Why I heart France: Reason # 6

It's fun to call my friends and family at 6PM eastern time and scream "Happy New Yeaaaaar!" drunkenly into the phone.

Sometimes if New Years happens to be on a weekday, they are actually still at their jobs working when they get my obnoxious call. That's right, while my Yank friends are in their cubicles printing TPS reports, we in France are already on our 2nd or 3rd bottle of champagne. I almost feel guilty. Almost.

Anyway, I don't have a new photo to post because we haven't started getting drunk yet, but here is a gem that I found from New years Eve 2005 when I hosted a surprise, extremely exclusive VIP soirée for my FrenchBoy. As you can see I went all out with the costumes. I'm just baller like that.

Happy New Year.

The French Barbie Dreamhouse Emerges!

Ok, it's just the garage to the Barbie DreamHouse, but still. It's dope... It's bigger than my last apartment in Brooklyn.

And the construction workers are nice.

To celebrate the completion of the walls to our garage, FrenchBoy bought me a new Swatch.

Ok, the Swatch was totally unrelated, but still, see how cute I'm iz wearing it?

French Christmas #3.

Well, uhm as you may have guessed from the title, this is my big number three Christmas in France. But more importantly, this Christmas will be forever known as the Christmas I decided that I liked Foie Gras. I have officially crossed over to the dark-side.

Whatever.

Stuff I like about French Christmas:

Fake Santas & Handsome FrenchBoys.

Dancing French Mother-in-laws.

Cheese!

Free-flowing liquor.

Sugary pastries.

Foie Gras.

Eatin' sugary pastries, cheese, and foie gras, followed by....

...more free-flowing liquor.

And of course...the glorious singing.

Have a Funky Christmas!

More Weekend Photo Blogging.

I never do anything without at least one camera on hand.

Anyway here's what I've collected this week:

The sushi we made Saturday doesn't exactly look delicious, but believe me it was! And for a first try I think we deserve an A+ for effort.

For relaxing times...make it Suntory time. We finaly cracked the bottle that we brought back from Tokyo.

I waited in line so long to buy FrenchBoy's Christmas gift that I got bored and started taking anti-gravity self-portraits.

I looked in every room of Santa's workshop and I didn't find ONE Black, Latino, or Asian elf. What up? I smell a lawsuit comin' on in Santa's future.

Why on earth would you pay to get into the Louvre when you can buy your very own Mona Lisa for 29 euros?

I Only Likes Christmas Because of the Pretty Lights.

...and because of the Polar bears doing the robot.

And get this: They put on non-stop performances for weeks on end each year during the Christmas season in downtown Thionville! And it's free anytime day or night!

Sweet.

More French Grocery Store Blogging.

Last week SNCF the French train was on strike yet again. This is in no way surprising since those people will strike over damn near anything. The French are famous for their protests, but milk protests are perhaps my favorite subject of protest to date.

Here in France, where people are quite happy to buy their meat from the butcher, their afternoon baguette from the local baker, and their cigarettes and newspapers from the local "tabac", the one-stop large scale, American-style supermarket shopping experience is still a relatively recent convenience that doesn't exactly agree with many cultural traditions. Earlier this week we found these adorable signs posted in the milk section of the grocery store.

"Stop the abusive margins of the distributors. For a fair milk price I side with the producers!"

What amused me the most was that the store employees either hadn't noticed the signs or simply hadn't bothered to remove them. They're big and yellow so I believe it's the latter.

In any case, in spite of the apparently inflated milk prices we bought some. And no---in France the milk is on a shelf and it is not refrigerated.

Freaky!

December is for eatin'!

For the first time, FrenchBoy and I properly celebrated our wedding anniversary in style. Over the past few weeks we hadn't had much luck with picking good restaurants, but for our anniversary we hit the jackpot. We were able to just squeeze into Le Petit Chez Soi at the absolute last minute.

"Oh lala! Champagne & lobster! C'est ballerifique!"

FrenchBoy ordered fancy grilled beef.

I ordered noix de Saint Jacques aux truffes de Meuse et pointes d'asperge.

And then of course there was dessert!

So that's that. Three years down, about 70 more to come.

Wassuuuup!? Did you miss me?

We have had the internet connection from hell for the past 3 weeks. It made blogging a very miserable experience. ...so I just stopped doing it. But my lovely FrenchBoy arranged totally new and improved internet service for us and now our internet connection is straight "baller".

To celebrate our new connection I have some weekend blogging photos for you.

Saturday

It's Christmas time in Centreville in Thionville again which of course means lights, lights, more lights, and a whole lotta drinkin'!

Wine and Waffles.

Drunk Ice-Skating

and of course Drunk Marching Bands.

Sunday

Everybody I know was born in December. This weekend was Cousin Phillipe's Birthday. He is now "the same age as Jesus" as Tata Paulette pointed out as we slurped down champagne at his place. Fun was had by all.

Closing comment:

Lychees freak me out.

Weekend Photo Blogging.

This blog entry has absolutely no theme or continuity, but it does contain some random goofy photos from our leisurely weekend.

Friday

For FrenchBoy and I, Friday night is “Date Night”. This Friday, as a break from our usual pasta vs. steak frites routine we decided to opt for Indian food, which we both love. Of course once we arrived in Center Ville we discovered that the best Indian Restaurant in the entire country had either moved or gone out of business. Our second dinner choice was the uhm….Pizza Hut. Shameful. I know. Shut up already.

After dinner we wandered around Luxembourg ville looking in shop windows. Although everyone makes jokes about how tiny a country Luxembourg is, if you’re ever in the BeneLux area, don’t miss the opportunity to wander around centreville. Day or night it’s always amusing and during Christmas season it’s twice as charming at night.

I mean, just look at this guy:

After dinner we arrived at our movie 30 minutes early because apparently I’m too retarded to properly read the movie listings correctly. As we waited in the theatre’s café sipping Orangina, I thought to myself: “Wow, if this were our first date it would be classified as the crappiest date ever.”

Saturday

At noon FrenchBoy’s friend Jean Jacque phoned us and invited us over for dinner. I immediately accepted because one, JJ and Noel are really fun people, and secondly because they have the cutest kids ever. Jehanne and Axel are just the cutest.

Axel insisted that I take a photo of his dancing. He didn’t like the first photo I took, so he promptly instructed me to take another. This is his favorite:

At 1AM we drove home. I vaguely remember the car ride and putting on pajamas.

Sunday

Where’s the ibuprofen? We had an early lunch & Birthday celebration with French Mother-in-Law and French Father -in-law. ( FrenchBoy’s birthday is tomorrow!) We were a half hour late arriving on account of the previous night’s drunkenness and the after effects. Lunch was great. Then after all the festivities FrenchBoy helped French Father-in-law clean the attic. How’s that for a birthday gift!

French Father-in-law was elated however to find a 30 year old scrabble board shoved in there “right where I left it 20 years ago!”

Alrighty then.

The highlight of the evening was watching them argue about what was the best metho for carefully patching the sides of the Scrabble box back together with both scotch tape and duct tape.

French Mother-in-Law and I flipped through a stack of kitchen & bath catalogs and rolled our eyes.

Ok, that’s all I got.

So much excitement and glamour!

To Bidet or not to Bidet in the Barbie Dream House.

Yesterday, Before driving over to the construction site of our new home, we had an appointment with the building construction manager to discuss of all things---showers and toilets. The meeting went great, and we left with literally a crate full of oversized catalogs to choose from.

My favorite PHILIPPE STARCK toilet.

I hate to admit it, but for me, this part of the process vaguely ressembles the many hours of labor that went into rearranging an decorating my Barbie Dreamhouse when I was 6 years old. Funny. Barbie always seemed to have the cutest handbags, but never seemed to have to pay for anything in that Dream House.

Wait. What did Barbie do for a living again? I'm skeerd to guess.

Anyway-the biggest news of the week of course is:

We have walls!

As of last week, the foundation of the building was officially finished. We watched with glee as the construction workers did, whatever it is they do with all of those huge noisy trucks.

Hard hats were worn, cement was poured, and fun was had by all in spite of the typically dreary French winter weather. The site still looks like a big old sloppy dirt mess, but at least now there are walls! It's almost a first floor!

FrenchBoy went into the site for a closer look while I snapped a few shots of the guys working before the cold weather made it impossible to properly use my fingers. Also-- Cranes scare me and so do loud noises, so I just tried to stay out of the way.

As you can see from the sign, the mess and construction is slated to last untill June 30th 2007! Everyone keep your fingers crossed that this means we will be all moved in by the end of August!