Chloe, slapping for slopers

Cactus cupcakes, v 1.0!

Back in the saddle

I discovered a new trail down from Proveysieux, the hamlet above where we live.

A hike with alex

I went on daddy-son hike with Alex up to the Aiguille de Quaix:  a solitary finger of rock visible from the valley floor.  Alex is still finding his hiking legs, so I wasn't sure if he would make it, but he really impressed me and stomped his way all the way to the rock.  Along the way I carried him across a river (twice!),

we found a patch of snow and threw snowballs at each other, we both slipped and fell in the mud, and we scrambled up the rocky flanks of the aiguille itself.

 I should mention also that the pollution has been terrible lately and the particulate count was as bad as Beijing today.  That was part of the motivation for going up into the mountains: usually the air is a lot betters.  And while I'm sure it was better than the valley, I was surprised that even at that altitude (~1100 meters),

I could barely see the Chamchaude (2100 m) because of all the haze.

APCs

My morning commute, while short, can still be entertaining.  I cross a train bridge as part of it, and today there were people staring at something in the train yard below.  I stopped and discovered that it was the army, rolling armored personnel carriers into a neat row.  Who knows where they are off to, but they were in a hurry.

A cake

A cake for Stephanie!

A bike ride

Which precipitated some crazy flu like symptoms.  Back to the sick bed

CT

So I've been pretty sick for the past two months.  Sinusitis compounded with a bunch of other stuff.  Finally, my doctor wrote me a script to go get a CT done of my head to determine if there was excessive inflammation/fluid buildup/etc.  They give you a CD at the end with all the tomographic slices, so I did the obvious nerdy thing and assembled a 3D model.  I give you: GoldMax

I'm trying to get it into a format to 3D print now.

A train, closeup

Falling cats

Bento seems to enjoy jumping on the roof and tailgate of our car.  Normally this isn't a problem, except when I don't see him up there!  What happens next is that I shut the tailgate and get clawed by a desperately scrabbling falling furball

The Vercors

Climbing!

The Vercors

Hamburgers!

Hanging out with Zoe

Zoe finds an egg!

Grenoble

My new go-to recipe:  Broccoli soup!

Chinese new year.. in Grenoble