SNAIL ESCAPE!

Today ch loe lured me away from MOSFLM to go to the market at Place de la Tribunal. We used to only go to Place aux Herbes for produce, until we found Tribunal, where you can get fresher and better quality produce (direct from the growers)... also, Tribunal is a much prettier venue than its more utilitarian cousin. Anyway, while chl oe was buying some rasberries and peaches, I wandered off and foundanother stand where they sold big live snails. They were in a 5 gallon plastic bucket under the rest of the produce, and the farmer was too engrossed in weighing and selling to notice that his snails were escaping. It would have been a really beautiful picture, but of course I didnt have a camera with me. I was very proud that I remembered the word for escape (echappe) and informed the farmer that his snails were getting away from him.
I felt a little bad because the escape artists snails were really hauling some escargot ass, and it was a little sad to see them
plucked from the limestone flagstones and chucked unceremoniously back in with the others. Of course, they would have just gotten stepped on, but still... you could tell they were going at 105% snail velocity.

Annals of Practical Jokes part II

Age: 10? 12?
Victim: Dad

This is one of those experiences that I look back on with awe. Not awe at my cleverness or skill, but at the fact that I didnt kill or injure myself. In this case, the potential (pun intended) hazard was high voltage. Not content to watch the HO train go around in oblong orbits around my room, I had recently begun experimenting with circuits that were probably not manufacturer recommended. These experiments would typically consist of me disassembling a broken radio (yes, they were all broken when I started with them!), pulling out the various mysterious and colorful nuggets, then shorting them between the railroad tracks. It was in this manner that I got shot in the chin by an exploding LED. But this is all just to give you a sense of my technical "sophistication", and doesnt have much to do with the prank itself.

I constructed a spring loaded switch out of legos (a little tray that would slide on the smooth topped legos) and well, aluminum foil. It was normally off, but when you pulled a string, it would open the circuit to a tape recorder. The string was routed via paperclips taped to the moulding out of my parents room and into the hallway. The switch and tape recorder were in my dads closet. The tape was of dogs howling and scratching at a door. I should add, at this point, that my dad comes from Japan, is quite superstitious, and not only believes in ghosts, but claims to have seen one when his friend died.

I let the dogs out several times becfore my dad discovered the tape recorder hidden in his closet, followed the string out of his room, and saw my door gently creaking shut as I fcrept ninja like back to my room. At that young age, I probably thought it possible that if he didnt see me in action, he might not know who had rigged such a contraption.


N.B. My mom was an unwilling co-conspirator because she had discovered me in my dads closet with legos, a tape recorder, electrical tape, and exposed wires.

mappy eats hairy dogshit

yes, I complain about it every time. yes, I swear never to believe mappy (like a Euro mapquest/blast for the north americans) again. No, I have no one to blame but myself. But still, I fucking hate mappy. Today I spent almost two hours in Geneva looking fot the french consulate because of a series of comical mishearings and mappy errors. Briefly: Avenue Henri Dunant &ne Avenue du Nant &ne Rue du Nant. By the time I made it to the visa issuing office I was a sweaty mess, but managed to get the forms in. I have to admit that I got a little panicked thinking that I might have driven an hour and a half for nothing.

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.