Is Joe Biden Obama's Dick Cheney?

I really can't think about it after a couple of weeks back in le Morvan - aka The Shire - dodging the the news. I also moved to Lyon and started my new 2-year j0b as the director of two University of California study centers - one here and the other in Grenoble, which is surrounded by the best mountain scenery I've seen in France. My main memory of the first week is spending four hours at Ikea outside of Lyon buying giant boxes, and then four hours turning the boxes into furniture. And then doing it all over again. It was actually fun, and the place looks great.

Here are some shots from the first week back in July:


I'm looking west from the middle of Place Bellecour towards the hill and the cathedral on Fourviere hidden behind it. that's my building, and I have the top floor windows - the three on the right.

Here's the best Ikea living room in history - main credit to Avery:


And here are two shots from yesterday evening looking left out the window in front of the table above (Place Bellecour, la grande roue, and the "crayon"), and then looking right.





I like it here.

You can see 100 or so pictures from the first week at Grenoble EAP on my Facebook page.