So clearly the city wasn't prepared for this and unfortunately our big marathon relay that was supposed to happen this morning was cancelled :-( ... I did go for a run later in the day though once the snow had calmed down a bit:
I know what you're wondering. You are wondering: "with that nice big river cutting through the city, why did he only run along it for a little bit.. like near the start on the north side and then just a tiny bit near the end there on the south side". (like a psychic, no?).. Anyways, since you've been wondering that I'll partially explain the reasons (yes, I said reasonS). First, we've been running along that #$%&*!@ river multiple times per week for months now. And man does it get boring; you gotta switch things up a little. Second, even if I wanted to run all along the river there are two sub-reasons in this reason of why I just CAN'T: (i) remember how it was snowing like crazy? Well there are some really nice paths that are literally like right ON the water (of course not ON the water but RIGHT beside it) and they are made of mud (sort of) and with this crazy snow and the melting and all that it would have been both insanely muddy and also super slippery and I would have most probably fallen in; and (ii) they're doing all kinds of protection contre les innondations along the riverbanks so in many of these places like just after I cross the river at Parc de l'Ile d'Amour over on the right there they've closed off the paths so they can work.
Catherine really wanted a normal blog post so I have to like be normal (or at least try) and maybe give some pictures and talk about what we've been doing and ... Well, maybe I'm exaggerating when I say that she said that she really wanted one but I told her that I would make one (a normal blog post) and then she told me today that she checked today and that there wasn't one there and so I had better get my act together and in fact she didn't even say that getting the act together thing but you know... Anyways, so what's been up in the land of the Alpes recently? Well, Sandi and I climbed a mountain (Le Grand Colon in the Belledonne) two Thursdays ago with my colleague who picked us up at 5 am and drove us to the "basecamp" (they don't really even come close to calling it basecamp). The summit is at 2400m and it was HARD! We were huffing and puffing like maniacs gettin up that thing trying to keep up with our friend who was just strolling along whistling a happy tune (metaphorically speaking). Our legs hurt like crazy for two days and remember we're like super human Ironmans (TM). Here we are in a super blurry photo at the summit (it is super blurry because it was taken with a phone and there wasn't much light and [most importantly] it was INSANELY windy.. like windy enough to easily knock you over [which it did on multiple occasions]):
By the way, this was WELL before the nouveau 'grand froid' and later in the day in Grenoble I was bustling around wearing a t-shirt having a grand old time in the warm French sun but it was freezing up there with the altitude, the morningness, and (mainly) the crazy wind.
Speaking of mountains and mountainous terrain (the connection is there) I was just in Lausanne and Bern Switzerland for work. It was fine but like most work trips that are for meetings (as opposed to conferences) I could have been anywhere and it wouldn't have made a difference since you're just in the meeting all day and then in the hotel and then in the meeting and then you go home and it's more of a hassle really than anything to travel but it was sort of neat to go to CH as I'd never been. The crazy thing about Bern (that I was able to observe) is that the city itself is very very different from Grenoble in that it is one hilly mo-fo. Grenoble is surrounded by tall mountains but the city itself is as flat as a pancake (side note: I made pancakes this morning with the Fanny Farmer Cookbook recipe and, as always, they were FAN-tastic). BUT, Bern is not flat anywhere in any way, shape, form, structure, or configuration (Grenoble Blog Contest: write your own witty fun slogan for Bern and send it to me before the next posting and you could win a Christmas present from France). I went for a short run in the morning time (so I guess you can sometimes do a few extra things besides work) and every direction you went was either way up or way down and even if you choose the way down direction you of course need to come way back up to make it back to the hotel to like shower and change and then head to the meeting. Funny story re the meeting (well not so much funny as sad and pretty typical everywhere): they had the Nespresso system (of which you, dear reader, are intimately familiar from my last ['weird'] blog post) and I'm seeing those things G-D everywhere. You know, each coffee you want introduces one huge puck of plastic waste to the world. Now, I can complain and complain but really I'm a big part of the problem (in a way.. wait for the conclusion..). You see, if they had had North-American "Tim Horton's" style urn drip coffee I would have complained way more and in fact wouldn't have had any (that shit is gross). But since Nespresso is actually proper coffee (to a certain extent) I had to have a bunch and I had to kill the Earth. They are so evil these meeting organizers.
This coming week (starting tomorrow morning -- well, I guess for most calendars that we're all used to it started today but generally I think when you're a working man [or woman] you think of the 'week' starting on Monday) is only a 3-day week! Thursday (November 1st) is a French holiday and the good people of Xerox are giving us Friday so we get a 4-day weekend. How about that? So we very well might go to Italy but we're running into some snags in the preparation process.. You know, where would we stay? Where would we go? How would we get there? Who would we go with? What would we do in the place that we decide to go? Etc &c and cetera and so forth.
Imagine for a minute that you are an identity thief. For whatever strange, sick, twisted, deranged, ugly, hideous, awful, terrible, destructive, vengeful reason you have decided that you wanted to steal my (or a person's, more generally) identity. You bastard! But, probably I am making your job (aren't I the nice one here?) that much easier by giving you all this information about myself? You (damn you, by the way) know where I work (I wrote it above several times), you know where I travel to, you know what I look like, you know my e-mail address, blah blah blah. Anyways, so that makes me a little nervous about writing all this stuff on here. Since this blog is like so popular and all, there must be thousands (millions?) of you IT's (NY Times style apostrophe on acronym.. don't worry) out there and I'm pretty well doomed. But, since now you know that I know that you know that I know (etc), I think we can all safely assume that there will be no theft of anyone's identity going on here, wouldn't you say? (Oops; sorry Catherine: I just remembered that you were hoping for a normal blog post and I may have just veered off the road a little with that one.. but I was really only doing it to make sure that I continue writing blog posts for you and all the fam without having to worry too much about those evil IT's).
More normal news: we saw Skyfall today! SWEET MOVIE! Now that was a JB film in its finest. Not Casino Royale caliber in my opinion, but very very good and clearly -- CLEARLY -- way better than Quantum of Solace (what a disappointment that was!). I won't give anything away of course but it was very different from a JB film I thought but still quite quite quite good and entertaining and all that. But here's something crazy from our foray to the cinema: I was just about to call Tom (in fact I did) because I saw a billboard-type affiche thing that had Tom Cruise (in case of ambiguity: I was about to call Tom D.) on it and it said "Jack Reacher" on it and I was like NO WAY! Anyways, so I did call Tom (D) but he wasn't there and THEN before the JB film started there was an actual preview for the JR film and it really is true: Tom Cruise is playing Jack Reacher! RIDICULOUS! Reacher is supposed to be like 7 feet tall (at least) and is supposed to be a HUGE guy.. that's like one of his MAIN PRINCIPAL NUMBER ONE characteristics.. And they get Tom CRUISE??? Doule-U, Tee, Eff. I'll still go see it though.
No comments:
Post a Comment