Well well well, after an unprecedented 6 weeks of fun, I finally realized it might be time to go home for awhile !! (but not for too long!!)

On my last days in town, I enjoyed some very exciting Christmas shopping at Galeries Lafayette & Au Printemps, where EVERYONE in Paris was tightly crowded outside & inside the stores, milling around the streets, coming & going with all their shopping bags. There were police directing both foot traffic & cars, scooters darting about, holiday puppet shows on the sidewalks, Christmas music & lights, crushes of people swarming back & forth across the street… ooh la laaa, quite an experience!! It even snowed for a few hours… big fluffy snowflakes, the likes of which I haven’t seen in years!

My last day there, Soenke flew to Paris from Frankfurt? Dresden? Hamburg? to take me to dinner, then assist me & my gigantic piles of luggage to successfully reach the airport the next day. It was all a lot of fun, with incessant teasing about how much stuff I had !! [By the way, I like having my own pilot… he is a man who knows how to get to where I am. Excellent!]

Coming back home was a lovely experience, since my parents were there to meet me at the airport, & my Mom had decorated my apartment for me with a little Christmas tree & various holiday accoutrements. We celebrated on Christmas Eve…it was the usual Crawford madhouse with my brother & his wife & their 3 darling boys. Sami, a Tunisian masters’ degree student (and Fulbright scholar) also joined us for the day. The weather was STUPENDOUS!… around 18C, which meant croquet in the backyard, & a big smile on my previously-frozen face !

On Christmas day, I met my folks down at our favorite beachside cafe for lunch, & enjoyed a few hours of warm California sunshine !

What is next for Jennifer????? Well, 3 days of furious year-end tax planning… then on Wednesday the 29th, Soenke lands at LAX for a week here in California! On the 5th or so, we head off to Hamburg (BE READY, SALLY!!!), then back to Paris for more fun & “business meetings” with our friends there!!

Christmas lights of Galeries Lafayette:

Soenke flying back to Paris (I couldn’t resist….)

Me & my luggage, at Charles de Gaulle!

Christmas Eve on the back porch:

Prime rib for dinner:

Sami with 2 of my nephews:

Gina (ma belle soeur) & Chase in his new beret!:

Mom’s version of the sparkling Tour Eiffel !!!

Christmas Day, lunch in Laguna Beach!

JOSSSSSSSSSSSHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH GROBANNNNNNNN !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! LIVE, IN CONCERT, IN PARIS……

Need I say more?

Ok, you know I will!

Some background: A few weeks ago when Soenke & I were shopping for Tim’s birthday present (Tim is the other Lufthansa pilot, from school), we were in the Virgin Megastore. I stood at the ticket counter hoping to score ballet tickets for Nureev’s ‘Sleeping Beauty’ production (uh, not for Tim), & noticed that JOSH GROBAN had a concert in Paris while I was here! I was astonished & overjoyed (having just seen him in concert in California a short time before). Forget ballet, I got 2 tix to see JOSH. (By the way, of course we got Tim a JOSH GROBAN CD for his birthday ) .

Rewind even a few more years. It was around 1999, & I was at this big charity event hosted by one of my clients, held at David Foster’s house in Malibu (the big producer behind Celine Dion, etc). Stars were in full supply that night (Olivia Newton John, Suzanne Somers, etc). One of the entertainers scheduled to sing was an unknown lad named Josh Groban. Well, when he got up to sing… HE WASN’T UNKNOWN ANYMORE. Everyone fell into hushed & awed silence at the pair of gorgeous lungs on this 19-ish kid. It was unbelievable. I went up after the performance to talk to him for awhile; since he’d sung an Italian aria, I assumed he was training for the opera (and thus told him about Jose Cura the famous tenor). No, he was training for pop singing, & he was very cool and humble, & thought he should look up Jose Cura & listen to some of his music (as if he needed to!). Now Josh has become EXTREMELY STRATOSPHERIC in his success!!!

Fast forward to the day of the concert (20 Dec). Everyone has left Paris to go back to family for Christmas. Dani is working late every night on some hot Yves Saint Laurent project. Soenke is flying 737s somewhere. I even tapped James the landlord & his party people… no takers. JE SUIS SEUL…!! (for perhaps the first time since I landed in Paris!)

And so I take myself to the ‘Theatre Casino’ in Paris, & am treated to a FANTASTIC concert in a totally intimate venue !! I would say the capacity was around 2,000-2,500 people. MUCH better than Staples Center or the Pond. I had a dead center seat, one level up. And come to find out that this is Josh’s FIRST ever concert in France!.. and I WAS THERE. His voice was glorious, the music was glorious, I was in heaven, it was ALL GOOD!!

MERCI JOSH !!

[P.S. If you haven’t already, run…do not walk… out to get his latest CD, titled ‘Closer’.]