Today marks the Epiphany, the 12th night, which commemorates when the infant Jesus was visited by Zoroastrian astronomers.

In France, it is celebrated by eating La Galette des rois, or frangipane.  It is a diddly-licious almondy cake.

The ritual goes as follows: one person, usually the youngest at the table (though last year it was me, the oldest) assigns each piece to each person.
Here’s the kicker: hidden in the cake is one small ceramic angel figurine!  Whoever gets it in his or her piece is named King or Queen.  The responsibilities of office are marginal, and pretty much the only priviledge is wearing the coveted Burger-King-like crown, which you can do for the rest of the party.  After a few bowles of cidre, you might feel tempted to wear it on the way home on the metro, but you listen to your girlfriend’s better judgement instead.

Have a look at my pictures from Xmas 2008.

One of the more endearing things I find about France is that comic books are broadly accepted as a form of art. 

This weekend in Blois there is the 25th annual BD Boum, with all sorts of things happening all around town. 

I don’t think there will be a lot of cosplay going on, though.

bd BOUM – Festival de Bande Dessinée à Blois

We gots the tubes, we gots the info supahighway, it’s on and we are on it, baby.  Even the Satanic Hot Water Bottle Cover is pleased.

Stay tuned for a new joint on Veesh dot Com

I’m calling one in.
Still weeks away from having the internet at home, I’ve set up the blog =
to post using email. In this fashion, one can write the posts as email =
messages using a pop3 email client, send the messages to the outbox, and =
they should get posted at soon as the email is sent.

There seems to be a few things to iron out: a few odd characters and =
text wrap issues etc. Also, I don’t think I can use any html or send =
attachments to be posted.

Last week was an eventful one for Julie.  Her thesis finally finished printed and sent off to the prof, and also hearing back as to which school, and which city she will be teaching in.

And that city is:  Blois .  Yes, that is pronounced like “blah” with a “w” in the middle.  Mike’s going to have a field day.

It’s a little town of about 50,000 inhabitants.  It is a very old city, dating back to the 6th century or so, and has a very rich history.  It was a residence for French Kings.  Louis XII was born and lived there.  Other notable homeboys are Denis Papin, who built the first piston steam engine, and Houdin, the father of modern conjuring.

The middle of town is hilly and winding.  On our apartment hunt yesterday, at least two of the flats we visited were in medieval houses.  One of which was literally next door to the chateau (I wanted that one because it’s on all the postcards).