Our Neighbors en Francais

These are our neighbors here in France, they're really friendly, and they don't talk incessantly about the "great war". They'll eat all the sucre you've got, straight out of your pockets and leave you needing a shower...but their english is impeccable and there is no language barrier what- so-ever. We love them and think the feeling is mutual, and we are making a special stop at the apple orchard tomorrow on the way to their place. A little cider for us...plusiers pomme pours les chevalles.

O.K. so I'm a horse nut for those of you who don't know it already...and I'm freaking because the Normandie Horse Show is here, (St Lo) 2 weekends, and it the biggest equine event in France! SO psyched...forget this movie...what movie? photos des chevalles to come...

Vache E Poisson

I really don't know where to

 begin folks...Normandie is one of the loveliest places I've ever been. The people are amazingly kind and helpful, the rolling fields are full of the richest green grass, which seems to grow the plumpest chevalles and most "belles" vaches, ever! Big mauve colored geese families, strut about flowery fields and dip into ponds live with giant poisson. 

Huge ancient trees  sleep in forests primeval, where ivy-covered  chapel

s and stone greenhouses topped with leaded glass, crumble beneath the ferns.

Restauranteurs serve huge buckets of creamy Cotentin Penisula mussels and make you sop up the sauce with a baguette which earlier in the day was "bungeed" to the back of a bicycle...and you sit around for 5 hours drinking wine and calvados with butter dripping down your arms, all the while nestled inside of a giant apple cider barrel turned 

into a restaurant booth.

The high gothic churches tower over the tiny villages and on Friday or Saturdays, local markets jump with people shopping their way through tables, piled with olives, fruit, bread, fish, crustaceans, meats and cheese. And on Sundays the church bell out your window rings with dissonant chords for an hour, demanding that you wake and pay attention, and get yourself off to church. 

After waking you wander down to find a real croissant waiting for you and hop in your compact diesel car to zip off to the coast where French Trotters are racing at the seaside hippodome. At the races you eat giant grilled sausages seved on baquette with moutarde, frites and no plates. There seems to be so much less waste here, and people have less...yet more...to me, so much more. More grass, more quiet, more politeness, more old stone houses, more bicycles, more sheep, more bakeries, more wine and more time.....ahhh more time.

Speaking of time...

...making a movie on French time...well, that's a whole other story, and those of you in the film business would be in for a shocker, and the faint of heart...well, I wouldn't even try. Wow! challenges at EVERY turn when it comes to this job. Too many to mention on 4 hours sleep, but as I said, the horses here are amazing, and their babies wobbling in the pastures are the most precious things I've laid eyes on. 

Photo Managment in France and a 1st look at my place

Hi All, 

Yes, I did get a new camera and I LOVE it! It's the Panasonic Luminex. I gave up the better macro features, (a bit of a bummer for me Michelle, I'll might miss really great flower prOn) for the 10x zoom in a compact, which is really great for me on this job. I love the clean, sleek design and it's taking really nice pictures. It's proving easy to travel with too.

So, Jeri said in a comment from my first post form France, "We need pictures, many many pictures" and Nathan said "rub our noses in it" and he's already really jealous, (which is nice) so I have a qurey regarding images and uploading for you all...

What is the best way for me to manage and upload photos and albums of this trip? A lot of the pictures I'll be taking are work related and will soon be deleted (and never uploaded), but I'll have a lot of great, personal and scenic stuff mixed in that I want to separate out and upload to my blog or online album or something. I'm on a Mac, and am using iphoto and gmail now, but to upload to my blog seems so slow, one image at a time.

You know I'm new to the bloggisphere...so help is appreciated...keep it simple for me and have at it! Thanks!

Oh, BTW check out the first view of my B&B at 10PM...what's up with that? It stays light SO late. The church, (Fr: eglise) in the background is St. Mere Eglise. WWII buffs will know it as the place the paratrooper, John Steele hung from the spire all night after dropping down for D-Day landings before cutting himself down to join in the d'embarquement battles, (depicted in Zanuck's 60's movie, The Longest Day with John Wayne). NOW A stone statue of a paratrooper hangs on the other side of the spire, (out of view) with a real parachute, billowing in the Norman sky.

Normandie - First Post

Oh my. I have arrived! Oh my.

Travel went incredibly smoothly, and I'll take that as a good omen for the job to come, (fingers crossed behind back). But no matter how the job goes, I'm in France, I'm in France, I have new French underpants (sort of, but I bought them at a mall in the U.S. before I left)!

I've really needed to keep pinching myself over and over on this one for the last few days...I barley comprehend the sudden turn of events in my life, my work, my life...in any case, as far as I can tell through the travel-induced haze,...I'm in Normadie, France about to embark on a really scary-looking movie job. Yikes!

So tired. So tired...yet So completely in awe of my current surroundings. And made all the more surreal by the sudden onset of this job. One week ago, "not-hubby" was in NY looking to lock in a job that would take us to within blocks of the fabled LM, Nathan Gendzier for the entire summer...and now, a week later, here I am... lying in bed in the dark, (after 17 hours of travel) having made it to my room upstairs in the little stone B&B, in St. Mere Eglise, France. I am just a few miles from Utah and Omaha beaches, and can faintly smell cowshit coming in over the pastoral countryside and through the tiny single skylight above my head. Wow.

I barely know what time it is, but it's late (GMT?, Paris time??? internally-EST???)!

Our movie, (more details to come after tomorrows first meeting in the early a.m.) is about a particular corps of paratroopers who held an important bridge (La Fiere) over the flooded Meredet River, and took back the few surrounding towns, (one of them, the town I'm in right now - St Mere Eglise) on D-Day plus 3, June 9th 1944, despite horrible communications and reconnaissance failures. WWII buffs, (or barley "buffs") should know about these paratrooper missions pre and post D-Day, that took place all over this part of Normandy, thus allowing the amphibious landings on the beaches, their foothold in Europe. Think, Band of Brothers (on a smaller budget).

Anyway, much more to say about it all, but I MUST sleep.

Final note though: The actual Manor House that was held by Germans, and then taken back in this " Battle of La Fiere", is the actual B&B from which I now write my blog and will live for the next 3 months! And I swear it could still be 1944 by the looks of everything! Amazing!

Bon Nuit.

Friday Cat Blogging

Look how Hazel snuggles up next to Camper.

Awwwww so cute!

O.K. Nathan, I get it.

Viable Post

Tonight my dog was looking at me...I mean straight at me. More than usual. It was, in fact, weird. I took it for the prescient powers that only the "Florida Brown Dog" exhibits i.e:

–When he knows before you do, that you're thinking of going on a run, (but you haven't even gotten up off the couch to get your sneakers on, and you're probably going to crap out and not even run anyway)....he's there...I mean WAY there. He's ready to go. He's bouncing 3 feet in the air by the door.

–Or when you think to yourself about going out on your boat cuz it's a really nice day, but you haven't even moved away from your bowl of Rice Crispies yet...he's gone...I mean gone...already slinked deep into the garage, so as not to be noticed and risk reliving his one and only boat trip which REALLY did not go well for any of us, (humans and dogs would all agree). Basically if you're on a boat trip you want to stay in the boat, at least for the very fast portion of the trip when you're tearing across the bay...and if you do choose to disembark, it's good to not aim you little body directly into the 150 hp engine and prop. –Just something for folks, (human and canine) to consider.

In short my special breed of dog, known as a Florida Brown, has special powers.

Tonight when he looked at me, I thought he said something in French. I thought he said "I like staying at your folks place when you're on a job, they feed me a lot of table scraps". Not really too far fetched.

His tongue was really lolling about as he said all this this. His jaw was flapping, he was actually foaming at the mouth. Actually foaming and waving his paws about his face. Hmmm–trying to tell me something, something cryptic, something...French? I mean, this dog is amazing!

So, I moved closer to him...I crawled over to his bed and leaned in...

O.K. turns out, what he was trying to tell me was, "mom, I ate a piece of wood this evening and I don't know why, but it's uncommonly and painfully jammed between my lower teeth and I really need some assistence. Help".

O.K., so my dog doesn't have special powers. But he is a my Florida Brown, and I'm really going to miss him while I'm away. And, I got the jammed stick out of his teeth.

Not a great picture of a Florida Brown 

(Taken with the built in camera of the new MacBook that I just bought today! Yay!)

Chateau Blanc Biscuits

Je sera hors du pays consommant des biscuits, en allant camargue les chevaux, en creusant des tranchees et en mangeant au Chateau Blanc Normandie. Au revoir pour maintenant.

Friday Cat Blogging (well, sort of)

Shoot! It's about 10p.m. Friday night, and I almost missed my Friday Cat Blogging. Apologies to all who waited with baited or is it bated breath? (A nod to Nathan's post, and fellow word-nerds "Talk Wordy To Me"). I didn't find anything about bated or baited on the Talk Wordy To Me blog though.

Anyway...my cat Hazel's breath is rotten, but she sure is cute!

O.K. so, technically this isn't Hazel, and technically this isn't cat blogging....but at least I tried. My camera got destroyed by a rougue wave on the sailing trip and I'm waiting for my next work gig to get a new one.

All Dessert Party w/ Champagne

Key Lime Ring...check it out Val

Yesterday I asked a friend for recipe advice because I was invited to an "All Dessert Party" (Sounds good don't it?) which I attended last night. And it was...good, that is.

She posted a great recipe for me. Desert Party! For Diana! Official thanks pal.

Unfortunately I did not make the dessert....or any dessert for that matter, but instead, rode my bike to a suburban supermarket and bought, (no bartering, no baking here) a classic-looking Key Lime Pie, which sneakily I slid onto a charming little plate and passed off as my own...HA HA! Got you guys! "My" pie fit in quite nicely with the home baked chocolate-chunk cookies, the hand-churnned ice cream with blueberry sauce, the mousse parfaits, and champage. Yes, champagne too!

Are all "All Dessert Parties" accompanied by champagne you ask? Not all...but when the intrepid hostess gets herself down on bended knee, (amongst cookie crumbs and blueberry sauce) in front of her long-time boyfriend and asks for his hand in marriage...then YES, you need champagne!!!!! 

CONGRATULATIONS VAL and DEAN!!!!!!!

Val, you are a courageous woman.

It was terrific all around and my friends recipe surely would have been another tummy jammin' treat. So thanks again pal. 

I must add that it wasn't sheer laziness or poor planning that led me to cheat on the pie, (a cheat far greater than Bisquick I must add) but it was a new and sudden job prospect that will bring me to my recipe-posting pals hood in the real near future. Look out preggy woman...I will see that round belly of your in person soon...yes I will!

Baby Citrus

Well it looks like the goods will be plump and ready to eat, squeeze, and drink by the time you northern dwellers come on down for a visit this winter. We had really fragrant lime and tangerine blossoms a couple of weeks ago, and now....babies. LOOK!

Key Lime Baby

Tangerine Baby

Community Baby - Plump and ready to eat!

Young Limes

A friend of mine posted a great picture of one of her ducks eggs in her hand just like this, so I thought I'd respond in a geographically correct way...this is todays egg-like delivery here on the sub-tropical, suburban, ranchette.

Our Capt. and our 4th Mate

It's the British Virgin Islands!!!!!!!!!!

Shoot. Nathan is on my ass....does this guy do anything else but blog???

O.K. So Julia won. It's the BVI's. Amazing.

YAY. Way too easy though. Now you need to guess why our boats seem so small and why Shawn is giving a shirt to a homeless guy? 

Where In The World Is Tropicaligal?

Where in the world is Tropicaligal?

I kinda hate to rub it in...or do I?

I didn't say specifically where we were vacationing...thought it might be fun to guess.

So my first picture is of one of the many favorite places we found to loll away the hours. The Soggy Dollar Bar. Go Fish.

Vacation from Vacation

Posting:

Back soon.

On Vay-cay. No computers where we're sailing! Ouch!

Friday Cat Blogging (an homage)

Last year our cat Hazel hit a truck. A white pick-up. The truck was o.k., and the driver was not hurt...as a matter of fact he was so fine, that he didn't even stop or slow down, but just continued down our quite little 25 mph street at more than 45 mph. See he was fine.

Hazel on the other hand, (not being made of steel yet, but fat and fur mostly) did not fare as well. She was fairly well...broken. After months of internment, (I will post her letters from that dark period in a future blog, if I can get the rights) a better cat emerged from a stinky cage. Armed now with bionic pins and plates in her body and a lust for sleeping, eating and lounging the likes of which I've never seen...Hazel went forth to lounge professionally about our home.

Today,...a Friday...,which makes for good Friday Cat Blogging, Hazel decided to re-enact her accident using our neighbors Honda. 

It's good to see she can finally laugh about it.

Play With Jackson

Hey, I don't think anybody was listening here....cuz I got no kinda response about this Pollack link. I wasn't just suggesting that you go and read some boring Art History book excerpt about Jackson....I was saying you HAVE to check out this link. Come on people. Play with me.

Hungry For Change Bake Sale!

Hey, Check this one out. I absolutely love it.

Organize a yummy bake sale in your neighborhood for Move On's, Obama Campaign.

Join us, join great communities like Brattleboro, VT, (yes the town that passed a new law to arrest George Bush and Dick Cheney for "crimes against the constitution" upon entering the township!) in baking for change.

ORGANIZE NOW

"Democracy Is Not A Spectator's Sport"

Check out another blog where people are getting on board and offer recipes and support for your sale.

On purely image alone...

No Contest!

...or you try making stale, old, "McSame" cookies...but they probably wouldn't taste very good.

Nifty AND Thrifty

This is probably all over the internet already. I got it from my dad a few days ago. I've just got to post it. I love shit like this....but it just makes me say, "those bastards!"

This one goes out specially to my nifty thrifty friend. You know who you are. :)

Pollock-esque

More on the porch floor project:

After exploring a bunch of ideas using cats, leaves and other household items coated with paint, (the cat by the way, could not be found after "the incident" for her photo)...

...I took one more look at a painting for inspiration  and I got started...

Wait, that's not it...

that's it...

A bit of practice on paper first...

...and then on to the porch floor! I was nervous, I mean, we have have to live here you know...but it came out alright. I like it. I may even love it! It was fun, and not as hard as I thought it would be. Maybe I channeled Pollock, (minus the alcoholism) for a minute there. Anyway, I definitely went with Abstract Expressionism.

I call it: Porch Floor

I'm sitting on Porch Floor right now.

Love him or hate him...to more experience the man himself  DO check out this Jackon P. link. Bug Out!

What Is Painting?

What is painting?

One definitions says, it's the  practice of applying color to a surface, and when used in an artistic sense, the term painting means the use of this activity in combination with drawing, composition and other aesthetic considerations in order to mainifest the expressive and conceptual

 intention of the practitioner.

William Hunt, in "Talks About Art" says painting can describe everything which can be seen and suggest every emotion which can be felt! Art reaches back into the babyhood of time, and is mans only lasting monument!"

Hmmmm

Well for me, it's about a quiet Sunday afternoon, a looming thunderstorm, a few cans of paint, some disposable brushes, and a brand new purple porch floor.

Shawn did the detailed work here...now it's my turn.

...and I need some inspiration. 

Where to start? where to start?...

Realism

leaf.

  dog.

Surrealism

cat wearing shoes

Cubism

Expressionism

not sure?

but I think I'm getting some inspiration. Now let me see what I can do with it...more later