Department store displays at Xmas

Today Sarah and I made it over to the two big department stores that do incredible displays for Christmas in their windows. They were both amazing. I think Printemps gets style points, they had a theme of Morroco for all their displays, and some very stylish windows. Galleries Lafayette was the winner though, their displays really appealed to the child inside me. They seemed to appeal to all the kids as well.

Each display has a raised platform in front of it on the sidewalk. The platform is for small kids only, so they can get up close and get a good view. Most things in the displays are animated: teapots walk around offering cake, dogs stage a small "bullfight", pigs scuba dive, and bears grill skish-kabobs or jackhammer huge chocolate bars. The attention to detail is amazing, everywhere you look something is going on. And you are surrounded by 5 year old kids who are bouncing around looking at everything. In between the kids displays are some rather odd non-animated displays for us adults.

I've posted some pictures from the displays, and one video. This was also a trial of my new spy camera I got for Christmas, and I was very happy with it. It has built in image stabilization, which helped in the low light situation like these window shots.

Enjoy:
http://picasaweb.google.com/suzypics/ParisXmasLights

Big Bend National Park Texas

We arrived back in France after a 2 and a half week visit to Texas. It was really great to see all our friends, and eat real TexMex. It was kind of scary driving a car again, and being in the US "car culture". I hadn't driven since last March, and was overwhelmed by being plopped into the Christmas shopping rush in Austin.

We also spent a week in Big Bend hiking with my family, which was very nice. This picture is from our last day of hiking, taken from the Emory Peak trail. The Sierra del Carmen are in the distance, they are about 20 miles away in this photo.

I've posted some photos. I've moved to using Picasa web albums, it has more features than what I was doing hand patching my own site.

Here are the pics:
http://picasaweb.google.com/suzypics/BigBendXmas2006 

Retirement receding in the distance

I sense that my retirement date crept out a bit last week. This was do to the large leak that my wallet seems to have sprung.

I mentioned in my last post that I was considering a new lens for my camera. Well, after much careful research and wringing of hands, I ended up getting ....*two* lenses. Ouch. I got a Sigma 10-20 mm for nice wide angle shots, and a Canon 28-135 mm zoom with image stabilization. They should be waiting for me when we arrive back in Texas for the holidays.

I'm also a tad worried about Sarah's new friend. She met the "really really nice guy who owns the cool wine shop around the corner". Translation: expect a steady stream of expensive bottles of wine into the apartment.

Last weekend was our last before heading to the US. We did some Xmas shopping, and I finally got to take Sarah to the good Japonaise place that makes its own Soba noodles. Sunday we had large salads with Sarah's cousin Elizabeth for lunch, and then demolished all the salad goodness by tucking into nice slices of Suzy's pear chocolate tarte. Then we took advantage of a last chance to hang out with our Aussie friends, they are definitely getting the "short timer" attitude as they look forward to their return to Sydney.

Friday we head for Austin and then hiking in Big Bend National Park. I probably won't be posting much until we return home to Paris in late December.