we climbed the Dibona this weekend:




and stayed at the Refuge du Soreiller for two nights. The food was ok, but it was the typically uncomfortable "group living" arrangement: bunk beds, picnic tables, no lights etc etc. The climb itself was great, except for the rescue helicopter which was shuttling people back down to the refuge and presumeably to the hospital. Heres one of the rescue dudes getting a ride:



even though its tuesday, my calves are still acheing from the 1100 meter approach and descent
(not to mention the climb itself!)

I always thought people were exaggerating when they talked about golf ball size hail stones.... until ten minutes ago, when I saw 2 or 3 of them bounce off our double glazed windows. I hope we dont see weather like this on the dibona this weekend; it rolled in in less than 30 minutes, which is not really enough time to get safe.

I also learned yesterday that calling your wife a cracker is generally a bad idea. even done in jest. even if she doesnt treat rice with respect and makes "rice salad".

annals of practical jokes #1

age:5 years old?
victim: my dad

This is probably my earliest and most primitive joke, so it makes sense to put it first. I think I must have seen this in a Tintin book, but I got it into my head that I would put a bucket of water on top of the door, so when my dad came in to make sure I was asleep, it would (youre not going to BELIEVE this) fall on his head. Well, it turned out that the water thing was a little hard to engineer, so I instead opted for an empty tinker toy box. I remember the box falling and bouncing off of my dads head. I also remember thinking that he looked kind of monkeyesque as he hooted and jumped immediately after the box hit him.

as an aside, while I was google searching for the tinker toy box, I discovered that
1)It is hard not to get at least one porno image when you google image search-- not that i mind
2)"tinker toy" is an extremely unoriginal name for a pet

why

I moved to France two and a half years ago with my girlfriend. When I got here, I spoke no french at all, and when I asked my new lab if they had any program to learn French, they responded firmly in the negative. When I found a school and asked my lab for some financial support (it cost 500 euro) they again responded firmly in the negative. I wont say that this experience set the tone for my next two years in the french research system, but .. ok maybe I will.


Anyway, there were a lot of times that I thought a blog would be a nice place to vent/pontificate/bitch and moan, so I have finally just set one up. I guess I have some catching up to do.

lunch

One thing you realize when you move to France is how low American standards of food quality are. OK, you dont need to move to France to realize that, but nothing hammers it home like a trip to the market. Strawberries that dont taste like styrofoam, white peaches so ripe that they bruise to the touch, hundreds of cheeses, excellent wine for less than 10 euro, hormone free beef, etc etc.

inauspicious start

"money crushing machine" is an epithet that my dad used to describe me. I'm not sure if it was a specific purchase (college?car?) or just general anguish over how expensive it is to raise a child. I was probably pretty offended by it at the time, but now I kind of like it, and in fact changed my email username in grad school to "money crushing machine". It goes without saying that I forgot that I had done it and emailed my professors with the modified username when trying to set a date for my defense.

Anyway, this blog will be about expat life in france (no, not paris), science, rock climbing, the little joys and indignities of everyday life etc etc. I am hopelessly self conscious, so every post will probably be edited twenty times and still be unreadable.