must be in the north, because i am an american ex-pat on the côte d’azur, near st tropez. so it is all white pants and shirts with panama hats for the tourists and nouveau riche here. ;)

i know! were mimes french? i think that is where that stereotype comes from. but then again, for a long time on long running french tv show, with the “grands guignols” (puppets), a sylvestre stallone puppet was the american stand-in. so now i guess someone wearing a MAGA hat? but that makes me think of this too... :)

of course, to establish that it is in france, they need to put an antique 2CV in the background, which is so ridiculously anachronistic. granted these do exist still and french people do actually buy fresh baguettes on a daily basis, but to complete the scene they should have made sure the eiffel tower was in the…

it’s in my playbook of “how to get out of doing stuff” that the first is doing something so incompetently the first time, will exempt you from any future requests to doing said thing ever again. :)

for a very, very long time, my go to game has always been civilization, starting probably with Civ 3, though i am not sure, those days are a bit hazy now. then civ 4, and then civ 5, and since i got civ 6 for free, civ 6. i do not know what it is, but i can easily lose hours, playing this series. i can get get tired…

well, if you ever wondered why certain cheeses are coloured orange it is because back in the in merry old england, certain areas fed their cows grasses that were high in beta-carotene, which in turn turned their milk and cheeses orange. orange cheeses were considered of higher quality and celebrated, and therefore…

as an american ex-pat in france, there are a lot of foragers of mushrooms in the rural area that i live, especially after the rains. but i would never, ever pick mushrooms unless with someone that is well experienced and i have full confidence in their abilities. i see a lot of mushrooms now, on my one hour government-…

this is one of those things where the cover songs are great, but the original song is superiour. :)

speaking of the song “I put a spell on you,” it was only recently that i was enlightened to the original, which puts an entirely different spin on things. i only knew the nina simone version, and never realized it was a cover. all of which lead to learning about the singer and his story, who i had never heard of, and…

overseas, your passport is your principal form of identification. no one is going to recognize some drivers licence from god knows where as a real id. i always kept my passport on my person, at all times. the last time, i was backpacking in central and south america for 16 months. normally, it was on my person, hidden…

or you could do as i did... marry a local! 13 years in france, for the win! :D

if that is not the motto of 2020, i do not know what is...

yeah, this is our new house. the lot was bare so the first spring i just bought several random bags of wildflower seeds and strew them everywhere and got flowers a couple of weeks later, all of the way until late fall. i had started my spiral beforehand the first fall, but used our first lockdown in the spring to do…

in france, beginning today, we have shut down all travel, basically. you cannot leave your département, borders are closed, any travel needs to be done with a document stating why and where, etc. you can drive your kids to school, go to the store to shop for groceries, or the dr or hospital, to work if it essential or…

well, the netherlands has some of the highest per capita infection rate in the world, 5 times that of the US in the past 2 weeks. it’s is very bad there. nobody should be out and about, especially without their passport, that is their official identifcation, not some drivers licence. netherlands has 1/20 the…

and now you are stuck in finland? at least because, for example, here in france there is no travel allowed. borders are closed, no inter-département travel, no travel unless with permission, nothing! at least until 1st of december or further notice. what are you going to do? 

oh yeah, as a vet with an 18 month tour in korea, you can say “never had a bad night juice” with soju, but man, based on personal experience, it’s the next morning where you can only think “no more ‘i have never felt worse!’ juice!” :D

i have not lived in the US in 14 years, voted by mail as soon as i could and i have gotten my email reciept! :)

my witch’s garden is coming along, though more for my wife who is the hedge witch. it looks like i will need to add pennyroyal to the list, since we are just starting out. photo of my spring/ quarantine project below the garden list. :)

this was my project during the 9 week spring confinement in france. things are not going so well here at this time, i anticipate another confinement sometime soon, partial or total i am not sure. a night-time curfew is getting imposed soon in our southern département. so, i think i will finish up the tail/start of my…