Random Thoughts Before a Long Weekend

Later this afternoon, a jet will carry the Kitten and me to Vienna on an overnight flight. We'll land, have a few hours to catch our connection, and then head a few hours back west to Paris where we'll land early Friday afternoon. This is an inefficient route, but when one cashes in airline points to travel, one's options are few.

The occasion for this trip is a comment of the Kitten's from several months ago, when she for the ten-thousandth time in the past eleven years said "I love surprises". Having listened now for nearing a dozen years to this comment, I decided it was high time to act upon it, if for no other reason than to see if perhaps doing so will make it go away. Monthly trips to the West Coast having contributed mightily to my airline status/miles account, I decided to whisk my best girl off for a long weekend in a city that she loves and which I had never visited.

Oh, I've been to France. Several times, as a matter of fact, courtesy of the U.S. Navy. I've had wonderful visits to a number of places along the Mediterranean coast, but I've never had the time or the inclination to visit Paris. I once carried on a conversation with a French woman in Cannes at a formal luncheon wherein the city's grandees feted a group of officers from my ship. She was seated next to me, an attractive woman of about 40 (I was 30ish), while her husband was seated across the round table. He was older than she, jowly and sullen. He was French and spoke no other foreign languages. She was French and also spoke German but no English. I speak English and German, but no French. Once we discovered that we could communicate -- I was treated to a tale of tired boredom as her midday wine intake increased, and eventually slipped a telephone number which I declined to exploit.

This was the same trip in which I enticed a number of my shipmates to unknowingly (we were young-ish) commit horrible relationship fouls. I had a few months earlier, come to know the charms of a young woman who wore a perfume (Boucheron) that was unusually attractive, if you know what I mean. And you do. She did not last, but the memory of her perfume did. There we were, seven or so Lieutenants and below, strolling along the main drag of Cannes--when we happened upon a Boucheron store. That's right. An entire store. So I convinced my (unknowing, soon to be troubled) shipmates to come in and "smell this stuff", which they did, and several of them reached the same conclusion that I had. This led to the brilliant conclusion that they would purchase some of it for their own sweeties. Which they did.

It was after we got home a few months later that the first inklings of dismay began to arise when one of the guys came by my stateroom to tell me about the big fight he had with his girl, and why he bought her perfume that reminded him of another woman. Apparently, "no honey, that wasn't it, the Operations Officer introduced it to me" was not an answer that held water. He was apparently not the only one to be so persecuted, and I learned a solid lesson from all of it. Interestingly, my inamorata at the time was a good sport and tried to wear the perfume "for me"-- but she was astoundingly allergic to it (and other perfumes, apparently) and so died my Boucheron fascination. Although I did keep a little perfume tester strip bearing the whiff of it in my wallet for some time thereafter...

This trip is a quick one, we'll return Monday. The surprise element of the master plan failed a few weeks ago when The Kitten consulted her own miles account and saw that there was a reservation to Paris. A calculated error in adding her number, I know. But once the cat was out of the bag, it relieved me of any other planning responsibilities, as she has gleefully ran with how to spend 72 hours there. Further evidence of my good fortune in having convinced this woman to accept me into her life is that we are sharing a single carry-on bag (don't hate, Tom).

First things first though. Our two black labs need to be transported to their luxury spa experience at our favorite "pet resort". The dogs (Baloo-7, Zuzu-5) lose their minds whenever they get into an automobile of any type, but when they realize that they are at the pet resort they are beside themselves with joy. This place is great--in the woods, lots of dogs, big play yard, the kind of joint I would want to be shunted of to were I a dog.

My only regret this weekend is that the trip coincides with a UVA home game (v. Louisville) in which we are favored. I would not bet this game, were I a gambler, but it is nice to think Vegas sees something in my team that I don't yet see.

Have a good weekend, folks.