...Continued

And another thing:

• Blake has arrived, sans passport. It disappeared somewhere between the U.S. and French passport control, so Nick spent about an hour busting the poor kid out of the airport. U.S. Airways apparently completely abandoned him (after making him leave the gate, where he was waiting for the employee who promised to go check the plane and never returned), and, by the way, they never posted an arrival gate (on the website or at the airport, even though the plane docked at one--no shuttles required. So please all join me in a moment of glaring disapprovingly at U.S. Airways.

• The passport office at the embassy is open Monday-Friday, 9am-12pm. Clearly, they have adapted to being French.

• We live fairly near a soccer stadium. Getting to sleep at a decent hour on Sunday nights is simply impossible. I feel old for even thinking that.

• The other night, when Olivier and Penny were here, we noticed something very small moving on the floor. Penny and I both jumped--I haven't been out of New York all that long, and it was approximately cockroach-sized. "I thought it was a cat," Penny said. "It seems like when something like that happens, it's always a cat." French neuroses are just so much cooler than New York ones. (The thing, by the way, was a Japanese rice cracker.)

• Métro stations come with little recessed faucets with running water. We saw a homeless guy rinsing his hands in one; I can't imagine what else one might use them for.

• They find different flavors appealing than we do. Like, it's easier to find mango yogurt in the grocery store than, say, strawberry. Chestnut yogurt is pretty popular, even. Sorry, Andrea: still no Mentos cassis. And Nick is getting increasingly snippy when I go off looking for it.

• Now that I'm here for good, Nick has suddenly become much more comfortable making me ask people for stuff. Like, he put his monthly Métro pass through the washing machine, and today he shoved me forward to plead with the guy. "He washed his card," was the best that I had. "He really did," the guy said when he saw the faded-out scrap of cardboard. It was too damaged to replace, if you're curious.

• We took Blake to Notre Dame, of which the coolest part is obviously the trained sparrows outside. There's just this massive flock of them in one of the rows of bushes, and if you bring over bread crumbs, they will swarm to sit on you and eat from your hand. I would never do this, of course--I just think it's cool.

• We talked Blake into ordering frogs' legs when we stopped for an apératif. In the meantime, the waiter brought over a plate of very thinly sliced saucisson for us to nibble with our wine. I swear I thought that Blake knew that I was kidding when I implied that those were his frogs. He did not. He ate most of the plate under the impression that it was frogs' legs.

• Oh, and Nick loved that the redeye went off when I took this shot on the stairs of a café: