Water Sports and other sorts

Got to say, never really been     t h a t    into water sports. No, I mean, I bought the rubber sheets and everything but getting wet just kind of pisses me off. Can't relate? Here, maybe this chart will help:

Evidence in suport of all your base belonging to me

So yah, making that graphic organizer is twenty minutes I can't get back. Everybody wins. But seriously folks, I just tried wake-boarding for the first time last Sunday. Well, and water skiing too, but that was my second attempt. Have you ever water skied? Way harder than wake-boarding in some ways. The most difficult thing was the full frontal wedgy I was so scared everyone in the boat could see.
If you digested the mixtape I made, you may have discerned that  in my youth I led a most nautical life. But most of that is crap. I'm more of a Spongebob than the Gorton's Fisherman, you can trust me on that..
All of my older siblings by contrast have been commercial fishing for at least a summer and one or two of them still fish professionally. And then there is me,  who's only sailed a handful of times and never been dangerously out of sight of the coast. I think most people look at the ocean and don't even realize it doesn't give a damn if it kills you. You have to respect its majesty and understand just how tenuous is our comprehension and control. It can still be beautiful while being dangerous. Many of the best nouns are.
To me, wake-boarding is just like skateboarding but instead of smashing your face on pavement when you fall you get water up your nose. I'm not going to lie, I rather prefer the trade off.
I'm told I did a 180 before I faceplanted so I felt sort of cool. I'm kind of addicted to trying again.

Like this picture of me water skiing? I call it, 'Dear god, I hope they can't see my vag.'
Yeah, it was on a river as you can tell, some place up near Euro Disney. Sebastien loved it.
Check out this badass photo of him:









It was ridiculously adorable watching him grin like a crazed child or a dog with his head victoriously out the window every time we took a tight turn in the boat. I wasn't a big, big fan of going as fast as we can. Never am. In fact, a few times I said, "Oh my death, oh my death"--which is what I say, in an unconscious way, when I'm fairly certain I'm about to die.

Other ongoings in my life include:
My second section of my French classes. The first teacher was really cheery and funny. I super enjoyed her methodology and was very sorry to see it end. I think I really dig into language classes because people are so impressed that they even understand when a joke is being attempted that they are more inclined to laugh--this of course brings the humor threshold way down to my level, as illustrated above.
 I think I'm getting better too, Frenchically speaking, since nowadays when I try to find a synonym to stir up a post up for youz, the first word my brain usually goes to is the orignal word's equivalent in French. Which isn't altogether helpful, but is probably normal, all things considered. (Plus ou moins.)

My bike is also sort of a big deal. I've recently discovered two important things about riding around in Paris. One, I don't get scared when I'm lost, unlike on foot. And two, the bike lanes that exist on one way streets going against the normal flow of traffic are awesome. I have a better time when I seek them out. Ok and three, people who ride scooters don't place much value on their personal safety. Or mine. Or yours. Fais Gaffe.
Even though it's a bit foolish to share the road with their likes it's way better than the  air-conditioner-less metro.
Mais oui, you read that correctly--
Part of me is like,  'Wow, the French are so practical--why waste energy when the windows being open will cool down the car as we move!!!" And then some frickin delay comes along and I'm like, 'Stupid ill-planned city, we're going to bake to death and everyone who ever smelled bad in their life is standing around me!' Tourists, don't act like this doesn't apply to you.

On Friday I went to a 'silent disco" where everyone wears headphones and chooses between three or four Dj's. It was only 12 euros to partake and a drink was included in the price of the headset so I'll probably do it again.

It was only about a 30 min walk back home after last metro and it was super funny to take the headset off now and then because it was kind of like being in a room of deaf people who were just screaming at random. No offense to deaf people--random people, that knock was at you.

I finally started reading 1984. I was embarresed to admit it at first but each time I have in a group there is always at least one person who hasn't read it yet. It's interesting that we can have such a cultrual touchstone that gets referred to and insinuated upon in ways that are fully comprehendable without having read it yet. I like it, but it's a little depressing. There's just something about dystopia that gets me down, you know?

No matter what, the summer is off to a great start. Bike rides, picnics, water sports, table tennis, spray paint and BBQz just to name a few. Sebastien's birthday is next month and I finally have an income to spoil him with! We still haven't picked where we'll go on vacation this year but we have it narrowed down to--well, we haven't narrowed it down much at all, frankly. But we'll see. I'm holding out for Portugal, Southern-Spain/Morocco, Istambul or Saint Petersburg.

 I'm feeling good, gang. The road ahead gleams as though gilded with sunshine. I can see it, and it stirs me, but I don't want to look too longingly because I've lived long enough to wonder with measured caution, will it tarnish as I walk?
The answer, I suppose, more often than not is yes...but up ahead, just up there, almost beyond what I can see--the road goes ever on in gold.



And so it goes.

Two Easy Pieces

Every once in awhile, there comes a film that you are willing to change your profile picture for. Well, you--I mean--not me. That's not my style. But my cover photo, totally up for grabs.

 On Tuesday night, I was feeling nostalgic and brooding and thusly in the mood for a Wes Anderson film. I started a download and I googled him to see what he's been up to of late. My efforts, minimal though they were, were rewarded with play times for a movie set in New England, in the year 1965!
Didn't even watch the trailer, I saw the cast list and trusted in his competence. I love the characters he paints, his theater-like sets and the way he  explores a color palet.

His shot composition and sense of depth of field would make Citizen Cain eat his shorts.

His mastery of the long shot and continuous shot have a tangible sense of cinematic history while still creating a world and a style all his own.
Wes doesn't play at subtlety. He keeps to a time period so well that he can actually make a joke out of purposely adding anachronisms.  His worlds are so well established, you can see a commercial and know he made it, the same way you recognize a Tim Burton Set. He wants you to notice who he's recast film after film, he's like Tarantino in this way--but all the characters seem to speak like him, so he's Woody Allen in that way.
The film stock he used for this feature was classic, and the greens and golds he emphasized are going to make you want for a New England Indian Summer--even if you've  never had the pleasure!

"I love you but you have no idea what you're talking about."
I resonate with that moment and many others.
I won't tell you anything else you can't get from the trailer, but if you know Wes Anderson films the protagonists are motivated, intelligent, orderly and serious. Tis the rules, and this dish offers no exception. The female lead made me think too much of Margaret as the young Tenenbaum, and Norton's character seemed written for Schwartzman, yet there was no disputing my satisfaction.
I cried just enough, and laughed just loud enough to overlook the more campy aspects of a film centered around, well, camp.

But it's not the only good film I've seen lately
If you've been talking with my landlady or my shitty upstairs nay-bors, you may have discerned that we've had a few parties recently. And I dare say, we've done a fair bit of singing without you.

As evidenced by these blury photos.

After one such soiree, a few of us who still had limbs and tenable headaches, walked to my second favorite little art theater to watch a Saturday afternoon showing of Howl.
Firstly, I want to say how impressed I was by James Franco's portrayal of Ginsberg. I've listend to more recordings of Allen's voice than is probably normal and was quite impressed by Franco's understanding of the way Ginsberg's rhythm played into how he spoke and breathed.  Oh, and if I've never put this Tom Waits-Allen Ginsberg mashup on a mix for you, I'm sorry.


The other really cool aspect of the film is the way they tie in the trial that Howl endured as being lurid and of no literary value, the personsal biography of Allen in bits and pieces, and a full length, graphically rendered retelling of Howl. I think it's an essential element for any high school English classroom, even if I was a little put off by how they realized the animation. In truth I will email my formal high school English teacher about it, even if the blue yellow tones are over done and the line quality was often reminiscent of microsoft office clipart. I'm sure it would have been way to expensive to shoot live action, atanyrate and I hardly fault them for trying.

I really liked how in many scences they filmed Franco in black and white, to keep us in Ginsberg's time and place. But the color scenes make his character real and approachable for me as well. I think an interesting balance was struck between the two.

During the trial scenes with Lawrence Ferlinghetti, renowned publisher, editor and author of a Coney Island of the Mind, I kept thinking how absurd it was that a poem could actually be put to trial for  being unconstitutional in the United States of America. I realized belatedly that my feelings on the mater of literary value and censorship are (without my knowing) directly linked to this verdict and verdicts of its kind. Of course it's normal that you may not understand everything written in a poem, of course the poet may use metaphors outside the breadth of your experience--that's the freedom-in-the-speech talking. That's the perspective of the words walking right across your eyes and into you mind. Leave the book burning to the Fascists!

If you have a chance to see either of these films I would recommend them with all five stars and both fists. Each film has finer and weaker points and I'd be open to discussing them critically in the comments section with those who have viewed them also. I come to the end of this post thinking that the shape of things is all in how you choose look at them, and the love left spinning around in our world is only as just a little bit bigger than each of us can imagine. But it ain't all smiles and walks in the park, I mean, after all, sometimes endings just end.

The French Elections, a civic education

As part of my naturalization process, it was mandated by the French government that I take part in a one-day civics class. They taught me about by-laws and symbols--the first king, what the colors of the flag mean and about as much back story on a 2000 year old culture as could be fit neatly between breakfast and dinner.

I'll be the first to admit that before dating Sebastien, I had the same sneering attitude towards the French that most Americans of my generation adopt.
That is to say, all things I "knew" about France could be summarized by this google bomb:

See also:

Wee Wee, Ms Clavell

Six years ago, I had precisely zero interest in learning French, living in France or even visiting France. But somehow sitting around a kitchen table where people are speaking in a different language, completely leaving you out of such fascinating discourses as, "pass the bread, if you please." I found I was quite suddenly interested in learning. Sometimes, because I'm so petty, I almost get annoyed when I think of his sister or his parents stopping their mundane dinner conversation to say, "Oh, I forgot--you don't speak French."

Here in  FRIGGIN Ohio, everyone speaks French.

Anyway, who can complain; between slowly learning French and reading nerdy fantasy novels with my husb-bee, my free rice niveau in English vocabulary has plateaued around level 42. This is upward mobility in it's most naked form--I'm gettin' wicked smarht. And it's time for us to face it, the French aren't pretentious, they're just better at Latin than we are.

Oh, ARE they?

The free lunch they gave me was excruciatingly bland, but in one day, I was told so much--I learned that there are 26 regions and 96 counties on mainland France. I learned that slavery was abolished in 1848 but that woman didn't get the right to vote until 1944. I learned that it's not actually illegal for me to play my music loudly after ten pm, but it goes against the concept of fraternity . I learned that Catholicism wasn't made the state religion in France until 1589 and there are things as old as the pyramids in Normandy.  I learned that there have been 5 republics in France and that the 4th ended with the German occupation's beginning.

I learned that Presidential elections happen every five years, that you don't need to be a natural-born citizen to run for office and that there is no term limit for the presidency. And that was about it. I got a piece of paper, my third French diploma--gotta catch them all, as they say--and headed home to randomly spout facts about achievements and emperors.

Guise, guies--This one time, in France...

The 2012 election was highly anticipated, from talk around the dinner table these last few months, I gathered that major players in this election were The Front National, UMP and the Parti Socialist.

There was also a collection of left-wing parties who called themselves le Front Gauche and a Centrist party member who ending up coming out in favor of the Socialist candidate for the second round of elections, once his party had been eliminated.
Anyway, we were all very curious to see if the UMP candidate, Nicolas Sarkozy would stay in power. If he lost, he would be the first president since the 70's not to serve two consecutive terms and if the socialist candidate François Hollande, won he would be the first of his party elected in 17 years. (Fun fact: His ex-wife ran and lost as the socialist candidate in 2007.) That's actually not so fun actually, if you actually think about it...like, really actually--yeah.
The first round of elections knocked out all but those two, but I was still pretty ashamed to be living in France when I saw how well the openly xenophobic candidate, Marine Le Pen, did. This ended up being useful to the over-all election spread however, because it meant that Sarko had to pander to the far right, trying to gather those votes--pushing the centrist  towards the left and to the only remaining candidate: Hollande, the socialist.

It was around 8 pm on Sunday night, Sebastien and I had just settled down into a nice plate of, uh...Mexicanos.

Are they made with real girl scouts?

We would have openly scoffed at such a dish back in the States but bar food around here is mostly vodka, absinthe and jagermeister. That is to say, one doesn't eat if it's not dinner time....unless it's suddenly breakfast.

So we were chomping down when we heard all sorts of ruckus out the window and by just moving towards the balcony, we completely learned the results of the election in under two mins. Worst timing ever, we weren't even tipsy.
WHERES MEH DAMN FOREPLAY, FRANCE?
I remember getting white girl wasted for the second Bush election when it was all but confirmed we were going to lose. My boyfriend at the time refused to let me sleep in the bathroom by the toilet. Gawd, who even invited you over? Anyway, I recovery positioned in my wee college bed and woke up sometime durring my Legitimation and Capitalism class to the b-friend saying, "Stay in bed Erin, the republicans have taken not only the presidency but also the House and the Senate." I moaned a weak Noooo, and moved my limbs experimentally. Hungover owls times a billion. You don't even know. I rarely missed class but I knew my professor wouldn't find my actions untoward. It was a very easy equation. Much simpler, I find then dying batteries and an absent camera.

That's right, these are all the photos I got, since my borrowed camera crapped its pants as I ran towards the celebration. I would have loved to document the event further, but I feel privileged to have witnessed it at all, it was like finding the gift in the garbage--
One man's treasure and all of that..
All the flags and the happy people--the smoke bombs and the flairs. The slogans and the chants. There was a good vibe and the cops were well in hand.
Here is all the video my camera was gracious enough to take between battery outages and my near crying silent frustration fits. I added English subtitles to the best of my capacities.

So there you have it, a Socialist president in France. The Euro dipped for a minute after the election was decided, but honestly, I think we're all kidding ourselves if we think things are going to drastically change in Europe. As a post-campaign-promises-American, who was totally ready to join Dumbledore's Obama's army, I don't exactly believe that Hollande will tax the rich 75% after their first million, but I do think that focusing on growth rather than cuts is a wise move and one worth watching play out for the next five years.

We take for granted peaceful elections and transitions of power in the occidental world but when we were packed into le Place de la Bastille, the symbolic location of France's first revolution and no one was tear gassing me or spitting rounds on full auto, I looked around at the Frenchmen and well wishers and considered how much we do together is based on faith and in faith I do believe. Even if I am a little bit afraid of patriotism...and tomatos.

It's Alive!

If I replace the seat and install a white one it may officially be too pretty for my own good. As it is I'm still a little nervous to stop at red lights. Wish me luck!

All talk and velociraptors

When I was a kid I rebuilt my first bike with  my dad and my brother. We found a pretty choice BMX frame at the dump and got to work on it. We greased the bearings, oiled the chain, sanded the frame and trued the wheels. We called it the Halloween Bike because we spray painted it bright orange and found a black set of handel bars. Current events have brought these things back up for me.

My dad has always been self-employed, putting ads in local papers as a catch all handy man, prouder of me when I work my way up a level than if my education grants me access. His parents were of the Depression, and you could see that in his paint stained pants and pre-existing-condition-no-insurance staunch Republican stance---in his scrap metal side venture and vocal disdain for planned obsolescence.  The bike he taught me to ride on was an old Schwinn from the fifties. I think he's really into reselling lead soldiers online right now, but for awhile there, he had a solid E-bay business where he fixed bikes and sold them to Chicago college students.
Till the wheels fall off I can fix a flat, but other than that I've built only one more bike in my life, back at Uni--even so, the smell of grease, and WD40 will always make me remember that first bike with my Dad and my Zack.

My new coloc--A GIRL!!!!!!- showed me this bike coop where I'll be fixing up a cruiser three days a week. The deal is remarkable, 15 for the membership, parts, labor and education, and the bike is pay what you can. So I'm working on this velo and it's so cool because I've never worked on a cassette crank--I'm learning all kinds of technical language and a practical skills. Admittedly, my new ride is far from sex on wheels, but I'm going to put my time in on this one and pay the difference on another beautiful blue racer the shop was hoping to use to turn a profit. It's tubeless, so I'm planning to replace the tires and rims, ride it for awhile and give it back to them to sell when I leave Paris. Can't say how long this will all take, should be fun though!

A short time ago, in a galaxy near you, I was teaching English three times a week from behind my computer screen. It's kind of weird leading a course via the internet--mostly because I've never really had lectures modeled for me by other proctors. Back at University, the biggest class I was ever in had 30 people and even then the professor knew everyone's name and we all spoke freely.

-->The class I'm referring to was Existienalism, my second class with Sebastien. Oddly enough, the person whom I habitually sat next to would always draw pictures of Seba and write things he said out of context beneath the images. It's so weird that I'm writing this from a room that I share with him now, in a different country--no less, because when all of this was my here and now,  I didn't have a crush on him.......although upon honest reflection, it was slightly more important than it should have been for me to impress him with my intellect each time we spoke... frankly, I didn't give it too much thought, at the time. I guess that's how I managed to not screw it up.

On to my classes again, I think the most important aspect of language acquisition is to be sure you practice speaking, which is impossible when there are 60 some odd persons in attendance.
I had some fun with it, though.
It made me smile to mentally fill in the blanks of the following section with the singular or the plural of "suck."

If not now, when? If not me, who?

That's droll enough, but I actually had to stop a few times  to keep from cracking up while reading this next section out loud because filling in the blank  with "blank"was just as hilarious in my mind as using the ongoing action form, the past tense, or the infinitive of Fuck. Try it!

Blankety, blank, blank, blank--pilgrim. 

Damn, it feels good to be a teacher.
But you're all clever girls around here, you who know me so well rest assured that I'll not trans-mutate into a grammar genie. That's 'prolly why I'll stay all talk and velociraptors till the sky falls.

Off to test the fences, be well.

Mixing tapes like it's 1999.

Have you ever wanted a gift that was almost as much for me as it is for you? Well, then you're clearly on the market for a mixtape.
Below is a picture of the peninsula I'm from, and Rt 28 is the major autoroute that runs through her. It becomes 128 once you hit Boston. And as I lived in down on the Cape and up in Boston for a few years each, I thought I'd make a mix to remind the rest of the world that the ladys of Cambridge know who I am...

Like the cover? Download Rt 28 and each track will display it!


Duncan (Colbert intro)..............................................Paul Simon
Even though I harvested the sample myself--want for quality though it does, I still credit my buddy Mike who put this song on the final mix he made me when I graduated university. And for the record, my father was a fishermen....and I may just have been born from the bordom and the chowder.
Roadrunner..............................................................Jonathan Richman & the Modern Lovers
This song was on the opening credits to one of my favorite public access shows, Naked with Bacon. When I moved out to LA a few years after, this was the first song I heard playing inside Amoeba Music, (the only music store fit to rival Newbury Comics back east.) The moment felt cosmically appropriate.
Walcott....................................................................Vampire Weekend
Vampire Weekend is not from neither Cape Cod nor Boston, but this is forgivable because they're basically the only modern band to even notice us.

Getting noticed is surreal.

Check out Fab Ciraolo -- his art gives my optic nerve a lady boner.


Mass Pike (R.Frost/Outsiders intro).........................The Get Up Kids
This Outsiders quote was originally attached to a version of a New Found Glory Song that was forever on my high school mixtapes. I don't know if they couldn't get the rights to the sample or something but I can't find that version anywhere, and it's totally in a box of other mix cds~ Anyway, this mashup is an homage to the fact that those two bands would have totally been on the same tape. Plus, Robert Frost was from New England, nbd.
The Ocean..............................................................Dar Williams
"Let me tell you the song of this town, she said everything closes at 5. After that, well you've just got the bars." I knew a transman from Maine who could relate to the small town seaside feel of this song,so, Cape Cod can't claim it alone. But Dar was a gift from my best friends Lean Milly-a & Ryehanson, aka Rhitard, aka Rye-ann-nom Al-shaminger...this will all be relevant when you get to the song I wrote for her a few tracks down...almost.
Down Easter Alexa................................................Billy Joel
Billy Joel was huge when I was still just a sprat. And like any cool kid, I got all my first CDs from my mom. No, my friends, I didn't start the fire--but it's still just rock and roll to me. Anyway, BJ is a wash-ashore who transposes the keyboard while he's vacationing on Nantucket. For the uninitiated, those are three solid reasons to disapprove of him completely. And frankly forget the swordfish, there ain't no luck in Cod Fishin' here.
Brandy (Toll Booth Willy Intro)..........................Looking Glass
Rumor has it I might just get my whimsy from my mother's side of the tum-tum tree. Anyway, one time when she was dropping me off back at school, this song came on and she told me that apparently, my father had said this song reminded him of her. I've always it a fancied it a romantic scope under which to view the recombinants of my DNA. Naturally I had to spoil the moment by adding samples from the best dirty CD mc ever.
Homecoming King.................................................Guster
I used to be up Guster's shorts and I even met them once before a concert and found out one of them used to life-guard at the pool on Winter-hill. That was cool, but this was really the last album of his I could get into. I check in with them now and then and still find that through the way they chose to play their instruments and due largely to how effortlessly they blow goats, I am just no longer interested in 
hearing them meow. But they say Massachusetts a gang of times on this track.
One 11 Princeton Street.........................................The Stares the Loots and the Lyres
This song is for my best friend, Rhi. When my band mate came to me with the piano part I knew I wanted to write a track for her. If it sounds a bit like the Ben Fold Five cut that ends the album that's pure coincidence...we were trying to make it sound like Penny Lane.
Boston (Mr. Lif Mix)..............................................Vampire Weekend
I think this is both my best track as well as the one I'm least satisfied with. Not many rappers with a name have made it out of Boston so I had to put Mr. Lif on here. Howevski, one hip hop number woulda stood out most grotesquely. But these samples were recorded live at the Middle East and that's all Scyentifik, for putting me on to Lif.
I Hate The Unseen.................................................Dark Buster
Dark Buster should have made it out of Boston. They were my favorite punk band of that era. Even though they shared the Knights of Columbus stage with many amazing Bean-town acts such as: Zippo Raid, Toxic, What and the Unseen. You might have actually heard of the Unseen if you're into punk.
Jonathan.................................................................Nerf Herder
This is amusing pick because it's about the singer of the second track on this mix. Plus those scruffy Nerf Hearderz mob his guitar style and taught me everything I ever bothered to learn about Jonathan 
Richman. Nerf Herder also wrote the first song I could sing and play at the same time.
Don't Change Your Plans (Will Hunting)...........Ben Folds 5

 Ben Folds Five carries a lot of currency in my adolescent and his lyrics and my memories are stamped all over those dolla dolla bills y'all. But I did change my plans once and I did move to LA and even if the leaves are still falling back east the road goes ever on, for Will Hunting as well. I tried to put Mystic Pizza on this track, but the quote I decided on reminds me of every genius I ever grew up around. Just think of a whole town worth of talent living on unemployment half the year. 

I love Cape Cod and I love Boston and I will always have the salt of the first 13 in my viens. But I wasn't captain of the New England Drinking team for nothing: I'm a Masshole first, in a ll things. I'll always scoff at Canadians, New Yorkers, Yankees fans, and anyone in the entire world wearing a hat with an NY on it. Especially if they don't like (or even understad the rules of) baseball. I will warmly extend this disdain to all persons from Rhode Island whose major contribution was Ocean State Job Lot, Maine, a land mass not even worth defending from the British, New Hampshire, who seriously wishes they were Vermont, and Vermont who needs to remember that those are barely mountains. Of couse I would never leave out anyone who pretends Connecticut isn't a suburb of, or perhaps mealy a parking-lot  for New York.

Yep. That last paragraph is the kind that helps you make friends and ensured my tenure as the captain of the New England drinking team--where my principal job was to set the minium standard for alcohol poisoning and survival. Those sick fucks wanted me dead...can't imagine why.
And if it doesn't make you want to download this mix:
THE MIXXXXOXOXOXOX
Nothing will.

Cover art for upcoming mixes:

I won't be 'splaining those, Lucy---but I'll link you their uploads when they're at a satisfactory level of completion.
Places to pick up free mixes:
I speak in tunes (Any genre)
Stay Glued (Any genre)
Birp (electro/disco/pop)
Mashup breakdown (Mashup, Dj cuts)
Datpiff (Hip Hop)
DJbooth.net (Hip Hop/RnB)

Plus, sometimes I just search tumblr for mixtapes. Many of those sites also except submissions so please participate and feel free to send me a link when you do.
I have no problem making mixes and mashups and calling them art. Mixtaping isn't meant to an infringement on privet property. If you dig a track, buy the album, or go to a live show--it's free advertising. Ask Radiohead if they regret giving their comeback album away.   If you've made a mixtape and you want to share it with me I'm sure I can find a mood to match it to. If you know a great site to get more music for free, please leave a comment. And by all means, if you download the mix let me know.

Big, big plans.

Well, I might as well come out and say it...I drunk tweeted LeVar Burton on Saint Patty's day.

It's probably the coolest thing I'll ever tweed and you are likely the only persons to even care.
Know that feel, bro?
In other news, You might not have noticed   would have no reason to give'a, but I haven't taken a picture since December when my camera broke in the mail.
This is the last picture she took:

Kelly's Roast Beef. I regret nothing.

It's been hard,  seeing the people and not being able to preserve the smiles---cameras are a pretty lie about putting a stopper in a bottle labeled time. Warm days in the park, spilled drinks in the dark, I'll be lucky if I remember half of half of them.
Things are tranquil ici, I'm chilling with my feet up, getting around to my third shot of espresso, really happy that it doesn't feel like there's a few loose sham-rocks knocking around in my head. Saint Patrick's day isn't as huge in Paris as it is in many American cities but if you think that's not very popular, just wait around to hear the crickets on Cinco De Mayo...
But by goodness, the blue of the sky paints a little something extra in each of us, doesn't it?
Our belts are a little looser around the McCarthy-Roblin fire-pit,  we can go out and get a drink, even afford to eat dinner in a restaurant. I mean, holy frackin class privilege, Batman--it feels good to buy food.

I finally tried a cocktail who's principal ingredient is a liqueur called Get 27 (in french sounds like: Jet vaant-set) Yeah, they came up with it in the 1700's and they're still pretty crazy about it.   It's fine, if you're into peppermint schnaps. But when a person agrees with themselves to drink glass after glass on the rocks, one wonders how they refrain from doing shooters of listerine on the daily.

Oh, it's just for boys. Well, at least that's settled. 

Pi day was great. Sebastien and I made a tarte onion. The Ides of March wasn't so bad and recently my coloc has been hanging out a lot together. Little things, picnics, brunch--they've got me eating beans with my eggs, it's all down hill from here! But at least we've set up the spare bedroom with a huge projector screen for sunday mario parties.  I guess I haven't kept you too up to date on what's been going on with my colocation.
The abridged version:

JK, that's the full version.

TL;DR? I'm the only girl left.
A funny thing happen on the way to get my french green card, well--actually I was there getting it...You may have read Sweeney's PRE chest X-ray post where she is being chided in French for not speaking French while having her shirt off for a doctor--well, when I was asked to remove my shirt and retake my seat across from a doctor, it occurred to me that our situations were similar, but there are a few more steps for spouses while we're being "naturalized." Such as, I have to take a civics class and for another they'll give me free French classes. I leaned all of this after the short film me and the other conjoints were forced to watch. And I got cookies.
Have you read her post yet? Do it, now!

The amusing stuff started after about the third or forth time I was sorted into a smaller room.  I was sitting across from a woman answering questions.
We started our interview like any stable puff piece, her asking things like,"Had I ever studied French in school....No,  not here, but in the US......Not grade school, not middle school, not high school---not university? "
I kept repeating no, I hadn't...and the more surprised she was, the larger a glowing spot of pride grew and grew until she switched to English and asked me,
"So you never went to grade school? Not high school, not University?"
"Oh, I thought we were talking about, uh, French classes?"
"No, not here--in the US!" she proclaims with the utter exasperation of someone who talks to morons for a living.
 Sigh, all that about the shoe when it fits...
No, well, yes--yes, I did my studies at such and such university and so forth. I respond to her in French and so she switches back as well.
"Your French is...." she makes the international sign for so-so- "...not bad. But the State will pay for your classes. Right now they are provided by the Alliance Francies."

And I.....

They're only like the most expensive and renowned school for French language and culture acquisition. W00t. That solved, I went back to my former holding pen and waited to be called to the medical waiting room where I waited to be medicaled.  They administered the eye tests, height tests and weight tests and then I was sent into this smaller corral with a door on each side. The doctor spoke rapidly but I gathered that above all I should put my bag on the bench and lock the door really well. So I did those things and stood there just kind of getting the mesure of the walls and wondering if I had to pee. There wasn't much in the room, or was it a hallway, yes, it had two doors it was clearly a hallway or hallway affilate.
No.
An air lock.
Yes, I was standing in the airlock and I figured they wanted to secure the door to protect themselves from radiation. Gamma rays, likely. Maybe I'm about to be spaced.
Then I noticed the sign at eye level displaying several languages worth of information. I took some time to oggle the graffiti in arabic  and saw also scrawled in French,"Portugees" followed by a question mark. Thinking quickly, I quested for the English translation and upon finding it was informed that I should be standing there nude to the waist, waiting for the door to open.
Weirdest thing I did all week.
Get half naked, and wait for a stranger to open the door and then ask me repeatedly if I'm pregnant.


I'm hungry so I'm going to go lay in a park. (that makes sense, shut up.) Or maybe I'm just an artist and my mind doesn't work the way I want it to sometimes.




Sebastien and I put in our applications for the Peace Corps, wish us luck. :D