Kris and Jo go to Paris

Angelina is jolie

In my quest to find the best hot chocolate in Paris, it is for you, my cher chocolat loving public, that I torment myself with tireless taste testings throughout the city.  In fact, I am am so dedicated to you, dear reader, that I even try some establishments more than once--just to be certain of my findings before I post them. 

I know you are counting on me.

And so it was that I found myself, once again, along the rue de Rivoli, a stones skip from the gardens Tuillerie and a short promenade from Le Louvre, at the quintessential turn-of-the- century Parisian establishment, Angelina. 

Rodin's rocks, rock

Kris and I have very different aesthetic tastes, but when it comes to art, we can agree on at least one thing: the Rodin museum kicks butt.  Tucked away in the 7th, near the gilded dome of les Invalides (read, home of Napoleon's tomb and a fascinating war museum), the museum is actually a former residence and workshop of the famous 19th century sculptor, Auguste Rodin.  Unlike many artists, Rodin knew great success during his life and is probably one of the best-known French sculptors, ever.

Site changes

The site changes I talked about earlier have been implemented.

Based on Stew's suggestion, I've added a search feature to the right column. Typepad makes this pretty easy, which was nice. Type "Vichy France" into the search box and you'll see the appropriate entry at the top of the list.

I've also kept the FeedBlitz subscription box since a couple people have actually used it. (Welcome Mom and Uncle Steve!)

I did remove the MapStats and TopBlogSites counters. MapStats just never worked properly and TopBlogSites didn't really bring any traffic to the site, and that place is just ugly.

I've also started a "daily publish" schedule for my posts. From now on, you should see one post a day, and it should appear at noon Paris time. Some days you'll get something interesting, and some days you'll get boring crap like this. Sorry about that. Jo's posts will still appear as she creates them.

Dessert

I'm beginning to think that I can start a blog that consists soley of funny pictures of my father.

This is from the first night of our Loire trip, which you can read more about here.

Free ... Works Good

I'm back in Seattle. Sorry about the lack of posts. I've been suffering from a combination of jet lag and massive amounts of work. When I return to Seattle, most of my time at work is spent meeting with people I haven't seen for months. This means I have to do my "real" work late at night or early in the morning.

The picture above is actually from the last time I was staying with Stew in the summer of 2005. The microwave was gone a few hours later, but the next day appeared on the sidewalk in front of another house with the same "works good" note attached. The "free" sign was different.

Today, as I was out running errands, I came along this (pictured below) on the very same street corner. (My camera was accidentally set to black and white mode when I took this. Sorry about that.)