Mah Jongg

Mah Jong every which way

family style

My daughter's stylish set

Porch style

Outdoor style

We've been playing all summer. I love the game, and my daughter is completely hooked.

You usually play with 4 people, but you can play with 3 or even 2. (Or 5 if you switch like in bridge). There are several ways to play it. The Chinese play it very much like gin rummy. The English have a whiole book of 'special hands', and my aunt, who taught us, learned the English way while she was living in China, lol.

The real difference is in the various 'hands'. They all have cool names, like 'Gerties Garters', and 'Heavenly Twins', or 'The Ruby hand', or 'Dragon's Breath'. There are three suits, (bams, cracks, and dots) and three dragons (red, white, and green) and the four winds (north, south, east, and west.)

The set-up is easy, once you get the hang of it. And playing is fun and for all ages.

We wanted to get a set, but they are hard to find. So this summer, I promised my daughter we'd take a trip to Chinatown in NYC and see if we could find one. We went down the last day of our visit, and stopped to see Sam, who offered to take us to Chinatown for lunch and help hunt down a set - so off we went. We had lunch in a Fabulous restaurant, I will definitely recommend it to anyone who loves Chinese food - it's called Shanghai Cuisine, and it's located at 89-91 Bayard street downtown Manhatten. (corner of Mulberry and Bayard). Everything we had was delicious - I can't say enough good things about that place.

Anyhow, after lunch we headed east, and hit a small street with some tiny shops, and Sam spotted a mahjongg set in the window! We went in, and the shop owner took down a box, opened it, and took out a huge wooden box with a dragon on it. She opened it, and my daughter gasped in delight. A lovely mah jongg set. My daughter asked the price, and her face crumpled It was expensive. I was just starting to tell the lady that we couldn't afford it, when Sam said, "Wrap it up! It's for her birthday!" My daughter was jumping with joy, and all I could think of was 'we are going to have to carry this 30 pound mah jongg set with us on the plane'. Actually, I was thrilled, and am planning on sending a care package to Sam, with some chocolate and some 'get skinny' tea - LOL!

My son managed to cram the box into our luggage, so all we had to do was wheel it around the airport. And now, every night, we play a few hands of mah jongg.

Last night I won with a hand called 5 odd honors.

:-)

Thank you Sam!!!!!

Happy Birthday!

Happy Birthday to me!

I'm 47 today - (I'll only admit to 35) and I mowed the lawn and lifted the old lady next door.

?

Yes, for the past few days I've been helping the nurse who takes care of the 104 yr old woman next door, because the nurse sprained her arm and can't lift her anymore. So I've been helping out. It's been an interesting experience. The woman in question (104 - that makes her 57 years older than I am) is deaf and cranky, and has slight dementia. Otherwise, she's in fine form. She can't walk, but she can complain - which according to the nurse, she does constantly. Today she complained I set her down too fast (I actually nearly rolled over with her onto the bed. She's heavy!) But she's strong, and she can usually hoist herself into her wheelchair, just not back into bed.

My son, who is a fireman, said that most of his missions are picking up elderly folk who have fallen down and can't get up. He told me to call him if the old woman got stuck. So far the nurse has managed on her own, until she sprained her arm.

The old woman saw me the first day and said, "Who's that?"

"La voisine!" (the neighbor) shouted the nurse. (she has to shout, as the old lady is deaf as my dachshund when he's decided he wants to stay in bed.)

"Justine?"

"No, la voisine!"

"Oh. Bonjour Justine."

"No, pas Justine. Ta voisine! She's here to help!"

The old lady calls me Justine now, and complains that I don't lift her high enough to get her situated right in bed.

According to the nurse, she's being difficult because she refuses to let the nurse lift her with this handy contraption that would make life considerably easier for everyone. But the old lady refuses, and so the poor nurse has to come knocking at my door every morning and evening to get the old woman set up right.

Next week a new nurse is coming, and I'm leaving on vacation, but my son said he'd be standing by in case she needs lifting, so don't anyone worry.

:-)

Vacation!

Vacation!

I love summer vacation. I love not having a schedule. I dont have to worry about forgetting appointments, getting days mixed up (they're all the same during summer!) and setting the alarm wrong. I feel free. I just took my daughter to the dentist today for her monthly checkup for her braces, and the dentist remarked at how relaxed and happy I looked. Thinking about schedules must put lines on my face. Oh well. I still have a month left. So what am I up to? I'm headed to the south of Spain, where I will try to catch up on my reading.
Books I've read so far this summer:
The Coal Black Horse (fabulous)
Killer Angels (even more fabulous)
Harry Potter and the Deathly Hollows (made my plane trip home so much more fun)
And a couple of decent books by good authors, but I've forgotten the titles, sorry.
Some photos of this summer:

At the military cemetery in Saratoga, where my father is buried.

Here is my daughter fishing at the lake at my uncle's camp.

This is a photo taken at the cemetery at Gettysburg.

Me holding my niece, and my mom, in her new house. We have to strip the wallpaper and paint this room, but the woodwork is done.

New York

I just got back from the lake. A lovely vacation with no computers, TV, e-mail, or any loud noises except the truck that started up every morning at 6 am when the neighbor went to work. And that was fine because at five we were up, drinking gourmet coffee, and sitting on the porch (or sitting in the canoe) admiring the silvery lake.
My sister and her husband own a restaurant and they came laden with food - and so we had wonderful dinners every night. My cousins, aunts, uncles, and grandparents all came to see us, and we fished, played mah jongg, and walked around the lake. And that was it. And it was heaven.
Now I have sporadic internet use - I'm at my mom's house for a week. Next Monday I'm going to Pennsylvania for a few days. I've never visited Gettysburg, and that's where we're headed for some historical events. My daughter and I are watching the TV series 'Gettysburg' that we rented from the library in anticipation of our trip. We're going with my school chum Debbie, whom I haven't seen in over 15 years!! I hope she recognises me.
;-)
I haven't had time to work, and I'm falling woefully behind. But I do have two new books out - Hotline - over at total-e-bound books, and My Fair Pixie is now in print in an anthology called Lady Jaided's Virile Vampires.
If I had more time I'd add links and such, but I'm headed out the door to help my mom with her new house. We just got the dry wall up, it's alnost all taped, and we'll start priming soon.
Got to run!
I'll write more later!

More about e-books & stuffed animals

I have discovered something terrific with Adobe Reader! They have a wonderful full screen option. But it's hard to find. When you open the pdf file, look at the very bottom left hand corner. (Yes - LEFT - I made sure, lol.) Bottom. Small icon, looks like a TV screen. When you hover over it, it says 'Full Screen View'. Click on it, and the result is a GREAT page for reading e-books, similar to the microsoft reader page.
I'm amazed. I never noticed that before. That'll teach me to read directions.

I am packed. My suitcase, though small and complete with wheels, weighs a ton because of all the French soaps I'm bringing back with me. French soaps are really nice. But they're heavy.

My daughter's suitcase (a school bookbag with wheels) is packed too. She is bringing her stuffed bunny with her. The bunny has been travelling back and forth with her since she was six. My son Sebi has a small stuffed seal called Lightning. He still has it, (he's 21 and he got the seal when he was 3). He's carried the seal back and forth from France to the US, to Argentina, and England. Lightning was once forgotten in the stables, and a big white horse named Ajax 'took care of him'. (My son had left him in the horse's stall during a game of hide and seek when the grooms had taken all the horses out to exercise.) Sebi was always attached to his stuffed animals. He had a stuffed rabbit named 'Apple' and a sort of yellow monkey named 'Saucisson'. Apple, Lightning, and Saucisson went everywhere with us for years and years. And my son still has, like I said, Lightning the small seal. (And like the old rocking horse in the Velveteen Rabbit, his eyes are gone, his nose has been rubbed off, and his fur has gone bald in spots - but he's still perched next to my son's bed.)
My daughter's bunny 'Jumper' is rag-worn, shapeless, and his ears have been sewn back on twice. But she loves him. She loves him better than the plush, new stuffed animals she got for Christmas or her birthday last year. Like Sebi, who pushed away a brand new rabbit with howls of "I want my Old Bunny Back!" when Apple was lost, my daughter prefers her careworn creature.
She looks at Jumper through eyes of love.

Packing

I'm finally packing for NY. Well, actually, I already finished. I pack in about three minutes. Then I leave the suitcase at the foot of the stairs and add things to it as I remember them. My daughter still hasn't packed, but she's said to me at least a hundred times, 'I wish I was in NY already!'. She's tired of school. In France, we have the longest school day of all European countries, and yet we're not the top performer - Finland is with the shortest day of all European schools, but they have a higher teachers per student ratio, and they offer lots of after school tutoring. My daughter loved the Finnish school system (she went there on a class trip). I wish they would shorten the school day here, but although our new president has said he wants to reform the education system, there haven't been any concrete propositions.
I haven't been blogging much - sorry. Busy with the garden (summer means lots of work outside - I love it!) And my son is on vacation from the university, so that means he's often on the computer during the day. I've been busy with Calderwood Books (and again, loving it. I enjoy reading the query letters and delving into the slush pile. I'm still excited about finding new books. I am waiting for one author to send in his contract, but he's hesitating because he's not sure he really wants to publish an e-book (he's holding out for a bigger publisher). In one way I'm disappointed. I fished his book out of the slush pile and loved it. But I understand an author's reticence. E-books don't have the best reputation of making tons of money for an author. And as much as I try to say that regular books don't do much better, it's true that even a small advance is often more than an e-book ever earns out over its lifetime.
I keep hoping that there will come an inexpensive and perfomant e-book reader. I think that books DO pollute. The industry is terribly wasteful. (But most industies are, come to think of it.) E-books are a good economic and ecological choice, but it's hard reading on a computer, even a laptop, and not many people have e-book readers yet.
I keep hoping...
And hoping.
A good, cheap e-book reader.
No bells and whistles.
Just a paperback size.
Thin, with good lighting.
Able to read several file formats.
Rechargeable battery with a long charge.
And then e-books will finally catch on. Imagine, you can carry a whole library in your pocket!
OK - time for lunch.

Dyslexia

I was writing some letters to find review sites for Calderwood Books. I have to run them through the spell checker because I'm a terrible speller. When I concentrate, I can usually spell most words right. Some I can never get right, so I avoid them. Mideival is one. I write it at least three ways before giving up and putting in Middle Ages. I have LOTS of words on my 'can never spell' list. And yet, I look the word up. I will spell it right by accident, then delete it because it doesn't look right. But I can't remember it.
I also can't tell my left from my right. I'm clumsy, bang into things a lot, and although I speak French, I'll never learn to write it. I'm dyslexic. It runs in the family. My mother can't tell her left from her right, and my daughter is so dylexic she didn't learn to read until she was 7, and she had to go to an orthophonist to learn to 'see' the difference between a d and a b. It was slow going. At first, she was at the bottom of her class. The school had a special teacher come in twice a week to work with her for almost two years, and her teachers only gave her half the amount of homework the other kids got. And yet, no one ever scolded her or told her she was 'slow'. We explained to her what dyslexia was, and told her she had to learn to live with it. She did, and now she's third in her class and has excellent grades. She's doing so well, we're thinking of putting her in a more challenging school. She wants to be a veterinarian. We're very proud of her. She worked hard and it paid off. She never got discouraged, and her teachers were all great and encouraged her to do her best.
My dyslexia never kept me from reading, although it does hamper my spelling, and if I meet a new word it takes me a while to get used to it. The best thing to happen to me as a kid was to be crazy about dinosaurs. Sounding out and then memorizing their long names helped tame my fear of multi-syllable words. I was never very good at sports - for some reason I can never catch a ball. I'm not great in math. I turn left when someone says 'go right!' and it took me years to catch the notion of 'early' VS 'late'. Time really does have no meaning for me. My most important helpers are my watch, my calendar, and my weekly planner. I use color-coded stickers, and yet I'm always forgetting what day it is, and when my friends invite me for lunch, they know they have to call me in the morning to make sure I don't forget. I didn't forget, I just don't know what day it is!
Weekends are the only times I feel like I can relax. There's no school, no schedule, no lessons, no lunches. And yet, I love having a full schedule. The more I do, the more energy I have. But sometimes I wish I could be organized. I wish I could put everything in neat piles, fold clothes (I can't fold clothes) and just organize my house. I know where everything is, but it looks like a rat's nest. But I am incapable of organizing my space. Dyslexia, for me, means having no concept of left-right, up-down, straight or crooked. I have three calendars on my desk, a yearly, a weekly, and a monthly. And I still get things wrong. Last week I arrived at the dentist a day early. (At least it wasn't a day late!)
Anyway, For those without dyslexia, it must be frustrating to deal with us sometimes. My husband mostly laughs it off, but he can't understand how I can get lost going somewhere I've been at least thirty times before. My sons can't understand how I can always be late picking them up from school. We don't do it on purpose. I look at my watch and see 'quarter to' instead of 'quarter past'.
Which reminds me - time to go to the pony club picnic! I'm riding today and my daughter is already mortified, just sure I'll fall off and humiliate her. I will be sure to get pictures if I do!
;-)

my rugby man calendar

When I went to play golf the other day, my daughter and her friends examined my rugby man calendar with much interest. I know because they hung it back up with Mr. September in view, instead of Mr. June. I suppose it might shock some people to see my 'nekkid guys' hanging on the wall but I've never thought of nudity as something shameful. In fact, I love the human body, even when it's not perfect. (But the rugby men are pretty near perfect, lol.)

Authors, pay attention!

Authors, pay attention.

I have been reading the slush pile again, and here are the problems I found. One book had too many heroes. The story was well written. I was hooked right away by a lovely description and some interesting action. And then the story went awry. Every character was a hero. The family - father, mother, and baby were all equally important. The neighbor's family - father, mother, and baby were important! And the secondary characters kept taking over the action.
If you have several heroes (thinking of Lord of the Rings here) then you need a strong, simple framework to carry them. The story has to be simple. "Take Ring To Volcano". What is simpler than that? Then you can have several different heroes. But be careful - don't overwhelm the reader. Each hero has his chapter. Each chapter has its structure. In the book I just pulled from the slushpile, the plot is complicated, the characters many, and I cannot get attached to any of them. I'm Overwhelmed.
I pulled a second book out of the slush pile. I read three chapters. Not once did I get into any of the character's heads. It was written in what I call third person omniscient. It's a good way to start a novel because you can introduce the setting and characters quickly. But it puts a certain distance between the reader and the characters because you're never deeply in their heads. So I read on, hoping that the second chapter would give me a clue as to who the hero was, and on to the third chapter, where the tone stayed the same. Good, clear writing. No connection at all with the characters. I needed a hero I could connect with, and I got comments on the weather.
POV is terribly important. Head-hopping is not bad if it does not confuse the reader, but it's a rare author who can pull it off. When I read the slush pile, I'm aware that most of the authors are just starting out. That's why we try to make our rejection letters as constructive as possible. We also invite the autors to resubmit if we like their writing and think they can fix the problems. Sometimes they are OK with our suggestions, and sometimes not. It's up to them. But I've never subbed a book anywhere without knowing that it will have to be edited. And my goal is to make the editor's job as easy as possible, and authors should keep this in the back of their minds. Their books WILL need editing. If the book needs too much, we can't afford it. Time is money, as they say, and if the book takes too long to edit, it's not worth it. So pay particular atention to POV. And count your heroes. (And heroines.)

Been Busy

Good news! My son passed his exams and he's admitted to the second year in his university. In France the universities are free, which means there are a lot of students in the first year. You have to pass tough exams to go on to the second year, and only 30% are admitted directly, so we're proud of him!

You know how it is. The calendar starts filling up, the days becoming crammed with appointments and 'things to do'. I'm leaving for the US on the 22nd, and suddenly there is a ton of stuff I have to take care of before I go. And then my husband got his job in Spain, so we'll be there for the whole month of August, and that means more frantic organising as I realize I'll probably be without internet for that whole time. (*gasp!*)

I threw a birthday party for my husband Wednesday and we had a great time. A golf tournament followed by dinner. The weather was wonderful, and we all had a great time.

My car, however, is falling apart bit by bit. It doesn't start well, the window is broken (it fell over when I lowered it the other day, and I had to prop it back up and close it to keep it from falling out again. Now I have to be careful not to open it. It's aslo making strange noises. I'm glad my husband got the job in Spain - it's paid well and hopefully we'll be able to get another car when we get back in September. Argh. As my son once said, 'Why does everything have to cost so much?' He was four at the time and was trying to buy an expensive stuffed hedgehog with only fifty pence - but I know exactly what he was feeling.

Happy French Mother's Day!

I had a lovely day. I spent it with good friends, in the sunshine, with lots of wine and song...Well, not any songs, actually, the group was not very musical, but it was a lot of fun.

When I got home, I found my son had made a batch of chocolate chip cookies!!!

(Happy Mother's Day?)

I ate two.

Yesterday there was a small tournament nearby. There were knights in shining armor, flags, a tavern (a tent, but it was quaint.) And there were people in costume but I didn't get a photo because my batteries wore out. Argh. I wanted a picture of the little boy in the musketeer outfit, complete with plumed hat and cape! It was very hot, so we didn't stay long. But isn't the barn fascinating?

Ye olde barn with ye strangely shaped round roof. (Probably an old pigeon coop)

Ye Olde Taverne (Perrier & Mead)

Applauding the winners

City life, country life

I used to live in the city. I was in NYC before I moved to Paris. In my apartment building, most people knew each other and said hello if they passed each other in the halls or in the elevator, but that was it. In Paris, we hardly spoke at all. I lived in my Paris apartment for three years and never saw my neighbors. In Lyon, it was a much more friendly. We had dinners with our neighbors, our kids walked to school together, and the mothers left the strollers in the nook next to the elevator. The apartment in Lyon was a big complex, with a pool, a park, and a wonderful view over the valley. Unfortunately, my husband couln't find work nearby, so we moved back to the Paris region.
We found a small house in a tiny village. I was used to city life, so I didn't rush out and knock on my neighbor's doors to introduce myself. My daughter, age 5, had no such qualms, and knocked on Everyone's door, so soon everyone knew us. I was used to a friendly nod as I passed a neighbor. Here, you stop and chat about the weather. I was also used to not knowing anyone, and not really paying attention to the poeple around me. What was considered polite in the big city was considered rude and stand-offish here. I had to learn to 'chat'. It was not easy.
Some of the people in this village have been here for generations. Their grandparents and great-great-ever-so-great grandparents lived here. Some just arrived, like us. The locals are friendly, but seem to have a rivalry between themselves. There is a veritable war going on between the two egg farmers, for example, and between the people on the hillside and the people on the valley side there is a sort of constant snipping. It's a war that has been going on for ages, I suppose. The village is divided into clans. The village fête commitee, for example, imploded because of the clan war, and they had to elect a whole new village fête commitee.
It may sound trite, but the people who live here and whose families have lived here for centuries, remind me of goldfish in a bowl sometimes. They peer out at the world, but to them, this village is their world.
For someone who has moved from one hemisphere to the next throughout her life, it's very strange. I can't imagine being so rooted to one place.
Recently the war escalated into a nasty graffiti written on the walls of a new house. The house was new - the family in it was one of the village's own. But the house was built on a spot of land that for a long time had been declared non constructable, the law (somehow) changed, and the house was built, which angered more than one person, obviously. Someone wrote a nasty slogan on the wall. The mayor issued a bulletin. People clucked and shook their heads. But for me it's obvious that the war is simply continuing along age-old lines. The hill people against the valley people, jealousy sprouting from a building permit and a covetted peice of property.
Does it make me wish I was back in the city?
No. Not at all. The villagers have drawn their lines of battle, but I'm not a villager. And most of them are caring, wonderful people. Graffiti is cruel, and the words were mean, but not harmful. And I'm pretty sure things will be smoothed out. Perhaps another building permit on another peice of land. We'll see. Life in a small village is never boring, despite what you may think.
I just have to be careful to buy my eggs from both farmers.

Future love by Summer Devon

I needed a break. The weather here has been dreadful, just like November, dark, dreary, and cold. Rain pounding off the roof - and there was no escape, except into another world.

So I opened Summer's book, 'Future Love', and was transported.

It's a deceptively simple tale. Man from the future goes back in time and meets a contemporary woman - they fall in love. But it's a complex story that had me laughing, sighing, and reading 'til the wee hours to find out what happened next. It made me think a little of Kurt Vonnegut's 'Welcome to the Monkey House', because in the future, sex is suppressed. So our future stud, Collins, has never made love before. He thinks it's an aberation to make love - chemicals control hormones and everyone is smooth and hairless, and sexless. But he is sent back by accident by a group of future terrorists. And this is where the story has it's extra depth. There is suspense and action as well as love because the terrorists are out to get him, and he has a mission to accomplish.

Candy, the heroine, is a nice modern girl. In the beginning I was prepared not to like her, because she shows a certain lack of judgement when she invites the strange man into her house; but hey, it's fiction, and besides, the heroine is not a push-over. She's got a great personality and she's a genuinely caring person. She behaves like a normal person, which is refreshing in a romance book. I really get to like her, and I LOVE how she teaches Collins a thing or two about sex. :-)

Collins is a great hero. I think I fell in love with him myself. As an extra bonus, Summer writes some of the steamiest love scenes I've read in ages!

So if you want a book that will brighten a gray day, warm your heart (and the rest of you) make you smile and fall in love, get Summer Devon's 'Future Love'. You can buy it HERE. from Ellora's Cave.

Hey Mikey, she likes me!

Mrs. Giggles reviewed 'My Fair Pixie' and gave it a Great review.
You can read the whole thing HERE, but here is the end quote which I will now tattoo on my left shoulder...

"...I have to hand it to author Samantha Winston - My Fair Pixie is splendorous laugh-a-minute affair that is so naughty all over the place and so unexpectedly tender at other places. This is simply fabulous fun from start to finish. Love it, love it, love it!"

Rating: 92

Well, actually, I'm really pleased she liked it. She has reviewed another book of mine a few years ago and didn't like it - but you know what they say - no publicity is bad publicity. (Or do they say something else?) At any rate, doing a little happy dance in the rain here (well, until Mrs. Giggles reviews another book and gives it a 02, lol. You know, life is short, so I will dance to a good review while I can!)

First Lines by the dozen & a dilemma

A dozen first lines from my erotic books:

1: Princess Shari gave a very unladylike curse as her private spaceship, the SS Marissa, hit a zone of turbulence due to a small, magnetic storm.
(The Frog Prince from Planet Marecage - Ellora's Cave)

2: The centaur was dreaming again.
(Paradise Earth II Revelations - Changeling Press)

3: He had blond hair, bleached almost white by salt water, and turquoise chips for eyes.
(Virtual Murder - Loose Id)

4: The nurse in charge of freezing my molecules inserted a glowing needle into my arm and had
me count backwards from ten.
(Angels on Crusade - Cerridwen Press)

5: The Scottish landscape rolled by.
(Battle's bride - Loose Id)

6: Steele heard a steady thumping first.
(Time Tracker - Loose Id)

7: “Your bath is ready, my lord.”
(Diamina - Ellora's Cave)

8: Darla Rooderville stared at her best friend in disbelief.
(Darla's Valentine - Simon and Schuster or Ellora's Cave)

9: The dangerous part was next.
(Renegade Aquarius - Ellora's Cave)

10:Agony unlike anything he’d ever felt tore through his body.
(Llewellyn's Song - Ellora's Cave)

11: Mitch stared at his huge cock.
(The Phallus from Dallas - Ellora's Cave)

12: What does a five hundred year old, incredibly cultured male vampire want?
(My Fair Pixie - Ellora's Cave)

The dilemma:

I was thinking of getting business cards for Calderwood. I want to stress the fact that e-books don't pollute. No trees are killed, no fuel is burned transporting the books, no chemical inks are used...but if I order business cards made from paper and shipped from the US, I'm polluting.

I thought I'd send these virtual business cards to the Calderwood authors so they can use them in their e-mails or print them out themselves. What do you think?

Stormy weather

After a hot and muggy week, the storms have moved in.
Time to get to my TBR pile, starting with Summer Devon's book. (Review next week!)
Also in line are two Terry Pratchett novels: Soul Music and The Truth, and a Colin Bateman novel: Turbulent Priests.
So think of me curled up in my chair (or reading on my computer) while the clouds darken the sky and sheets of rain pour off my roof. The trees are wet and shiny, the flowers have shredded like crepe paper, and the dogs sit next to the door and sigh loudly, wet paw marks showing that they've been outside this morning. Last night the electricity went off twice, but came back on before we had time to find the matches to light our candles. Bright puddles greeted me when I went outside to take the garbage out this morning, and my yellow roses have lost their fragile petals to the driving rain.
But I bet it makes all the seeds I planted grow!
:-)

New hat day.

Today I bought a new hat. It's a summer tradition with me, and since the weather has been so warm I bought it early. I had to go to the doctor for my yearly check-up, and since I was early, I parked by the church and took a stroll through the town of Montfort L'Amaury. Go check out the link, there are some nice pictures of the village, which dates back to the Middle Ages. As I was walking through the town, I saw a small shop with hats in the window. I went in, and fell in love with this one.
I've bought a new hat every year since I can remember. It can be straw, or cloth, or a cap, or whatever. Last year's hat was a floppy red cloth hat. The year before it was an even floppier pink hat made with woven yarn, and the year before that, it was a straw hat with a green ribbon.

This year, I found a hat with a buckle on it. It's a beige hat, which is nice because it 'goes' with everything. (Ever the fashion victim here...)

My new hat is chic.

Rusty and Auguste like it.

Here is a great site:

http://www.st-pierre-montfort-l-amaury.fr/st_pierre_de_montfort_plan.html

It's the plan for the church in Montfort, showing the stained glass windows in detail, if you click on the names of the windows, and then on the small icons, you get some lovely pictures of the windows, which were made in the 13th and 14th centuries. (The church and village are classified as historical monuments).

Is there something that you do that marks the begining of summer?

Garden day

Yesterday, I took the clippers out and started to trip the forsythia bush in the front lawn. It had gotten so big it was taking over the small space. My husband ended up cutting it ALL back, now there is just a stump. It will grow back, never fear - and it will be a nice, tame bush for a couple years.

But I ended up weeding, raking, planting and trimming. I itched all night with bug bites and nettle stings. Here is a picture of the space where the tree was, and the stump with a boar's skull on it (very Lord of the Flies). (Or redneck - whatever.)

But after the flowers I planted grow, this will be a mass of bright colors (I made sure to add marigolds to the seed mix - if nothing else grows, they will, lol.)

Then today, I started to mow the lawn in the back, and since I can't start something and not finish, I finished the whole lawn, then weedwhacked, trimmed, weeded, and cut the nettles under the fig tree. Now I am again covered with nettle rash and bug bites, and looking forward to another night tossing and turning...and itching. But doesn't the garden look nice?

Flying

I took my son to the airport yesterday. He was supposed to be leaving with Tony - who lives next to us and who wanted to go to the US this summer. But Tony's passport was expired, so we ended up trying to figure out how soon he would be able to get a new passport, how to change his ticket, and all those fun things you do when a wrench gets thrown into the machine.
Passport - The US only accepts machine readable passports now, so Tony needs to get a new passport. It takes two weeks.
Plane Ticket - He has to pay a 100 euro penalty in order to change the date. I hope he can get a flexible date, because the passport can take longer than 2 weeks.
My daughter and I are going to the states on June 22, and I checked our passports. They are fine.
I missed my plane once. (overslept)
Twice I arrived very, very late, and the plane was held up while I dashed to the gate.
Once the plane was already on the runway, and they stopped it and let me get on. (At a small airport)
Once the radio wasn't working and everyone had to get off and get on a new plane.
Once the brakes didn't work, and we had to wait in the airport while they got fixed - and they we watched as they took off and landed our plane three times in a row.
Once we had an emergency landing. We ditched the fuel, turned around to land back at the ariport we'd just left, and there were eight fire trucks driving along the runway as we landed.
Once we had a bomb scare and everyone was taken off the plane by policemen with machine guns and dogs, and we stood on the tarmac a distance from the plane while the police emptied the baggage and the dogs sniffed everything.
Once I was in a brand new plane. It was for a short flight from Paris to London. I was reading a newspaper, and it said that the plane I was in had been taken off the long distance lines because it did unexpected barrel rolls. I asked the stewardess if that was true, and she said "Yes, so don't unfasten your seatbelt."
Ha ha.
Once I met a man in the plane, and somehow he found out it was my birthday. (I think it was when I was filling out the custom's form with my passport.) He asked the stewardess to get me a peice of cake with a candle and a glass of champagne while I slept. When I woke up, she brought it to me. I was really touched.
The man was from Brazil. I didn't speak Portugese and he ddin't speak English. We had some trouble communicating, but this is what I found out. He was coming to Paris because his son had been killed in an accident. His son had been working on a construction site in Paris. I knew a Brazilian woman who lived in Paris, so I called her when I got to the airport and I took a taxi with the man to her house. She took care of him during the time he was in Paris. She took him to the Brazilian embassy and helped him get everything organized. She made sure he was never alone. Before he left, we had dinner together and he gave me a good luck charm.
I still have it.

Goodbye Miss Snark!

It looks like an icon will be hanging up her stilettos. Miss Snark has announced she's stopping her blog.
Aspiring writers everywhere will miss her wry comments, Snarkisms, Snarklings, and Killer Yapp. (And George Clooney. Whatever else you can say about Miss Snark - she has good taste in men!)
I'll miss the cocking of the clue gun, but I suppose that if you go through the archives, she's probably answered every question there is about finding an agent. She will leave the blog up, so the archives will be available (thank you, Miss Snark!)
I like the fact that she managed to remain anonymous in the small workd of publishing. (How did she manage that?) I think she might have had secret agent training...
And I loved the contests (so many talented people read her blog) and I found new friends in the comment section (waving to Bernita, Orion, and many, many more.)
I will miss checking on the 'nitwit of the day', and hearing about Killer Yapp.
I can't imagine anyone taking her place!
Goodbye Miss Snark!