I'm Considering Vegetarianism

I love to cook things that "cook themselves". You just put them in the oven with some spices, a little wine, or something easy like that and then take it out and dinner's ready. That's why I like small birds, like cornish hens in the US and quail anywhere I can find it.

Last night's dinner took on a new dimension when I looked closely at the quail I'd bought. Yikes. Their heads are still on! I don't like to look into the eyes of my dinner. This includes fish. I also don't want to see feet, tails, or fur of any kind.



Of course Terry wasn't around to do the "dirty work". So, out came my knife. I tried not to look too closely (even when I took the pictures). I wonder why they left the heads on? No one would want to eat them, I hope! They are tiny.

I felt pretty brave after cutting off their heads. It wasn't very hard, since they're small. But, this doesn't mean I'm considering a job at the butcher shop in my neighborhood. Cutting the heads off almost took the fun away from cooking these lovely little things. But, I managed to cook them and eat one!




Without the heads, of course.

Dupuis, the French "Smith"

We are having dinner tonight at a woman's apartment. She gave us all the directions that we need. We hope.

In Paris, you need the person's street address, the person's phone number (for emergencies), the front door code and the person's last name to get into the inner door of the building. There are normally two locked doors, one on the street (where you punch in a code) and one inside the building that leads to a staircase or elevator. The second door usually has a buzzer that buzzes the person's apartment, you talk to them and if you're invited, they buzz you in.

For large buildings, you also need to know which building they live in which is usually designated A, B, C, etc.

Tonight we're thinking there might be a problem. We're going to visit a person named Dupuis who lives in a large building. Dupuis in France is the equivalent of Smith or Brown in the US. The woman told us that there are three Dupuis families in her building. And she lives in Building B. Imagine how many are spread over A-D combined.

Other common names seem to all start with D -- Dupont, Dugas.

We're leaving a little bit early just to sort through the Dupuis buttons on the inner courtyard door. Maybe they should have names like Dupuis-1 (the first Dupuis to live there) through Dupuis-3. That would work nicely.

Wish us luck. It's cold outside and we'll be buzzing every Dupuis in the building until we find the place that's got dinner cooking. Or until one of the other Dupuis families calls the police on the crazy couple carrying flowers that's buzzing every door.

Things Disappear

While we're in one place, things disappear from the other place. They are things that I like, that I rely on. I get on a plane and "poof" it's gone!

Restaurants and shops are the businesses that do the disappearing act the most often. But there's also the beloved hair stylist or esthéticien that moves away.

This time, I've lost two things important to my pleasure, although not my daily well-being.

L'etudiant, a dive restaurant and bar with great, inexpensive food has changed hands. We went by the other night and they were painting the inside white. White is the only color that wasn't present in the old, beloved L'etudiant. Cracked brown plastic booths, mosaic tiled floor, a wooden rustic old bar created the atmosphere of the place. I'm sure the prices will go up and the quality will go down.

But, the thing that has caused the most grief so far is the loss of my tennis racquet stringer. First match in Paris and I broke a string. I didn't think much about it at the time because we had a good stringer at a shop in Montparnasse called Roissy Sports. The next day, we went to the store and it was closed, "Fermeture Travail".

I went home and called their number and a man answered and informed me that the store will be closed until June (read November) and that the stringer was at his house and not working. Yikes. This lead to a flurry of internet searches and a few failed trips around Paris. The worst was at Decathalon at Madeline where the woman stringer suggested the "bas de gamme" stings (low quality) at a price of Euro 42.95. We dashed out of the store since a good string should cost less than 20.

Another search yielded something quite surprising, a tennis shop in our neighborhood on a street that we go down all the time. I called and yes, he was there! We went, dropped off the racquet and found out he could string it in one hour for Euro 15.

Now if I can find a restaurant to replace L'etudiant, I'll be even. There's even a cute boutique that took the place of a beloved card shop in the neighborhood.

Imperfect

Not me, what a silly thought!

The verb tense -- "imparfait". It's driving me crazy this week.

I'm in school these days to try to improve my french. Yes, I can communicate, understand, read and write, but it's not pretty, not elegant, in a word, imperfect.

The first few classes were a breeze. Even though I'm at least twice the age of the next oldest pupil, I seem to be keeping up, even achieving at a high level.

Until yesterday. A worksheet was introduced. We had to read a long paragraph with a description of a person's choice of education and career, based on experiences as a child. Easy enough. I understand it all. We were asked to place the activities and occurrences in the order in which they happened. Since some happened at the same or almost the same time, this was a little bit challenging but I whipped through that exercise with flying colors.

Then, the XXXX started to happen. Below this activity, on the same page it asked us to put other events on a timeline, with the verb and verb tense below. I froze. All at once, I was reading Chinese. My mind was spinning, out of control. When this happens, nothing enters or exits, it's a free-fall. The teacher came to the rescue, patiently explained it, I pretended to understand but was still in free-fall.

She gave us homework, also incomprehensible. I've re-done it at least 10 times, I've gone through an entire eraser on the end of my pencil.

Out come the books. I've applied myself to the theory, the rules of this verb tense. Terry thinks it's easy. I hear others use it with ease. Of course, I don't know if they're using it correctly or not, since I don't understand it at all. I'll be studying this today, trying to make sense out of the imperfect.