Now for the real holiday message. A little bit more than the smidgen I was able to type yesterday (Christmas) while I was stealing internet from the Apple store down the street from my house on the way to the video store and having to go to the bathroom in a powerful way. I was really getting in the spirit of sharing. Specifically, I was in the spirit of Apple Computers, Inc. paying for my hugely fast internet connection for just one day. I figure that’s the least they can do to help out a poor recently powerbook-less quasi-expat. Especially on Christmas. I don’t think anybody minds.

But I digress. Which I do a lot. I also write “But I digress” a lot. There’s a pattern here. Hopefully it’s not recursive, and all future posts won’t be locked into a cycle of me digressing and then commenting on how digressive I’m being in general. That would be really boring. Not at all the high standard that this blog normally achieves.

But I digress.

Ha! I’m just kidding.

It’s the holiday season. Hard to miss it. Montpellier gets lit up, well, like a Christmas tree during the holiday season. They hang these ornate light sculpture things over ever major street in the center of town (pictures are coming, I swear), and plant Christmas trees in the stone in the Plazas and spray everything with fake snow (that, fortunately, doesn’t wash off in the rain). There are all of these booths set up downtown, where they do things like get the whole town drunk tasting different local wines for 1 Euro a person, or sell local artisanry, such as glass jewelry, olive paté, and sausages drowning in hot string cheese. Basically what you’d expect. A very high standard of entertainment and consumption. There you have it: the holiday season.

Rebecca (oldest, wisest sibling) and Tim (oldest, wisest sibling’s boyfriend) are visiting for the holiday season. This is great for everybody involved. They come from Nantucket, which is more expensive in the low season for two than Montpellier is in the holiday season for four people. So they stay in our apartment (on the futon they so graciously purchased), and we guide them around town and generally speak French for them. It works out well for every concerned party. Not that we’re concerned, mind you. But I digress.

Oh well. My hot chocolate is finished, so that means I have to close up Anna’s fancy computer and go send this post off. I hope that everybody’s holiday season is awesome. And by awesome, I mean totally sweet.