brrrrrrrr

As I'm writing this post, I just came back from outside, this crazy horrendous place and it's -3°F which is approximately -20°C. Do you know how I realized that we reached that kind of temperatures? Well I just suddenly experienced something I didn't feel since Finland, two years ago (Already !!! Damn this is going way too freaking fast, seriously) and this feeling is: the humidity in my nose freezing. I tell you, that is a good indicator for -20. At -40 there is another level, when your eyelids freeze together when you close your eyes and that's a troubling experience.

So what's new with me? Well since the beginning of this year I've been pretty busy. Busy with work, writing my internship report (a god forgotten task that ruins your hopes and crushes you like you're a nothing until you start hallucinating great ancient life forms dominating parallel universes and coming in your dreams to force you to worship it wearing a hello kitty hat. That is pretty disturbing. I tell you) and traveling around. Yep traveling! So I've been to Glacier with Sarah, we rented a cottage there. It was a lot of fun, we've been x-country skiing under some kind of snow storm that covered our tracks so we could have a greater chance to get lost and die frozen in a middle of one of the prettiest US state parks. Also that would keep us in a good state of conservation so that the human things that will crawl over the surface of the planet in 120 000 years could fin us and expose our bodies in a freak-show-2nd-millennium museum.
By chance (thanks to my tremendous orientation skills) we made it safe back to the car and brought back some lovely skiing pictures.
Last week end I went to visit my good old pal Hunter in Fredericksburg Virginia! And man I had a blast!! Since Hunter studied history in College he was able to describe me the civil war battles and how the south was fighting a pretty unfair war (the odds were for the north who had the majority of the population). I say, that's bravery. But anyway, I love history and such, I always find it fascinating and instructing. I believe our leaders often make the mistake to look down on history thus making over and over the same stupid mistakes. We visited Williamsburg which had a pretty neat college. Jamestown, the fist British settlement. Yorktown, where the French and Americans battled together to kick the ass of Brits, unfortunately they surrendered before the battle started. Good for us, that one battle we didn't have to surrender. Vive la France!
Finally we went to Washington DC, which look very different form what I remember back in 1998. Now it's some kind of business/administration bunker with military fences, patrols and alien motherships.

Well, as you can read, I'm trying to have the best of the time I have left in the US. Putting behind the old stories, building some good new fresh memories.

With this I tell you thanks for reading Montana Clem. Giving news from the cold front.

-Clément.

EDIT: This morning the temperatures are -20F which is ... -28°C

Ready to party

I don't know if it's gonna be a "Party" but I'm invited at a family get together for thanksgiving at Sarah's uncle's place in North Dakota, pretty near form Fargo. I'll be out of Bozeman for about 4 days.
It's true Ruben that I didn't write much on the blog these days, it has been almost a month!!

Well let's try to summarise a month worth of craziness, I've spent a week-end in Helena MT, the capital city of Montana. Sarah had a conference there and I jumped on the occasion to visit another city. It's a little bigger that Bozeman (around 50 thousand) and it was strangely empty of people. That might be because it was a Friday in fact. Anyway it looked like a nice city with more history than Bozeman.

I've been to work, where I got done some good old coding. I'm thinking about changing my methodology so I would have more to say in my report that I'm planning to start writing next week.

It's been snowing here almost non-stop for the past couple of days. I tell you it's brrrrrrrrr!! The snow melts and creates some nice ice rings on the streets. I've seen some cars missing their turns right from my window. They didn't seem to get hurt, just out of the road.

I've been playing a lot with my new guitar! Let me introduce my new baby, a Gibson SG faded brown. 6 strings, two nice humbekers with a very nice warm sound. The neck is a real pleasure to play, it's really fast. Specially to get the 20th and plus frets, there is no wood obstructing the left hand! This is a nice improvement compared to my old pal, the Epiphone Explorer Goth which design, even if really cool and hardcore, makes it a little harder to play.

With the Acolyts we start being pretty serious about composing an album, I have recorded a few riffs, we are writing lyrics, designing a cool logo for the band and also working on the band itself, its orientation, its philosophical meaning ;) Today, thanks to Justin (Acolyt n°2) we have a pretty near perfect logo that just needs a couple improvements to rock even more! The compositions are for now at early stages but I can tell you it sounds like wicked mix between Megadeth, Judas Priest and Pink Floyd (what ??). Well that's what we would like to do. We are still looking for a drummer who would become Acolyt n°4.

The other day we went hiking and we took some nice pictures form Spanish Creek. So here are the pictures, for the ones who prefer to look than to read!

I'd like to send more but blogger seems to be bugging...































Thanks for reading Montana Clem !!
Scenic & disastrous writing.

Let it snow, let it snow

As the sky is black, the temperature falls down and enormous clouds hide the stars. While the children and the good people sleep, one of the most magical nature's tricks begins. As beautiful as deadly it swings in the air, slowly, almost nonchalantly it lands on the ground like a white feather blown by a little kid. Billions of water crystals, perfect shaped, creates a delicious sugar frosting on Bozeman.
The following morning, we hear the laugh of the Bozeman-lings discovering this year's first snow, running around, throwing snow balls, building ice-mans, tasting the ice or just observing this sudden feel of purity over their homes, their country. The warm autumn colors of the trees adds beauty to the painting. Leaves make a soft colorful tapestry and contrast with snow's detail-less whiteness.
It's been my duty as your friendly bloggin' Bozemanite to walk around the streets and take pictures of this unfortunately (or not?) temporary enchantment.

Please pardon my attempt of lyricism today. I admit this snow must have froze some part of my brain and here is the awful result. But anyway, I hope it made you smile or even laugh (who knows?) and that you'll have a great time looking at the pictures and maybe a great day !

Thanks for reading Montana Clem. A fairly quite not regularly updated blog.

Fancy trip to the fairy lake

fairy lake clean water

Clean water for a change, no trans-fat, not in a bottle. Today we've been to the "fairy lake", a very pretty spot, 30 minutes from Bozeman. It's located in the Bridgers mountains, the ones that has the college M, but on the other side. Well anyway, that was one good occasion to take my camera out. Unfortunately I discovered when I arrived at the lake that I forgot the 1Gb SD-Card in my computer's slot. I've been taking some pics lately of my brand new bike !! (but I'll talk about it in another post) and stuff around Bozeman. Today let's focus on the Fairy Lake, it's a little heaven out of the city, at about 6000 feet.

We've been driving there with Sarah's Oldsmobile Intrigue, It's a pretty cool car she has but definitely a city ride. So that was great until we arrived on the fairy lake trail, 7 miles of off-road pleasure. Quite bumpy, but definitely fun (except that sometimes we were a bit worried about breaking the car, but oh well what's a car after all), there were some cows around in the forest, which was pretty weird. I guess the rancher who owns them must be pretty confident that they will find their way back! As we were gaining altitude we had a great view on the valley and the Bridger canyon.

Finally we arrived at the Fairy lake. Seriously if I could buy a little cabin, I would put it right there. The scenery is truly beautiful, on one side impressive mountains (Bridgers) on the other side there are a few trees and a big valley.

There is a small trail around the lake, and when the sun reflects on the water it makes thousands of shiny sparkles, thousands of fairies dancing upon the water, mystique whirling little lights, inspiring fantasy and day dreaming.

Thanks for reading montana clem. More poetry to come (maybe) and crazy stories (for sure). We appreciate your business.

Back in the Bozone

Hello everyone ! I'm back in Montana. Here is a picture of what you can see from my window tonight.

I have just finished my first week of work, wooohoooo!! After 6 months bumming around, I finally enjoy developing some cool widgets for RightNow new prototype. It's quite confusing I must say, especially during the first 3 days, I was quite lost. But now I start to get how the things work and it's pretty exiting, I'm working with a real cool team, it's very motivating!
I'm in the middle of a start of the art project and I feel like I can contribute for a great achievement!

Alright, these last few days have been quite smoky around here. Montana is on fire! Plus Bozeman is located in a valley which make it difficult to evacuate the smoke. Oh well, it's almost gone, I can see the mountains again and seriously they kick ass!

Today I got a cell phone SIM card so I got a Montana phone number, oh yeah ! I have applied for my social security number, and I'm looking for a second hand bike.
Yep, the idea is to go to work biking, because it's nice enough out there and that's good for the shape. Also it's not very convenient for Sarah and I to share her car.

It's nice to be back in Bozeman again, there are plenty of thing I got to tell you! There is that rodeo thing I went to when I was in Marshall, that was hilarious. I have to find a way to post a video that I made with Sarah's camera. If you guys know how to post a video on a blog, please tell me!!

Okay, this is enough for today.

Thanks for (still) reading Montana Clem and no I haven't forgot about the horrible invasion of prairie dogs but it needs more time to collect the informations.

-Thanks, the management.

The invasion has begun.

Reuters: Bozeman, Thursday April 12, 3:40PM 2007

Fear those little rodents

The office of National Forests and the US department of health and human services, released an astonishing report this morning in Washington (7:45 AM GMT-5). In front of the congress and US Military officials, Dr. Trudman head of the Genetic Contamination Committee (GCC) made terrible revelations.

On the 2^nd of March 2003 in Idaho Falls (ID, USA), the Foundation for Animal Research and Trans-genetics lost a couple of Cynomys parvidens strikeanus from the laboratory 106-2B.
The scientific in charge of the "Animal Optimization" department, Dr McMourning, reports on these events.

Dr McMourning : "I was really wasted that night, I had a gallon of Moose Drool beer and half a bottle of tequila with Fernando my assistant. Actually it was quite a regular evening, we researchers are having fun torturing animals and getting trashed. Obviously I was working on a couple of these new Cynomys parvidens strikeanus guys and I forgot to lock them in their cage. Really these spirits company are to blame. It isn't written on their bottles that it makes you do a shitty job. However when I saw these little fuckers escaping I grabbed the lab's emergency shotgun. I missed them, but I eventually killed Fernando. I'll have another bottle of that damn good stuff in his loving memory."

While the democrats ask for the return of the prohibition, scientists are deeply concerned by the impact of this brand new flavor of prairie dogs to the environment. This for several reasons.

First: The new prairie dogs have 7 rut cycles per year and a female can bear up to 10 which means during these four years, the first female have probably already had around 250 babies. A CPS (Cynomys parvidens strikeanus) arrives to sexual maturity at only 3 month old. You understand the growth of this new specie is exponential, uncountable and probably already near the million individuals.

Second: The babies, even if they are very cute (Dr McMourning's team says), have a very bad energy consumption ratio. They need to be fed about 5 times their own weight every day, and they eat any kind of grass. They are responsible for an incredible ecologic devastation in US western plains.

These pictures shows from right to left, a satellite view of the USA in february 2003, today and on the left the expected result of uncontrolled breed in 2010.

Third (and the worse): Sometimes these creatures are "confused" about where is their natural habitat.
(the end of the article tomorrow)

Edit (June 6th): I promised the end of that article a month and a half ago, but since then I've been escaping a prairie dog state conspiracy and I can't find time yet to write the end.

Thanks for reading Montana Clem, not supported by ads, getting the news first.

-Clem

Cook with Clément !

Yep, every person that knows me, even a little, knows I like good food! Well, I think the best way to get some quality meals, it's to cook them yourself. Tonight I've been preparing some great stuff and I'd like to share with you my kitchen secrets...

Cooking with Clément ! For cheap and tasty meals.
Tonight, the "Potée à la dinde et son riz pourpre" as I call it or "Turkey casserole and it's purple rice".

Cooking time : Around two hours. But you need to be around cooking only about 20 minutes (depending on how blazing fast you are!).
For that particular meal you have think ahead a little bit.
You will need for the casserole:

1. some turkey left overs (could surely be replaced by some chicken breasts).
2. 2 carrots
3. 1/2 Onion (the big white ones, if it's a small one, then I guess all of it)
4. 1 garlic clove (une gousse d'ail)
   
5. 1 sweet potato

For the rice:

1. 33cl of rice
2. 10cl of red wine (yeah!)
3. one teaspoon of olive oil
4. one teaspoon of salt
5. one tablespoon of soy sauce
6. 1/4 of an onion

Cooking instructions

The casserole:
Start by cutting the carrots in slices (not thin, about 1cm long), rince and peel your sweet potato and cut it in slices too.
Now cut your onion in half. If you don't feel like crying, there are several techniques, more or less efficient. You can manage to cut the onion next to a window so that the air blows away the nasty onion's gas, you can also cut it underwater, and there is one thing that I noticed, it's better to use a sharp knife to cut it gently. Yeah, it's horrible when you cut these guys with a knife with teeth, it messes the pulp and creates more emanations. Nasty stuff !
So cut that god damn bulb into thin slices and then cut those in half. You can do it. Now that you've been weeping like a young girl because you didn't care about my safety advices, you can put all of that stuff you chopped into a saucepan. Then fill the pan with water until the vegetables are almost completely covered. Add some turkey pieces in the pan. Cut the garlic clover into small chunks and add them. Add one teaspoon (cuillère à café, 5cm³) of salt and one of olive oil. Let it cook slowly on low heat for two hours. Normally when it's done the vegetables and the meat are very tender... Pretty good.
Ok that looks like vomit, but it's good !!

While the casserole is slowly cooking on its own, you can have a fresh carrot raw, if you are starved. Plenty of good vitamins.
You can start preparing the rice 1 hour and a half after.

The rice:
Start by cutting some onions, then pour the rice into a pan, just like on the picture on the left. Add one teaspoon of olive oil, the onions and heat. Be careful not to burn the rice, it's pretty smoky.
I know, that sounds crazy, but do as I say... Wait for the rice to become golden, or brown and then pour your 10cl of red wine in the pan, right on the super warm rice !! Yeah, be careful, it might be spectacular depending on how hot the pan is. Your rice turns purple... Original look, plus it adds a little frenchy touch to the taste. Now that you have a "Sauté" of purple rice, you want to cook it, so, pour 1.5 times the amount of rice in water in the pan (normally 33cl of rice is contained in a regular glass, so add one glass and a half of water into the pan, yeah I'm a math genius). Cover the pan and let it cook on full heat during 10 minutes.
It's ready ! Let it cool off and serve, I recommend having some regular water with that dish, yeah, not too much fantasy. Plus it's better for you.

Thanks for reading "Montana Clem" and I hope you enjoy your meal !
Just like we did :

-Clément

Bozeman, Exotic !

Tropical heat, sandy beaches, the sent of sun screen cream. Yes, Bozeman has it all, except all of the above. Today's a sunny day, quite warm, -1°C. I guess in those conditions Bozeman qualifies to be an Exotic place compared to Paris or the good old Fréjus ! Here the snow covers almost everything, it falls gently every other day to keep a good thick layer on the grass and clean walkways.
It's time for me to share, with you guys, a view of what you can see from my current apartment windows !


On the left, next to the text, the view from my "office", the room where my computer is... You can see here some other student housing buildings, the park in between is covered with snow, yep, no kidding. On the horizon you see the mountains, they are all over Bozeman. The city is located in a valley, the Gallatin Valley.
It's easy to see it but there is a big M on the mountain, on the right, just upon the building. Not very visible because of the snow... I'll take another picture when we can see it better, from nearer. This M of course means Montana, and it's facing the MSU (Montana State University)
The picture on top is form my living room's window.
The one on the top-left is form my bedroom.

That's all for now, hep don't be too demanding ! See ya later :)
Thank you for reading "Montana Clem". We thank you for your patronage.

Welcome to Montana !

Yeah let me introduce myself, I'm Clement Della Monica, brand new Bozemanite ! In this blog I will regularly keep you guys, up to date with delicious tales from Montana. Yes the blog is in English, sorry French fellows but you'll have to answer in English too.

Let's see... So on Saturday, February the 3rd I got up in this good old Frejus, France, at 4am. I got done with some last errands, eat breakfast, cleaned up and took the highway to Nice where my flight departed at 7am. Then it's been a very very long journey, I had to wait 5 hours in Frankfurt for my flight to Denver. This flight lasted 10 long hours, I've been served two meals and two movies were shown. "A good year" and "The magician", pretty good ones, too bad I had to concentrate that much to hear the dialogs because the plane was full of Germans speaking really loud. That's strange that's the second time it happens. I didn't knew that about Germans. When I arrived in Denver I had a nice interview with an immigration officer because the last time I left USA I forgot to notice that I was leaving by giving back the little peace of green paper the had put in my passport. Well nobody asked for it when I got in the plane to go back to France. How was I supposed to guess? Anyway that went OK, but really freaked me on the moment. Then followed 7 long hours to wait for my Bozeman plane, delayed two hours, nobody knows why. I had to keep awake because I didn't want to miss the connection. After a two hours flight I finally landed in Bozeman BZM airport which is located at Belgrade (USA) 20 minutes far from Bozeman by road. There Sarah was waiting for me. How wonderful it is to finally see a friendly face and especially her, of course !

More about Sarah and I in Bozeman pretty soon !
Keep connected.

Yours, Clement.