"Aye, There's the rub!"

Well, when I did my posting yesterday, I forgot that I have to work this evening. So I will miss handing out treats to the little princesses, monsters and goblins that would be coming down our street.

I came to work dressed as a Cowboy. Yeah, I know-not super original. I can see my daughter or a real cowboy laughing their asses off...

For those of you who don't recognize the above figure, that is Lucky Luke-a French comic, or "BD", or "Bande Dessine`" In France, there are TONS of hard cover comics covering a variety of subjects. Lucky Luke is an older strip that really hits on the French fascination of the American West. My other favorites, besides Asterix, are "Les Rugbymen"and "Les Femmes en Blancs"(Women in White), which is a BD about Nurses.(shocking, I know)

There is a town in France called Angouleme that has a HUGE comics festival every year. I have passed through Angouleme, on my way to Biarritz. It's on the TGV line that hits Paris-Orleans-Poitiers-Angouleme-Bordeaux-Biarritz and stops just short of the Spanish Border.It's a neat looking town, and who knows, someday, I might make it there for the festival. http://www.bdangouleme.com/

It's always easy  to wallow in a pity-party if you think you have been having a bad week-and you hear people in the States moan and bitch about their lives all of the time: My job sucks, my boss sucks, my kids are annoying, my spouse doesn't understand me anymore and the dog pissed on the carpet again...

Leave it Southern California-particularly the San Diego County area-to come up with this week's reality check:

This fire did not discriminate. It hit everybody: Mansion, Trailer park, old, young, white, Hispanic, valley, hilltop, inland and coastal. Well over a thousand people lost homes. Hundreds of thousands of people were displaced.
These fires moved so quickly, that in many cases, people had just minutes to grab a handful of clothes, important documents and pictures...but many people did not even have THAT much time. As you prepare for your weekend fun, spare a thought and a prayer for the citizens of San Diego County and other parts of Southern California, who have just had a nightmarish week. Also spare a thought and a thanks to law enforcement, firemen, medical personal and Humane society people-among others-who have tried to help people and animals through a thoroughly wretched week.

I turned 47 last Thursday. It's been busy the last few days, so I apoligize for not getting on line. I was so busy that I still have not had a chance to watch the Rugby World Cup Final-I have it Tivo'd, so I hope tomorrow I can finally watch it all. Congratulations to the Springboks for winning. England also deserves credit for a valiant last 3 weeks, where they upset Australia, France and gave the Springboks a helluva game.
They came within a whisker of winning...

For my Birthday, we ended up going to my Grandmother's house. My sister in law and my nephews were there, as was my wife, kids and our exchange student. We had a GREAT German Chocolate cake that my cousin Margo made at her bakery. We showed a bunch of our pictures from the France trip. Just a great time. My wife gave me some good non fiction reading like Colin Powell's biography,  and letters from home written by soldiers during the Second World War. With those books, plus my books I bought in France, I am in REALLY good shape for reading material.

It's kind of sobering to think that when I was born, my grandmother was only 44. When my son Ian was born, my dad became a first time grandfather when he was 48. (Actually, first time biological Grandpa-he became a grandfather through his stepkids when he was in his early 40's) I remember as a kid looking at pictures of people in their 40's and they LOOKED and acted  old. Contrast that to today, with Viagra and plastic surgery, people are going into middle and old age kicking and screaming. I cannot afford plastic surgery-particularly after this France Trip. I just plan on taking a page out of Jack LaLanne's book and just try to exercise and eat in moderation-and stay married to the same woman for a LONG time.

A discussion that I have had with some of my rugby-mad friends on the blogosphere has been the lack of love shown towards Argentina. The first non-6-Nations or Tri-Nations team to make it to the Semifinals. Dealing with IRB politics has been probably a more daunting task for the Pumas than the teams with which they have butted heads so far...
I came accross an intersting article talking about this strange state of affairs, now that Argentina has shown that they deserve to be in an annual competition, be it the Tri-Nations(Makes more geographic sense) or the 6-Nations.(More logistical sense, since most of the best Argentines play in Europe) http://msn.foxsports.com/rugby/story/7336154

Go to the URL and have a look at the article and see what you think.  Pichot makes some very good points in it.

My son Ian does not speak French. He does speak Japanese, which I think is a whole helluva lot more impressive.

During our trip to France, we did not get too much opportunity to watch Television, which makes sense since most people don't go overseas just to watch the tube.

Imagine my suprise one night when we were at my Freind Patrick's house in Ancerville, in the Meuse(Lorraine) when I noticed that my son was transfixed watching the news...eventhough he does not speak French. I kept watching and I found out WHY he was watching the news on FR3 so closely:
I found out from Patrick that her name is Marie Drucker. I had heard some reports in the states about a French Newscaster who gave up her anchor post for awhile untill the elections were over, because she was dating a minister in the French Government.

Well, she is back on the air now. I know while we were at Patrick's, we made it a point to watch the FR 3 news. She's not just some pretty face that FR 3 put out there. I listened to her doing interviews, and she is a sharp one. If you look up her bio on Winkepedia, she has a very impressive CV.  All I know is that I have not seen anybody on American TV with this level of looks and brains since there was a very young Diane Sawyer at CBS.

Among the many questions that I got upon my return from the land of Asterix and Obelix, the most common was "How was the food?" I guess that would be like asking Monica Bellucci's significant other "How's the view?"

The food was MAGNIFICENT, OK? We did not have a mediocre or bad meal during the entire time. My friends really came up big for us: May and Gerry(Cous-Cous), Jean-Paul and Fabienne(Oysters, "Sanglier", or Wild Pig), Patrick and Martine(Quiche), and Guy and Martine(Ratatouille and Quiche) just spoiled us rotten with wonderful food. Every restaurant meal we had was excellent. Rachel loved her Steak-Frites in Paris, Ian really loved the squid(Rouilles) done "Sete-Style" while we were in Montpellier. I have to give a special mention to Patricks 79 year old mother in law, who lives outside of Sedan, in the Ardennes of France, not far from the border with Belgium. "Mami", made us a feast worthy of a fine restaurant: We started with  Pate`(washed down with champagne), followed up by sublime mini quiches, salad, veal, fresh green beans, fried potatos, 4-5 different cheeses, washed down by a Bordeaux. For dessert, she made us homemade rum cake, followed by coffee. I felt like Obelix after a BIG meal...I should add that on the way back home, I had a chance to sit next a chef from Marseille, and I could not resist asking him if he had seen the movie "Ratatouille" and what he thought of it. He smiled and said that he LOVED the movie, that it did a great job of showing what goes on in the kitchen and the passion that a chef has for tastes and making new and different tastes to please people. That, I thought, was pretty high praise.

PS-His restaurant is Une Table au Sud, 2 Quai du Port in Marseille. www.unetableausud.com

There are a few people I would not want to be today. I would not want to be Marion Jones' press agent, I would not want to be a lawyer for Brittany Spears or Lindsay Lohan,and I would not want to be Graham Henry, the head coach of the New Zealand All-Blacks-the prohibitive favorites to win the 2007 Rugby World Cup, who today fell short against France in the Quarterfinals in Cardiff, Wales.

France's upset, coupled with England's upset of Australia, made a shambles of my quarterfinal picks. If Marion Jones' recent admission about doping is the ugly part of modern sport, these two upset wins on Saturday showed why sport can be such a sublime thing. It shows that no matter what it says on paper, you STILL have to play the game. The only thing I was mad about, is that Setanta sports decided to show these games on DELAY. I have to watch them on Sunday.

As much as I feel for my friends in the Blogosphere like Matt(Greenandgoldrugby.blogspot.com) and Ferdy (Ruggerblogger.blogspot.com), I know that somewhere in Languedoc-one of my favorite places on this earth, there is a very dear freind of mine-a geography teacher named Jean-Paul who is just giddy with the French win.

If I'm Argentina, I have to wonder if Scotland brings in Mel Gibson to do his best William Wallace to get the troops ready for battle against the Pumas.

Wow, has it been crazy since getting back. My luggage and Ian's made it back. The interesting thing is that the champagne, beer and wine we had in our luggage-and my mom's smokes-all made it back. All of the chocolate packed in Ian's bags was missing. Luckily, the dark Belgian chocolat I bought for my wife, I stashed in my boots, so that made it back. Ian was pretty pissed, because a bunch of that chocolate was for his girlfriend. You have to wonder if one of the Somali's working at the airport might have filched it, because why would somebody steal sweets, but not the champagne, beer, wine or cigarettes?

 "Il n'y plus du chocolat? Ce n'est PAS possible!!"

Enough moaning about that. Now to Rugby.

The Quarterfinals on tap are France-New Zealand, Scotland-Argentina, Australia-England and South Africa and Fiji. It sure looks like an all Southern Hemisphere matchup in the Semi finals. Australia and South Africa should be both strong favorites, Argentina should be a prohibitive favorite against a Scottish side that huffed and puffed its way to a win against Italy. You don't always get the main entree as an hors d'oevre, but let's be blunt: France and New Zealand is an utterly mouth watering match. People talk about Kiwi nerves and the ghosts of Twickinham in 1999 still haunting Graham Henry's men. Don't buy it. I think New Zealand wins this one going away in Cardiff.

Well, back home in Minnesota after 3 weeks in France. So much to talk about, it's hard to even pick a place to begin. I may just have to pick different topics about the trip over the next few days so that I don't ramble.

It was a GREAT trip. I enjoyed showing my kids why I love France, having them meet my friends like Jean-Paul, Bernard, May, Gerry, Patrick and his wife Martine...and catching up with our dear friends the Catanis.

I need to give "Da Redhead"-my wife-her mad props for STRONGLY suggesting that we get a GPS system. Since we rented a car, An A-series Mercedes that had really good gas milage-a very good thing when you figure between exchange rate and how expensive petrol is in Europe anyway:about 6.20$ a gallon, I figured. Trying to get around with the poorly marked roads with my wife's inability to read maps was going to be a hard thing to overcome. Getting the GPS saved our trip...and probably my marriage.

My son Ian and I had a great time at the rugby games that we went to: USA-Tonga, Tonga-Samoa, and Argentina-Namibia. Tonga and Samoa was by far the best game. It was close, and Tonga showed a lot of heart holding onto a slim lead after having had one player red-carded and another player sin-binned. They finished the game with 13 men and eeked out a win over their South Pacific rivals.The Tongans had to be very pleased with their tournament. Far from being among the worst teams in the tournament, they beat both the US and Samoa, gave South Africa the scare of their lives, and gave England a helluva game. What really struck me and my son was the physicality of the Tongans: Every tackle was very tough and physical. We could even hear the sounds of bone against flesh from where we sat at Le Stade de la Mosson in Montpellier. There were  about 24,000 fans for both games in Montpellier. The Argentina and Namibia match was played in a great ambiance in the Stade Velodrome in Marseille. (My second favorite city in France after Biarritz) After the USA-Tonga Match, Ian, Bernard and I met my friend Jean-Paul and some of his cronies from near Beziers and Puisserguier. We shared a few beers and had a great time after the match. Some female rugby players  from Minnesota recognized my friend's Metropolis Jersey, and they joined in on the fun. I saw a few games on the TV while there. The best game I saw on the telly was Fiji's pulsating win over Wales. It's a game I saw at a bar in a village west of Beziers surrounded by a bunch of Aussies madly cheering for Fiji. Tomorrow, I will talk about the Quarterfinal matchups.