summer = bière pèche

bière pèche is a blond beer with a shot of peach schnapps... it's fruity, fizzy deliciousness and a summer staple in paris. the french don't really do beer, we've discovered, and when they do, it's often preferred with a shot of peach or cherry. they actually love their flavored syrups here - want to look like a local next time you're in paris? order a perrier menthe - a perrier over ice with a shot of mint syrup.

but back to the beer...

(poor kp - he really doesn't like having his picture taken all the time)

there are plenty of lovely spots to enjoy a bière pèche around town, but our favorite is the place flora tristan in the neighborhood. knox discovered this place pretty early after we moved in, and we made it our regular hang out. the servers all know us (in fact, everybody knows knox around here - the guys at félicie - another café we frequent - the baker, the folks who run our favorite vegetable stand, the italian traiteur... the guys at the wine shop on rue daguerre even gave us a going-away present to thank us for all our business over the last two years! i wouldn't be surprised if knox exchanged emails with them!)

you won't find many tourists here - we're the only anglophones around - and it's so quiet and pretty. i especially dig this old boulangerie. you can barely make out the deco lettering over the red door. isn't it fabulous?

the left bank - and the 14 arrondissement in particular - is a decidedly unhip part of paris: not much nightlife, a lot of families, kind of staid... "bougie" as knox would say. but we love it here. and that's not just the beer talking.

clean pajamas

i think i've said this before... i'm a lucky woman. not only does knox read every sentence i write, but he cooks my dinner and does my laundry too. today i went out on a class tour of the marché dejean in the 18th - this area of town has a large concentration of african and caribbean immigrants, and the market is overflowing with super vibrant fabrics from west africa, beef kidneys and lamb tripe, hair weaves, and a range of skin-lightening creams. add to that the roaming vendors offering DVDs, sunglasses, stolen cigarettes, and designer purses, and you've got yourself a pretty exciting place. sadly, there are no photos to share. the vendors get a little cagey when folks start breaking out their cameras.

anyway, while i was off playing the american tourist, knox took care of business chez nous. as you can probably imagine, getting out of france is just as irritating as getting settled here is, so i am happy to let him take the lead on all things administrative. after lunch, he busied himself making photocopies of my offer letter at tulane, my french residency permit, and our marriage license so he could send them via registered mail to... get this... our internet provider!! is this not insane? it seems like a whole mess of trouble just to turn off the internet service. but it is soooo french.

and after that, he did our laundry. i don't know how or when laundry became his job, but not a day goes by that i don't thank my lucky stars it did. i HATE laundry. so i came home to find little mounds of clean clothes all over our room. let me tell you, nothing beats ending a long day in a pair of fresh, clean pajamas!

what a man!

happy birthday USA, or, k&l kick over a nest

i must admit, kp&i don't typically celebrate the 4th, especially since we've been in paris. last year i think we literally did nothing - i probably went to the library - but this year the 4th happened to fall on the first sunday of the month, which is free public museum day in paris... so we rallied.

we decided to go out to the musée marmottan monet in the 16th, where they've put on a great exhibit about monet and 20th-century abstract painting (richter, rothko, pollock, etc. - good stuff). unfortunately, the marmottan monet is a private museum, which means we had to shell out 14 bucks to get in. but it was worth it to see all those water lilies... and certainly for the 20 minutes we spent decorating our dream house around this beauty:

gerhard richter (1932-)

then we took a walk around the bois de boulogne, the wooded area that marks the western border of paris. it's 2.5 times bigger than central park and is apparently THE hotspot for transvestite prostitutes, but you wouldn't know that during the day... we made our way around the lac supérieur, admiring the giant, skinny trees (beech? some kind of cedar?)

then we walked over to the palais de tokyo (missing the museum hours by about 3 minutes. doh!), had a beer on the terrace, and grabbed one more shot of the eiffel tower. you really can't have too many, can you?

naturally, we worked up a pretty good appetite with all that walking, so over to saint anne we went for some noodles at our favorite japanese restaurant in town, higuma. kp always gets a little fussy at this place - the service is slooooow.

kp's grumpy face

i was ready for bed at this point, but kp had other plans for us. after a good bit of needling, he talked me into stopping into harry's new york bar for ONE cocktail. "it's the 4th of july! we have to go to the american bar!" according to wikipedia, harry's is one of the most famous bars in the world - coco chanel used to drop in on occasion - but i'd never heard of it.

the ONE cocktail (that, for kp, then became 5...)

i went with a g&t - the classic summer bevvy - and kp had an old fashioned. the bar was quiet, the night fresh, the barman snooty but totally on top of his game... everything was fine... and then, we kicked over a nest.

note: "kicked over a nest" in the family vernacular refers to a rare social phenomenon whereby two unsuspecting, merry travelers happen upon an unknown location (usually a roadside diner or a local bar) and encounter a heretofore unseen species.

the nest: the "writer," the retired judge from tempe, the gay jeweler, lb

these pennants were everywhere... kp entertained himself by taking pictures of them once he'd grown weary of our new friends (ps, go green wave)

kp, post-harry's self portrait

happy birthday USA. i think you're going to feel that one in the morning.

creative living

as part of the summer program i teach for, we all have to live onsite with the students in a citadines apartment/hotel in the neighborhood. bob is not exactly thrilled with this development, and i can't say that i blame him. the 3 of us - and ALL our stuff - are sharing a space no larger than our bedroom back at home... it's cozy, to say the least.

so cozy, apparently, that bob has had to make the TV his home base...

"ahh, hotel living... this is the life!"

walking tour...

i never get tired of walking through this city... and have planned to walk myself silly in the few weeks we have left here. i want to wander through every single quartier, taking as many pictures as i can, and stopping as often as possible for a glass of rosé or a bite of cheese. heaven!

kp, my favorite person to wander the city with

st. gervais

street poster magic, right bank

l'hôtel de ville

notre dame

view from the pont d'arcol

Z is for festival de jaZZ!

a few weeks ago we went to the jazz festival at the marché aux puces (antique/flea market) in st. ouen. this is a very well-known parisian flea market that we have carefully avoided until now because of its size (huuuge! i prefer the smaller versions) and location (far from us). but not long ago, a couple of my very favorite parisiens moved into an apartment smack dab in the middle of st. ouen, so we've changed our tune.

delph and fan fan

side note: i met delphine online in 2006, when i answered her ad for a conversation exchange. it wasn't long before we were hanging out as friends, though, since we soon discovered we have a lot in common (we both like to dance, we like to make art (well, i entertain myself with scissors and glue. delphine actually paints), we both love to travel...) i was looking to practice my french but i made a good friend too. what luck!

it was a great day - good friends, groovy old stuff to look at, music on nearly every corner, dancing, cool weather...it was a little too cool for june, if you ask me, but it gave me an excuse to break out my new leather jacket, and knox looks so cute in that scarf...

really, who could ask for a better sunday afternoon?

joyeuse fête des pères!

happy father's day to my dear old dad! a few years ago i scanned a bunch of family pics onto my computer, and looking through them today, i realized i have only a very few pics of my dad! i guess that's what happens when you're always the one behind the camera (thanks, dad, for taking so many great pics all those years!)

i did find a few recent-ish ones, though..

father's day, 2003: on our way to horse shoe bay

2004: dad and lib come to san fran

2007: on the front porch in dallas

while i'm at it, i'll send a big happy dad's day to my dad-in-law, who, by the way, is the best dad-in-law i've ever had!

knox and jim, circa 1981? doesn't this one just melt your heart? i love it.

...and a little comic relief

j&j come to san fran, july 2004

wish we were there to spoil you, dads... but we send lots of love. and you should know that knox and i consider ourselves pretty darn lucky to have a couple of dads as great as you two.

untitled

i never realized how difficult it would be to finish the dissertation and leave paris at the very same moment in time... all i want to do is run outside and play. i want to go take pictures, eat confit de canard at lunch, drink champagne at the bois de vincennes, take evening bike rides, scour the book stalls on the seine, spend an afternoon drawing notre dame (possibly also whilst eating duck and sipping champagne - why not?). i need to soak it all up!

but instead, i am more often than not stuck inside, in front of my computer or at the library...

fortunately, inside has its own charms:

let's call this one "photographer descending a staircase" (fully clothed, bien sûr). it's not as inspiring as marcel duchamp's version, naturally...

"nude descending a staircase" (1912) marcelduchamp.net

but the checked floor and yellow door make me so happy that i almost don't mind being stuck inside all day.

runaway kitty

it's warm here (not as warm as it is there, i'm sure: today's high was somewhere in the mid-80s), so we've had our windows wide open lately... bob was, of course, very interested in this development. he'd spent all winter either on top of our modem, under the covers or tucked behind the space heater (singed kitty fur - yuk)... but once he saw this, he got himself a new spot.

the birds are back - it's like "24" for him

at first we were very careful, only letting him sit in this window and only while one of us was sitting there with him. but we have our own lives, after all, so eventually we slacked a bit. kp and i, as it turns out, have very different 'parenting' styles... he said, "no way, he'll make a break for freedom." i said, "where's he going to go? it's fine." and it was until we looked out the kitchen window last weekend to find bob in the neighbor's courtyard.

i thought we could trust him here. i thought he would just watch our exhibitionist neighbor do her modern dance routines like we do during dinner (first window to bob's left)


"ha ha! i'm out of here, suckers!"

well, i couldn't have been more wrong. you can tell he's checking for us here, getting ready to go for it... knox had to run around the block to get into this courtyard while i stood at the window calling to bob. he instantly regretted his decision, of course, and was mraowing semi-frantically while i cooed and sang 'twinkle twinkle little star' to him. fortunately knox got to him before he wondered off into the maze of parisian courtyards... if he'd slipped out somehow, we never would have found him.

what an exhausting adventure! (he's lost all window privileges, btw)

Y is for yaourt/yogurt

yaourt :: yogurt

if winter was all about mariage frères green tea with petit écolier cookies, this spring we've discovered the many uses of plain greek yogurt. french yogurt is good, and we've eaten our fair share, but greek really is better. and think of plain yogurt like a painter's canvas - so many possibilities!

here are two of our favorites:

**the homemade creamsicle**

1 C greek yogurt

1 C oj

1 C strawberries, raspberries, whatever berries you like, really

2 t vanilla extract (the original recipe calls for vanilla bean pods...? too much work)

1 heaping T clover honey

i added half a giant banana last time, which i think is a nice touch. otherwise, it's pretty tart.

toss it all in the blender and pour into popsicle molds (we use old yogurt glasses, which also make great picnic wine glasses. you can't eat them like a popsicle though because of the way the glass is shaped, but that hasn't diminished my enjoyment one bit.)

**greek treat**

1 C greek yogurt

a handful of dried apricots, cut into bite-size pieces

a handful of sliced, toasted almonds

a good drizzle of honey

the lousy quality of the light isn't helping this last pic much, but i must say, this is SO GOOD. there was a two-week period in march where i ate it daily. sometimes twice a day.

bon appétit!