Le deluge

I think I killed Jocelyn.

Victor be warned: this bike trip was, I think Joc and Tim will agree, most entertainingly disastrous. To give you an idea: this photo was taken before things went bad. Details next week, or thereabouts, after I get back from the beaches of the Mediterranean.

Apres moi, le deluge

It figures, that after two solid weeks of hot sun, that we would end up with this forecast just as Amynah and I are expecting a gazillion visitors, many of whom are coming from some of the rainier areas of Canada.

NB Blogging will be even lighter than it has been this week, as a result my diverting my attentions from entertaining you, my dear readers, to entertaining said visitors (nine, or roughly three times that of my actual readership). And no, they're not all showing up at the same time, though damn nearly.

Conversations funnier to the people having them, an occasional series:

Prompted by a recent education reform in France that will boost the number of hours of weekly math instruction, Amynah tried to imagine a typical French math problem:

“If a farmer produces three tones of grapes, making 5,012 bottles of wine, which are then taxed at 20 percent, how long before his workers go on strike?”

To be fair, they also call it the stone gate

Went for another hike this weekend, this time to a mountaintop rock formation known as “The Devil’s Gate.” With this, and the Devil’s Rock we visited a couple of months ago, I am left wondering why the otherwise pious people of Alsace are so eager to attribute the more interesting geological formations in their part of Creation to his Satanic Majesty.


I also do not know what to make of this statue, which marked the beginning of our hike. Is it, perhaps, the Devil’s Zipper? Making the forest behind it the Devil’s Boxers? The mind boggles.

The cat did not come back

Garfield minus Garfield. Brilliant.

May Day! May Day!

_{Gunther and Bruno, feeling love bloom}

It’s May Day, an official holiday in France. In addition to its association with labour (I can hear* the parade of the class struggle drawing nearer even as I write this), May 1st is the official start of spring.

Starting yesterday, itinerant flower sellers were hawking little nosegays of mugeut on the streets of Strasbourg. Men are supposed to buy them for ladies they fancy, and so I ran out this morning and bought one from the lady who’d set up shop across from our apartment.


* The musicians have settled into a reggae theme this time around. Not their best work.