Last night, Sarah and I arrived safely in Newport Beach. We were quite tired, having traveled nearly 24 hours straight, and went to sleep almost as soon as we got home. I have plenty of adventures to post about, but I won’t be doing that today because 1) There are many, many other things here at the house that need avoiding, and 2) I don’t want to. What I will do is post some pictures (you can make up your own story) and say “Thanks!” to everyone who pitched in to get me the awesome new camera.


Above: Kandern (Sarah's home) from atop an adjacent hill. Below: a cathedral in Dijon, France (the spire, as you might have guessed, was filled with mustard).


Below: Sarah and I are standing on a bridge in Basel, Switzerland; the Rhine river flows in the background.



Above and below: Crikey! (Australian accent to be inferred) I was lucky enough to spot this on two separte occasions, and twice photographed it in its natural habitat.

Returning to home base in T minus 48 hours...

Most likely, this will be my last post before returning to California. Sarah and I have continued to have a good time: we just got back from a great pizza place (where we try and frequent at least once a visit) in the next town over. Yesterday, we spent most of the day in Basel, Switzerland, doing my favorite thing in the entire world, shopping. Yeah, if it was opposite day. Remember opposite day? I don't, but I digress. I'm sure I have lots to say (such as how I don't like mustard, no matter where it's made, and how we saw a GIANT wild boar forraging on the side of the road), but I don't remember the majority of it. More from Orange County...

I twisted my ankle. I know you all want to know my ailments (why else would you come to this site?). I was, that's correct, you guessed it, playing basketball when it happened. I won't say someone played dirtily and pushed me while I was in the air, but someone played dirtily and pushed me while I was in the air. I came down on another player's foot, and that was the end of my walking for a while. I was on crutches for a few days, but things are okay now: my limb is still very weak, but I can walk (with minimal pain), so that's been a blessing.

Sarah has been taking in the sights, sounds, and foods (especially the foods) of her home. We leave in less than a week, and she's been doing a good job not to be down about it. Yesterday, we visited Dijon, France. (You know, like the mustard: in fact, so like the mustard, it is where that particular condiment was invented). We walked around town, ate mustard, looked at old churches, ate mustard, ate mustard, and came back home. Seems rousing, I know (you're probably tired just reading about it), but our excursion was limited due to time constraints: Dijon is three hours from where Jan and Randy live, and we stopped at a castle on the way, which took about 2 hours (but it was worth it: they had monkeys, Japanese Snow Monkeys, in fact).

Anywho, I must go (the foreign keyboard: it's slowly killing me). I may write once or twice more before we return to California and my regular routine of posting 82 times a day. The end.

Everything is in French. The site keeps asking me if I want to modifier le code HTML. As it turns out, I don't; though, I might want to moderer les commentaires. In any case, the French keyboard doesn't really make things any easier: it's fine, so long as I don't look at it, but one glance down, and I'm done: a becomes q, m becomes some strange mark of punctuation. I'm not entirely sure how the French communicate with one another. I know I'd be confused if I were them...