Sunset at 6:13!?!

It is very hard to get very many miles after work if sunset comes, as it did today (according to the Weather Channel) at 6:13. It is even harder to take a couple of minutes to get a decent photo. It is even harder if it is too overcast to provide decent lighting for any such photo.

But I did get to ride. The temperature was OK, the wind was tolerable.

We curled last night. The game turned, as it often does on a single shot. Our highly paid final shooter failed to execute a shot in the 4th end. We were lying 1, opponents had the hammer. We were down 3-1 but were in position to steal 1 to get back to 3-2. The attempted shot with our final rock was to place another rock near the button, allowing us to lie 2, making the final shot takeout by the opponent as difficult as possible. This was necessary because the opponent looked to be able to score 4 if they could take out our shot rock. The takeout looked to be a very difficult shot but we had to defend against it. It was such a difficult shot that our final shooter failed to adequately consider the possibility that he would make that shot on behalf of the opponent. Yup. I took out our shot rock and set the opponent up for an easy coast in 5. In a six end game coming back from down 5 is pretty much out of the question. Closed circuit to TT: We might well have done better if we had had another sweeper for several shots which just missed from unavoidable lack of sweeping.

*sigh*

We are contemplating a trip to Paris in the spring. In the process of just thinking about it I recently reread Michael Palin's account of a walk he took in Paris of sites associated with Ernest Hemingway.

Here is a passage from near the end of his account:

"Here you have a choice of classic brasseries, all well known to Hemingway — La Rotonde, Le Dôme, La Coupole, Le Select. Pass them by for now and turn off the main road up rue Delambre, where you will find the site of the fabulously named Dingo Bar. It’s now called the Auberge de Venise, and the cooking is Italian, but surely that’s a small price to pay for eating on the spot where Hemingway first met Scott Fitzgerald and the two English aristocrats on whom he based the characters of Duff Twysden and Mike Guthrie in "The Sun Also Rises," the book that made Hemingway, and Hemingway’s Paris, famous."That is TOPWLH standing in front of the Auberge de Venise, shortly after we dined there during our first visit to Paris in 2004. This was one of our first outings after our French speaking guide had departed to return to Nantes, leaving us alone in Paris with our very, very limited French.

Hint: the waiter spoke much better English than our French. Indeed, it is true, we have dined at the Dingo Bar and we have enjoyed cocktails at Harry's New York Bar.