And today’s spam is brought to you by…

…some site that could help me lose thirty pounds in one month. But since doing so would probably be the death of me (literally) I won’ tell you who they are.

On the bright side, in each of the three comments they left me, they made it clear that they would be back (oh good):

• Hi, nice post. I have been pondering this issue,so thanks for sharing. I’ll probably be coming back to your site. Keep up great writing
• Hi, nice post. I have been pondering this issue,so thanks for writing. I will definitely be coming back to your site.
• Hi, good post. I have been thinking about this topic,so thanks for sharing. I will certainly be coming back to your posts.

Nothing like a little original thought in the comments…

Easily amused

Why do I find this post from Opal so funny? Maybe it’s one of those “funny cause it’s so sad” things, because man do I feel that way sometimes too.

In any case, each time I watch it, it makes me laugh out loud.

Random photos

After attempting to take a picture of my strangely-shaped bread, I went through the various photos on my (work) telephone, and made some amusing (re)discoveries:

Canadian Jealousy for sale at Cora: 10€ per kilo (June 4, 2008)

Gift-wrapped goodness: My main course at Alchimy (remember when I told you about French Fusion cuisine?) (June 13, 2008)

Unwrapped goodness (but let me tell you that that plastic wrap was a royal pain during the actually chow time)

Someone else's goodness...or perhaps my entrée, I don't remember.

A mountain - probably in Switzerland, I think on my way to a meeting in Milan (July 24, 2008)

The top half of a vending machine probably at Basel train station. Why did I take this photo? Possibly the impressively wide range of snacks...as well as condoms and lighters. (September 18, 2008).

The bottom half of said vending machine. Fruit juice and Red Bull and Dairy-based beverages: oh my!

The whole reason I was looking at my mobile photos to begin with: my cratered cheese bread. Voilà.

Well, I thought it was funny.

One of a kind?

With the aforementioned sales on, Amazon.fr has been sending me lots of emails to let me know that the sales are on online as well. I have been cruising through the offerings, and am currently looking for a couple of inexpensive mystery novels in the “livres en anglais” section to fill out my order (and feed my permanent craving for reading). After adding one to my basket, I was presented with the “people who bought this also bought…” with an eclectic selection that looked remarkably like my own shopping cart / books set aside for later. Either there are lot of people in France that like English children’s books, French television shorts, and Japanese logic games, or I’m the first person ever (in France) to put this book in my cart.

Crazy snails

No, this one isn’t about food; as I mentioned before, I’ve tried snails, and I didn’t like them…frog’s legs are tasty though!

Anyway, the snails in our aquarium our out of control. There are at least 14 egg pouches (times like 10 snails each) in the baby box alone. I wonder how many snails will be too many, and what we will be able to do about it if we reach that point. In the meantime, I’m happy that they’re doing a great job of keeping the bottom of the baby box clean though! Speaking of which, one more baby in the baby box as of tonight, and at least one other hiding somewhere… the procreation continues…

Hmmm, about those keywords

Apparently writing about keywords doesn’t include any useful keywords, because after a significant (all things being relative) spike yesterday, today’s traffic has been nil (and no, I don’t mean almost). I am, more than ever, intrigued by this unexplained traffic (since WordPress doesn’t seem to know where any of these people came from, except for 1). Weird. Maybe it was Vianney…

Fish babies

Since the weekly trend of finding new babies in our aquarium is continuing, I felt it was time to find out more about our frisky fish. Apparently the average gestational period is 26-42 days (at least according to Rate My Fish Tank
), although I haven’t made any real effort to verify that information. Assuming it’s accurate, that means that most of the fish were pregnant when we bought them which, the way I see it, makes them a pretty good deal – x for the price of 1! If we’re still seeing babies in a few weeks, then we’re all set for a self-renewing fishy family .

Incidentally, of the 4 types of fish mentioned in Rate My Fish Tank’s paragraph on the gestational period, we have 3 of them: guppies, mollies, and platies. We also have neons, a bottom feeder and a window cleaner (I don’t remember the real names of those that make our aquarium a living version of a self-cleaning oven).

Cooking and social networking?

I wonder how many social networks, RSS feeds, and other such web addictions are too many, because I must be close. Even so, with impressive timing (considering my recent reflections on where/how to put my offline recipes online so that I can tag them and bookmark them with my ever-growing online collection), I have just discovered Group Recipes. I don’t know if I’ll go that route, for a lot of reasons, but it’s one more thing to consider, even if it means adding yet another website to my list of places to spend (waste?) time.

Why call it “power”, when it’s really just “off”?

Some television remote controls in France actually do not turn the TV on. It took me a while to figure out that, despite this, I didn’t actually have to get up to turn the TV on: changing the channel on the remote turns the TV on (but, of course, not off). All this, I can only assume, ties into the fact that most TVs here actually have 2 levels of off: off that can be turned on by the remote – but not using the power button – which is actually a kind of sleep mode that still uses a bit of electricity and is equivalent to off in back in Canada (or at least it was when I left, but maybe that’s changed in 5 years), and off off which depends on a button/switch on the television itself. I haven’t figured out, though, why the power button wouldn’t be designed to turn the TV on.