We had our friends Cyril and Cecil over for dinner tonight, with their son. Lot's of fun, drinking, and talking about impending kids (she is pregnant with twins!!). They are in an apartment in Fontaine, but bought a place in La Monta, so they will be moving this summer.
We went to the new (and mysteriously deserted! woo!) Caserne la Bonne shopping center to replace my climbing shoes (blown out toes after a year of good usage) and pick up the new and much anticipated Petzl Grigri 2. After much debate, I started using the much maligned GriGri 1 nearly six years ago, and have never looked back. I'm excited to see whether this new device lives up to the hype. The Grigri 2 is not even available in the states yet. I guess proximity to the Petzl mothership in Crolles has it's advantages! Near the register, I had the idea to have Zoe try on child harnesses, which seem to vary considerably in their adjustability and comfort. Although the Petzl was probably the best in terms of ease of donning, it was a bit too big. The CAMP was a total disaster: I can't believe anyone buys them. The Fixé Apache was the clear winner: lots of adjustability and quite easy to get on. Time for some winter first ascents of alpine North faces with ZZ! YES!
After emptying our bank account at Vieux Campeur, we had lunch at Paul, which was simple, but excellent
Next, it was time to buy some clothes for Chloe and myself. Zoe assisted us by running around the store, and periodically opening the curtains to the changing rooms so that the whole store could see us in our underwear. Thanks, Zoe! Next, we went outside to the central garden. They have some nice reflecting pools with bridges over them, and more importantly, a playground! The playground is elevated, and has all kinds of exciting activities for kids. The most significant of which, is of course, the Big Slide:
From the playground, you are surrounded by new buildings. Many of them have sparkling penthouse apartments with rooftop gardens. Still more are currently being constructed, which makes me think the recession (la Crise) is hopefully hitting Grenoble a little less hard than in other places.
After dragging Zoe away from the Big Slide, we drove to the museum.
We bought memberships for the museum last year, and like our National Parks Pass, we have made excellent use of them. It is easy to do, however, because they are only eighteen euro per person, per year! Compare that with the prices that you have to pay for museums in the Bay Area. A day at the Cal Academy will set a family like ours back $60 -- a privilege of the middle and upper classes? I know that the museum does a few things to improve access for people who can't afford it, but they seem pretty small ( nine lines in the prospectus on this, compared to pages on the environmental design), especially considering the fact that it received 150 million USD in public money. Anyway, we love the Grenoble Museum, and are happy to be members, even if it seems like there are not very many other members! I have never seen anyone else show members passes, and I get the feeling sometimes that even the cashiers are surprised when we produce our member cards.
After walking around the museum for an hour or so, we walked down by place Notre Dame, to buy florentines and tartes aux noix at Bourbon
I went to les 7 laux today. It was a balmy and blue skies day. They have installed a new ski lift which absolutely rocks: twice as fast as the old one, and it gins you access to some ridiculous new terrain. I can't wait until it snows again.
went mountain biking with Lolo today: we rode to Mont St. Martin on the road and then down by the hiking trail. The descent was pretty technical: lots of water, mud and rolling rocks. I almost crashed twice!
The Gendarmes here have pretty sweet pursuit cars: Impreza STIs. AWD, 300 bhp, you know the story. Well, it turns out that as of this summer, 58 of the 73 had been destroyed -- oops! A new pursuit car was just announced: the Megane RS! This is a seriously fast car, even though it supposed to be pretty poor as a daily driver "comically stiff suspension" is the quote that I remember. Anyway, these are not ordinary RS (which are already fast), but modified by Renault to produce more power, with a higher top speed.
still jet lagged. We woke up at 10:30 AM this morning! Then it was off to the marche for provisions. Yesterday we braved the masses at IKEA to buy come cheap cabinets and lights. IKEA is the refuge of the expat/immigrant renter.
Today was the day we were not looking forward to: the long day of planes, trains, buses and automobiles to Grenoble. I used to get nervous traveling by myself (ever since I forgot my ticket once, coming back from Williams), but now I get pathologically nervous. I had weighed all of the bags the night before and made a last minute Target mission to buy a third suitcase, so I knew there would be no problems with exceeding the maximum weight. Tickets, passports, babies: everything was in order. We got to the airport in plenty of time and said our tearful goodbyes to the parents, then checked in and cleared security. A kind TSA person moved us into the family line for security, so we got through fairly quickly. At the gate, we were told that they did not do family boarding by one attendant, and that they do by another (and that it was at the discretion of the agent). This was not a good start to the day. The flight itself was a little less painful than the flight from Europe, but only slightly. The stewards and stewardesses were United employees, which is to say the worst and most unhelpful imaginable. Alex actually slept a few times, which was wonderful, but there were no in seat movie screens (on an 11 hour flight -- are you kidding me!?!) so Zoe was constantly bored. We had plenty of toys, puzzles, and an iphone loaded with Pixar, but she went through all of those in the first three hours or so. After a while, chloe and I resorted to playing with oranges with Alex to keep him occupied. Highlights were getting peed on by Alex a few hours in, and the United choice of videos. Specifically, they were playing Anthony Bourdain's No Reservations, which was filled with beautiful and delicious looking food footage. This was in between serving us some of the greyest, most nausea inducing "food" to ever grace the fold out tray of a 747-400. Thanks, United! I did learn that some of the best Szechuan food outside of China can be found in Melbourne, Australia though!
We arrived in Frankfurt groggy and sickly feeling, and then had the pleasure of clearing security again! I wish that one of these massive hub airports could be designed in such a way that you don't have to clear security more than once. Due to some airplane problem, we then sat on the bus to the airplane for a half an hour. The front of the bus was taken up by a contingent from the Canadian World Cup Snowboarding team, dressed in sponsor clothing and talking about their upcoming races. We eventually made it to Lyon, where they told us that Alex's stroller had never left Frankfurt! There was actually a long line of people queued up for the lost and damaged baggage counter: I saw three suitcases on the conveyor which had been ripped open, with clothes falling out of them. All of the luggage (including ours) was completely soaked, too. The only bright parts of the day were finding our car in the mega lot (I took a picture of the zone when I parked it), the car actually starting, and arriving to a home which had *not* been burglarized (most people that I know have had their house broken into in our area at some point). Good times!
We toured our house today. My pineapple guava has fruited! And they are delicious!
Today we bagn the day with another item off the culinary tick list of the bay area: Dim-sum at Yank Sing. The food was perfect. I wish we could find such perfect Shanghai dumplings in Grenoble! Zoe, however, was largely uninterested in everything except for the deep fried crab claw
Next, we drove to the SFMOMA and got a parking space right outside! I had not seen the rooftop garden before, which is very well done
There was an excellent Cartier-Bresson exhibit (like ten rooms full of photos!). Zoe's favorite part of the exhibit was the beaded exit, though:
She also enjoyed the aerial walkway
As well as some excellent Rothkos, Diebenkorns etc 
On our way to Berkeley we stopped at See's candies. I wanted to take a picture of Zoe in front of the heaps of chocolates, but was informed that photos are not allowed in the store! I feel honor bound to violate every anti-photo policy I can find though, and I'm sure they don't really care, so I took some pictures anyway. It was just too cute.
Two friends of the parents that collect Kenji's paintings were at the NYE party. My parents had told me that it was one of the best presentations of his work that they had seen, and arranged for Chloe, Keith and I to go check it out today. The house was in Belvedere, with a dock that goes out to the lagoon. The house is spectacular, and Kenji's prints and paintings look fantastic.
The house even has a cupola-like upper level that looks out over the lagoon and environs.
There was also a rather impressive wine cellar. Apparently, a large part of the contents of the cellar had been sold to fund the remodeling of the house
Next: some bouldering with Ian. We brought Zoe, which turned out to be pretty exhausting. One of us obviously had to be with her at all times, which required hoisting her to the gymnastic rings to swing (and then fall on the mats), but she grew weary of this quickly. Happily, they also have a kids room that is filled with toys, which kept her fairly occupied. Zoe "cooked" me omelets with pickles, oranges and mushrooms using the Playskool cooking set.
Later on, Ian and I shared a pitcher of beer at Pyramid, and we uncorked the beloved Ardbeg 17 bottle (around 30 mL remain): The smoothest and best whiskey I have ever tasted. It's a shame it is not made anymore!
Today was the parents new years day party. Despite daily sacrifices to Taka-Okami, the god of rain and consumer electronics (Ok I made that part up), it rained during the party, so things were a little crowded. We were hoping to be able to use the gardens and the deck, but Kenji had obviously angered the gods somehow. Kenji was prepared the traditional Japanese New Years soup called ozoni,
and I was in charge of grilling chicken teriyaki skewers (in the rain again). I got fed up with getting my hands singed and the bamboo skewers turning into charcoal halfway through, but finished it without too much collateral carbonization. Even more exciting than the soup was the music: mom had found Shamisen players from the Santa Cruz province of Honshu.
They were very nice, and patiently sat through some very strange behavior from my parents friends. As they were setting up, one of them got into a long conversation with them about his harmonica, and how it was a shame he had not brought it. They looked crestfallen at not being able to do a little harmonica shamisen jamming. Later on another old family friend cornered them and began grilling them about the name of a stringed intrument she had bought in Turkey, which she was sure was a "Baclava". Although it is possible that she was not talking about the sweet middle eastern pastry and there is indeed a stringed instrument from the middle east called a "Baclava", I have a feeling that she was talking about a Bouzouki. They both looked very confused but kept politely suggesting the names of instruments that began with the letter "B". Their suggestions were only for Japanese "B" instruments though. Some of Chloe and my friends also showed up, and I finally got to meet my friend Steve's son, who was born within a few weeks of Alex's surprise early arrival.
It was great to see everyone, but there were so many people that I barely had any time to talk to anyone in particular. I did manage to sneak away for ten minutes for a ride in Steve's 335i: an excellent and very fast ride. The acceleration on that thing is pretty savage. If only gas were less than six dollars a gallon and 335s didn't require the selling of organs here.
I did, however get to drink way too much heavily hopped beer (hard to find in France), whiskey and Chartreuse. A winning combination!
