Thanksgiving and visitor come and gone

Our friend Bill from Amsterdam arrived for a visit on Thanksgiving Day, sacks of cranberries in hand, one of which quickly turned into cranberry sauce. We had a nice meal with our new neighbor Vanessa and her two kids. They're all vegetarian, so the turkey was the only meat-related thing on the table.

Because the weather has been too too warm, we now have spring shrubs a-blooming. We had camellias decorating our Thanksgiving table.

Our only real outing while Bill was here was to visit one of the Limoges porcelain factories. We got there in time for the tour of the factory itself and struggled to learn (in French) about the process of making the porcelain slurry, filling the mold, firing, glazing, painting or decaling, etc. Then we bought a couple of new mugs—can't have too many mugs, can you?—in the shop.

In the French news, it seems that starting in the spring, all drivers will be required to have a breathalyzer kit in the car. It's unclear what we're supposed do with this, but it should be there, along with our reflective vest and our reflective triangle. Supposedly France is going to ask the EU to require a breathalyzer sort of thing to allow cars to be starter. We wonder.

Last weekend we attended a rather soggy marché de Nöel in nearby Montemboeuf. The crafts stands had all been moved inside while the food vendors lined a narrow alley so that their awnings almost met in the center. The weather didn't motivate to take any pictures unfortunately.

Ed's choir sang at a special carol service Sunday evening. Here's the group in the choir loft. Ed's on the far left. (Ordinarily the choir and congregation are about the same size, so the the choir sings from the pews.)

We've been having lots of rain of late. Luckily not hard rain, but gentle rain to fill up reservoirs and rain barrels. Unfortunately that's meant lots of gloomy weather, so we're trying to keep ourselves cheery.