6. Castles galore! Real beds!

So I'm currently working on the tale of our war with Monsieur le Club, our neighbor who likes to play bad

techno long and loud, without any reason or right. But just earlier this week Megan and I went to Tours. Tours is a city about 240 kilometers or so south and a bit west of Paris (should I say kilometres? Klicks? How native should I go here?), chock full of history and overflowing with castles.

Megan has a dear wonderful friend whose mother is French. She maintains a small apartment in Tours and

spends a couple months a year there. There just happened to be a bit of overlap between her stay and ours, and her friend's mother invited us down for a couple days. Naturally, we accepted; aside from the chance to see a familiar face and a new town, any home whose owner felt could accept overnight guests was bound to be lavish luxury compared to Le Petit Bateau. We put a few days' worth of clothes and necessaries into one of our big backpacks and set out for the train station. Come along and let me tell you about it.

5. I Remember a Soldier Sleeping Next to Me...

Hey all. So, (I think) I have started putting ads on here. Because that way I will become rich. At this point I have no idea what kinds of ads will appear or how which ads are picked or by whom. Hopefully there's some algorithm thing where what shows up will have something to do with what I'm writing about or will be interesting to people. I think, if you click on them, I get money? Is that right? Whatever. Let me know if you're getting ads for wang-embiggeners or ads selling Sarah Palin anything. Blech.

        Also, folks who prefer to do their internetting with a mobile device can now read my blog that way. It was super hard to set up, too: I went to a page and clicked a button. They should have that enabled as a default.  Hmph.   Aaanyway, read on. Today I tackle the Metro:

 I am sure that nowhere in all the tales of people moving from small towns to big cities, be it on paper, online, or verbally, has anyone said anything about learning to use the train-based public transport system. I can't speak to the Subway or the Underground, but I can tell you about the Paris Metro. And since no one else has ever talked about it, I shall. But first I need to tell you about my parents' driveway.

4. Things We Might Have Been: Regulars at a Kids' Cafe

Here's something I wrote barely a week after we got here. We still weren't online in our apartment yet, so we roamed the neighborhood, looking for places with free wifi.

9/7/11 (in France they do the dates day/month/year, so if I wanted to go all native I'd write 7/9/11, but then you guys in the States'd be confused): 

There's this tiny little cafe near our place called la Dinette des Fils a Maman, or Mama's Boys' Little Diner. Or something like that. It has four tables and would be crowded with ten people in it. It's got free wifi (as long as you buy at least a 1 euro cup of coffee) so that's been super helpful. The places with free wifi (with purchase) around here are few, and we've been using this other cafe where a cup of coffee is 2.40. When I say a cup of coffee, I mean a shot of espresso. That's how they roll here. A cup of coffee with cream and stuff is 4.20. Anyway, La Dinette is a super cheap alternative. Also it's crazy awesome.

3. Kidney Stones II: Nat and Megan's Bogus Journey

In Neal Stephenson's Baroque Cycle (I think it's in Quicksilver, the first one), there's a character named Daniel Waterhouse. He has a kidney stone, which is a much bigger deal in the 17^th century; in fact, he's pretty sure it's going to kill him.

Now, this book (and by book I mean all three of them) is about so much more than kidney stones. It manages to make the rise of modern banking and scientific thought in the 17^th and 18^th centuries read like cyberpunk. It is one of the most awesome books I have ever read. And it came into my mind while we waited in the ER.

Come with me after the jump to find out why.

2. Kidney Stones- a bladderful of fun

I've had kidney stones once, maybe twice before. My first kidney stone was in 1998 and was fairly mundane, as episodes of horrible pain in your abdomen go. I thought I was dying and went to the ER (with one heroical Father Christmas acting as my wheelman, gods bless 'im) where they told me they could shoot it with ultrasonic waves for a lot of money or they could give me a prescription for pain meds and I could hole up at home with those for a couple days. I chose the latter and tried to grind a Percoset up into a joint. Blah blah college.

The second time was maybe a year ago, and may have been a kidney stone or may have just been some mild food poisoning (my doctor, back when I had one, thought the latter), but at any rate, after puking like Veronica Cartwright did in The Witches of Eastwick right before she died while the guy who later played Nathaniel Fisher just read his book, I felt fine.

That's not even from the right movie, but that's what it looked like.

Come along after the break (this seems to be the thing to say in this format) and I'll tell you about my latest experience with mineral buildup in your innards.