Life After Baseball...

It's been a post lagging 2 weeks my friends, and I apologize. You see for the last four years during the month of October I have had the privilege of leaving behind the role of being a productive member of society to transforming into an even more than usual rabid Philadelphia Phillies baseball fan, and this year was no different. Moving to France has meant a change in my schedule for watching my beloved boys in red and white pinstripes, such as a 2 am start for most playoff games with games concluding between 5 and 6 am. Our run came to a close this year a little early (after two straight years of going to the World Series, winning it all in 2008), as we lost very early Sunday morning to the pansy San Francisco Giants in a heartbreaking loss. I'm typically not a sore loser (unless we lose to the Mets), but in this case the pompous and holy-ier than thou attitude of the Giants, Giants media outlets and Giants fans of the postseason was a hell of a lot more than I could physically take, and I can't wait for them to get tromped in the World Series by Clifton Pfifer Lee, former ace for the Phils. So long story short, I'm back...a little saltier than usual perhaps, but back. Now let's catch up shall we?



I've been very into leaves lately...


[Scientist at work...]

I've started taking french classes at CERN, and occassionally, if I'm lucky, I get to have lunch and coffee with this handsome devil...




In addition to canning for the first time, I made my first apple pie, from scratch (more on that later). And it was great! (Thanks to Christine over at Christine and the Big Scary Kitchen for the suggestion on buying an oven thermometer - our former temperature guesses were WAY OFF!)


I'm making new friends on my frequent bike rides to Botanic...


[Hee-haw. That's the noise donkeys make right?]


I'm learning that I have a fear of french spiders...American sized spiders don't bother me, but French spiders are seriously as large as my hand and their legs are as long as my fingers...


And there's snow on the Jura. Hello cold and grey weather, oh how I've missed you!