I’m sitting here, supping my first post-France, North American café creme, and my first post-France, North American pain au chocolate, and thinking that its about time to update my blog.

Firstly, the cappuccino and pain-au-chocolate from Le Gourmand makes a pretty authentic French breakfast. Its not tartines, but it’ll do.

Secondly, if you really love me, you’ll tell me where I can find a café with authentic tartines somewhere in Toronto downtown.

And thirdly: if you call those wretched freezer-sticky-buns and dirty-dishwater-coffee meals a “continental breakfast”, I’m going to give you such a smack.

Now on to the vacation; Ah, Paris in the spring. Ah, France pretty much anytime.

Our vacation it was absolutely wonderful. Not necessarily as relaxing as some, but rich and varied. If you’ve ever thought you’d like to visit France, I’d urge you to go as soon as you can. The scenery is amazing, the food is phenomenal, and the people most certainly do not deserve the reputation Americans and the English have bestowed upon them. You can also do it much more cheaply than you’d imagine. We actually got a room for 56Euro in Paris, thanks to my wife’s French and crackerjack phoning. And it was clean and comfortable, even though the bed was a super single. Try doing that in Toronto!

If you’re at all interested in what we did over there, I can’t do better than point you to my wonderful wife’s blog. We’ll be tidying it up a bit, and I hope to add some of my stories to it later on.

True to form, it didn’t take long to feel as though I’d never left. We’ve had quite a week here at work, and life at the co-op has been madness. I’ve finally managed to read my email, and have only a few messages yet to which I must reply. If you sent me a number of things in the past week, you’re probably waiting for a response since I’m rolling your messages up into one response.

In more blog-related news, I’ve received a number of requests by email and a comment to go into more detail on my docket-oriented email organizing technique I mentioned in my post on Applying the ìGMail Journalî to Outlook. I’ve made some short responses in the past, but I think the time has come to write a full article. Expect that one to be appearing shortly.

Well, toodle-oo, all. I and my lovely wife are off to The Land of France for a little over two weeks. I don’t anticipate posting while I’m away, but I think M wants to get her travel log going. Go check out what she’s written over at Shmo-to-Go.

UPDATE: No one got the joke, and its not going to be funny now that I explain it, but “toodle-oo” is an English bastardization of “tout a l’heure”, a common French farewell.

If any people still believe that the Canadian media — and the Global/National Post duo in particular — lean anywhere other than right, this should set them straight. Peter Kent, Liberal-lambasting talking head for Global’s “news” reports, has announced he is running for leadership of the Cons. This article is full of the usual accusations of “criminality” in a case that hasn’t been fully investigated yet, and accuses the Liberals of FUD, a mainstay in Con electioneering.

At least we have the Metro reminding us that not only are the Tories no strangers to scandal, they actually have a proud tradition of it:

• In1873, a corruption scandal brought down Sir John A. Macdonaldís Tory government and cost Canadaís first prime minister the 1874 election. Macdonald and the Conservatives were accused of accepting $350,000 in donations from Sir Hugh Allan during the 1872 election in return for agreeing to give Allanís syndicate the contract to build the Canadian Pacific Railway.
• Conservative prime minister Brian Mulroney led a government that was dogged by scandal. A dozen cabinet ministers left under a cloud, for everything from kickbacks to fraud.
• In May 1986, then-Tory MP Michel Gravel was arrested and jailed on 50 counts of influence peddling and corruption. And Sinclair Stevens, the-then minister of regional industrial expansion, stepped down because of allegations related to a $2.6 million loan to a family company.

(The only version I can find online is locked in a 37 page PDF, so I’m excerpting at great length.)

And on the Ontario side, lets not forget the Tory gutting of Hydro, and giving the nice bits to their friends.

In light of this, should Kent really be trying to claim the highroad?

The drama ended two hours later when the suspicious item was identified as a 30-inch burrito filled with steak, guacamole, lettuce, salsa and jalapenos.