3 things

• Flickr is dangerously addictive.


• Bought old editions of Elizabeth David's French Country Cooking and Claudia Roden's Middle Eastern Food at a second-hand book store for 6 euros ! Classics that have been part of my mother's cookbook collection for as long as I can remember, and now I have my own copies.


• Have just got a weekly "subscription" of organic fruit and veggies, locally or regionally grown whenever possible: every Wednesday I get to pick up a random assortment of in-season goodness from a neighborhood store. Can't wait to see what's in the basket tomorrow !

Jean-Paul ? Gaultier !

Smart and successful people

...don't necessarily have a lot of common sense.

Case in point, the lovely lady who requests a meeting with my boss. Meeting fixed. Fine. I ask for her phone number in case I need to get in touch to change the appointment. She mentions specifically that she will be travelling for the whole week prior to the meeting and gives me a number. Silly me assumes that's a cell phone. You would too, right ?

Murphy's Law being what it is, I need to cancel the meeting and as soon as I find out, I leave a voice mail a day for 3 days. No response. Lovely lady shows up at appointed time. Boss is not here. I apologize profusely for not having managed to reach her and we check the number she had given me - yep, it's her home office line.

Obviously the moral of the story is that I should never assume anything. But bloody hell it's annoying.

Oh. My.

Reading a NY Times food section article called "Fat, Glorious Fat, Moves to the Center of the Plate" half an hour before lunchtime is probably not a good idea...

What's in a name ?

On the metro a baby is fussing in its fancy McLaren pram and I hear the father say, "Arrête, Toscane".

Not sure whether that calls for a smile or a smirk.

Time flies

.... and we all know it, but sometimes little incidents really bring it home - such as having a meal outside, watching a group of kids play around with a soccer ball. A few of them start to chant, "Et un, et deux, et trois - zéro" and it occurs to me that they weren't even born in 1998 when Les Bleus beat Brazil 3-0 in the World Cup final, and yet there they are, owning that little song, and I remember that day and night as if it were yesterday.

Talking about diets

In some circles it's a form of female bonding, or so it seems. Or perhaps not...

My boss tells me today that she didn't eat the sushi I ordered for her lunch because she's on a diet. (Huh? Sushi seems to be the ideal diet food to me, but I tell myself that perhaps she's avoiding the carbs in the rice). Anyway, after some short diet blabla (during which I confess that my diets consist of not having seconds, and only for about 2 days before I lose the will power even for that) I tell her that she looks great, which is the truth - granted I've never seen her in a bathing suit, but dressed - and she does dress very well - she has a figure most women would envy, honestly.

To which she replies, on her way out the door, "Thanks, but everything is relative".

Now I'm not usually paranoid (but everyone really is out to get me! nah, just kidding) or overly sensitive, but... ouch, no ?

A wannabe Sartorialist post

Love this woman's take on white for summer - the shoes, the bag, the lace trim on her dress, the flesh-tone fishnets. White shoes in general are hard to do right, I think - they often look cheap for some reason, but hers are great.