The NFL

When I was in college I usually watched between 10 and 15 hours of football every weekend. My buddies and I always said, "There's no such thing as too much football."

As I've become older (and more concerned about my wife killing me than I am about watching football), I've toned it down a lot. It's (sadly) basically gotten to the point where I can't even watch a whole game anymore. The 2nd half is enough for me, unless the game is really meaningful.

Like the playoffs, which started yesterday. As I type this, the Giants have just beaten the Buccaneers, and in about 20 minutes the Chargers play the Titans in the last wild card game. Although Norv Turner might be the worst head coach in NFL history, right now I would give my right arm to just eat some pretzels and watch his team run around in those beautiful new uniforms, just hitting everything they see. Instead I get some B movie on France 1. Better to follow the game on the Internet, or just check the score in the morning. Does anyone know if I got Slingbox for my tv in the US, would it work on my laptop here in France? Please comment if you have any insights. There are still three weeks of playoffs left and I'm dying over here.

Enjoy the game. I'm off to bed. What choice do I have?

My kids are sneaky and selfish

When the kids are playing on the computer and something urgent tears them away (like going to the bathroom or they have been called away to help clean the kitchen), they take the wireless mouse with them. Or they hide it somewhere, so nobody else can come along and take their place at the computer. The only problem is that sometimes they forget where they put it and Mommy can't find it. And when Mommy can't get on to people.com, Mommy is NOT happy.

How To Humiliate People 100 Years After Your Death

At left, Jules Verne, favorite son of Nantes, in about 1880. He was allowed to wear pants in this photo. No one stopped him.

The village where we live now, Mougins (pronounced "Moo ZHAN"), is in the extreme southeast of France, sort of the equivalent to Miami geographically. Last summer, when we first arrived in France and before ever coming to Mougins, we spent nearly a month in a city called Nantes (pronounced "NONT"), which is sort of the equivalent of Portland geographically. It's in the Northwest of France, so is a long way from Mougins. Although keep in mind that all of France is smaller than Texas. That part of France has a long, rich history so naturally Dave insisted we spend a bunch of time there. We had a lot of interesting experiences during that month, partly because we knew absolutely no one and Dave couldn't understand a word of French at that time. I was only slightly better. The below is from an email Dave sent to his brothers about an experience we had while in Nantes that typifies some of the cultural differences between here and the US. It happened one weekday early in August. I'll let him tell it.

We've been in Nantes for a few weeks and I really like it. I can't understand the traffic patterns, I get lost every day and nothing anybody says makes any sense, but the summer weather is great and there's lots of good stuff to see within reasonable driving distance. Like this. And this. And this. But there's only so much touring around the kids can stand, and so yesterday instead of visiting castles and Roman ruins, we took the kids to the main public pool in Nantes, called the "Piscine Jules Verne". Piscine is swimming pool in French and Jules Verne was a 19th century author from Nantes who wrote 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea. They make a big deal out of the guy here. Sort of a favorite son thing I guess. A lot of dudes have written fairy tales so I don't know what the big deal is. But Jules Verne is everywhere in Nantes.

The kids are so used to swimming every day in Phoenix they've really missed it. I hesitated to go a public pool because I didn't really know where it was (so we would get lost going there), it's indoors, it's expensive, and public pools kind of creep me out, but of course we eventually do what they want because they're kids and we're parents and that's what happens when they keep asking for something. Boy was I in for a treat.

We arrived at noon, when they open. No business establishment in France ever seems to be open for very long, and this is no exception. It's summer, all the kids are out of school, and there is enormous demand for this pool. They're open every day from – get this - Noon until 4:30pm. I mean, are you kidding me?

We stood in line, paid our money, and went in to the locker room. It was like a room with a bunch of secret doors that didn't lead anywhere. The entire room seemed like just a bunch of thick yellow and blue melamine from floor to ceiling. Each cramped changing room had one door on each end, and the changing rooms were everywhere, so walking into the locker room was like walking into a maze of doors and walls. I couldn't figure out where I was. I couldn’t tell where anything led. It was very confusing.

Then, when I walked into the changing room (you couldn't get to the pool, which was in some unseeable, unknowable place very far away and very mysterious) I couldn't figure out how to lock the door. Turns out the door lock was by one's FEET. Sam found it. It was this long pole-like structure the same length as the length of the changing room. It had three fat dowels on each end attached to a circular piece of plastic. You had to grab one of the dowels and turn it counter-clockwise and it would partially cover and therefore (b)lock both doors (on each end) at the same time. It was seriously ridiculous. I mean absolutely ludicrous. But it worked.

So we changed into our swim trunks. I put on my very fancy, long polka dot twister swim trunks that make the ladies crazy. Sam was wearing his long Spiderman trunks. We looked tremendous. We found Stasha and the girls in the maze and blindly followed one corridor after another until we found the entrance to the pool. At the end of the maze, when you make it out, they give you a piece of cheese. I'm just kidding.

I walk out and basically see this:Piscine Jules Verne - Click on photo to look at the men in line for the waterslide.

So I was trying to figure out where to go. There were four or five pools of different shapes, sizes and heights, and they were all connected. And when I say "height", I don't mean "depth", I mean "height". One pool was here, another one was there, connected to it, but was set five or ten feet lower. The next one was the same way. There were big portholes in the side of this one or that one so you could see various people's legs showing up here and there (not as interesting as it might sound). The pools were apparently all supposed to serve different functions (i.e. lap pool, tide pool, waterslide pool, baby pool, etc etc), but everyone was everywhere doing whatever they wanted so it was all the same. Oh, and every pool was a different temperature. Hmmmmmmmmmm, I wonder which one had the most people in it?

I started walking toward one of the pools with Sam when an official-looking man stopped me. I could tell he was saying 'You can't go in the pool', it's "Interdit" (forbidden/prohibited),' but I had no idea why. When the French say "Interdit" it sounds a lot like "On dirty" so I looked down at my trunks thinking, "What, are they dirty? Did I have a very bad accident and not realize it?"

Then the guy proceeded to explain in English, to my absolute horror, that swimming trunks are not allowed. This not a joke. You can't wear swimming trunks at the Piscine Jules Verne in Nantes. No trunks. Do you understand what I'm saying to you? Yes, that's what I'm saying.

I could tell that arguing would only make me look like the ugly American, and he wasn't going to change his mind anyway, so I just slumped my shoulders and hung my head. He explained that neither Sam nor I were allowed to get into the pool, which was going to be a big issue for Sam. But then he said, "You can't even stay in here because you're wearing trunks, and other people will see you. We can't have that. So you must leave." Sam was about to cry because the man in charge had just he couldn't swim.

I'd already paid my $87 to get into the pool area, so I was thinking ‘how am I going to get my money back?’ when the guy held up one finger and said "Attendez". I know this means "wait a second", so I continued to stand there. He said"asdpiuqerkjafd" to a minion standing next to him, who promptly left. He must have understood the man. I sure didn’t.

About thirty seconds later the minion came back, holding two of the smallest, tightest, revealingest, mostly oily-bohunk Speedos that have EVER been made. And they're someone else's. Other men's penises have been in these Speedos. There's no way to know when or how often, but oh they've been there. Touching the very spots “I” would soon be touching. If I remember correctly, shortly before I vomited then fainted he said something like, "Put these on and you can stay".

Did I really have a choice? The kids had been crying for two weeks to go to the pool and now we were standing at the water's edge. So I took Sam's hand and we went back into the maze and found another changing room. This time I remembered how to lock the door. You just kick it.

I put Sam's Speedo on him. He was not happy about taking off Spiderman but he knew it was the only way to get into the pool so didn't say much. His suit was a hot little black number that was just a bit too large for him so there was some room between where the legs ended and where his privates began. You know, sort of like the dudes that wear those threadbare, stretched out tighty whities where the legholes have become too big for the legs that get put in them? Once, on a business trip, both my 55 year-old boss and I stayed at the house of a colleague who lived in the country we were visiting. One morning I was walking to the bathroom and my boss was walking back into his own bedroom. He was wearing nothing but a pair of old, yellowing tighty whities and the legs were all stretched out. To see that on a grown man was more than I could handle. That was a bad trip for me. My boss lost his job about four months after that. I've never quite recovered. Anyway, with Sam it was sort of like that, only this Speedo was a lot smaller.

Then I put on mine and walked out. It was kind of a blue color, but not just the boring regular blue that those doped-up, greased-up, hairless champion swimmers always wear. It was a gussied-up version with a little design that had varying shades of blue with daring green and red streaks on it. And it had been worn a LOT, so the fabric on the back wads fraying and had those tiny balls of fabric that form on any old piece of clothing. It was very soft to the touch. It's times like this that one wishes for dea…sorry; I mean acutely realizes that one's legs are similar to those of a fowl, why one never became an underwear model, etc.

So I walked out to swim. Since all the other guys out there were wearing something similar (although I can honestly say that - because they knew this was coming when they left their homes for Piscine Jules Verne, they had prepared and that – therefore – mine was the absolute worst suit in the whole place) and since I'm an adult, I said to myself 'OK I'm going to pretend this is normal and will not show my pain to the world lest I draw attention to it.'

This became difficult as soon as I saw Stasha. Her uproarious laughter and pointed finger drew more attention than I was looking for. I quietly asked her to stop and just turned my back on her. Sam ran off to go down the waterslide as I slinked into the nearest more-than-waist-deep pool, where I elected to remain for virtually the entire time. I did get out at one point, to go down the enormous indoor water slide. When I was standing in line for it Abby stood behind and looked me up and down. She didn’t say anything for what seemed like a long time as she stood there dripping and shivering, holding her hand to her mouth deep in thought. Finally, this: "I don't like that bathing suit. It looks dumb," she said. Great minds think alike, I guess.

By the way, I was also dripping and shivering, which further reduced my chances of looking like an underwear model. Sam, of course, forgot all about Spiderman and was having a great time. I didn't know where he was most of the time because it was a big place. However, several times during the next 90 minutes, which incidentally seemed like maybe twenty - or forty five hundred and twenty - hours, Sam ran by and said stuff like "Hey dad this Speedo isn't bad", then later, "Hey dad I think this Speedo is cool", etc. I think he thought he looked like "Dash" from The Incredibles. I disagreed.

At 2pm we had to leave. I got out of the pool and found Sam and the girls. We all walked back into the maze. I went into a changing room with Sam. I took off my Speedo and was about to put on my clothes when Sam started whining that he couldn't take off his suit. If you know five year-olds you know that voice that says "Dad it's time to drop everything and help me right now. RIGHT NOW." So there I stood, naked and shivering, kneeling on the freezing infested tile trying to undo the knot that had cinched itself in the drawstring during the last 90 minutes. It was cinched really tight and I was really hoping to get it undone quickly because I wasn't wearing any clothes and it was cold and I was in a maze in France and I'd just had to wear a Speedo for 90 minutes. In front of my children. In public. I got the string undone and was pulling the suit off his five year-old body and he looked down at me. "Dad", he said. "Can you buy me a Speedo?"

The Year's Best Halloween Costume

We're still a bit behind, since it's November 11th and I've yet to post a Halloween party update from Mougins. I'm working on it. After I post on that, a few days later I'm going to move it back in the list, so it looks like I actually posted shortly after Halloween. I love the Internet. Anyway, for the moment you get "Halloween Filler".

Dave says this is the funniest costume he's ever seen. He was laughing like crazy when he showed it to me. Look at the guy's eyes. And how about his nose? You have to down a lot of hard liquor every day for a long time to burst that many blood vessels.

I didn't want to post this, but Dave was begging me. The costume was worn by some very bad American actor at some (probably very bad) party in the US on Halloween night. What's going on over there, anyway?

Put down that . . .

France has this really great law that bans you from talking on your cell phone while driving. I'm sure many studies have proven that it is very dangerous to talk on your cell phone while driving.

Hopefully soon they will ban smoking while driving. I've seen mothers driving their kids to school while puffing one half out the window, truck drivers taking both hands momentarily off the wheel to light one up, and even a guy on a motorcycle toking away with one hand while maneuvering with the other. I mean, look at this guy in the picture, he isn't even trying to look at the road! (Okay, okay, I just got this picture someplace on the internet, and the guy isn't even French, unless he is just taking a holiday in the UK somewhere, and very recently left a military establishmen).

This whole smoking thing really baffles me. It's not just people smoking while driving, they do it everywhere. Walking their kids to the door of the school, sitting at the outdoor playplace at McDo, while helping their kids play on the monkey bars at the park, even while pushing their babies in strollers. Ladies toting Louis Vuitton bags or sporting a great pair of Chanel sunglasses puffing away in the faces of their children. Teenagers lighting up their lives on the way to ballet class, and old ladies grasping for air enjoying their golden years.

My kids keep asking me why everyone here smokes. I have yet to think up a clever response, for now I just say "Smoking is bad! You can get cancer and your breath always stinks and your teeth turn yellow and you have trouble breathing and you can lose all your money buying cigarettes and nobody will like you if you are stinky and dying!"

Geez, I wonder what I am going to tell them about cell phones?

The Fact(ure) Don't Lie

One of the reasons things are expensive around here is because the dollar is weaker than it's ever been. If you had purchased a house in France, Spain or Portugal six years ago, even if it hadn't appreciated at all that whole time, in dollars it would now be worth twice what you paid for it.

But it's not just the exchange rate that makes things expensive. There is something here called "TVA" (Taxe à la Valeur Ajouté) that is added onto every transaction. It's really just a sales tax, but they call it "Value Added Tax" to make it sound like you get something for it, when in fact you get nothing. The problem is that TVA is 20%. TWENTY.

The photo is a facture, or receipt, taken today from McDonald's, where we took the kids to have lunch so they could eat disgusting food, which they love. Notice the 19.6% added to the facture. That's TVA for you. I can't wait to buy a car. By the way, if you want a Happy Meal (pronounced "un appy meel"), you can call the number on the facture. It's right there at the top. But you'll pay taxes up the wazoo.

Customer Service is Interdit

I went to Castorama today. I needed some salt for the water softener. Castorama is very big and this was my first visit inside the store. I didn’t know the term for “water softener” so I brought the old empty salt bag to help with the conversation, which went like this:

(I enter the store and go to the help desk)
Me, holding up bag: “Hi ma’am, I’m looking for a salt bag for the thing for the water. Do you know where I can find it?

French person, looking very tired: I don’t know where it is. Go to the bathroom section and {unintelligible}. I think it’s back there {unintelligible}. If you don't {unintelligible}{unintelligible} .

(1 minute later in the bathroom section)
Me: Hi sir, I’m looking for a bag of this salt for the water softener (by then I’d figured out how to say the word because it was printed on the bag). Do you know where I can find it?

French person, looking very tired: Yes, it’s on aisle 25.

Me: OK thanks.

I go look on aisle 25 and there’s nothing even remotely resembling water softener salt there)

(1 minute later at the Help Desk at the back of the store)
Me: Hi sir, I’m looking for salt bags for the water softener. Do you know where I can find them?

French person, looking very tired: They’re somewhere in the back, near {unintelligible because he used several complicated words in rapid succession}. if you just {unintelligible} you’ll {unintelligible}.

Me: (Knowing I won’t find anything if I do that) OK thanks a lot.

(1 minute later, across the store in the lights aisle)
Me: Hi sir, I’m looking for a bag of this salt for the water softener, and everyone says it’s in the back of the store but I can’t find it. Can you help me?

French person: I don’t know where that is. I don’t even think we carry it. Let me see the bag.

I hand him the bag and he gets on the phone and speaks very quickly in French, asking where it is. Then he gets off the phone

French person (again), looking very tired: I talked to my colleague, and we carry it but he doesn’t know where it is. Go to the Help Desk in the back and they’ll tell you where it is (points to the other end of the store, where I just came from)

Me, knowing I’ve already been there: OK Thanks a lot.

I walked around the back again until I spied the warehouse part of the store, where they do deliveries and stuff. I could tell it was the warehouse part because the store itself was clean and this part looked like a bomb had gone off recently. I knew it was “Interdit” to go back there (Interdit, meaning “it’s forbidden”, is one of the most used words in French. It’s right up there with “Yes”, or “sex”, or “Oprah Winfrey” in English), but I knew that this was precisely why I had to go there. I walked through the very wide doorway into the warehouse area

French man on forklift, looking agitated and nervous less than one second after I walked into the forbidden part of the store: What are you looking for?

Me: I’m looking for salt for my water softener. Do you know where it is?

French man, eyes lighting up because he now understands by my accent that I "didn't know" that area was Interdit: Yes, let me take you there

He took me to aisle 28 and VOILA. I had my salt. Only $10 per bag, which costs $4 in the US. Sometimes you just have to do what you have to do.

Plastic Bags

On the way to the library.
This afternoon we went to the library with Sophie's class. There is no library at the school, so they had to get on a bus to get there. While there, the kids practiced typing on the computers by tapping out "Pierre et le Loup" ("Peter and the Wolf") in the French version of Microsoft Word. It just took me about three seconds to type "Pierre et le Loup". It took the kids about 7 or 8 minutes apiece. Then one of the librarians read them a story. Afterwards they were free to look at whatever books they wanted in the library.

Unfortunately, near the end of the visit it became apparent that someone had had a very serious "issue". There was a bathroom five feet away from where the children had had story time, but no visit occurred and the accident did. It was not going to be possible for the boy to sit on the bus in his condition, so the teacher's assistant got a huge plastic bag, like a Hefty, and wrapped his torso in it. She had to put a bunch of tape around his waist to hold up the plastic bag. It looked like an enormous black diaper with swaths of tape all over it. Only the diaper was over his pants, which were not in good shape. He then made the long walk with the class to the waiting bus and went back to school. No one made a big deal out of it and it was interesting to watch how Sophie's teacher protected the boy.

I'm not sure what I learned from this experience except that certain problems happen everywhere. And certain issues smell really bad.

I Feel Poor

Last week we took the BMW (pronounced bay em doob-le-vay) to have the mirror fixed. (You know, the one I broke when it smacked against someone else's mirror?). When it was ready, Dave asked me to drop him off at Garage Raymondou.

On the way to the garage we were having a discussion about how diesel (gazol) fuel (sold by the litre) is so great and even though it is expensive to fill up the car here (and even though gazol being dispensed gives off a smell so bad that it makes you feel faint), we don't have to do it very often. Dave remarked that the Trafic gets great gas mileage and we have not had to fill the tank since we drove through Lyon in late August. I gently reminded him that I DETEST driving the Trafic (since it's basically the equivalent of a school bus) and the only reason we haven't had to fill the tank is because I only drive the BMW. "Which reminds me, I said, the gas light went on yesterday, so we need to fill it up again."

I dropped Dave off and drove directly home, although the route is LESS than direct! Lots of speed bumps and hills. I often feel nauseous driving here, and I am not even pregnant! Thank goodness for that, by the way.

I had been home for fifteen minutes or so (enough time to be seriously involved in a game of Goober's Lab on Webkinz) when I received a call from Dave: "Hi, I ran out of gas." He told me he was on his way to fill up the car when it sputtered and died, and that he had managed to push the car out of the road into the parking lot of Chez Franck, a pizza place. "Can you bring the gas can and come get me?"

I had to laugh, because there was only one time in my life that I have run out of gas. I was in high school and was driving myself to church because my family had already left. I had this REALLY old truck that was given to me by a family for whom I used to babysit. I loved having the independence of this truck, but there was a rust hole in the floor and it occasionally took twenty minutes to get the engine to turn over. I had just crested a small hill in the road and as I began the descent I could feel the truck lose power. So strange to go from power and control to coasting. Anyway, I managed to coast all the way into the parking lot of a gas station very close to the church. I just left it there. Nobody was going to steal that hunk of junk. It had holes in the floorboards. You could literally see glimpses of the ground below as you drove around. I'm not kidding.

But I digress . . . I picked up Dave and we filled up the gas can, as well as the Trafic. I snapped this picture of the gas pump after I filled up the Trafic, but before the gas can. By the time we filled up the BMW again, we were feeling really, really poor. Keep in mind that one euro equals 1.4186 dollars! Do the math.

Dave's Not the Only Bad Driver

Let me start by saying that French roads are really narrow.

I was on my way for some retail therapy in Cannes. Shopping in Cannes sounds really great, right? You know, walking along the Riviera, looking at all the yachts and the beautiful people, as the waves crash on the surf, while you spot the latest fashions at bargain prices. Almost, but not quite. It's actually more like this: Drive along French roads that are 5 feet wide, find a minuscule parking spot that costs about $4 per hour (the cheapest one), battle the crowds, have a heart attack when you convert Euros into dollars. . .just to find some black pants or a pair of winter shoes. All in all I wouldn't mind just going to Target.

But I digress. On my way to Cannes I got lost. I mean, I knew generally where I was, but it was not going to get me to Zara to buy my black pants. The road was narrow (big surprise!) and windy and there were cars parked all along the side.

I was driving along when I heard a really loud crack that shocked me. My heart was racing as I looked around to see what was going on. Imagine my surprise when I saw the passenger side mirror dangling in the autumn ocean breeze, by a single electrical wire.

I made it to Cannes OK and even found some great black pants at Zara for 30 Euros. But I must admit most of the joy of finding my way alone and accomplishing my shopping goal was hampered by the annoyance of wondering how many Euros it would be to fix that dang mirror!

For now it is well secured with one of my hair elastics so it doesn't flap around and get the attention of the flics!

You can sing Fernando all you want

The other day Dave and I were driving to the school for the 19th time that day and he said, "You know what I love about France? You can drive down the country lane with the windows down, passing horses and wild boars, all the while singing "Fernando" at the top of your lungs. And no one even thinks you're gay, because that's just how it is here."

I thought perhaps he was a little crazy, until he played it for me later that day (Enjoy it here). And I agree, if you sang it at the top of your lungs in Arizona you would risk being "labeled". And I also agree, you can hear it on the radio because they play it here, and you'll pass horses and wild boars while you're at it. But I still asked him not to sing it here anyway.

Just in case you didn't get enough of the Rat.

I love frqnce1

Sorry I Hqvenùt posted anything for q zhile; but noz thqt ze qre in the house in <,ougins; I thought I zould get on the co,puter qnd post q blog1
one of the things I reqlly love qbout frqnce is the keyboqrd for the co,puter: I ,eqn; everything is just zhere it should be1
It is so eqsy to type reqlly fqst qnd get q lot of ideqs zritten dozn very auickly:
I think zhenever ze co,e bqck to the US I zould very ,uch like to bring this keyboqrd zith ,e so thqt I cqn qlzqys type qs cleqrly qnd auickly qnd hqve qs ,uch fun doing it qs I q, these dqys here in ?ougins.

What a great thing: to spend a year using a computer that has a keyboard in which the letters are in different places than the keyboards in the US. I can't say I'd planned on that one...

Life in the City

I wish I could have changed the title to something that rhymes with city, but I'm sure you'll get the drift after I have a little rant.

Every day we walk at least 2-3 times from the flat to the Hotel des Ducs in Dijon so that we can 1) use the internet 2) get free drinks and 3) let the kids make pyramids with the sugar cubes at the bar.

Along the way I see an inordinate amount of dog poo. I mean, it's unbelievable. What are people thinking? I'm going to take my dog for a walk, let it poop on the sidewalk so that the 200 people who walk down this sidewalk every hour can step in it or must walk around it.

We've only had one incident so far, but luckily the pile Carter stepped in had a crusty outer shell so when he stepped in it it didn't actually get into the grooves on the bottom of his shoe.

This picture has nothing to do with dog poo, but it's a nice picture taken from the top of a city building in Dijon.

To Dave's Credit

This is a picture of the house in Nantes. The house is on the left, that yellow building. To park the car in the driveway you drive down the lane in this picture, then you have to turn left into that driveway that you can see. I don't know if you can tell from the picture, but it's a fairly sharp turn. Dave was backing out of the driveway when he scratched the front of the deBricourt's van. Maybe the 90 degree turn in a 10 foot area had something to do with that.

Dave is a good driver

This is the van that we have been using for the past month. As you can see, Dave has taken extra care while driving.