Chloe and I continued our training regime in the climbing gym today, and in the changing room I noticed that a man was wearing a "Williamstown, MA" sweatshirtt. It's rare to hear English, let alone American English being spoken in the gym, so I quickly got the back story: His dad was a math professor at Williams, and he is a professional translator in Grenoble. The Williams connection is everywhere!
We went to have Thanksgiving dinner/lunch at Mary-Jane's today. We all had a very nice time, with Zoe playing with the other kids, Legos, and a big, fluffy dog. Alex also accosted the dog, demanded to be held, and played with Legos. I realized afterwards that it had been two years since our last Thanksgiving meal! Of course, last year Chloe and I made grand plans to make a big meal this year.. but you know how that goes. Recently we have been in survival mode, just trying to keep up with work and the kids. Maybe next year.
On the first major snow of the season, we loaded the kids up and drove to Le Sappey to do some sledding. Zoe was in heaven (PLUS VITE!! (faster!)), but the wind and cold did not exactly agree with poor Alex, and we had to abort "Mission: Luge" after fifteen minutes. I'm sure there will be plenty of other opportunities
We though Alex might enjoy riding the sled WITH Zoe, but he expressed a slight preference to instead go back to the warm car.
Work trip to Hamburg. Note to self: get sick just before future work trips to Hamburg. The only redeeming parts of the trip were:
+remembering to get on the right side of the plane for the best views
A panorama pieced together from many photos. I used the amazing content aware fixing to fill in a gap at the upper right. A bit of cheating!
+A fun dinner with some of the Grenoble guys
+And a 30 euro bottle of Ardbeg at the Duty Free.
I barely made my connection in Toulouse on the way back. No idea why it makes sense to fly from Hamburg to Lyon via Toulouse!
After a morning at the market (the most exciting purchases was two year old comté and Tomme au marc de raisin) 
Next, we went into town and walked up a few switchbacks of the Bastille
Before stopping into the Bookworm café, which was wonderful. They even have a kids area downstairs.
Then, back over the Pont Saint Laurent
and home
We hit the road today and headed to La Garde Adhémar today (~1:30 from Grenoble). We had seen the town many times because it is perched on a high bluff overlooking the A7 to Marseille, but we had never stopped to take a look. It turns out to be yet another charming Southern town, 
with cobbled streets and charming doorways -- yawn (just kidding)! There is a small garden
where they grow medicinal herbs on the western side, which we walked through and in which I discovered a nice Arbutus. The arbutus looked essentially the same as the one in our yard in Oakland, and I was reminded of my friend and coworker Steve, who brought me back some delicious medronho from Portugal. Thanks again, Steve! Anyway, there is an excellent central square with a few cafés. After a few weeks of Grenoble rain, it felt great to sit outside at a table soaking up the sun, drinking espressos and eating crêpes. We watched people playing boules in the dirt while being serenaded by the lilting whine of Alex and the "FEED ME"s of Zoe.
In addition to the beautiful sunny skies (did I mention that it was sunny?), it was also quite clear, and we could see all the way to the Giant of Provence: Ventoux
As well as the less scenic cooling towers from the nearby nuclear reactors. Interestingly, "the man" appears to have reduced the available resolution of Google Maps for the reactor complex:
View Larger Map
Today was a French holiday, but I was on call for work, so after setting up the beamline, I decided to go into Grenoble with Zoe. I figured that if something bad happened at the beam, I could drop ZZ off at home and be back there within the acceptable time (happily, no problems occurred). We started off with a trip to the museum, where we saw the Balkenhol exhibit. I quite liked it but Zoe was generally unimpressed until she saw the room full of Penguins. Next, it was downstairs to see some of the permanent collection, where I saw a painting from Gerhard Richter's series of candles (familiar to many of us as the cover to Daydream Nation). From the musée, it was on to a park in the quartier St. Laurent. It met with Zoe's approval, except for the fact that there was no slide, so it was soon time to move on. Along the way, we passed a really cool looking cafe which was unfortunately closed. We had a lovely café and syrop de menthe right next to the pont Saint Laurent.
From there, it was on to the excellent, but chaotic park at the jardin de ville, where I received more questioning looks regarding my black eyed daughter. 
After chasing Zoe around for a while, we left with the intention of buying some shelves at the IKEA, but it was a complete mad house, so I chickened out and left without even parking. Instead, we went to Espace Montagne, where zoe played on the kids climbing wall, and I tried on some fancy down jackets. For some reason Espace Montagne has organized their gigantic outerwear section according to brand, not function! So if you are looking for a shell, you have to traverse the entire floor looking at the various brands. Even so, it is more comfortable than the tiny Vieux Campeur, where every jerk outdoors enthusiast in Grenoble seems to go!
Today, Zoe's eye socket is an angry shade of purple, but at least her eye is open. More explanations were of course necessary at the school drop off. This is getting embarassing!!
Chloe ran the Ekiden today with Francois and Laurent, and did really well! She was the 28th woman out of 235 (unfortunately classified as a man by the organisers, though).
Meanwhile, I took the kids shopping at the market and had to explain the state of Zoe about ten times. She is better today, but still looks pretty bad.
Zoe tripped today, while running through the living room and smacked her eyebrow on the glider chair. We didn't think it was anything out of the ordinary at first, but a gold ball lump appeared within a few minutes, and had almost closed her eye by the early evening.
swapped front wheels today and went for a ride up to Proveysieux. They finished reopaving the lower half and it is soooo nice and smooth now! Of course, tractors have already managed to grind hardened mud into the beautiful and otherwise pristine asphalt... bastards!
One of my favorite outdoor stores in the world is Au Vieux Campeur. They might not have very good prices, but they have *everything*. For years, there has been debate in Grenoble about whether a VC in Grenoble would be a good thing. It actually seems a little weird to not have one in such a sporty town, but they finally opened one in a new american style mall downtown that used to be military barracks. I'm not sure who the biggest opponents were, but I have heard that places like Espace Montagne were behind the anti VC campaign. Who knows. My suggestion to Espace Montagne is to think about ohh I don't know... lowering their prices?! I'm not sure what they are really worried about, since it is possible to stay in business with the worst possible service and products (e.g. Intersport). In any case, the new VC is pretty good, and they had a huge selection of down jackets (doudounes in French), and I have a new object of covetousness: a Pertex enclosed 850 fill power jacket. I was also amazed to see the asking price for the GoPro Helmetcam: 349 euro! In the states it is 300 dollars (~213 euro). Highway robbery! There should be outrage and burning of cars in the French helmet cam community!
