Friday, December 18, 2009

A Joyeux Noel

So, the holidays and what-not were pretty cool here. I always thought it would be awesome to spend the winter in Europe, figuring it would look like something out of a movie. Which it was, pretty much. Brussels got its first real snow in the last couple weeks of December and I was happy like a school girl.

Ssnow is awesome when you don't have to drive and you can still walk around without slipping. But after a while, snow in the city gets packed down to the point where if you step on it, you're going to bust your ass. Which Marine did once, by the way! The more I get to know her the more I realize how clumsy she is when she gets tired or lazy... it's as if she has no awareness of her physical self, where she ends or begins, and the area around her. Knocking glasses over, dropping things... busting her ass in the snow. That's my wife.

For Christmas we ended up going to France. The train ride was great. As for the time there, it was ok, but unfortunately on the 23rd or so I was asked to accompany a group of Marine's dad's friends on a hunt in the woods. For wild pigs, giant god damn wild pigs. Anyway, our job was to walk around and scare the pigs out of the woods. You heard me, you walk around with no weapon and "scare" the pigs, yelling or smacking trees with sticks, anything to make a noise. If you see one charge at you, you run, because they can easily slice an artery in your leg with their tusks and that'll be the end of you, squirming and bleeding out while a bunch of Sarkozy loving Frenchmen run after their next vanity kill.

Unfortunately (or fortunately?) we didn't end up scaring any pigs out to be slaughtered. The woods there can get pretty thick -- it's the same area where I dug up WW2 trenches last year (I'll have to post about that later) -- and it was cold as balls, of course. So in between the random bomb craters we walked, looking for pigs which never showed up. It didn't take long to get scratched up, cold, tired, and kinda bored. We stopped for lunch at one point, which meant lots of food and lots of booze. Of course. A little strange to see a bunch of guys guzzle wine and then pick up shotguns to head out and kill some shit, but mostly they were safe.

In the end, they did something lame, although I guess it's a tradition. A bunch of pheasants were bought and released into a certain area of the woods and were then hunted. They definitely got a few of those. I wasn't aware pheasants stunk so much, you learn new things every day. Marine had a pretty :( story though, apparently she was near some old dude who managed to blow only the wings off of one of the birds. He shouted at her to chase it, so chase it she did... until it managed to get away in the thick brush. Later, the more ...adept... hunters told her they should have just let it be so they could track it or whatever. So the poor bird ran out into the middle of nowhere loaded full of buckshot. War is hell, pheasant.

All I was saw (alive) was a big hare which was scared absolutely shitless. It was running like a Cheetah through the woods. I yelled "LAPINE! LA LAPINE!" which just made Marine giggle. I was actually trying to be serious though. I need new gloves and that thing looked soft. I was tempted to hunt it myself using knowledge from First Blood starring Sylvester Stallone but decided to let it be for then.

For New Years, we ended up staying in Lille. At this point I was sick with something or other so it kind of sucked. It was in this (cool) old building where they have projectors showing video clips to music. Unfortunately, most of it was typical Eurotrash techno crap with bad art school CGI movies and neither me nor the woman liked it, so we left shortly after 12 and walked a couple of girls home. That was it. Got some midnight kisses on the cheek from pretty French girls and I turned one year older. Here's to my 26th year on the pale blue dot...