far. Another was the aforementioned Pet Cemetary on the outskirts of the city. It was a really touching and peaceful place to be. It was also nice to go somewhere where there weren't a lot of people. Great as this city is, there are not many places you can go where you're alone. Steph went with me and we saw Rin-Tin-Tin's grave, but we couldn't find the stones for Faust the Sheep, Braveheart the racehorse, or Kiki the monkey. We did see the plaque for the 40,000th animal interred there, a stray dog who was hit by a car just outside the cemetary, and well as the famous St. Bernard rescue dog who saved 40 people and died to save the 41st. There was also a memorial for police dogs who died in service. It was really nice to see the care and love that people have for their pets who are really members of their family. My favourite inscription was (translated from French) "May your rest be as peaceful as your heart was good."

We also had our first Canadian visitor just a few days ago! Ms. Sarah Gartshore and her fella Mike were here for a week's vacation so they dropped by on Friday night for a crepe and a chat. It was nice and a little surreal to see someone from Sudbury, but I suppose that describes this whole month: nice, and a little surreal.

In fact, Liz "Filibuster" Buchanan recently asked what the strangest litle difference has been about ths place, something that caught me off guard. I can think of two. The first is that the movie theatre changes the titles to movies. Not just translations, but rather things like "Before the Devil Knows You're Dead" becomes "7:58 This Saturday." Number two is that I can't find cheddar cheese anywhere.

And finally, because I nearly always talk about music on here, here is a progressive playlist of things I'm listening to lately. Jayne, being just a good all around person, brought me her entire music collection on DVD's yesterday. Wow. So I've added some of those choices on here as well. Thanks Jayne!

1) Lost & Found - Taken by Trees
2) This Side of the Blue - Joanna Newsom
3) Leslie Anne Levine - The Decemberists
4) 23 - Blonde Redhead
5) The Smoke Detector - Rilo Kiley
6) Life on Mars? - Seu Jorge
7) Rose Rouge - St. Germain (which is an area in Paris! Bonus!)
8) What We Had - Handsome Furs
9) Willie Deadwilder - Cat Power
10) ABC - The Pipettes
11) Ballad of a Thin Man - Bob Dylan
12) The Con - Tegan & Sara
13) Teardrop - Jose Gonzolez
14) Time of My Life - The Watson Twins

So there!