José el Bloggo!

Starting Feb. 20 I will be double-posting to both this blog and a NEW blog (which I hope will be easier for you to use when you add comments .. plus some other features). Let me know what you think. I plan to cut-over, if all goes well, on March 1.

PLEASE visit it, add comments (on the layout, etc. … as well as your comments on the posts themselves, as usual). You should be able to add comments "anonymously" without even having to be a Blogger member.

Give it a look, try it out … the NEW BLOG (replacing this one here) is at: http://josepietri.blogspot.com/

Thanks, Gracias, Merci.

I’m off to the 10th arrondissement to grab some eel for tonight’s dinner. Slippery sucker!

UPDATE: … it is well past the witching (or eeling) hour, going on 2:30am and one last die-hard (the ineffable, stolid Flo). Excellent Odilized dinner of lemon grassed/gingered eel/plerotes with saffron rice and bak choy/soja.
Around the highly convivial table: Odile, Lowry, Anne, Roland,
Fanchette, yours truly, Florence with discussion ranging from Rudolf
Steiner to Freemasons, from the Compagnons to Gian Carlo Menotti. Without mentioning (I will, if I must) my killer-flan-to-die-for (recipe on request) with molto whippéd cream. Ay! Pix to come …

Nothing like regularly (every 7 years or so) cleaning your crudy
kitchen window-fan to feel like you’ve actually acomplished something
on a slow, rainy day.

Dinner at home with Denis, back from his two-week Spanish vacation at Altea (nar Valencia) and with Fanchette, in town from Coucy-le-Château
for a few days. We all got caught up on who, what, where, when of the
last weeks … and our plans for the weeks to come (including the
mid-March "Carnaval" at la Comedia).

We arranged to meet Lowry at Shakespeare and Company bookstore from whence we walked over to Le Saint Severin (next to the fine church of the same name) where we had coffee and some wonderful conversation - we decided to stay for lunch and afterwards went strolling together around the 5th arrondissement. We ended up in front of the photo expo (Est-ce ainsi que les hommes vivent ?) at the Luxembourg gardens. We parted ways there as we had a dinner with our friends, the Texidors, and Lowry was off to a dinner with the best known ex-pat in Paris, Jim Haynes.

We picked up Odile’s mother,Myriam, at her place and the three of us trundled over in the rain to dinner with Guy & Arleni and their friend, Blandine (a back-to-the-country Parisian ,now living, with numerous goats, sheep, cow and some horses, in the Ardèche). Arleni made a SUPERB chapon - my first ever! I finished off dinner with a snifter of Pampero Ron Anejo Aniversario.

An excellent day.

Other than a walk over to Lawry’s (a friend of Sharon of Colorado) hotel (to drop off a "welcome to Paris/see ya soon" note) and a visit to PC City (to look at a possible laptop purchase to replace my ailing ‘puter) it has been a nice lazy day.

We had dinner tonight (lotte en sauce Odile) with Chantal - who is staying with us this weekend while she’s in Paris for meetings (Palestinian support groups). She kindly brought a gift of a bag of super-yummy gingerbread (see the 3 bio gingerpersons cavorting in the pic) made near her village at the Fournil de l’Aubance (merci, Marie !)

… or chatting hacks. In any case I’d been looking for a way to put all my Instant Messaging "personalities" on the SAME platform (as the oil-drillers say) and I’ve finally come across meebo.

As they assert: "Web-based IM chat service Meebo allows you to log into multiple popular IM services AIM/ICQ, Yahoo! Messenger, Jabber/GTalk, and MSN Messenger, all at the same time." I’ve signed up and so it seems … although I haven’t actually connected to anyone yet. SO, if you’re out there dear friends … ping me so I can test this out. Merci.

Dinner tonight at Le Petit Baigneur nearby with Odile the polyglot multi-talent, Jacques the informatique guy, Dominique the law clerk, her Polish friend Mariusz the former dancer (look for news on his restaurant opening -and "Jak z.yczyc’ ogólnie szcze;s’cia " to him)  and our neighbor, Florence the  dermatologist. Wide-ranging conversation: from genealogy to Auschwitz to world travel …and more.

Afterwards Odile and I went to La Comedia , the local watering-hole, where Alison and her buddy "Pitch" showed up ’round midnight. Patricia (the bar owner’s sweetie) had decorated with ceiling-hung hearts (over-decorated ? no way, just look at that pic) for a lateish Valentine’s Day shindig.

I just ran across the Music Genome Project, which purports to answer the question "Can you help me discover more music that I’ll like?" … indeed it seems to go a long way towards that goal with just a click or two. I’ll post more as I use it more.

ADVANCE NEWS: Heading down to Montigny today until early next week - planning to take another shot at a "wine run" to Burgundy mid-week (more details later).

… sont là!

We’re off to a birthday party for Fanchette’s son, Alexis, and his wife, Hélène. His birthday actually falls on today’s date, but hers was earlier (actually the same day as mine) but they’re celebrating together. By the way, the title above is the latest film that Alexis’ production company was involved with - I believe it is one of two French films nominated for best foreign film Oscar. Bonne chance, Alexis!

Question: What if we all decided to celebrate our birthdays on the same day each year, regardless of our actual birth dates? Wouldn’t that simplify a lot of calendar follow-up, e-mailing and residual guilt (when we forget) …

UPDATE on my fast: Today is day six of the fast and I’m feeling OK, not really missing food - although I had slight headaches days 3 and 4. Tonight may be a challenge, we’ll see.