Carving out a new experience

Autumn is definitely upon us, and the temperature has plunged this week. Still, we have blue skies and crisp weather for the moment, which is not a bad thing. The clocks went back today, which is a bad thing. It's already been getting dark quite early, so now it will be all short days and gloom for the foreseeable. On the bright side, once again, I headed to the local park to capture a few pictures of the autumn leaves:

Last night, on the other hand, I had an entirely new autumn experience: pumpkin carving! I expected I would be terrible at this, since I have pretty much zero artistic ability and my knife skills are poor at best (and not enhanced by drinking wine). So on balance I think I did a pretty good job. I was pretty terrified of the bold stabs with a butcher knife you had to do to get into the top of the thing:

You can imagine the Psycho music here

And surprised at how much scraping and pulling out of gooey handfuls of flesh and seeds that had to be undertaken once you did get the top off. It's hard work!

It was a lot of fun though! I did a double-sided design, a pretty basic scary face on one side (and I managed to screw that up even) and hearts and stars on the back. It made a nice change from going out on the booze for once!

Marcia, Laura, Margot, me, Mathilde, Caroline and our pumpkins

The back of my pumpkin. The other ladies took the piss that I made a heart,  but you know, love's a scary thing, right?

Mathilde's pumpkin was far superior to anything I could have managed. Unfairly, this was her first time as well!

Spoooooky! I cut the bottom teeth the wrong way round so they all fell off. Whoops!

Yes, someone did a jizzing cock pumpkin...

There's more Halloween fun to come. On Wednesday I think everybody I've ever met in Tours and more are all headed to one of the Irish pubs. Handily, the 1st of November is a public holiday in France, so everyone can kick up their heels without worrying about work the next day. You'll have to stay tuned to discover my (not very exciting) costume!

Just a technical note to finish on - I reached my free photo storage limit on Blogger, so I added my other gmail address as a "blog author" and hey presto, I can upload photos again! So now you'll see some posts by Gwan and some by Gwannel, but it's all me. Everyone seems to say Wordpress is better than Blogger etc. but I've had the blog for over 6 years now, so I'd rather just keep the continuity going if possible.

Back in action

My laptop died last week, which particularly upset me, since I've had all the squillions of euros of expenses moving to the new place, then my ipod died a few months back, and then the laptop. Then I was in turn upset with myself for being upset because I like to imagine I'm above being attached to material possessions and money worries, even though it's a) clearly not true and b) kind of part of being a grown-up to stop being all starry-eyed and idealistic about not being driven by money. Sure, I don't have to think that money and possessions are the most important things in life, but I probably don't have to feel like some sort of capitalist stooge for acknowledging that they do matter.

Anyway, I put off taking it in to get fixed because a) I hoped if I unplugged it for a couple of days it might magically forget it was broken (didn't work) and b) asking "do you do repairs?" in French - "faites-vous les reparations?" - makes me feel like I'm a French interrogator in Weimar Germany. (Yeah, all that for a dumb history joke!) When I did take it in, I was amazed when the guy gave me a quote (40 euro) - I'm used to repair people being magically totally unable to give you the vaguest idea of what something might cost. He seemed to think it would be easy to fix, so I got my hopes all up only for them to be dashed when I went back the next day and he said he'd need to wipe the hard drive and it might be corrupted :( I was, of course, convinced that it WOULD be corrupted and I'd have to get a new one. But "good news everybody!", it is fixed and for the original price, yay! Luckily, since losing all my photos when my last laptop died, I've been a good little backing-up bunny, so I've spent the last couple of hours putting all my files back on the laptop and downloading stuff like iTunes.

It is soooo good to have it back. It seems kind of incredible now that I didn't bring a laptop when I was in Europe from 2006-07, and even as recently as 2008 we didn't have internet in our flat in Wellington. (Well, we did briefly, until the guy who was meant to be in charge of these things didn't pay the bills and it got cut off. Electricity almost got cut off too! Students, eh?) It seems like a totally different universe almost. Sometimes when I think about doing a PhD I seriously wonder if I would have the attention span for that these days, or if it would be just too tempting to check my emails or Facebook etc. all day long... I suppose in a few years I'll feel the same way about a smart phone (yeah, I still don't have one).

ANYWAY, I'm sure that is all very boring to everyone who's not me, so I'll just add (lots of) pretty autumn pictures I took on a lovely sunny day in the park. Stay tuned for news of wild partying with Ksam!

Bob rocks out with his... tongue out


I found it funny that the bake-it-yourself bread I bought "fears damp"


I made cream of cauliflower soup! Here, it is shown as part of a balanced meal :)


Ze moon, on the street where I used to live

If you don't like trees, or autumn, or parks, look away now...