Notre épisode neigeux, etc.

Saturday night: By the way, I love my new tablet computer (called une tablette tactile in French). I don't use it much for composing blog posts, but I'm 'typing' this paragraph on it. I'm feeling more and more comfortable with the on-screen keyboard. For example, I've now figured out how to type the accented characters required by French -- ê é à ï û etc.

What's nice is being able to sit on the sofa or in a comfortable chair and read, surf, or reply to e-mails. Or look things up on Rotten Tomatoes, IMDB, or Wikipedia when I'm watching a movie, the news, or a documentary on TV. Or looking at photos that I might decide to post here.

The weather alert area according to last night's TF1 news broadcast

Sunday morning: I didn't get up until 7:00. And yes, it was and is snowing. There's not an awful lot of it so far, but the MétéoCiel forecast say the heaviest snow is yet to arrive.

The view out a back window at 7:15 a.m. today

I have to take the dog out in it in a few minutes. It's not light enough yet. The sun rises at 8:32, and with the cloud cover and snow it's still pitch dark out there.

The forecast map for this morning. Saint-Aignan is just east of the blue dot (Tours)
slightly to the right of weatherwoman Catherine Laborde's left hand.

The snow is always exciting — I guess that's because I grew up on the N.C. coast, where snow was fairly rare, and then I lived in the SF Bay Area in California for so many years, and there it didn't snow at all.

P.S. A final picture, which I took at 8:15 a.m. out the front window

Here in Saint-Aignan, we get some snow nearly every year, but still... Tomorrow it's supposed to rain.

Il s'en lèche les babines *

Bertie the black cat is an optimist by nature. He thinks the whole big chicken might be for him, and for him alone. * He's licking his chops.

This was a 7¼ lb. capon. Bertie didn't get much, but he did enjoy a few bits
that I pulled off the carcass for him.

__________________________________

Despite predictions of snow, we didn't get any in Saint-Aignan yesterday. Well, we saw a few flurries over the course of the day, but with no accumulation.

Now MétéoCiel, one weather service we keep track of, says we could get 15 cm (6") of snow starting tonight and continuing into tomorrow afternoon. We have no plans to take the car out until it all gets scraped off the roads, or melts. Significant snowfall is rare here and it's a big deal when it happens.

Through the curtains

The sun finally came back out for a couple of days.
Yesterday's sunrise was bright and clear. And cold.

A mid-January sunrise through the kitchen curtains

Problem is, we're supposed to get snow today and tomorrow. I think
I'd better go to SuperU and make sure we have all the food essentials for the weekend.

Winter days

It's very cold here this morning. The temperature is –4ºC (25ºF) according to our outdoor thermometer, and it's only 11.5ºC (53ºF) in the house. (We don't keep the heat on overnight — the first thing I did this morning, before I made coffee, was go downstairs and turn it on.)

The pictures in this post show winter in San Francisco, not in Saint-Aignan.

Walt saw this photo on my computer screen and said that he liked it better
than a similar one that I posted yesterday. So here it is.

The weather widget on my computer desktop reports –9ºC (16ºF !). That weather service has found an extremely cold spot in Saint-Aignan for its thermometer. The TV weather report that's on right now says the temperature in Touraine this morning is –4º.

Crisp, clear winter air made it possible to take this shot from far away.

I'm spending a good portion of the days right now working with my Google Nexus 7 tablet computer, trying to figure out how it works and what it can do. I figured out how to get accented characters like é and à and û on the on-screen keyboard yesterday. I've downloaded some free "apps" for file management, etc., from the Google store.

San Francisco isn't all skyscrapers. This shows the Mission District and the Bay Bridge.

And cooking: yesterday for we had boudin noir (AKA blood sausage, black pudding) and boudin blanc (white sausage, white pudding) that we got from the traveling butcher. Both were very good. I made some sautéed potatoes called pommes de terre sautées à cru to go with them and then we had a big salad of escarole lettuce (scarole) and cooked (red) beets (bettarave, beetroot).

Walt did some "winter cleaning"
(can't really call it spring cleaning)
in the kitchen a couple of days ago.
He's perched up there like some kind
of  mountain goat. He said the wall
over the sink needed to be washed.


As always, you can click on the pictures here to see them at a larger size.