sey085

Seeing as how I saw/meet about 90% of my reading public in the last couple of weeks, I didn't feel very motivated to keep the blog updated. I mean, if you guys wanted to know what was up, you probably had a good opportunity to ask me in person. At any rate, I do hope to keep updating this thing, at least sporadically, and before I left for vacation I actually started an update before things got too hectic and it got shelved and now seem like as good a time as any to get back to business. Sometime ago (almost a month, I think), I headed off to beautiful Grenoble, France to visit my good friend Loren. Although Grenoble is always rocking, I chose this weekend in particular for two reasons: first, I heard that the most popular Romanian folkloric dance group in the city would be giving a performance; and second, the Fête des Lumières was taking place in nearby Lyon. Many of you, dear readers, probably do not know about my interest in Romanian folkloric dancing. Admittedly, even I d...

Last week, I finally bought a toaster. Why did I wait this long? Well, the biggest reason was that I just couldn't really find anything that fit both my demanding tastes and my cheapskate nature. Toasters are somewhat of a luxury item here (I saw some that were $300) so there weren't a lot of cheap options. Second, I don't have any counter space in my apartment and I took a long time convincing myself that I could rearrange things so that I wouldn't have to leave it on the floor. And finally, every time I found one, I either gave up on the purchase because my arms were already full of groceries, or I just didn't have the patience to wait in a ridiculously long line -- electronic stores in Lausanne seem to be chronically understaffed. Anyway, a price/convenience nexus formed at the store near my apartment the other day and I decided to pick up this winning model. Fig. 1: I've tried the "Crusty Normal" and let me tell you, it's a piece of crap c...