Today we celebrate our 10th year of being here.
A lot has happened over the decade.
But because everything around us and in our lives is now normal I find I'm pretty much talked out. No words of wisdom. No more jokes. No humorous highlights.
Nope. Nuttin. It's sure been fun, though.
I'll leave this blog on-line for the foreseeable future.
Thanks for reading.
I think this will be the second to the last blog entry I will make here before putting my rambling blabbering living in Europe comments on ice. But as I go, I'd like to share a couple things.
The subject of this post is nose *boops*.
My wife had friends over for tea, so I headed out to see the Salon International de l'Agriculture. It is held just down the street from where we live and I wanted to be away for a few hours to give Jude time to enjoy the company of her female friends.
The Salon is a farm show like only the French can put on. The animals are beautiful. The farmers seem passionate about what they do.
I started in the Pavillon dedicated to bovines. It was good to see that the animals had gotten used to the vast throngs of folk wandering around and petting the beasts that were within reach. I didn't want to add to the reaching and touching, so I let them be and just took photos and admired the living beings as they were.
One calf took a long look at me and came over to nose *boop* my hand. It'd been a long time since I'd been *booped* by such a cute animal. The last time was when we were in Nice and we went to see a very special guard dog who's domain happens to be a classic car shop. Our guard dog is a tiny little teckel a poil dur. He melted our hearts on first sight three years ago and try to visit him, to the delight of his owner, each time we're in town.
Returning to the Salon, not long after being *booped* by the calf I saw that a parade of Charolais cattle were being returned to their pens after putting on a show in a ring nearby.
I knelt down and took photos of the passing animals when one big guy, he must've been easily 1500kilos, came ambling along. What a magnificent animal he was, too.
He pulled up just in front of me, took a look my direction, and just stood there as if to say "Hi. I'm here for my photo, thank you." After a few moments and dozens of photos I stood up. He seemed to realize the photo was "in the can" and he could move along.
The young lady who was guiding him back to the stall said he knew how to "ham it up" for the camera and she, too, thanked me for taking his photo. I felt as if I'd been nose *booped* from a distance by a princely beast.
Spread across several Pavillons the show can be a little difficult on tender feet. There was so much I wanted to see, but knew I couldn't take it all in. One Pavillon I wanted to see the most was where the horses were kept. I headed over to have a final look at things.
The show ring didn't seem to have much of interest going on, so I wandered the aisles and had a look at how everyone was doing.
Just as in the bovine Pavillon I happened to be on an aisle when a show let out and handlers were bringing their animals back to their resting places. The horses were parading by when one headed my direction, and *boop* went his nose against the shoulder. The young lady who was guiding him said her horse liked me.
It would be interesting to do a study of nose *boops*, their frequencies, the reasons behind them, and what might be their effects on humans. But I will leave that for another more interested generation to sort out.
Snow.
Yes. You read it right.
No fool'n. Big. White. Fluffy. Flakes. Of. Snow.
No.
This is not snow.
But if you step outside and look up,
it kind of looks like this right now.
