A is for arc

as in arc de triomphe, where knox and i spent new year's eve three years ago (well, we were on the champs élysées... with about 2,500 other champagne-fueled revelers...). the arc was designed in 1806 in honor of all those who fought for the glory of napoleon's france, and its iconography depicts heroic young frenchmen in the buff fighting germanic warriors in chain mail (rrrowr! next time i'll have to pay closer attention). it's one of the most famous landmarks in paris, and it's hard to believe that the french had considered charles ribart's elephant triomphal in its place:



can you imagine?? and they thought the eiffel tower was tacky!

FRAVINAbécédaire

so, monday at the library: i'm staring at my cursor, humming the theme song to "sanford and son" inside my head (don't ask - it's a mystery)... when it hits me: i am not wasting enough time on my blog! hours later, knox introduces me (virtually) to nina, a british gal who keeps a much hipper blog than i do.... i'm pretty sure knox has a geek-crush on her, but that's okay. she's smart. and she does the most fab alphabetical entries on all sorts of random things.

it's an abécédaire, as they say here. you know, a picture alphabet! "A is for alamo, B is for bloated..." (which, given the amount of cheese i've been eating lately, would not be so terribly hard to capture in image form!)

so this next installment, which will be 26 posts in all, goes out to knox, redd foxx, and nina. my cursor will mock me no more! stay tuned for entry numéro un: A is for arc.

au revoir fall leaves, bonjour winter freeze

the fountain at jardin du luxembourg

happy new year! bonne année! chuc mung nam moi!

i don't know about you, but we'd just about had enough of 2008 chez barnes peden. i love the new year. i usually make it a point to spend the first day of the year in my pjs, which given my line of work, could happen any old day, but i try to limit it to the first... and some sundays... now, knox and i are not known for our new year's eve antics ("amateur night," as he calls it), but this year was particularly... umm... boring? since knox was leaving bright and early in the morning for nyc, we spent our evening packing and doing laundry (though not quickly enough sadly - we stepped away for a moment only to return to a locked-up laverie with our clothes still in the dryer! he had to leave without his favorite argyle socks!). knox did cook up a delicious batch of walnut chicken (a peden family favorite), and we managed to stay up till midnight, but... well, i'd wager the frozen horses had a wilder night than we did.

a horse made of bronze covered in ice