Giant Anthropomorphic Rodent Terrorizes Children

It was the longest, most expensive vacation I've ever taken, even more so than our honeymoon in Tahiti. Three weeks, thousands of miles, thousands of dollars--just to spend time in my own home town, doing things that would have seemed very ordinary just a year and a half ago. And I seemed to spend an inordinate amount of it hanging around the mall.

See, this was as much a resupply mission as anything else, and we arrived in NC bearing empty suitcases so we'd have enough room to haul our purchases back (and we ended up buying an extra suitcase on top of that). With a pair of Levi's costing upward of $100 in Lyon and only $21.99 in Durham, you can see the logic.

But I ended up spending less time than I had hoped seeing friends and family, which was disappointing for me. If I missed you on this trip, please know that I'm sorry and I'll catch you next time.

It happened that both of the boys' birthdays fell during our stay in the States, which made a lot of things much easier. A party for Boog was arranged at Chuck E. Cheese with just a phone call [pic]; the staff looked pretty confused when we sang Joyeux Anniversaire instead of Happy Birthday To You, Boog enjoyed running around screaming, and I turned out to still be pretty decent at Pop-A-Shot. V baked a cake for Tater's first birthday [pic] and that was pretty much that.

As it turned out, this vacation that didn't feel much like a vacation meant that I didn't take too many pictures (apart from the birthday pictures of the kids). A few snaps at a Durham Bulls game [pics; note famous Bull ("Hit Bull Win Steak/Hit Grass Win Salad")] are enclosed for your perusal.

I could conclude with some sort of sweeping statement about American culture and What I've Learned and whatnot, but frankly I'm a little tired of thinking about it. Besides, you don't come here to read about what America is like, you come here to read about France, right?

So more of that coming up, starting with the next post.