My Oh My

Comments Only Women Really Understand

I see Comments Only Guys Really Understand all the time and I think Man, most of these are stupid.  But THESE, I think make perfect sense.

Even the one about Lucifer's Waterfall. 

French

I am sure that the French periodically get together and scramble the meanings of their words, just to confuse me.

DANS means IN.  So why does

l'attente de son apparition est vécue dans l'angoisse

mean the expecation of its arrival is seen WITH anxiety?

Just to confuse me, of course. 

Artificial Intelligence... Among Other Things

Why is it that I regard sex toys for women as perfectly normal, but this as creepy?  Shouldn't it be the other way around? Maybe the sex-toys-for-women industry has a better PR function?

Scary

When your wife goes to the local doc to investigate a random recurring pain.... and they recommend a quick mammogram.... and you do searches on LEFT BREAST RANDOM PAIN and find all that it could be - including but not limited to cancer -- that's scary.

Finding out that the mammogram and ultrasound showed nothing abnormal was a relief.

Reading

I don't read the range of things that I used to read, and, thanks to the internet, my willingness to read at more than paragraph length on a specific subject is diminished, too. 

Just now, I was at a local library,  where I read an issue of The Atlantic that contained two articles that interested me -- one about Newt Gingrich and his effect on slash-and-burn politics, and one about the rise of artificial intelligence, both in tools like Alexa and in medical (and other) diagnostic tools (one company offers to generate real-time analysis of a patients affective state, and to use it to suggest questions that the physician might want to ask).  It also contained an article about the state of politics written by David Frum, who suggested that we need to save our society from Trump and Gingrich's style of operation (Frum used a catchy phrase which I don't recall to suggest that Trump wants more and more of our politics to be controlled by fewer and fewer people, and he's succeeding at it)

And yet as I drove home, all I could think of was gee, I wish someone would summarize those articles for me.

Politics

The great thing about being a conservative politician is that you don't have to care about people.  As long as you keep your Papa Dog head of party happy, that's all you need.  Because liberals suck at firing up people, and conservatives are great at appealing to their base instincts..

Israel Connect

In about two weeks, I start weekly sessions with two Israeli kids, and their teacher, to help them practice speaking English.  Should be fun.

If Only.....

Chokepoint

When I bought my smartphone, I switched to TMobile because they offered phones with a chip that could be swapped, which was something I needed in order to be able to connect the phone to a SIM that was owned by a French network. (Trivia: apparently Orange is the big player there; the other networks, such as Lebara, buy space from them.  Guess what happens when Orange itself gets tight on space?)

I don't objectively know if TMobile is better than Verizon, the company I did have a connection to; in fact, given that Verizon has wider coverage, Verizon is probably better.  But I like TMobile more.  Part of that is smart marketing. .  Part of it is that they seem more responsive.  Part of it is that their website is not cluttered with ten thousand services that they want to sell you, unlike Verizon's.

And part of it is stuff like this.

Weaselicious

Republican Mitch McConnell says there is no need for legislation to protect Robert Mueller because 'there is no sign that Trump plans to fire him'.  And, one presumes, if he does move to fire him, McConnell will say Well, shucks, too late, we can't do anything now.

And a California Republican apparently wanted to buy clothes for a vacation, but his wife said No, we don't have the money for that -- but just charge it to your campaign fund and mark it as Golf Balls for Wounded Warriors or Isomething like that.

I can see how this would take a lot of balls. 

Eating

I totally do not get why people like food that looks like this.  I get that they do, but even just the thought of biting into something like this makes me nauseous.  Now a decent burger - that's a different story.

A Different Take On The Need For Affordable Health Care

Hmmm......

French thoughts

We got back from France (and Italy) just over a week ago.  In the process, we evaded the brutal heat that is hitting parts of Europe now, we met three conversation partners whom I had never met in person before (one of whom gave me two massive books about Italian cooking and about the history of her seaside ville, and another of whom gave me a delightful commemorative T shirt for the French win in the World Cup; both are much appreciated, but I have to say that the T shirt is particularly close to my heart because the colors on the sleeve can be read as ours (red/white/blue) or theirs (blue/white/red; it is a quiet giggle for me to think that I'm wearing a shirt with the French colors on it, and no one knows it)

Plus, we got to see our friends in Toulouse, and stay on their farm for a few days -- hot, beause people there don't believe in air conditioning, but still quite nice; we got to see our friends in Bourgogne (arranged so that we would not be in Paris for 14 July, instead seeing the local fireworks -- that didn't work out, because the wife was recovering from some emergency surgery, but it was still good), we got to see my friend the Sorbonne doctorante, and, perhaps most notably, we got to stay with the family of our French exchange student, which was simultaneously overwhelming -- they are very nice, very generous people who stunned us on more than one occasion - and heartbreaking - I had to admit to myself that except for the occasional trip, I'm not going to  see her ever again, which saddened me a lot.  I know, I know, her life is there, not here.  She's their daughter, not ours. Still, the part of me that still believes in Santa thought that maybe, maybe.....

But overall, it was a very nice trip.

Thinking

I am startled and amazed when I realize how utterly vicious my thoughts become when I think about the current hard-core conservative environment.  Utterly vicious.

And perhaps the scariest part is that I'm not sure that I want to change, because I don't see any benefit in doing so. 

Air Who?

I like the image of flying on Air France.  Its classy, at least in my mind. What ISN'T is the fascination that AF staff has with going on strike, every summer.  We're going to France this summer, and yes, the tickets over and back are on AF.  But this will be the last time, I think.  Enough is enough.

Today

Today's the day that our French exchange student goes home.  We're sad.  Not devastated, but - sad.  Wishing that things were different.

The Return

This week, my American daughter returns to her new home in Virginia, and my French daughter returns to her home in France.

Meanwhile, my wife will be on a trip with her mother and sister, leaving me and the cat.

Going to be lonely around here.

Departure

This is the last week of the French exchange student as a resident in our home.  This coming Sunday, she gets on a plane for Paris.  We are sad, because we really bonded with her. 

I am sure that as things happen, we will become just a memory to her, but still: when her mother thanks us energetically for always being there for her daughter, and for being very supportive - in fact, she referred to us as famille et amis - family and friends -- well, its hard not to have warm feelings about their whole family.  That's a little ironic, because our contact with her parents has been minimal -- something to do with both of them working, and a six-hour time differencee between here and Paris.  But still:  we feel warmly toward the girl, and by transference, toward the family, too.

Even if they're curiously reluctant to let us adopt her.

Move Along, Move Along

Every available sitting surface in the Empire State Building observation areas has one of these spiky edges to make sure you don't rest there a bit. Except the toilets, and where they sell you stuff.

É Giusto