Bonne année

Vacation is over and I'm exhausted. I suppose that's the sign of a good vacation, right? Dad is, even as I type this, winging his way back state-side (well, as far as I know, anyway; we haven't heard otherwise and the trip to the airport this morning is a blog entry in and of itself).

I'm not even going to attempt to tell you everything that happened over the last two weeks right now, as the gray matter between my ears is rather more frazzled than normal, but I can give you some highlights, including:

• teaching Dad the joys of playing Rapido while drinking a coffee in the local PMU
• Dad teaching me how to make my favorite home made meal of all time, and then subjecting it to our friends (it was a thumb's up all around)
• the look on my Dad's face when he opened his Christmas gift from Steph and I and Steph's parents
• finding the Best Pizza in France in the last place you'd think to look
• stumbling into a bar in Troyes that exclusively plays Blues and Soul music, and Dad discovering that his son-in-law has no rhythm
  
• the very odd man that sold Dad a new hat
• Dad increasing his French vocabulary from zero to ten phrases!

and more where that came from.... possibly tomorrow. For now, I want to wish every single one of you lovely folks who stumble upon this mess a very Happy, Fabulous, Outstanding, Insert-Your-Favorite-Adjective-Here, 2006!