The school run

I was dropping Zoe off when this pulled into the school lot:

A ride to school in a Ferrari 348 -- not bad.

All we need is for people to show up with Stokke strollers, and it'll be just
like the peninsula!

on my own

Chloe is off to caramel school at Valrhona, so I have the kids. When I dropped ZZN off this morning, they had a table with cards bearing all of their names. Other kids were affixing them to a big blue card holder on the wall. I saw Zoe fiddling with what I assumed to be a random namecard and stick it on the wall, but it was indeed hers! I was very surprised that she recognized her name... I wonder if a teacher's aide handed it to her while I wasn't looking.

update: I made cards with lots of random three letter names on it and she really does recognize her name!

Clemenciere via Narbonne

another nice ride

Happy Birthday, Alex!!

Romeyer

We went climbing with Julien and some of his friends at Romeyer: very difficult, but great to be outside.


On the way back, I saw an absolutely stunning orange limestone cliff face. It is the Rocher de Cambau, and is just begging to be climbed!

Stickers

I went shopping with Zoe to buy clothes for her and alex today, and also made a stop at the Troc place, since I have driven by it many times and never stopped. It is basically a warehouse full of mostly crappy furniture. I did, however see a very nice bonetier and an homme debout. These are sort of smaller, more practical versions of the armoire. I particularly like homme debouts because they have a drawer in between two smaller compartments: very practical. They also had this majestic sculpture of Serge Gainsbourg

I'm not sure if that's a flask or a microphone in his hand.

Next was a visit to the art supply store, where Zoe caught sight of a sticker display and immediately grabbed a packet of stickers, jammed them into her mouth, looked up at me with wide eyes and asked "Dat's Zoe's?". Fine. I started paying for the watercolors, pens, pastels and her stickers, when she realized that there were even more stickers... and those stickers had BEARS on them! Unfortunately, I had just finished paying. I also did not have any cash at all, and couldn't pay for a one euro sticker packet with a card. Zoe had the packet firmly in her hand, and after a brief tussle which rendered the stickers ours, we came to an agreement which involved going out to the car to find change, coming back and paying for the bear stickers. On my way home, I had a the terribly cynical thought that the placement of the children's sticker rack next to the register might not have been an accident.

Mont St. Martin

A short hike with the kids on the Boucle de Sabot. Zoe walked all the way up without even asking to be carried, so she is making a lot of progress on the hiking front.

Quest for Camera

Very narrow now:

Fuji X100:
+fuji lens
+enough res
-to damn wide!

Nikon 3100:
+light
+decent res
+inexpensive
-can't drive older Nikon lenses, MF a pain

Nikon D90:
-a bit heavy
+can drive older Nikon lenses

Nikon D7000:
+excellent pixel count
+can drive older Nikon lenses
-pricey
-heavy

Canon 550D:
+18 mp!
+not too heavy
+not too expensive

Sony Alpha 55:
+Light
+10 frames/second
+Excellent sensor (same as D7000?)
-Reasonable lenses for alpha mount are overpriced

ok, not narrow at all.

WEEKEND IS HERE

after a long week of shooting 10-20 micron crystals. Too tired for even a lunchtime bouldering session.

Cycling Clemenciere via Narbonne with Franck

perfect weather

Museum with Zoe

A robbery!

At the Proxy mart 100 feet from our house. I heard the gunshot -- it took me back to our East Oaktown days. Actually, not really, since it didn't sound like a handgun.

Cycling Clemenciere via Narbonne with Franck

We were passed like we were standing still by some guy on an electrically assisted bike. I'm amazed by how fast they can go.

Museum

with the kids



then a trip to the park

running the whole way


with a stop for a strawberry eclair

Circus

The circus was in town, which of course meant that Zoe had to go. It was quite small, but the upside was that the furthest you could get from the ring was about three feet.


It was the usual stuff: animals

juggling

and trapeze.
Dramatic songs accompanied the performers at all their entrances. This backfired a bit before the trapeze show, when the music started thumping, the curtains parted, and a woman appeared with a ... shovel? She then scooped up the poo from the show horse as discretely and ceremoniously as possible before exiting the ring.

Zoe requested a big purple balloon

on call all weekend

booo

Faculty retreat

In Germany. A lot of interesting stuff going on. I ate a vast quantity of food and hit golf balls on the driving range (for the first time in my life) in between talks. They gave me a left handed club for some reason, which did not work for me at all. After exchanging it for a right handed 7 iron, I soon got in a escalating competition with a fellow grenoblite to crush the ball the furthest. By the end, we were hitting them to 150 yards, with the occasional drives into trees and the hotel roof (the nets were seriously low).

Family biking

We went for a ride along the bike path that runs along the Isère today.

It was another beautiful almost-Fall day, and there were a lot of other people on the path as well. I've seen quite a few other trailers on the road, but for some reason ours always gets people's attention (maybe because it is bright green?). After six or so miles, we stopped for Zoe to pick flowers and to hydrate a bit. It was a little exhausting herding her away from the path, but we managed to avoid any catastrophic collisions with bikes.

I mounted the helmet cam on the tow bar of the trailer, and here is the resulting video (trimmed down from 6gb of raw HD footage!) with suitable non copyrighted music

A short (but wonderful) hike

We hiked the fabulous Boucle du Cuchet today. As we were nearing the cables to go up the cliff, I heard the distinct sounds of climbing gear being jostled, which got me very excited to see if there were any routes on the cliff. It looks like excellent quality rock, but I had not seen any evidence of any routes up it. We caught up to the climbers at the top, who informed me that therethere were indeed a few routes, but they were all aid routes. Booo! In any case, it's a beautiful hike.



which ends up back in Mont St. Martin. Here is Zoe enjoying the flat paved section at the top


Mont Saint Martin looks like it would be a nice place to live.