visiting ma with jj

jj and i head back to new hampshire to visit my mom. jj wanted to come back and see her and since she had a few extra days at the end of vacation, we figured it was the best time to come – rather than taking days off from school. we felt that she should come visit soon, in case... we will head back new years day. sad that we will not spend new years together with p.

jj and friend in paris

jj got to spend a whole day with her friend, running around paris. then i cooked dinner for everyone.

my birthday

we got back to paris at 6pm today. came back to the apartment where jj’s friend was waiting for us. her parents and brother have moved to a hotel for the last 2 nights. we went over to their hotel with a bottle of champagne and had it in their lovely lobby. it was great to see them. we then all headed to dinner. we had booked a table at “le violin d’ingres” which is the fancy restaurant owned by christian constant. you may remember that we really like his “cafe constant” which has very good food at very good prices. “le violin d’ingres” had a michelin star – though it lost it this year... so tonight we were going to try the real stuff. i was very excited. it was much more expensive than i realized – i had accidently misread the website of ANOTHER restaurant called by the same name. the food was very good. the ingredients were fancy. the ambiance was white table cloth and fancy. BUT if you take into account the price of things, his little bistro is a much better value. excellent food without ridiculous prices. of course, there are no dishes with fois gras or truffles in them. ( and then on top of that our friends treated us! whoa!)

back in paris, briefly

back in paris. only until saturday when we go to carcassonne. jj’s friend from boston moved to india when we moved to paris. they are coming to use our apartment when we are away. we get to see them for the day on saturday.

visiting ma

i had wanted to come back and visit my mother around now. the flights are much cheaper outside of the christmas/new year weeks. i found a good flight and booked it for december 6.

meanwhile, the week before i came out, my mom, who had moved into a facility in september, fell down and broke her hip. she had an operation to get a new hip, and had a stroke or 2... so i’m very glad to be visiting her. mostly, i hung out with her. tried to feed her when food came, but she was having problems swallowing. she couldn’t really talk much. she would start a sentence and it sounded almost intelligible, but then it would slide into mumbles. my sister says she doesn’t remember well, so that after i leave, she will forget. but that doesn’t matter. i feel that just being there with her, and her seeing me there at that moment, is the important thing. life is in the moment.

party season - cocktail party, wrap party

party season - cocktail party, wrap party – (pub’d)

jj is in heavy testing week. “compos” they call it. they have no classes. they just go in for an exam and then they are home studying for the next one. but we have two parties to go to.

so we left jj home, studying, on her own. we only felt a little guilty...

the first party was a cocktail party near the madeleine. one of the conversation moms was throwing the party in her apartment that looked out over paris with a wall of windows in a posh part of town. nice group of people, nice champagne.

the second party, was luckily in the same neighborhood. i was very excited to be invited to this, the wrap party for the new feature film that this studio just finished. wrap parties are usually really fun. we arrived unfashionably on time at 8. there were enough people there. it was in a club which was one mirrored room. there was champagne too, of course. that’s another thing i love about france. there’s always champagne. i didn’t know too many people at the studio. but funny, some friends, who i knew in computer graphics eons ago, showed up too. it’s a small world of course, of computer graphics, and since this studio has been around for 20 years, it shouldn’t have been too big a surprise. otherwise, i only knew a few people and not too well. so we ended up leaving by 10, when, of course, the fashionable people were just arriving. didn’t matter, since i didn’t know them either. oh well, we’re showing our age...