A Reminder: Part 2

We renew our tale with our arrival in Calais post-Chunnel. We left quite early from London so that we would be able to enjoy the beautiful Normandy countryside. Dad had booked a car at the Hertz attached to the train station, so there would be as little of a delay as possible. After some slight confusion as to where to go after getting of the train, we got into the terminal.

Alamo, but no Hertz.

Dad started wandering around looking for the Hertz, convinced that despite being able to see the entire terminal from where we were standing, it must be lurking in a corner somewhere. A Frenchman sitting on the bench outside the Alamo asked me a question in (surprise) French. This was my first opportunity to use the two sentences of French that I had learned: "Sorry, I don't understand French," and "Do you speak English?"  I summoned everything I could muster, which amounted to a blank stare and an slack jawed mouth.

Having thus reaffirmed all assumptions about the idiocy of Americans, he asked me in excellent English what we were looking for, and told us we'd have to take a taxi to get there.

Dad called the taxi stand and they said it would be about 5 minutes. There was one other couple there waiting for a taxi, and we felt kinda bad that they would have to wait even longer, seeing as it had started raining. Our driver arrived, got out, and when he realized there were 4 of us, told us he'd call for a bigger car since he couldn't fit us all in. The other couple got our taxi, and we waited another 10 minutes. The second taxi arrived, and it was (surprise again) smaller than the first one. This man, however felt no qualms about having 4 people in his taxi, and off we went to the Hertz.

We piled in to our Opel Astra, and made our way to Caen. It was quite rainy, but the parts of Normandy that we could see were beautiful. Rolling hills, lots of little farms, and of course, I took no pictures.

We stayed in Caen that night and had the most wonderful breakfast at our little hotel (seriously, I know everyone says it, but man. French people know food.), and headed off to the beaches of Normandy

Omaha Beach
That path does lead down to the beach, and you can walk around.

The World War 2 museum in Caen, it was incredible, and very depressing.

The Memorial at the American Cemetery.

The Cemetery.

 The cemetery was so touching, knowing that all those men died in France for people they didn't know. I may have teared up a few times. I might be doing so now as I think about it. Shut up.

Then we left Omaha beach and headed over to Juno beach, where most of the Canadians fought. They left some of the pillboxes and artillery emplacements there so you could see them (and walk around in them, and on top of them).

Artillery in the mist.

The guns... they've stopped.

To give you a sense of scale.

It bet it was REALLY loud in here when they were firing.

An adorable church just hanging out in Caen.

We spent a second night in Caen, and got ready to drive down to Chartes, which Dad had told me is basically the quintessential Gothic cathedral.

Boy was he right.

 We took a tour from an amazing old British man who has spent a very, very long time studying Chartes, and gives incredible tours. The level of detail in the cathedral was incredible, and it was quite inspiring to see people put all their faith and belief and knowledge into building an incredible building. Chartes is actually hobbled together from like 3 different centuries of building, but the result is just absolutely phenomenal.

Absolutely everything in this picture has like 10 layers of meaning.
It's incredible. This is on the outside of the building too. Exposed to the elements.

Inside, surrounding the choir are these incredibly fine and VERY delicate
carvings that depict scenes from the life of Christ.

Sadly this is the only really good picture I got of the stained glass, but the restoration they've been doing is astounding. This glass is just remarkably beautiful.

They're painting the inside of the cathedral, which apparently was done quite a lot back in the day. They're trying to restore it to look as it would have way back when, and the day we were there was the first day they'd unveiled this area, so our tour guide was really excited. It was gorgeous.

We left Chartes a little earlier than I wanted to (I could've spent a whole day looking around in there), but Mom and Dad were convinced we'd need extra time once we got to Paris.

And again, boy were they right. There are no lane markers on any of the streets, so people create as many lanes as they see fit. Many times, this is about 3 more lanes than should actually exist. We were dropping our Hertz rental car off in Paris and it was supposedly very close to the Louvre. We literally drove around the Louvre and across the Seine about 9 times in a futile effort to see some sign of the Hertz. I made a call to the Hertz agency (in and of itself a great feat, because the phone didn't want to recognize French phone numbers), and he said it was in a tunnel.

We looked around for a tunnel, and couldn't really find it, so we pulled over to have Dad call and get real directions. This is where we made that stop.

Yeah. We're inside the Louvre courtyard.

 It turns out that the Hertz rental place is INSIDE the Louvre underground parking, but the Louvre forbids them from putting any signs up indicating that's where it is. It does keep the city pretty, but we literally drove past it probably 4 times without realizing it.

We dropped off our car, found our apartment, and ate some delicious Parisian cuisine (I think it was pizza).

Stay tuned for Paris!

A Reminder: Part 1

For those of you who can't remember or never learned why my parents are cooler than yours, allow me to rectify that.

In the nascent stages of the year, we asked Mom and Dad if we could take our family vacation with them prior to giving birth to a genetic scramble composed partially of me, but hopefully mostly of Jes. They graciously said yes, and foolishly (monetarily, anyways) allowed us to pick the destination.

Jes being the Anglophile she is, said England, and I being the...Francophile(? That makes me sound like I love James Franco) I am, really wanted to see France. I'm not really a Francophile (I don't much care for James Franco), but I was quite interested in seeing France.

Within days tickets had been purchased, tours had been reserved, and we were stupid excited for a trip that was basically 6 months away.

Fast forward those months, and we arrive here:

Sadly, this is honestly the second-best picture of the two of us the whole trip.

That's us aboard the Heathrow Express, after a 1.5 hour flight from Salt Lake to Los Angeles, a 3 hour layover in LA, and a 9.5 hour flight from LA to Heathrow in London. Thankfully, I slept from about 20 minutes after takeoff to about 20 minutes before landing, but Jes was not so fortunate. But we were in London! Hooray!

We did, however have a hard time finding where our rented apartment thing was, and Jes was so tired, she had to sit down.

Naturally, that bench was about 100 yards from where we were staying, but it took us an hour to find it.

That evening, we went for a walkabout to find some food, and were stunned to see:

Saint Paul's was basically 2 blocks from our apartment!

Visible are Tower Bridge, The Globe Theater, Millennium Bridge,
and several people without faces, or complete bodies.
Panorama on the iPhone at its best.
(If you click on all the panorama pictures they become quite large.)
((I'd recommend it.))

Our first full day in London was spent at the Tower of London, which is famous for the Crown Jewels, as well as being ridiculous in its awesomeness.

The White Tower, built by William the Conqueror.

A more different view of the White Tower.
And yes, that's the front door on the second story there.

Our Beefeater guide was fantastic.
He was also one of the 4 guards to take care of the ravens.

The Tower Complex. The grass is where the moat was.

That evening we all went to Singing in the Rain, which was quite excellent. And yes. It did rain in the theater. And yes, those people in the first 4 rows got quite wet.

The next day we went to Saint Paul's, which, if I'm honest, was my favorite single event of the trip. It was breathtaking inside. No pictures were allowed inside, sadly, but man. Amazing.

The light on the right is actually a 10-mega nuke going off.

After St. Paul's we headed off on the train to Windsor Castle, which is probably the most picturesque and adorable place in the world. And apparently an ideal location to defend against rampaging hordes.

These soldiers kindly shouted at some folk to "MOVE IT!" right before they almost trampled them to death

The Royal Residence. The Queen lives in there. The QUEEN.

St. George's Chapel, where Henry VIII is buried.

That evening, Jes and I went to Mama Mia, which in all honesty was actually pretty decent. No one in the front 4 rows got wet though. So, needs improvement.


The next day, which happened to be October 7th (my brithday!), we went to Buckingham Palace. Jes tells me that when you tour the White House, they kinda move you quickly through about 4 rooms, one of which may or may not be a hallway, and then dump you outside. Buckingham Palace takes the opposite approach. They show you pretty much everything but the Queen's bedroom. It was also the last day of the Diamond Jubilee celebration that went on this summer to commemorate Elizabeth's 60th year as monarch. So naturally there were 600 million people there. In spite of that, this was Jes' favorite part of the trip.

This takes the cake as the best picture of us by far.

Buckingham Palace

This building was super rad so I took a picture of it.
It's a hotel, but resembles Harrods, which I didn't take a picture of. 

 We made a sojourn into Harrods and man, it was seriously like being a stranger in a strange land. And everyone in that strange land is so lucratively wealthy, they don't mind spending £1,000 on a vest. Or £4,000 on shoes. One pair of shoes. £4,000. Our desire to buy something there died. Very quickly.

That was our last full day in England, and the next morning, we were going to hop aboard the Channel Tunnel train (affectionately called the Chunnel) to head to Calais and France. We left from Paddington Station, which is adjacent to King's Cross Station of Harry Potter fame. We had a little while to kill so we wanted to go look at Platform 9 3/4s.

There's platforms 9 and 10. Between them? Nothing. Air.
I feel lied to. My whole childhood, ruined.

We were quite disappointed.

Until we found this!

Jes goes for casual while slipping past the barrier to the Hogwart's Express.

Except it's actually just wedged between two stores.

Jes thinks they might have renovated since Harry Potter was written, but it was still a little soul crushing.

RIP Childhood.

King's Cross

And with that, we left England!

I love the Olympics . . . and Michael Phelps

Watch what happens when Apollo gets called on =)

Press conference

James' First Blag Post!

Wall of Text crits you for 60 hp. You have been warned.

It's true. I'm writing a blog post. Joining the blagosphere. I've hitched my wagon to the... bandwagon? Caught the blogging disease (I assume it's venereal) ((I also assume I can get away with saying that because no one actually reads this)).

Really though, I have one pseudo-funny story to tell, and I was too lazy to text it to the only people who might read this. It'll be a good barometer of who my true friends are. Out of my family members.

But first, a little background:

I typically (read: always) let Jes do all the packing of suitcases for the same reasons I typically let Mom load the dishwasher when we visit. 1) The unbelievably sophisticated spatial reasoning part of my brain does not extend its gifts to clothes or dish containers. 2) As previously mentioned, I'm lazy. 3) I believe it infuriates them when they see what a piss-poor job I've done, and they'll end up unloading everything in order to more efficiently load it, and that's just more work for them in the long run.

So really, I don't help because I love them.

I imagine there's a pretty good slogan for a business in there somewhere.

Anyways, Jes managed to pack like 10 days worth of clothes for both of us in a single suitcase. It's a large suitcase sure, but it's one that fits comfortably in the trunk of my Volkswagen Rabbit. I imagine several physicists and geologists would scratch their heads in wary disbelief at fitting so large an object into such an amazingly compact car, were they to read that sentence. Thankfully, they won't read this, so their psoriasatic (Firefox tells me that's not a word, but what do they know?) heads will go unscratched.

I considered this quite a feat, but Jes shrugged it off and told me that Cindy would be able to pack it all in a small backpack. Probably.

The whole point of telling you all that is to now tell you that upon Cindy's return from camping, I was asked to help unload the Ford Expedition she had packed.

The internet tells me that a 2007 Expedition weighs about 4,500 lbs. I unloaded at least twice that. I'm pretty sure she should've had a CDL and some sort of certification for driving that heavy.

While unloading, Jes and I had the following conversation. I had just discovered a new cache of goods.

ME: Holy crap! How does she do this?

JES: Do what?

ME: Cram all this stuff in here! Is that... are those... power tools?

JES: Well, yeah. They went camping.

ME: POWER TOOLS?

JES: James, they went camping.

ME: ... You're not making the compelling argument you think you're making.


Jes has since asked that I explain that the tools in question were power drills required for anchoring tents into the sand. Anchoring tents. Into sand. Power drills. Camping. 

Father's Day

James got two cards today, one from me, one from Baylee. I thought I'd share Baylee's.

Sorry this is turned sideways. Baylee thinks its very important to be clear when addressing a card.

She is such a clever dog! And look how she traced her paw it almost looks like she was struggling against herself while she traced it . . .


I'd like to point out that while James is not yet a father someday he will be. In the very distant future. In a galaxy far, far away.

Crazy Dog Lady

I often worry about being "that crazy dog lady" because we don't have any kids and Baylee ends up being treated more like a child than a pet. Not always because we want to do that, sometimes Baylee makes the decision for us. Like the time she gave herself stress colitis from her serious separation anxiety, started bleeding from a place no being should, we had to rush her to the vet at midnight, and Dr. Erkison said she might need to go on anxiety medication. OUR DOG might need "puppy prozac" as she called it. That's just kind of embarrassing. No one wants to tell people that story, "yeah, we have to go pick up Baylee's anxiety medication . . ." No thank you. So we instead bought a Thunder Shirt.

(notice the huge neck fat roll)

The shirt seems to be working which is nice since the dumb thing was $35. Then we went to City Creek up in Salt Lake and I saw something that made me realize I am not the crazy dog lady. Nope that is the lady who had this coming out of Banana Republic:

Just substitute two tiny yorkies for that shiba inu. Yeah, I am SOOOOOO good right now.

I just have good taste, or there's something wrong with me.

I found the stroller I want! Good thing too cause its going to take 2-5 years to save up for the dumb thing.
See how it's higher so you don't have to bend down and they face you when they're little? So awesome! And a bargain at $1,049. Ya, you read that right.

I'm taking donations, just let me know what you're in for ;-)

Kids say the most interesting things. . .

Every week in Government we assign a current event that the students must research and discuss with the rest of the class. Topics are selected by the teachers, but the entire discussion is student led. The other teacher selected this weeks topic of "Secret Service Scandal" which I wasn't super excited about until the comments started coming.

"My article said the first guy didn't realize she was a prostitute until she wanted her money."

 "What can I say? Prostitution is bad. And gross."

But, by far my favorite was, "I think these guys work really hard and I don't understand why they can't have fun after hours." Followed by a huge uproar and threats to fight. It was also at this point that one student decided the door should be closed for this topic. I totally agreed.

I have . . . fish. . .

Last Friday I was in the teacher's lounge when a group of six students (4 of mine, 2 I didn't know) came in very excited. "Beesley, we got you something!" One of them produced from under his hoodie this:

I said, "Ya right. What are those really for?"

"No really, for YOU!"

"crap."

I'm actually pretty sure that last one I said in my head, but I did mention that I now had to go buy a tank and, "thanks . . . guys . . ."

I first went to Petco, where the fish had been purchased and thanked the nice man for selling six goldfish to a group of high school students so they could gift them to me. He looked rather sheepish. Then I proceeded to spend $43 on a very basic setup drove back to school and decided I didn't want a real tank so I ran across the street to Walmart and got a big glass jar-like-thing. I filled it with water and stuck the bag in there to equalize the temperature.

Then I decided the "tank" needed rocks so I pulled out the baggy and decorated a little.

Yes, much better.

Then I did some water mixing and eventually let them be free!

And then I fed them and left for the weekend, terrified the whole time they would all be dead when I came back Monday. I don't like death. Imagine my excitement when all six, P.D., Sugar, Cinnamon, Spice, Candy, and Splenda were all alive and accounted for after those two days! But, then Candy and Cinnamon did not survive allegedly (via anonymous note on the tank) because there was not enough surface area to give all of them the needed oxygen. So I had my T.A.s fill up the bigger tank and I put in the filter (it has a cool waterfall action going on) and hopefully the others will live. Even if its in a way less-cool tank.

It looks lame, but decorations are expensive, so . . . at least they're alive!

P.S. I did not name the fish, they came pre-named and P.D. actually stands for "Pimp Daddy." Can you see why he's going by P.D.?

P.P.S. Okay, maybe I named Splenda.