Sarko goes to Washington

Yesterday, the president of France was Washington’s host of honor and had a chance to address a joint meeting of Congress — a rare privilege for a foreign head of state. Mr. Sarkozy did his very best to say what his audience wanted to hear, which is the quintessential quality of an effective politician. Among other platitudes he expressed his love and admiration for a variety of American personalities ranging from Elvis Presley, Ernest Hemingway to Marilyn Monroe; I’m glad he didn’t add Cheney, Rumsfeld or Wolfowitz to the list. I would have perhaps understood if he had included his countryman-rocker-friend, Johnny Hallyday with his American-sounding name, but he was limited in time. At least he showed up as a man of passion and, for the day, counted as the most eligible bachelor in the U.S. Capital…

Elections

Yesterday – the first Tuesday of November - was our traditional voting day. We had to elect 3 council members and give our opinion on two initiatives; one for state wide school vouchers and the other for a $15 million “walkability” bond within our little city. When I checked the results this morning they were not quite in line with my vote, but I got two right “answers” out of five possible. Not bad after all. When I think that I could have flunked the entire test…

Things we like

As we were talking yesterday, Evelyne told me that she gets a quick out of not having to fill up her car for a long, long, time. Not that I love to pour gasoline into my tank, but for me, this same matter leaves me indifferent. My excitement comes from doing projects. These are mostly seasonal or spur of the moment. This summer it was laying flagstones in the garden, more recently it was working on our holiday card. Things we like the most are often bizarre, they may sound trivial to many and generally have no big material impact on our lives, but somehow they can produce great pleasures. At any rate, they are wonderful antidotes to our society of never ending consumption…

"Liquid" fondue

I’m not what you’d call a real cook. I certainly do barbecue, crush our breakfast bananas, officiate over raclette, and do cheese fondue from A to Z. Over the years, I have always managed to produce delectable fondues, with two notable exceptions. One was about a year ago, when our entire family was ready around the pot, and the two types of cheese we had tried to mix behaved like separatists and forced us to eat something else instead. The second was this past Saturday, when I suggested a fondue dinner for my spouse and me. I have neglected to mention that, over time, we’ve reduced the cheese portion from the traditional 200 gram down to 125 gram per person. Since the ratio between cheese and wine is critical, and that 10 centiliter of wine are to match a 200 gram serving of cheese, I had to run down to my office, punch in my calculator the 2 servings needed, namely 250 grams, to figure out the required quantity of wine. I came up with 12.5 centiliter. Since I tried to relate that quantity with the clear plastic measurer that we use, two times 12.5 made ¼ liter which precisely falls on one of the markings; for some odd reasons, I kept that round figure in my head and poured it into the fondue pot. Very quickly, I discovered the “fluidity” of the situation, tried to let the fondue boil a bit to evaporate some of the extra liquid, but even a dressed-up pig remains a pig, and at the end, I had to acknowledge my miscalculation. My spouse was a good trooper, didn’t give me any hard time and, by pulling together, we finished (I should say, drank) the entire dish. I promise that the next fondue will be more… solid!

Sacred passion…

When I was a little kid I loved to draw a lot, I mean cartoon characters, small objects and the like. At age ten, my creations even won me a contest that sent me flying through Europe for a week with other children my age. Later, when I was in school or helped in the family business, drawing was still my passion except that it was seen as in interference with work and therefore strongly discouraged and repressed whenever I got caught doing it. A few nights ago, I saw a TV show about the life of Charles Schulz, the creator of the “Peanuts” comic strip, and it made me reminisce about that fire that had burned in me for so long and still burns... Morale of the story: Always do what your inner self screams for you to do and ignore everyone else’s admonitions…

Halloween visitors

As tradition dictates, we got ready last night for another Halloween night. I now regret that, over the years, we haven’t bothered to keep a count of our colorful visitors - we only started last year - but based on our tally, last evening was a great success. Perhaps the transgenic, fat-laden candies that we had stocked for the occasion or the new lighting that we set up (we just added a new solar-powered light that spots our house number) vastly contributed to a high visitation. While we recorded 18 groups for a total of 62 individuals last year, we broke that record with 22 groups totaling a small crowd of 82 visitors. Some costumes were pretty good, although no nurse wearing fishnet stocking and other sexy paraphernalia showed up as the media had announced. All goblins, spiders and other bees that came to our door were for the most part polite and didn’t even smash our token pumpkin.

Moab, toy town

We spent the last three days in Moab, southern Utah, a remarkable little town. Situated four hour drive from Park City, on the Colorado River, it was discovered by the Spaniards in the mid 1700s, settled by the Mormons a century later and became famous for uranium mining in the 1950s. Today, it’s become a “toy town” with crowds of all-terrain vehicle riders. It’s also a great place for river running and it has become the de-factor mountain bike capital of North America - if not the world (Moab is famous for its “slick-rock” riding). To top it off, Moab is adjacent to two National Parks, Arches and Canyonland, and we just visited the latter Monday and Tuesday. Tourist season runs pretty much from spring to fall, even though temperatures can get very, very hot in summer. There are basically three types of visitors who come to that desert wonderland: Rednecks that ride motorized vehicles on dirt roads and slick rock (Jeeps, four-wheelers and dirt bikes), adrenaline junkies that raft, kayak and mountain bike, and pseudo-intellectuals like us – with many foreigners among them – who just visit the Parks…