Gatzing Out

Post-Christmas Rundown, Part I: The Music

2011-12-29T21:34:00.002+01:00

So, Christmas 2011 is behind us. Well, sort of. I'm still coming up with odd combinations of leftovers (hot dogs + frozen corn + cheddar cheese soup = two minutes away from lukewarm microwaved perfection), gorging myself on Christmas candy at least once every hour, and wondering where I put the $50 check from my cousins (seriously, where is it?). But other than that, we're pretty much done here.

Except for the fact that I keep catching myself humming those catchy-ass (and, in some cases, kitschy-ass) Christmas carols. This is problematic for two reasons. First, some of the catchiest Christmas songs cover such a ridiculous range that even anyone who's ever had to sing the Star-Spangled Banner looks at them as too much of a challenge, which means that I don't exactly sound stellar when I'm song-doodling them around the house.

"And the rockets' red glaaaaaaare...!"

Second, a pretty significant fraction of the Christmas song milieu is barely tolerable even when you're hopped up on eggnog and Christmas spirit; it's pretty much absolutely insufferable to listen to any songs from this group after your Christmas buzz has faded and all that's left are huge electrical bills and three garbage bags full of paper you paid six bucks a roll for three weeks ago.

In a humanitarian effort to help you guys all move on, I'm going to break down this Christmas for you all, much the way that former athletes try to re-validate themselves by getting jobs with ESPN and passing judgment on the way current athletes are playing. So here is your post-Christmas rundown. You're welcome.

Part 1: The Music

1. Faux-Carols
Christmas has managed to inspire more songs than pretty much any other holiday. Halloween has made a valiant effort to catch up--name me one radio station that doesn't manage to squeeze in one quick play of "Monster Mash" on October 31--but eventually it has to admit defeat and co-opt non-holiday but remotely relevant-sounding tracks like "Spooky" and "Thriller."

Christmas, on the other hand, not content with having an entire genre of music to itself, slaps these other wussy holidays around and co-opts their songs as well. Did you know that "Over the River and Through the Woods" is a Thanksgiving song? Neither did I until I saw A Charlie Brown Thanksgiving. The imagery is so reminiscent of "Jingle Bells" that you'd think that "Over the River" would have to be about Christmas, too.

Oh, wait, "Jingle Bells" is a Thanksgiving song too?! Does anyone want to drop any more knowledge bombs on me? Was Jesus's birth also attended by some pilgrims and a turkey? Did the wise men bring green bean casserole and pumpkin pie and start a rowdy post-dinner football game of Magi vs. Shepherds? Why are all my holidays melding together into one giant Christgiving mush?!

Also falling into this category is "What Child Is This?" aka "Greensleeves." The lyrics to "What Child Is This?" were written by William Chatterton Dix in 1865. Old Willy was apparently quite a wordsmith but not motivated enough to find someone to bang out a quick melody for him on a piano. Naturally, he just took an old English folk tune and used that instead.

We can't all luck into dream teams like these. Sorry, Wills.

And finally, perhaps the biggest offender of all: "My Favorite Things." I don't care what anyone says, this is not a Christmas song. This is a show tune about liking things. If we're going to use that logic, I demand that "I Enjoy Being a Girl," "America," "Oh What a Beautiful Mornin'," and "I Think I'm Gonna Like It Here" all be declared Christmas carols posthaste. Someone get on that.

2. Songs That Celebrate Materialism
We as a society know what Christmas is supposed to be about: peace on Earth and goodwill toward men. We also know what Christmas is actually about: accumulating more stuff.

And mercilessly assaulting anyone who gets in the way of that goal.

While most songs try not to put too fine a point on this (subtlety in a Christmas song? What?), they include passing references to it pretty much across the board. "It's Beginning to Look a Lot Like Christmas" is all "Look at the pretty lights! Trees! Snow!" until it gets to the bridge, at which point it basically just enumerates all the crap some bratty kids want for Christmas until their parents can't even stand to be around them anymore, although in the end it does suggest that Christmas is actually "within your heart."

"Get me some tinsel, stat!"

Adding to the fun is "The Chipmunk Song (Christmas, Don't Be Late)," with its signature line, "Me, I want a HUUUUU-LAH HOOP!" What six-inch-tall rodents are going to do with a hula hoop is beyond me, but it doesn't seem to really be bothering anyone else for some reason. For the love of God, though, don't forget that Alvin STILL WANTS A HUUUUU-LAH HOOP!

And speaking of ridiculous requests, let's talk about Gayla Peevey's "I Want a Hippopotamus for Christmas." "Only a hippopotamus will do," she insists, and you have to wonder what would constitute a hippopotamus substitute. "Oh, you see, Gayla," perhaps her mother said frantically, "the store was all out of hippopotamuses, but I got you a lovely rhinoceros! It's like a hippo, but on land and with horns!" (Fun fact: after the song became a hit, some people thought it would be a good idea to actually GIVE Gayla Peevey a hippopotamus. Ten-year-old Gayla, apparently being smarter than all the adults involved in this plan, donated said hippo to a zoo.)

Lest you go on thinking that only modern society has brainwashed us into thinking that Christmas is about stuff, I would like to present for your consideration "The Twelve Days of Christmas," wherein the singer's true love gives him/her 5 pieces of bling, 23 birds, and 50 HUMAN BEINGS (including associated instruments and possibly 8 cows). Who needs all that stuff? Why does a Christmas carol consider PEOPLE to be appropriate gifts (human trafficking?!)? Where is the recipient supposed to put all this stuff? Why would you give someone 23 birds but no one to clean up after them? (Presumably, the maids / dancers / lords / pipers / drummers are all busy milking / dancing / leaping / piping / drumming.)

And finally, no discussion of materialistic Christmas songs would be complete without "Santa Baby," wherein you're encouraged not only to want stuff but to prostitute yourself for it.

Now I ain't sayin' she a gold digger...

3. Songs that Concentrate on the True Meaning of Christmas...But Are Actually Still About Wanting Stuff
Did you hear Mariah Carey's "All I Want for Christmas is You" on the radio this holiday season? Of course you did, that shit was EVERYWHERE. It was on stations that played Christmas songs 24/7. It was on pop stations, since it is, technically, a pop song. It was on rap stations, since Mariah Carey is married to a (sort of) rapper and anyway there aren't any good Christmas rap songs.

Anyhoo, this song is supposed to be about how you love someone so much that you want their presence instead of their presents (see what I did there?). However, it actually becomes about eschewing everything good about Christmas (carols, Santa, magical reindeer, sleigh rides, snow, and CHILDREN'S LAUGHTER, for Pete's sake) and standing alone under a rapidly-dying (or plastic) seasonal plant, hoping wholeheartedly that the person who doesn't want you on any of the other 364 days of the year will throw you a pity kiss or something.

I feel a Christmas miracle coming on!

Then we have possibly the most annoying song of all time (non-Christmas songs included): "My Grown-Up Christmas List." The singer of this song, be it Natalie Cole, Amy Grant, or whoever, seems to have a very altruistic and mature idea of what a "Grown-Up Christmas List" should look like, as said list includes such easily gift-wrappable items as an end to all wars, friends for everyone, and never-ending love. These are admirable goals and all, but I think most people's ideas of what constitutes a "Grown-Up Christmas List" would include fewer abstract concepts and more references to sex, booze, and general debauchery.

Exhibit A.

If you thought "My Grown-Up Christmas List" was saccharine, though, think again: I'm about to pull out the trump card, also known as "The Christmas Shoes," which documents a child's heart-wrenching quest to buy shoes for his dying mother (because, despite their apparent importance to her health, they don't seem to be covered by insurance). Never mind the fact that where this woman is going, she most likely won't be needing new shoes. (I'm gonna go out on a limb and say Jesus doesn't really care. Where in the Bible does it say "No shirt, no shoes, no service"? Please, point it out to me.) What really bothers me about "The Christmas Shoes" is that it's almost five straight minutes of this simpering child trying to mooch free footwear off of strangers WHILE HIS MOTHER LAYS DYING. You know what? If I'm on my deathbed, just come and hold my freakin' hand. Don't drive all over the place looking for some damn Mary Janes, okay?

4. Songs That Are Actually Thinly-Veiled Threats

Sometimes, ya gotta deal with creepers, and Christmas is no exception. I'm far from the first person to comment on the immense sketchiness of "Santa Claus Is Coming To Town," but in the spirit of Christmas music I'm gonna just go ahead and keep on beating that dead horse. "He sees you when you're sleeping, he knows when you're awake"? If this song were about your ex-boyfriend the next verse would be all about your restraining order, but because it's a Christmas song we're supposed to be HAPPY about this constant surveillance.

If he had a beard and a red suit, this would be totally acceptable...?

For real, though, you'd better be good for goodness sake.

"Here Comes Santa Claus" falls under this category as well, mostly because I think it's cut from the same fuzzy red cloth as "Santa Claus Is Coming To Town" in terms of theme. Most of the lyrics are pretty innocuous, but I'm always slightly disturbed by the line that instructs me to "jump in bed and cover your head, because Santa Claus comes tonight." I don't understand why my Santa preparations need to be pretty much the same as my childhood preparations for withstanding an attack from the monsters I was convinced were under my bed. It casts kind of an ominous tone over things, don't you think?

Last but not least, we have "We Wish You a Merry Christmas," which definitely wins the award for "Most Unexpectedly Aggressive Christmas Carol." Sure, it starts off innocently and cheerily enough by repeatedly telling its listeners to have a merry Christmas and a happy new year, but then verses two and three cross some threshold similar to the one that separates an amusingly tipsy friend from a belligerent terror. "Now bring us some figgy pudding!" demands verse two, apparently expecting some sort of payment for the jolly well-wishing put forth a verse earlier. And then, just to show they mean business, verse three's singers warn you that "we won't go until we get some." Eeesh. Christmas has never been quite so terrifying.

"Take the figgy pudding! For the love of God, just take it! I don't even know what's so great about it!"

Merry Christmas, suckas.

This week's episode of Bones (in case you missed it)

2011-11-19T16:30:00.002+01:00

COLD OPEN

We open at a TRASH DUMP in the FOREST, where a YUPPIE COUPLE is hunting for antiques.

YUPPIE LADY: I’m picking a fight with you, because picking fights is a prerequisite to stumbling upon horrible bodies in the Bones cold open!

YUPPIE GUY: I’m trying to put a positive spin on the situation! I have a good, healthy outlook on life! Karma will surely reward me for my sunny disposition!

Something vaguely corpse-looking tumbles down the hill.

YUPPIE GUY: There does not appear to be anything sketchy about this!

YUPPIE LADY: No indeed!

YUPPIE GUY runs toward said totally un-sketchy object, trips on a toilet bowl (I’m not making that up) and lands face-to-face with a skeleton (and associated fleshy goop) wrapped in plastic.

YUPPIE GUY and YUPPIE LADY scream their yuppie heads off.

FADE TO:

BOOTH, BRENNAN, and SWEETS getting coffee in a park in “WASHINGTON, D.C.,” where the November weather appears to be incredibly mild—as mild as, say, Los Angeles. There seems to be some sort of DISAGREEMENT occurring.

BOOTH: Sweets, I do not approve of your getting a gun, despite the fact that you will be in the field with me facing horrible dangers.

AUDIENCE: I do not approve of the fact that the FBI apparently finds it appropriate to send a PSYCHIATRIST out into the field. Didn’t Booth have to fight just to get Brennan into the field, when she arguably had much more job and weapons experience than Sweets? Couldn’t Booth easily put a stop to this?

SWEETS, to distract both BOOTH and the AUDIENCE, changes the subject.

SWEETS: Let’s talk about your living arrangements.

BOOTH: No.

BRENNAN: Okay. I want an acre of land, he wants a man cave.

BOOTH: Yes, two weeks ago I wanted a family-friendly home, now I want the exact opposite of that.

BRENNAN: It makes no sense to me.

For once, AUDIENCE and BRENNAN are on the same page.

BRENNAN: Anyway, back to Sweets and guns. If we arm him he’s a prime target for a shooter, so he’ll draw fire away from you! I don’t want to be a single mom!

AUDIENCE: Classic Brennan! Comedy! Guffaw!

BOOTH: Irrelevant, Sweets isn’t getting a gun.

SWEETS: Fine then, you’re not getting a man cave.

AUDIENCE: How could you possibly follow through on that threat given that—

EXECUTIVE PRODUCERS OF BONES: Scene change! You can’t ask questions now! La la la, can’t hear you!

CUT TO: The Jeffersonian. CAM and BRENNAN are examining a PLASTIC-WRAPPED CORPSE while DAISY looks busy in the background.

CAM: Look, here’s our gross body of the week!

BRENNAN: I’ll explain to you things we already should both know, given our professional backgrounds, almost as if you were the average 18-35 year-old viewer of a primetime television show.

CAM: Sounds perfectly logical to me.

DAISY: Don’t forget me! I’m quirky but I’m also smart, and in this scene I have an air compressor!

CAM: Why?

BRENNAN: To help us pressurize the interior of the plastic so we can drain the remains.

CAM: Ah, right, I should have known that!

BRENNAN and CAM both stare at the camera and wink knowingly. CAM cuts slits in the bottom of the plastic-wrapped corpse so the goop can drain out.

DAISY sums up the show with the following line (again, not kidding with this one):

DAISY: This is revolting…but kind of fun.

CAM, BRENNAN, and most of the AUDIENCE concur. Portion of AUDIENCE that was stupidly eating dinner while watching cannot weigh in because they are too busy trying not to vomit and/or recovering from doing so.

CAM cuts open the goopy, plastic wrapped remains. She, BRENNAN, and DAISY are unfazed.

BRENNAN: It’s a good thing all three of us have apparently lost our sense of smell.

CAM: Indeed.

DAISY: I had mine surgically removed for this very reason.

CAM finds a Ken doll in the remains, but for copyright reasons (and as fodder for some jokes later on), this doll is called PRINCE CHARMINGTON.

CAM: Look, a plastic doll.

DAISY: PRINCE CHARMINGTON!

BRENNAN: Who’s Prince Charmington?

CAM: Let me explain, since we need some exposition and you’re totally ignorant about pop culture. Prince Charmington is the best. Toy. Ever.

DAISY: It’s so sad!

BRENNAN: That seems like rather a strange reaction.

CAM: Nah, I’m fine with it. Seems plausible.

EXECUTIVE PRODUCERS OF BONES hope the AUDIENCE agrees so we can all LAUGH together at BRENNAN’S SOCIAL AWKWARDNESS. AUDIENCE looks dubious. EXECUTIVE PRODUCERS try again.

DAISY: OH MY GOD! Whoever killed Prince Charmington will PAY!

CAM: I’m mildly befuddled, but otherwise that seems like an appropriate reaction to a grisly murder scene. I’m so glad I hired you.

DRAMATIC ZOOM on PRINCE CHARMINGTON with the HUMAN CORPSE relegated to the BACKGROUND of the shot. CUT TO: OPENING CREDITS

COMMERCIAL BREAK in which we see car commercials for every vehicle that’s ever been driven on Bones.

ACT ONE

At the JEFFERSONIAN, CAM, HODGINS, and DAISY search through what remains of the…remains. (See what I did there?)

HODGINS: I study bugs and slime and dirt and stuff, none of which is relevant to this particular murder. In real life I’d go work on some research or write a paper or work another case or something, but my contractually mandated screentime requires me to be here sorting through flesh goop like a lowly intern. And providing exposition. And reminding everyone of my real area of specialization.

CAM: That’s great, but what can you do to help move the plot along?

HODGINS: Well, I found a lung. Coincidentally, it’s the only organ that will be relevant later in this investigation.

CAM: Oh, cool. We can just forget about examining the other twenty-odd internal organs in the human body, then.

HODGINS: And here are bone fragments for you, Daisy.

DAISY: Phalanx, patella…awww! Here’s a socket from the late Prince Charmington’s royal patella.

HODGINS: Are the executive producers trying to imply that I can’t tell the difference between human bones and plastic doll bits or that I have a weird sense of humor and professionalism?

DAISY: Don’t care; too busy being bummed about Prince Charmington.

HODGINS: Whatever. Did you guys hear about the B-plot of this episode in which Sweets is trying to get certified to carry a gun?

CAM: No way!

DAISY: I fully support my boyfriend’s right to shoot people, largely because he is a decent human being who would never hurt a fly. Oh, by the way, the x-rays I did show that the victim was apparently beaten right before her death and may have been beaten as a child.

CAM: Sad.

BEAT. (No pun intended.)

CAM: Moving on…

Coincidentally, ANGELA enters with KEY INFORMATION.

ANGELA: I found fingerprints, bitchezzz! All the ID’ing you’ve been doing up until now is irrelevant! Our victim was vice president of a toy company!

AUDIENCE: I sense a theme coming on….

ANGELA: Anyway, her name is Debra Cortez and her brother reported her missing two weeks ago.

CUT TO: INTERROGATION ROOM. BOOTH and SWEETS are talking to the victim’s BROTHER.

MR. CORTEZ: My sister is dead? I’m so sad! She was such a quiet, shy, wonderful person.

SWEETS: She was quiet and shy? That fits in with the childhood abuse she suffered.

MR. CORTEZ: Um, what now?

SWEETS: The abuse. It’s totally understandable you have no idea what I’m talking about, since most children are abused by their parents and you two grew up in the same household. The fact that you seem confused does not cause me to doubt this hypothesis at all.

MR. CORTEZ: Debbie wasn’t abused, she was the sole survivor of the plane crash that killed our parents.

AUDIENCE feels a little sorry for MR. CORTEZ, since he wasn’t invited along on this little childhood jaunt across the sky, and then remembers that he was LUCKY because the PLANE ended up CRASHING.

BOOTH: I see that you also worked at the toy company.

MR. CORTEZ: My sister got me a job at the company, but I only worked there a month because it was too humiliating working for my more successful sister.

BOOTH: What do you do now?

MR. CORTEZ: Still looking.

AUDIENCE: Who quits a job in this economy? Think, man, think!

CUT TO: JEFFERSONIAN LAB. BRENNAN is examining stuff. It doesn’t really matter because the casework is simply a segue into BRENNAN COMEDY. ANGELA enters.

BRENNAN: Did you have a Prince Charmington doll as a kid?

ANGELA: Everyone did. I dressed mine like Sid Vicious Charmington, because I’m edgy and bohemian!

BRENNAN: I didn’t like toys. They distracted me from science.

ANGELA: Playing is important, too. Anthropology is on my side. You should play with that Prince Charmington doll!

BRENNAN: You mean the evidence?

ANGELA: It’s completely appropriate!

BRENNAN: Okay…

BRENNAN adopts a funny voice, so things are already delving into the realm of COMEDY, and picks up PRINCE CHARMINGTON, whose outfit is remarkably clean considering it was covered in liquefied organs mere scenes ago.

BRENNAN: Hello subjects! My name is Prince Charmington! My arm and leg have been torn asunder but my cervical spine is intact!

We can tell from ANGELA’S FACIAL EXPRESSIONS that BRENNAN is definitely DOING IT WRONG. BRENNAN laughs at her own cleverness. ANGELA laughs awkwardly and worries that BRENNAN’s future child will be a serial killer or something.

CUT TO: DILLIO TOY FACTORY. BOOTH and BRENNAN walk with BIANCA, the president of the company, who shows them around. She seems TRUSTWORTHY and COOPERATIVE, so there is NO WAY she can be the MURDERER.

BIANCA: These are our Bouncing Bears.

BOOTH: Parker loves those!

BRENNAN: Why? Children should not be playing with bears! Do you know how many fatal bear maulings occur in the United States every year?

BOOTH: Are you going to talk to our daughter like that?

BRENNAN: No, but I’m certainly not going to let her play with bears.

BIANCA shows BOOTH and BRENNAN the IMAGITORIUM, where the company tests prototypes on kids.

BIANCA: …and these are “Love Mutts.” Their heads and bodies are interchangeable so you can make an endless array of combinations!

A LITTLE GIRL holds up what looks like a Frankenstein science experiment gone wrong.

LITTLE GIRL: I made a bull-poodle!

AUDIENCE worries that these children will all become mad scientist serial killers. BRENNAN, BOOTH, AND BIANCA seem unconcerned.

BRENNAN: I can see how this would teach children about dominant and recessive genes!

AUDIENCE: Um, I can’t. I’m pretty sure my sister doesn’t have blue eyes because my parents ripped off the head of a blue-eyed person and attached it to my sister’s body.

BIANCA: Moving on, here’s Larry. He was Debra Cortez’s professional competition, except his ideas suck.

LARRY, who seems frazzled and lame in a COMEDIC WAY, is attacked by children who don’t dig his toys. He exits the IMAGITORIUM in a huff.

LARRY: I wanna wring those little bastards’ necks sometimes, you know?

BEAT.

LARRY: Was that not an appropriate way to greet strangers? Okay, let me try again. I hate Debbie Cortez.

BEAT. LARRY looks about for a shovel with which to dig himself an even deeper grave. BOOTH puts a stop to it by pulling out his badge and deciding to interrogate LARRY.

CUT TO: EMPTY IMAGITORIUM ROOM. BOOTH, BRENNAN, and LARRY sit around a child-size table on child-sized chairs.

LARRY: Here’s all the useful info you need for this scene. I didn’t like Debbie, but I didn’t kill her. I think she had a secret boyfriend. I was at home watching the game the night she was murdered, but my wife and kids were conveniently in Florida so no one can corroborate my story.

BOOTH: We’ll be in touch.

This is a prime opportunity for PREGNANCY HUMOR, so BRENNAN gets stuck in the child-size chair. BOOTH helps her out and they exit.

CUT TO: JEFFERSONIAN LAB, where HODGINS and DAISY are doing important lab-related tasks.

HODGINS: Here’s Prince Charmington’s leg!

DAISY: Gimme!

HODGINS: It appears to have been burned with some kind of acid.

DAISY: The horror!

HODGINS: Don’t worry. I’ll figure it out.

BEAT.

HODGINS: Remember that “King of the Lab” joke we started like five seasons ago?

DAISY: Kind of…

AUDIENCE: YES.

HODGINS: Well, I’m bringing it back. King of the Lab!

CUT TO: ANGELA’S OFFICE. ANGELA is trying to assemble a toy, which leads to COMICAL HIJINKS. BRENNAN enters.

BRENNAN: What are you doing?

ANGELA: I’m assembling a toy for Michael. Remember, that son I had at the end of last season?

BRENNAN: Vaguely.

ANGELA: Right. He’s never onscreen and I immediately lost all my pregnancy "weight,", so I’m assembling this toy in my office instead of at home so I can remind everyone of his existence.

BRENNAN: Right. Why are the instructions in Chinese?

ANGELA: That’s just the diagrams. The instructions should be in clear, easy-to-understand English.

Clearly ANGELA has never assembled anything herself before. AUDIENCE chuckles in anticipation.

ANGELA: “Insert to parts for assemble which toy can have immediately.”

AUDIENCE: Told ya!

BRENNAN: What if you try…?

ANGELA: DO NOT BACKSEAT DRIVE, SWEETIE! I hate toys. They suck.

EXECUTIVE PRODUCERS: And there’s the theme! Toys! The theme of the episode is toys! Did you get it? Did you?

BRENNAN: Well, anyway. On the topic of relevant stuff, did you construct a scenario for what happened to the victim?

ANGELA: Sure did. Let’s go!

CUT TO: The ANGELATOR room. ANGELA pulls up a schematic on the screen.

ANGELA: She was lying facedown on the concrete and she was struck with an incredible amount of force.

BRENNAN: This seems redundant, since we already knew she had fractures and her lung was collapsed so she suffocated to death, but I’m sure you’re going somewhere with this.

ANGELA: Right. Just reminding you of the details. There has been a commercial break since we went over all that the first time, you know.

BRENNAN: Oh, right.

ANGELA: Anyway, the person who did it must have been really angry to hit her so hard.

BRENNAN: No, if it were rage the blows would be all over the place. These are concentrated to her arms and upper back. Move her right and left arm?

ANGELA makes the image of the victim splay out a little more, then draws a line connecting the injuries. Nevertheless, she waits for BRENNAN to explain what this means.

BRENNAN: She was hit only once with great force, and the blow fell along this line!

ANGELA: Cool, I drew that line! Now I know why it’s significant!

CUT TO: BOOTH and DAISY in the car.

DAISY: I’m so excited to be going into the field!

BOOTH: Don’t get too excited. You’re only here because Bones wasn’t available.

AUDIENCE wonders where BRENNAN is. Presumably helping ANGELA assemble that toy?

EXECUTIVE PRODUCERS: We actually don’t know where Brennan is, we just wanted to put Booth and Daisy at the scene together. You know, for comedy!

AUDIENCE: Sure. Okay.

DAISY: When I’m field-tested and Lance has his gun, we can go on murdery double-dates with you and Brennan!

BOOTH: Let’s never do that. Also, don’t talk when we get there.

DAISY: I’ll agree now, but I will undoubtedly disregard this agreement as soon as we arrive at the crime scene.

BOOTH dies a little inside.

CUT TO: DILLIO TOYS FACTORY. BIANCA is showing BOOTH and DAISY into the PROTOTYPE LAB.

BIANCA: Before we go in, I need you to sign a nondisclosure agreement.

BOOTH: Ha ha, don’t think so.

DAISY, not to be outdone in BADASSERY, jumps in despite her promises to keep silent.

DAISY: If you don’t let us in, we’ll come back with a warrant and the press will have a field day.

BIANCA: Oh, fine. Whatever.

BIANCA, DAISY, and BOOTH enter the PROTOTYPE LAB.

DAISY: This plastic could be the same plastic the body was wrapped in!

BOOTH: Interesting.

DAISY: There’s blood on the floor over here!

BOOTH: That’s suspicious.

DAISY: This sliding vertical door could have been what crushed our victim!

BOOTH, not to be outdone in USEFULNESS, makes a discovery of his own.

BOOTH: This door looks like it’s been broken into.

BIANCA: Impossible!

In the background, FACTORY EMPLOYEES continue working, not expressing the least bit of interest in the MURDER CASE unfolding beneath their very noses. CASTING DIRECTORS pat themselves on the back for their choice in extras.

DRAMATIC ZOOM on the characters’ faces and the crime scene.

COMMERCIAL BREAK in which Fox plugs at least three shows that will be canceled by February sweeps.

ACT TWO

SWEETS is at the FIRING RANGE, where he is practicing for his test to carry a weapon. He does well. DAISY appears behind him.

DAISY: Good job! You’re hot when you’re firing a gun.

SWEETS: Daisy! God! I’m trying to concentrate!

SWEETS fires off another three rounds and misses the target each time.

DAISY: Pretend that target is someone trying to hurt me. Don’t let him hurt me, Lance!

SWEETS fires three shots almost straight through the target’s heart.

SWEETS: At first your presence made me suck, but now it makes me awesome!

DAISY: What’s that? I was too distracted by wanting to have sex with you.

CUT TO: JEFFERSONIAN LAB. HODGINS is doing science-y things. CAM enters.

HODGINS: Hey Cam, guess what? I found metal embedded in the victim that matches the door at the factory, so we have our murder weapon!

CAM: Great!

HODGINS: AND I discovered that someone used a carjack to break in! Multimillion dollar security system and all it took was a cheap-o carjack.

CAM: What dumbasses.

CUT TO: JEFFERSONIAN LAB. BRENNAN enters and sees DAISY.

BRENNAN: Hold up. Are you doing an autopsy on Prince Charmington?

DAISY: Yes. That makes total sense, right?

BRENNAN: Um, sure. Explain, please?

CUE intense “we’re solving a mystery” music.

DAISY: There was a struggle. Someone grabbed Prince Charmington and our victim pulled back, and Prince Charmington was pulled apart in the struggle. This is an original doll from the 1960s and it’s now worth $10,000. Someone wanted to steal him!

CUT TO: ANGELATOR ROOM. ANGELA is examining the victim’s computer files.

ANGELA: There’s nothing suspicious on here, except for that little email interaction in which she accuses someone of stealing from the company and they write back telling her to stay out of it.

CAM: Well, who was the other person?

ANGELA: I traced the IP address and get this—it’s her brother!

AUDIENCE: Couldn’t you have just checked the email address?

EXECUTIVE PRODUCERS: Never mind that! Quick! Scene change!

CUT TO: BOOTH and SWEETS on a stakeout.

BOOTH: It’s not that I don’t want you to have a gun. I just think you’d end up, like, shooting yourself in the foot or something.

SWEETS: You think I’m incompetent?

BOOTH: No. I never said that.

BOOTH sees the perp arrive and exits the car.

SWEETS: Oh, so now you’re just gonna leave?

BOOTH leans in through the open window.

BOOTH: No, Sweets, the perp’s here. God, pay attention. You suck at stakeouts.

AUDIENCE wonders whether people who leave their windows open while having conversations at a normal volume during a stakeout should really through stones in the incompetence arena.

SWEETS and BOOTH confront the perp, MR.CORTEZ.

BOOTH: Open your trunk.

MR. CORTEZ: You got a warrant?

BOOTH: Nope. But you’ve been stealing vintage toys. You should probably cooperate.

MR. CORTEZ: In that case, okay. You really have me cornered here, since it’s not like I could have emptied my trunk in the time it took you to go wake up a judge and get him or her to sign a warrant.

BOOTH opens the trunk. It is full of STOLEN VINTAGE TOYS.

SWEETS: I’m guessing you don’t have a receipt for those.

BEAT.

SWEETS: See? I can be snarky and badass, too!

BOOTH: And a carjack! Since one never finds carjacks in the trunks of cars, this is clearly the carjack used to pry open the door at the factory!

COMMERCIAL BREAK, at which point the AUDIENCE members turn to each other and complain about how there have only been like four minutes of the episode since the last commercial break, and what is television coming to these days?

ACT THREE

MR. CORTEZ is being interrogated in the FBI INTERROGATION ROOM. As the chairs are all regular-sized there is no potential for PREGNANCY HUMOR in this scene, so BOOTH and SWEETS conduct the interrogation while BRENNAN remains absent.

BOOTH: Your sister was pretty mad you were stealing from the company.

MR. CORTEZ: Whatever. I have a criminal record anyway, so it wasn’t a big deal or anything.

AUDIENCE shakes head and mutters derisively about recidivism.

BOOTH: She was going to turn you in.

MR. CORTEZ: Debbie would never do that!

SWEETS: She’d lose her job if you got caught.

MR. CORTEZ: I’m her brother, she owes me!

BOOTH: You squashed your sister with the factory door because she caught you stealing THIS!

He throws PRINCE CHARMINGTON down on the table rather roughly. Poor PRINCE CHARMINGTON is going through rather a lot in this episode, and the AUDIENCE feels a little sorry for him until they remember that he is a DOLL.

Anyway, there is a DRAMATIC PAUSE, and then:

CUE sappy sad piano/violin music.

MR. CORTEZ stares at PRINCE CHARMINGTON, then reaches out to pick him up. MUSIC stalls on one suspenseful violin note.

MR. CORTEZ: Oh my God.

PIANOS resume.

MR. CORTEZ: This was the last thing our mom gave Debbie before she died.

BEAT.

MR. CORTEZ: “She” being our mom in this case, not Debbie. The grammar skills of this recap are questionable.

BOOTH has time for neither META-COMMENTARY nor SCHMALTZ.

BOOTH: This doll is valuable. I think you stole it.

MR. CORTEZ: Go ahead, lock me up for stealing. But I didn’t kill my sister!

AUDIENCE: He’s probably right, we are only like forty minutes into the episode.

CUT TO: BOOTH’S APARTMENT. BRENNAN is sitting on the couch eating when BOOTH comes home from work.

BOOTH: How are you?

BRENNAN: Baby’s kicking my spleen. You?

BOOTH: Work sucks.

BRENNAN: We’re both having bad days. But tomorrow I’ll have my lab minions solve the case for you.

BOOTH: Cool. Let’s cuddle.

BRENNAN: Yeah. Okay.

BEAT.

BRENNAN: I’m not good at playing with toys. What if I’m a bad mom?

BOOTH switches into PEP TALK MODE.

BOOTH: You’re gonna be a great mom!

BRENNAN: Okay, I’m convinced. Hey, maybe when our daughter’s motor skills develop, we can dissect a frog together!

BOOTH: Maybe!

BOOTH, unlike most other characters on the show, does not seem to harbor any secret fears that his daughter will turn out to be a serial killer. This bodes well for his relationship with BRENNAN, but it remains to be seen whether or not it will benefit their UNBORN CHILD.

CUT TO: HODGINS and CAM in the JEFFERSONIAN LAB.

HODGINS: I’ve discovered a fake nail, and there’s DNA trapped between the glue and the nail!

CAM: Cool! Let’s solve this bitch!

CUT TO: ANGELA’s OFFICE, where ANGELA is still trying to assemble the toy from earlier. She has made some progress…but not much. CAM enters.

ANGELA: “Gently forward piece for coupling together with warning about many danger.” What. The. HELL?!

CAM then makes a ROOKIE MISTAKE.

CAM: It looks like that red piece might fit there.

ANGELA: Oh, does it? DOES IT?!

CAM: You’d think the store would offer some sort of assembly service.

AUDIENCE agrees with CAM.

ANGELA: Oh, they do, but this toy cost thirty-three bucks and they want thirty-five to put it together.

AUDIENCE abandons TEAM CAM to side with TEAM ANGELA. Those thieves! Who do they think they are?!

CAM: Seems like money well spent.

ANGELA: Are you calling me stupid? “Baby Walker” will not beat me!

HODGINS chooses an unfortunate moment to enter.

HODGINS: Hey, are you ready for lunch?

ANGELA: He’s your son, too!

HODGINS: We have a son?

BEAT.

HODGINS: Oh, duh, that’s right. It’s just that he never appears on screen so sometimes I can’t remember if he’s real or if the season six finale was all a hallucination.

CAM: No, that was season four.

HODGINS: Oh, right. What was up with that?

ANGELA: Hodgins!!!!

CAM: See ya.

We leave a befuddled HODGINS to his fate and

CUT TO: SHOOTING RANGE, where BOOTH has pulled come strings to administer SWEET’S test on the theory that if SWEETS is distracted by BOOTH’s presence, he won’t be any help in the field, with or without a gun. It sort of makes sense, but AUDIENCE wonders how BOOTH manages to pull all these strings and still be unable to block SWEETS entirely from gun ownership.

SWEETS enters a dark room for his test. Suddenly—FOG! FLASHING COLORS! OBSTACLES! LOUD NOISES! STROBE LIGHTS!

SWEETS looks around and tries to focus. AUDIENCE waits, half-expecting BARNEY STINSON and ROBIN SCHERBATSKY to appear in laser tag gear.

SWEETS performs admirably until a bullet ricochets off a target and hits him in the arm. AUDIENCE wonders why this kink was not worked out prior to the test.

BOOTH: You’ll have a scar but you’ll be fine.

And on that anti-climactic note, we

CUT TO: JEFFERSONIAN LAB, where CAM and DAISY discover that the DNA from the fingernail has gotten a hit in the FBI database.

CAM: So it’s this guy. He was in the military in Iraq. That fact is irrelevant to the storyline except that it explains why the FBI has his DNA on file.

DAISY: Yeah, it’s funny how many suspects and victims on this show turn out to have military or government backgrounds.

CAM: Pretty convenient for us though.

DAISY: For sure. Hey, that’s the guy who plays Prince Charmington in all the commercials!

CAM: And wasn’t our victim in a secret relationship? I wonder if there’s any connection!

DAISY: The prince is evil?!

COMMERCIAL BREAK, during which there are so many Christmas ads the AUDIENCE begins to feel guilty that they haven’t already finished their holiday shopping.

ACT FOUR

FBI INTERROGATION ROOM, where BOOTH and an be-slinged SWEETS question THE REAL PRINCE CHARMINGTON, whose name I forget.

SWEETS: Were you in a relationship with Debbie?

PRINCE CHARMINGTON: Yes. I can’t believe this could have happened to her. She always said she’d found her prince…but I was really the lucky one. I felt like the frog the princess kissed.

EXECUTIVE PRODUCERS: See what we did there with the Prince Charmington thing? Worth the payoff, right?

AUDIENCE: Oh. Yeah, sure.

BOOTH: Wow, you’re really into this whole prince thing. That’s not at all odd or potentially homicidal.

PRINCE CHARMINGTON: I didn’t kill Debbie! We had to keep our relationship a secret because of company policy—Bianca was really strict. I was encouraging Debbie to leave Dillio and strike out on her own. When she stopped calling me, I thought she’d tried to leave and it hadn’t worked out.

SWEETS: You thought she blamed you?

PRINCE CHARMINGTON: Yeah.

SWEETS: Psych degree for the win!

CUT TO: JEFFERSONIAN LAB. HODGINS is explaining things to CAM and oh hey! BRENNAN, who has been kind of MIA this episode.

HODGINS: The acid that burned through the plastic was from a car battery.

CAM: But car batteries are stored in the hood, you can’t fit a body in that part of the car!

HODGINS: But some Mazerati models have the battery in the back, and I found fibers from the trunk of a Mazerati, too!

BRENNAN: I’ll have Booth see what cars the Dillio employees drive!

CUT TO: DILLIO PARKING LOT, where BIANCA is just getting into her car. BOOTH and BRENNAN walk up. AUDIENCE wonders why SWEETS, after all the work he put in on this case, doesn’t get the satisfaction of collaring the REAL KILLER.

BOOTH: Open your truck.

BIANCA: Why?

BOOTH: I think you know why.

Faced with this INCONTROVERTIBLE LOGIC, BIANCA opens her trunk. BRENNAN finds traces of blood.

BIANCA: Without Debbie, our stock would have plummeted. It was an accident!

BRENNAN: Don’t care, you’re an evil bitch.

BIANCA has no response.

CUT TO: SWEETS’S OFFICE. DAISY enters.

DAISY: Can I see your gun?

It's not an innuendo. SWEETS shows her. They MAKE OUT.

SWEETS: No more sex in my office.

DAISY: Whyyyyy?

SWEETS: Okay, but this is the last time!

CUT TO: BRENNAN’S OFFICE.

BRENNAN, after a long day of not really doing any work (she’s pregnant, cut her some slack!) is doing work in her office. ANGELA enters with MICHAEL, her baby (in case you’d forgotten).

ANGELA: I’m giving up. Wanna come to the toy store with us so someone there can assemble that toy for me?

BRENNAN: Uhhhh…

ANGELA: Bassinets! Mobiles!

BRENNAN: As a soon-to-be parent, those things interest me now! Let’s go!

CUT TO: BOOTH’s APARTMENT. BRENNAN is reading a serious-looking book. BOOTH comes in.

BOOTH: Hey!

BRENNAN: Freeze, copper!

BRENNAN has a gun that shoots foam balls, and she is happily attacking BOOTH.

BRENNAN: Today at the store, I realized that this is fun! And the baby thought it was funny! So now I understand what play is all about!

BOOTH: You’d think as a brilliant anthropologist, you’d already understand what play is all about.

BRENNAN: Apparently not.

BOOTH fishes another gun out of a shopping bag.

BOOTH: You bought two of these?

BRENNAN: Duh.

BOOTH and BRENNAN proceed to have an ADORABLE FOAM-BALL SHOOTOUT, and even though the AUDIENCE can’t help but wonder how their guns seem to magically never run out of foam balls, it is a pretty cute ending.

Thanks for the 'help,' but you can take it back

2011-09-11T22:43:00.005+02:00

So unless you haven't been on the internet in the last week-and-a-half or so, you probably know all about the controversy surrounding photographer Tyler Shields's portraits of a made-up-to-look-bruised-up Heather Morris. Let's set aside for the moment the fact that the shoot itself was DEFINITELY in poor taste and concentrate on Shields's defense of his work:

“There is a shot of [Morris] pushing the iron to my face and ironing my crotch. … That seems more like female empowerment.” (source)

THIS is where I reached my limit. Okay, go ahead, do a photo shoot glamorizing domestic abuse. It makes you--pardon my French--an insensitive assface, but go right ahead and claim that you "didn't know" that people would be upset by the photos. We could maybe, maybe buy it and assume that you are actually just a colossal idiot instead of a giant tool. And then you go and spout off crap like this.

Look, before we go any further, I'm not trying to trivialize the complete and utter tastelessness of these photos in regards to domestic abuse. They're gross and twisted and, to be completely honest, not even that good. I don't consider myself a photography connoisseur or anything, but I can say unequivocally that pretty much anyone with a model, some makeup, and a white background could have taken these pictures. Seriously, I could go recreate them in my living room right now. (But I won't.)

So I'll admit, I was already disinclined to meet Shields's defense with anything more than an eye-roll and a snort of disdain / disbelief / disgust / dis-all-of-the-above. But then he decided to work the feminist angle. And I was puzzled, to say the least.

So let me examine this and make sure I've got it right. Violence is "empowering" as long as it's a woman inflicting it on a man? WHAT? Oh, okay. That makes total sense. It's abuse when she's sporting a black eye, but when he walks into work on Monday with iron-shaped burns all over him, everyone goes, "Gee, his wife/ girlfriend / female roommate sure is EMPOWERED!" That's sick. If that's what female empowerment looks like, no wonder feminism faces such stiff resistance.

Look, I get it. No one wants an angry woman coming after him wielding an iron. I'm not debating that. But herein lies the problem: the world basically thinks of all feminists as iron-wielding crazies, hellbent on beating men into submission. That is not, nor has it ever been, the goal of feminism. The goal of feminism is fair and equal treatment for women and men. It's right there in the definition of feminism in the ever-infallible Oxford English Dictionary:

Feminism: the advocacy of women's rights on the grounds of political, social, and economic equality to men.

See? Nothing in there about compulsory man hating. Nowhere does it say that I have to earn my empowerment through any UFC-type battle scenario. Which is lucky for me, as the extent of my workout for the last three months has been power-walking down the street and playing WiiFit. Also, my only iron is travel-size and barely heats up past room temperature, which means it'd be pretty useless in the crotch-burning arena. But I digress.

Let me come right out and say it. I'm a feminist, and I am proud to be one. You can say I'm overreacting, that I just like complaining, that I want attention, but I don't see it that way. All I'm doing is standing up for myself, my mom, my grandmothers, my sister, my best friend. I'm standing up for my friends who won't stand up for themselves. I'm standing up for my little cousins, who are too young to know what sexism is but will someday probably experience it firsthand.

And that's why this bothers me so much. Deserving and expecting fair and equal treatment is not the same as assault and battery, and for one petty, fame-seeking little man to publicly declare that the two are basically the same thing is wrong. Generations' worth of work have gone into the feminist movement. Both women and men have devoted their lives to fighting for female equality. And here comes Tyler Shields with his ridiculously warped ideas on empowerment, ignoring fifty-plus years of dedication, diligence, and struggle. And we're supposed to be what, thankful?

Luckily for him, I think he'll find most feminists prefer blogging to iron attacks.

Adventures in oral hygiene

2011-07-13T12:59:00.001+02:00

I've found, as I get older, that in many facets of my life, I'm just a straight-up anomaly. I like plucking my eyebrows. I usually relish the opportunity to clean up a really messy room. And, perhaps most strangely, I don't fear the dentist.

I mean, it's not like I look forward to my appointments for weeks and eagerly check off the intermediate days on a calendar or anything. But I just don't have any aversion to it. It probably helps that, crooked bottom teeth aside, my dental experiences have been pretty much all positive. No braces. No root canals. No cavities, even. When I was a kid, going to the dentist was actually kind of a positive experience. The dental hygienist would poke around for awhile, which was not so fun, but then she'd let me pick a toothpaste flavor and would brush my teeth for me with that weird whirring suction stick thingy, after which I'd get a free toothbrush, a trinket (comparable in quality to the prize in a Cracker Jack box), and a compliment on how my pearly whites were, well, pearly white.

As I've grown older, I don't really look forward to the dentist (No more prizes?! What is that all about?!), but I tend to view it with a detached kind of neutrality. I go, I get my teeth cleaned, I leave, and I repeat the process in six months. Whatever.

However, my most recent foray into the world of oral hygiene was different than the others, in that I actually had a problem. My gums around my wisdom teeth had been swollen for a few days, and despite my fervent wishes that they would just go back to normal on their own, they did not. So yesterday I headed in to my regular dentist appointment and mentioned to the hygienist in what I hoped was a casual way:

"You know, I'm glad I could get an appointment for today. I have a little swelling around my gums."

"Oh, really?" she said. "Let's take a look."

I got into the chair and opened wide. She took out the least-friendly looking metal instrument on the tray and held it as she peered inside.

"Oh, yeah, you do have some swelling there," she said. She gingerly poked around with the metal thing before adding, "Holy moly."

At that point, I knew all was lost. It's never a good sign when your dental hygienist, who has presumably seen quite a few oral maladies, starts throwing around phrases like "holy moly."

So after my check-up I was scheduled to return this morning to get all the bacteria scraped out from under my gums. Sounds like fun, right?

Well, yes and no. The Novocaine shots (all three of them) weren't so bad, but ever since my medical drama in February (three stitches above my eyebrow, three on my eyelid, and about eight painful anesthesia shots preceding them) I've adopted a more blasé attitude toward giant sharp poking implements in the immediate vicinity of my face. The gum-scraping itself wasn't all that awful either, given the effectiveness of the shots, although the scraping instruments kept coming out of my mouth looking considerably gorier than they had when they went in. At any rate, the whole thing was over in about twenty-five minutes, and this includes the serious post-procedure talk I got about proper flossing to prevent future occurrences like this.

The Novocaine, however, has yet to wear off.

Granted, it's only been about an hour since I left the dentist. Though now that I mention it, I seem to have regained some control of my tongue, and I can smile again without having one side of my mouth be way more into it than the other. Bizarrely enough, though, my chin and left ear appear to be pretty numb still. It's a bit frustrating, as I've had an itch on my chin for the past twenty minutes and scratching is pretty non-effective, since I can't feel it. I don't even know how it's even medically possible to be able to feel the itch and not the scratching, but there you go.

It hasn't been all bad, though. Having the entire left side of my face numb from my ear to my chin has actually been, to me at least, pretty entertaining. (I know, small amusement for small minds.) It began in the dentist's office when I tried to rinse out my mouth. Never having had Novocaine injections before, I severely overestimated my ability to manipulate my lips and tongue and, instead of neatly spitting the water into the sink, managed instead to dribble it down my chin. A second attempt proved just as fruitless, possibly even more so, since I happened to catch a look at my face in the mirror above the sink as I was attempting to swish the water around in my mouth. I looked rather like Cletus the slack-jawed yokel and half-spit the water out in laughter while the rest of it trickled down my face again and ended up (mostly) in the sink. Luckily no one was around to witness this incredibly graceful display, and I managed (with great effort) to hold myself together for the remainder of my time in the dentist's office, speaking almost normally.

Once I got out of there, however, all bets (along with my dignity) were off, and I became a lithping mathine thomewhat resthembling Thindy Brady. My teeth felt like they were about twice their normal size and five times their regular density, my face somehow felt like it was simultaneously made out of Play-Doh and a balloon, and I kept almost choking on my own tongue. By all accounts, it was not a very proud moment for me, but it was just so darn funny.

I got home and decided that it would be a good idea to take some ibuprofin before the numbness wore off, since having someone digging around in your gums is bound to result in some soreness later on. Drinking water proved a challenge, but that was easily solved by getting a drinking straw into the mix. Swallowing the ibuprofin was a little tougher, as I actually had to throw my head all the way back and let gravity do most of the work (whilst trying to prevent it from working on my tongue, which I was still apt to accidentally attempt to swallow). And now, an hour-and-a-half post-dentist (I took some time off in the middle of this post to google Harry Potter), I've got some feeling back in the very tip of my tongue but am definitely still numb everywhere else. The dentist said it would last about an hour but that it was different for everyone. I wonder how long it will last for me. It's been funny and everything, but I'd really like to eat some lunch without the danger of accidentally biting off a huge chunk of my own tongue.

The moral of the story here is, I suppose, is that if you don't mind giant syringes in your mouth, Novocaine is pretty amusing. If you'd rather avoid needles altogether, though, do yourself a favor and floss.

Work and Play

2011-06-21T23:24:00.000+02:00

Today was day two of my being back at the Basket, and I remembered just how predictable it all is; in fact, that I was wondering how I was going to get through my six-hour shift tomorrow without dying of boredom. And then, BRILLIANCE (or a mildly amusing idea). Ladies and gentlemen, I give you...

MARKET BASKET BINGO

(click for full size)

Note that:

"Adorable children" and "Horrible children" are right next to each other...making play more convenient when there are adorably horrible (or horribly adorable) children prancing about.
You can score a Bingo using both "Boy, it's empty in here today!" and "Why is it so busy in here today?" You'd think they'd be mutually exclusive...but they're not.
I will freely admit that there are many (mostly) good customers at Market Basket and that occasionally I actually (gasp!) sort of enjoy myself there. But such things do not make for good Bingo squares. (You know I'm right on this one.)

Print this out. Bring it with you the next time you go to the supermarket. I dare you. You'll see just how (sadly) accurate it is. Oh. You'll see.

Abridged Timeline of my Finals Preparation

2010-12-04T22:39:00.000+01:00

9:45 am: Wake up.
9:50 am: Realize that "the little tickle in my throat, probably from the room being too dry" is actually my second cold of the term.
10:45 am: Have roommate change my facebook password to help me avoid the temptation to procrastinate.
11 am: Errands
Noon: Research
1:45 pm: Take break from studying to watch roommate have a hilarious finals-induced breakdown centered around the word "punchy."
1:47 pm: Get camera to record the remainder of said mental breakdown.
2 pm: Work
2:45 pm: Realize that I missed yesterday's deadline for an important piece of financial aid paperwork. Call home to incoherently blubber apologies and beg for forgiveness.
3:25 pm: Go into hallway with roommate to send Slinky down the stairs.
3:26 pm: Stairs are too wide. Go in search of more suitable stairs.
3:28 pm: All stairs in building are too wide. Damn this grandiose dorm architecture.
3:30 pm: Build makeshift stairs out of books and boxes of cake mix for sole purpose of watching the Slinky walk down them
3:35 pm: Disassemble Slinky stairs, go back to doing more work
5:38 pm: Order Indian food
5:40 pm: Shower
6:38 pm: Food was supposed to be here 15 minutes ago.
6:39 pm: Food is here!
6:40 pm: Have awkward conversation in hallway with food delivery guy vis-à-vis how much I will be tipping him today (too much, considering the fact that he was late)
6:42 pm: Inhale naan and aloo mattar sitting sprawled out on the floor, since all table space is taken up with books, research materials, and empty cans of iced tea (not mine).
7:00 pm: "Time to get back to work!"
7:05 pm: Play "Eye of the Tiger" to psych self up
7:07 pm: Epic "Don't Stop Believin'"air-guitar/sing-along session with roommates
7:09 pm: Roommate's friend enters, is enticed to join in
7:10 pm: Okay, seriously, back to work.
8:30 pm: Sinking feeling that none of research is relevant to paper topic
9 pm: Nope. Not at all.
9:15 pm: Study break to cheer up!
9:45 pm: YOUTUBE!!!
9:55 pm: Back to work. For real.
10:19 pm: BLOG!!!
10:39 pm: Craaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaap, another 20 minutes wasted.

Did I mention this thing's due Monday?

I hate finals.

Obsession of the Moment #1: The Library

2010-11-06T20:49:00.000+01:00

After another long day of doing nothing productive, I have come to the following conclusion: The library is God's most magical gift to the world.

Well, you know, God or whatever deity you choose. The point is, the place is the bomb-diggity.

Last week Michelle and I started a weekly tradition wherein we go into town on Friday afternoons and spend time at the library before stopping at Dunkin' Donuts on the way back. We call it "Books and Beignets," although beignets may be too classy a term for goods that are obtained from a Dunkins located in a gas station convenience store.

Regardless, these outings (all two of them, thus far) are magical little forays away from the real world and into a world inhabited by people who are somehow way more interesting than you and I. Since I'm currently on a mystery-reading kick, my version of an interesting person is one who not only finds dead bodies strewn about in his/her immediate vicinity on a disturbingly regular basis, but who also manages to figure out without fail who did it and why. Every time.

The nice thing about reading is knowing that everything will come to a resolution at some point. I'm partial to happy endings myself, but even bummer endings are endings. No loose ends here, no siree. (If there were loose ends, chances are this thing wouldn't have gotten published.) If only life offered the same guarantee. (I mean, apart from the ULTIMATE ending, in which we all go to the big library in the sky.) But let's not get all philosophical here. Let's get back to the library, and why it is perhaps--nay, certainly--the best public institution there is.

First of all, it's FREE. What?! Free?! And legal?! Too much, too much. I mean, you could conceivably photocopy every book you ever borrow (although the legality of that is sort of questionable) and never pay for books again! (I feel like you'd run up a pretty hefty tab at Kinko's, though.) I love buying books, and I love filling my shelves with them, but I'm also a poor college student whose bank account averages about $40 from month to month. I can't go around buying books all willy-nilly. Plus, the last time I went on a book-buying expedition, two of the three were stinkers (and the third was a French-English dictionary, so it didn't really redeem the other two).

But with the library, there's no risk! No commitment! If it sucks, return it! If it doesn't suck, pretend you lost it and steal it for your personal collection! (Kidding. KIDDING.) I've discovered some of my favorite books and book series just by picking up random ones at the library, whereas when I go to the bookstore I usually have a very organized list of exactly what I'm looking for. (I'm not saying I don't get distracted, though.)

Second of all, the library is a freaking mystical repository for books that arguably "don't exist" anymore. What? Out of print for six years? Oh, hey, here it is on the shelf, just waiting for you. You're welcome.

Third: it's quiet. In bookstores, there's no guarantee, especially if there's a Starbucks or Seattle's Best Coffee smooshed in there somewhere. In the library, you might get shushed by the stereotypical cranky librarian, but dude, you probably deserved it. And that librarian is there to shush other people so you don't have to be "that bitch who told me to be quiet. Who does she think she is, anyway?" So you see, that librarian is actually taking the fall so you don't have to. Win.

Fourth, you can increase the size of your iTunes to the nth degree just by taking CDs out of the library. Again, this point is of somewhat dubious legality, but really, what can anyone do about it? And it's not like you're going to go out and actually buy "Christmas with the Brady Bunch," but damn if you don't want that crazy clan to serenade you during the holidays. Don't even deny it.

Fifth, you get to watch movies. For free. Without Chinese/Russian/Japanese subtitles and without Megavideo cutting you off. Score.

Sixth, and this is perhaps THE most magical thing: you get to put things on hold. No, really, think about it. It is the grown-up, tax-dollar-funded method of calling dibs. No need to sit around for weeks waiting for the object of your desire to become available; just slap a hold on that sucker and you get priority over all the other schmucks that want it. If only dating worked like this, life would be sooo much simpler.

In fact, my only complaint about the library is that they don't let me live there.

Pity.

All I wanted was soup, not the third degree

2010-11-02T16:09:00.010+01:00

Ahhhh, election day.

Now let me preface the rest of this entry with the fact that I believe in one's civic duty to schlep out to the polls; my facebook political views are "People should vote," and I complain on a fairly regular basis about people who don't vote but complain about the state of the government. "If you didn't vote," I say (to my patiently-listening friends, not to the actual vote-shirkers), "what are you complaining about? You had your chance to change things and you didn't take it."

Now let me say this: I am not the most politically informed person. Don't ask me who's running for Congress in the state of New Hampshire today, because I don't know. Something that begins with a K. Kushman? Kuster? Who knows? I'm guessing s/he is a Democrat, though, since the majority of the college's "honk if you agree" sign-holders seem to be holding signs with his/her name on them.

Don't get me wrong, if a hot button election issue comes into my realm of knowledge, I'll know which side I stand on. And if I know what different candidates stand for, too, I can come up with a pretty good idea of who I'll support. But the problem is that it's just so HARD in modern American politics to tell what the issues actually are and who stands for what, considering that most political candidates spend most of their time spouting off things like, "My opponent eats babies. I have never eaten and will never eat a baby. Vote for me." And then when you ask them, "What do you stand for, though?" they generally respond with something like, "I'll tell you what I DON'T stand for: BABY-EATING," which is not exactly helpful or enlightening.

What needs to happen is at the beginning of each campaign season, each candidate releases a list of things that they do and do not stand for. Or, you know what, given the flip-flopping nature of politicians, maybe this should be more of a Venn diagram: "Things I Stand For" on one side, "Things I Don't Stand For" on the other, and "Things I'll Change My Mind About Based On What My Opponent Does or Does Not Stand For" taking up the middle.

The point I'm trying (and failing?) to make here is that I am pathetically uninformed about this particular election, and in my mind voting blindly is worse than not voting at all, as I could end up accidentally voting for a baby-eater or something. And I don't believe in just voting along party lines. (I'm an Independent anyway.)

All of this means that I've spent the day divided between feeling guilty at shirking my patriotic duty and pissed at the political activists who are hounding me about it. As I ran to class (late for my quiz), someone with a sign shouted, "Hey! Are you running TO THE POLLS?!" which frankly was not as funny as the other sign-holders seemed to think it was and made me, in my already cranky mood, want to reply, "It's none of your damn business where I'm going."

So when I had to walk into Collis to get lunch later I had to brace myself and brave the activists who had stationed themselves between me and the one thing (a giant bowl of soup) that would keep me from descending into a hunger-induced streak of madness. I'd almost made it to the door without incident, which was somewhat disappointing since I was actually craving some confrontation (like I said, I'm cranky today). But as I was heading up the stairs, a girl yelled to me, "Hey! Have you voted today?"

Politeness (cowardice?) won out, and I answered, "No, not today."

"But today's the only day when it's going to make a difference!" she said.

"I know," I said, but what I really wanted to do was stop, stare at her for a minute in mock disbelief, and then exclaim, "So THAT'S how voting works?!" before heading off on my not-so-merry way.

I want to make this clear, though: I honestly believe people should vote. I'm not planning on making a habit out of not voting. But I also think it's out of line for people, particularly strangers, to question you as to why. It's a personal thing. Maybe I'm not a US Citizen. Maybe I'm not old enough to vote. Maybe I've already voted but I just don't want to have a conversation about it with some rando on the street. Maybe I'm lazy. The reasons don't matter. The bottom line is that this aspect of politics is a personal decision, and my feelings toward people who badger me about it are about on par with people who ask me if I've accepted Jesus Christ as my personal savior.

So for the rest of the day, I am going to "be a Canadian." God bless Canadians and the fact that they're virtually indistinguishable from Americans unless they're a.) playing us in a game of hockey or b.) apologizing for something ("soor-y!").

And I am not going to feel guilty about not voting. I am going to put on a happy face and attend all my commitments - class, work, rehearsal - despite the fact that I haven't had an hour to myself for days, I desperately need to catch up on schoolwork, and I don't feel well. And in my one hour (literally) of free time, I am going to eat dinner, take some Advil, and lie down. I am making an executive decision to take care of myself first.

And that's my right as an American. So there.

My mind is a pretty weird place.

2010-10-22T13:23:00.000+02:00

English notes 10/22

The Canterbury Tales: The Wife of Bath's Tale
Wife is actively trying to find her voice
- But she is forced almost necessarily to draw on all the preexisting discourses that shape her because that's the language she has at her disposal
- Has to give a sermon in defense of her idea of marriage

Turns around one of the fundamental tropes of antifeminism by accusing her husbands of lecturing her when she's drunk (it's all a lie, though).

Wife as proto-capitalist subject --> understands her life and position in the world as fundamentally economic and based on consumption

She desires because she lacks, and she lacks because there's been a "cut" of some kind (symbolic castration)

Prologue, line 509: Middle English "glose" = gloss, interpret. Her fifth husband knows how to read her/interpret her, and that's why she's attracted to him

DAMN IT, IT IS SNOWING OUT. WE ARE DIGRESSING ABOUT THE SNOW. I AM WEARING LEGGINGS AND A CARDIGAN.
oh, no, wait. it's stopped. thank the lord.

but SERIOUSLY. there are still leaves on the trees.

okay, back to work.

but it was just so FUNNY. an entire room full of people got distracted and prof was like, 'what?' and someone said, 'snow,' and he went, 'oh, well, you know. new england.' and then told us how when he moved here from LA he thought snow was "volcanic ash falling from the sky." ha.

NO, IT IS STILL GOING. WRONG WRONG WRONG WRONG WRONG. bad hanover. bad. snow is only pretty between thanksgiving and new year's. everyone knows that. except skiiers. but they're crazy. they strap sticks to their feet and whiz downhill at speeds that no unaided human should ever achieve. crazy. we shouldn't use them as our authorities on desirable weather.

i can practically hear this snow taunting me. "wee-hee, i'm a little snowflake, i'm here a month early! not for any real reason, since i'm not even going to bother to accumulate, i'm only here to freak you the hell out about how it's almost winter and another year is gone by and you're still broke, single, and lacking definitive direction in life! tee-frickin'-hee! aren't i adorable?!"

no, snow, i hate you. with your stupid mickey-mouse-y voice and the taunting way in which you swirl outside, as if you're circling me going, "c'mon, take your best shot. oh-oh-OHHHH, missed me, suckaaaa! i'm SNOW, BITCH. y'all can't touch this!"

whew. coast is clear. yes. a good long stare out the window has proven that the sky is barren. ha-HA, sky. HA. HA.

language of choice = attribution of sovereignty to old hag that rewards knight's fantasies ROGUE FLAKE SPOTTED. okay. we're good. we're good. that's right, RUN AWAY! i will break out my roommate's hair dryer and BLOW DRY you, fools! y'all will MELT!
--> tale consists of wife's fundamental fantasy: man listens to his wife, and then she gets to be young and beautiful again.

male fantasy rather than female fantasy? --> why does a wife who is both true and beautiful have to be a fantasy at all?

possible sighting: it was either a distant leaf falling or a close up snow flake. i'm gonna go with leaf for my own sanity.

?!?!?!?!

Conversations with Sleeping People

2010-10-02T06:51:00.004+02:00

I'm back, reporting to you from the top bunk of the room I share with three other women. Yeah. Things are getting real up in here. As my example of things getting real, I was going to complain in great detail about how I never sleep straight through the night anymore, as my roommates all wake up at least an hour earlier than I do every day (the particularly ambitious among them waking up a full FOUR HOURS before me, at four-thirty in the morning), but I was just afforded a much better opportunity to demonstrate "things getting real," completely by chance. You probably won't find it as amusing as I do, but whatever.

I present to you the conversation I just had with Madison, who has been peacefully sleeping on the top bunk opposite mine for at least two hours. She inexplicably stirred, opened her eyes, glared around the room, and wrinkled her brow in some form of half-asleep disdain, possibly (understandably) for my table lamp, which actually performs well beyond the call of duty and lights the entire room rather than just the immediately surrounding area. I happen to like this, as it's placed at the foot of my bed. (Top bunk sort of limits your options in terms of bedside table placement, and my "bedside table" is a bookshelf stacked on top of my desk. Yes, I do have to climb over my desk in order to hoist myself up onto the ladder to my bed. But I digress.) I have a feeling my roommates don't like my super-bright lamp as much as I do, especially when it's on as they're trying to sleep.

Anyway, Madison woke up, cast a bewildered and disparaging look around the room, then made eye contact with me. We then proceeded to have the following exchange.

Me: What's the matter?
Madison (long pause): Weird.
Me: ...
Madison (repositioning her blankets): Ouch.
Me: What's the matter?
Madison: What?
Me: You said "weird."
Madison: Yeah.

That was it. End of conversation.

And this, I think, is the most amusing part of things getting real. When you share a room with other people, the best part is probably the half-asleep (or fully asleep) conversations that just have a way of occurring. Sometimes they're variations on a theme; I'm fairly certain Madison and I have had several versions of the following exchange as I walk into the room when she's already asleep.

Madison: Hey, baby.
Me: Go back to sleep.
Madison: Okay.

And she always immediately just lies back down and goes to sleep. Oh, that I could wield that kind of power over the fully conscious. Creepy? Perhaps. Useful? Most definitely.

I can't say as I'm innocent of having ridiculous half-asleep conversations. I had this one with Michelle last night at approximately 2:47 am, at which point I had been asleep for roughly two hours.

Me: Two-forty-seven.
Michelle: Yeah, I just got home.
Me: Two-forty-seven.
Michelle: Yes, it's two-forty-seven.
Me: Hm. Hmmmm.
Michelle: ...
Me: Bathroom.

I then proceeded to walk to the bathroom, take care of business, and return to bed. Michelle has enjoyed telling this story to our roommates, casting me in the role of Crazy Sleep Talker, but I maintain that everything I said made perfect sense, so long as you were in my head. Because although I only said a few words, the inner monologue filling in the spaces went something like this:

"What? Someone just got home. What time is it? I can't see a damn thing without my glasses. I could just put them on, but they're all the way down at the foot of my bed. No, I can kind of see Madison's alarm clock from here. What does that say? If I really squint, it looks like two-forty-seven. Oh, okay. It definitely says two-forty-seven. Now, wait, why am I still awake? Hm. Well, Michelle coming in woke me up, but why haven't I fallen back asleep yet? Hmmmm. Oh. I need to use the bathroom. That's it. Okay."

See? It makes total sense.

And now I really need to get myself to sleep for real, as I am exhausted from a busy week, I have a busy weekend ahead of me, and it is almost 1:30 in the morning and I want to be up at 9:30. So I'm off to bed, but I will leave you with this quote from two drunk girls walking on Mass Row, aka the pedestrian street outside my window, for those of you not familiar with my lovely college campus. (And in case you non-Dartmouth folks were wondering: "Foco" = "Food Court.")

"WE'RE GOING TO FOCO! ARE YOU GUYS GOING TO FOCO?"
"You guys, I don't need to eat!!!"

Cette petite écolière n'aime pas son travail

2010-08-02T22:30:00.001+02:00

So here I am, studying in the library, ostensibly because "I can focus better here." Hogwash. I've just found other ways to put off doing work, including...ba-ba-da-BAAA!! blogging. (That was my trumpet fanfare. Just so you know.)

I have to admit, the library was pretty effective at first. There's no one here to talk to, so there's no way for me to read something interesting, comment on it to whoever happens to be nearby (usually Madison, poor soul), then launch into a long verbal reaction that ends up only vaguely related to the original topic. So, with that being the case, I did manage to power through two chapters of engineering reading (and all the comprehension questions associated therewith), along with a three page paper analyzing a primary source I looked at this morning in the Special Collections library for my WWI history class. After that, however, I started on my paper for engines--an analysis of the History Channel documentary (if you could call it that) Life After People, which you'd think would be right up my ally, being that I haunt the TV listings for interesting History Channel programming (often in vain, I might add, seeing as the History Channel seems to be more interested in airing ridiculous shows with ridiculous names, such as Pawn Stars, instead of actual historical programming like The History of Sex or The Dark Ages). But anyway, it's not that Life After People was bad. (The show, not the concept in general. I'm not a huge fan of the general concept of a life without human beings.) But yeah. It wasn't bad. But I just don't know how to spin a five page paper out of it that doesn't sound like a book report.

I took a study break to go get some water and a ciabatta roll from Novack and then came back up to my seat in the Tower Room, which I'd clearly staked out by surrounding it with roughly 50% of my earthly possessions, including my laptop, my tote bag, my notebook, my Chinese calligraphy midterm project, my engines book, my charger and its supplementary extension, etc. I then proceeded to uphold my resolution to "jump right back into work" by checking blitz obsessively and looking at my iCal again to see if I'd almost reached the end of my blocked-out library study time. (Nope, I'm here 'til five and it's just past four. Darn.) Then an engineering stroke of inspiration hit me and I banged out a paragraph of my paper. So far, so good. Then ANOTHER stroke of inspiration hit. Unfortunately for my productivity, it was a blogging-related rather than engineering-related stroke of inspiration, so here I am.

I wouldn't say that this particular turn in my library time has been devoid of accomplishments, though. For example, I did use the word "therewith" for quite possibly the first time in my life, and most certainly for the first time in this blog. (In any blog?) So things are getting done over here. Just not the right things. You know how it is.

So I should really get back to my Life After People essay. And I should probably try to finish it with as few references to the [cock-and-bull] theory of Rapture as possible, since it's probably not terribly relevant to whether or not the Golden Gate Bridge will rust and fall apart in one century or two. But it's gonna be really hard not to. I mean, in the show, the humans just DISAPPEAR! They leave their housepets locked in the house, their cars in the middle of the street, their alarm clocks set. Where did they GO?! For a special that claims not to be concerned with how humankind came to disappear, Life After People pretty tantalizingly dangles a bunch of unspoken morbid possibilities just out of reach. And come on. People want the morbid stuff. That's why we watch horror movies. And Access Hollywood.

The Golden Girls: Run It Back

2010-06-29T22:58:00.000+02:00

So I've moved back up to school for my Sophomore Summer (I don't feel like explaining it yet again, read all about it here) and have the incredible luck to be living with three wonderful ladies, aka my friends Madison, Amrita, and Melissa. So far, apartment life has been fantastic, if a little unmotivated. (We have a kitchen and it's really hot out, thus we don't even venture out for a lot of meals anymore.) Yesterday, our efforts to get schoolwork done quickly devolved into two hours of couch potato sporcling followed by a game of "Truth or Truth" (which began, traditionally enough, as a game of "Truth or Dare," but we were too lazy and hot to feel like moving off any of the three couches/futons we have crammed into our living room). And then Melissa came back (having left after the sporcling to go have a life outside the apartment, for which I admire her greatly) and we all ate pie. And laid out ground rules for food consumption, the rules basically being "eat whatever doesn't have someone's name on it, but don't finish the last of something that's not yours" and "if you finish off a basic item (i.e. milk, Cheerios), buy the next one for the group." All in all, a pretty good system, methinks. Although it hasn't really been tested yet.

To continue the roomie bonding, Amrita is cooking the first of what will hopefully become weekly (or every-other-weekly?) roomie dinners, which means we're going on a field trip to Price Chopper tomorrow, since our on-campus grocery shopping options are extremely limited. Here's how Dartmouth's money allotment breaks down:

Smallest on-campus meal plan (which I always opt for): $1000/trimester
Topside money (Topside being the on-campus convenience store): $200/trimester
(Off-campus meal plan: $700/trimester)

Considering the fact that I almost always have between $200 and $400 left over at the end of every term (including the ones where I DON'T have a fully functioning kitchen at my disposal), you can see that, money-wise, apartment living might be tough on me, especially when Topside is so sparsely stocked (a., it's summer, and b., they moved locations since Thayer Hall's under construction). I mean, if I'm obligated to spend $1000 on Dartmouth's campus, it doesn't make sense financially to eat off-campus food, since the price of that is just compounded on top of the $1000 I've already shelled out to Dartmouth. My parents reminded me of this quite frequently before I moved up here. "Don't cook for yourself all the time," the urged. "Eat campus food and get your money's worth."

But since it's summer and the majority of the dining halls are closed, my options include (my favorite!) pasta made-to-order (Monday through Thursday), the salad bar, and/or an assortment of meat-packed, deep-fried, and often sodium-packed culinary delights. It's so much healthier to prepare your own meals, and the variety is so much better. So how are we supposed to stock our fridge while using our meal plan money?

Easy. It's called "Grocery Shopping in the Dining Halls."

Basically, Madison and I went to Collis and raided the salad bar for veggies, which we took home and then put in plastic baggies in the fridge to give the whole thing an air of organization and legitimacy. (Plus the soybeans and chickpeas had gotten all mixed up with the broccoli and, needless to say, each other, which was probably going to be an issue.) We also stocked up on bananas and oranges from the Collis fridge. Then we headed over to the Hop to buy a bunch of Milk Chugs (those Garelick Farms individual milk bottles) for our morning cereal only to discover that apparently someone else (or a bunch of someone elses) had had the same idea, as there was not a single Milk Chug to be found in the cooler. (I can only assume that's why they took them, because milk alone is not a particularly summery drink, ESPECIALLY when chugged.) We recouped our losses by stockpiling some Greek yogurts instead, and Madison bought some of those little milk-in-a-pointed-cardboard-carton thingies that always make me think of elementary school lunch. So all in all, Operation Grocery Shop Without Paying Out of Pocket was a rousing success.

Then we returned to the apartment and Madison did work while I hung a couple more posters (including one that says "Dare to Dream," which, in a spurt of creativity, we hung on the bathroom wall across from the toilet) and wondered (loudly) where our roommates were, at which point Amrita emerged from her room after the world's longest (and quietest?) nap. She then wandered into the bathroom and shut the door as Madison looked at me and whispered, "The POSTER," at which point we heard laughter from behind the bathroom door, followed by a loud, "Whaaaaat...?!" and the sound of the door opening again as Amrita came back in to question us as to why there was a motivational poster staring you down on the crapper.

It was then that we decided that the goings-on in our apartment definitely have the makings of a good sitcom (or maybe a reality show, although there's a definite dearth of girl fights and oddly-named people). What would we title such a show? we wondered. Amrita's answer was "The Golden Girls: Run It Back," which actually seems pretty appropriate. Equally appropriate was Madison's remark that "if our lives were a sitcom, it would have to be on HBO." (Don't ask, just accept it.)

At any rate, I absolutely LOVE my roomies (in case that wasn't clear). My classes...not bad. I think I'm gonna really like my history class, despite the fact that I'm behind in the reading because the bookstore was out of two-thirds of the required texts for this particular class. It was not out of the (only) book for my Chinese calligraphy class, however, and that set me back $69. (I'm already trying to re-sell this monster, I swear to God. It's a lovely, two-inch-thick hardcover book about the art and history of Chinese calligraphy. Do you want it? It would look lovely on your coffee table. And think of how cultured and smart you'll look when company comes over and sees it there! I'll give you a goooood price on it!) And then Madison and I split the cost of our engineering textbook. Since it was the only book required for the class, we'd anticipated a fat hardcover in the neighborhood of $40-$70. Turns out it's a dinky paperback. We bought it used for $7.80 (and split the price anyway).

All in all, it's good to be back at Dartmouth and back in the States (but more on that some other time). I've got mixed feelings about heading home for the Fourth of July this weekend (a long one, thanks to Dartmouth's giving us Monday off), but I'm hoping to hang out with my friends a bit more than when I was home last (for a grand total of what, maybe four days?). But I have a good feeling about this whole "sophomore summer" thing. And not just because there's ice cream in my freezer and a river practically out my back door.*

Roll out those lazy, hazy, crazy days of summer!

*Even though we're not supposed to swim in it. LAME. We can still kayak, though. (Not lame!)

Overheard in Notting Hill

2010-06-12T21:33:00.000+02:00

Guy whose girlfriend dragged him into American Apparel: "There's just too many pastel colors. I feel physically nauseous."

I have to say, I definitely agreed with at least the first part of that statement.

Wasting time agian

2010-06-12T13:37:00.008+02:00

I feel like I've wasted quite a bit of time on this trip, but this time it's not actually my fault! Here's the deal: I need to check out of this hostel and move across the city to the Earl's Court youth hostel. But check-out time here is 10 am, and check-in time there is 2 pm, leaving me four hours to kill. I *was* gonna store my luggage and go across the street to the British Library so at least I could be doing something sight-seeing-y while I waited, but the lockers in luggage storage are WAY too small to hold all my giant suitcases, so I'm just sitting on a couch in the hostel's café area, keeping an eye on my nearby bags, surfing the internet, watching World Cup coverage on some British sports channel, revising my itinerary, and now blogging. Fun stuff. In the next half hour or so, though, I can head off for Earl's Court and check in, and after that I think I'll go to Notting Hill for the Portobello Road Market, which is supposed to be really hopping on Saturdays.

So, I want to share pictures of my trip but I don't feel like posting them all to facebook right now (partly because I'm realizing that when I get home, I won't have the fun of showing my pictures off because everyone will have seen them already), so I'm gonna sum up my week here and post pictures to accompany everything. It seems like a fair compromise.

So:

Friday, June 4th
Arrived in London, checked into hostel #1 (after getting lost due to some bad GoogleMap directions), and then went off to explore the Hyde Park/Kensington Gardens area. That's about it.

Sunken Garden outside Kensington Palace

Saturday, June 5th
Spent most of the day at the Tower of London, which is actually not what I expected. I don't know how I managed to make it through life without ever actually seeing a picture of the Tower or reading a detailed description of it, but I was prepared for a literal tower. A lone tall structure looking all ominous and foreboding looming over London, preferably with lightning bolts in the background, à la the Tower of Terror at Disney World. Actually, the Tower of London is a whole castle, and it wasn't always a prison. It was actually quite interesting to walk around, and there are lots of exhibits, from armor to the crown jewels (and oh my Lord, are they over-the-top with the gem-encrusted-ness. No one really needs that much bling. No one.).

The Tower of London

After the Tower I killed time in the area before going on a "Grim Reaper Tour" of the East End, where we covered the more morbid facets of London history, such as the Plague, executions in the Tower, Jack the Ripper, etc. It was good but by the time I got back to the hostel my feet were killing me (and I wore sneakers and everything!).

Tower Bridge

Sunday, June 6th
Woke up a little later than I intended but still made it to Windsor to see Windsor Castle. Unfortunately I met a sketchy guy on the train there and it kind of left a bad taste in my mouth for the rest of the day. (He was at least 20 years older than me and he asked me if I wanted to go around with him and sightsee all day. I said no thanks, I had plans already. (The plans being not to get saddled with a random stranger all day.) He replied, "Look, I'm not looking for anything, I just want someone to go around with, have fun," which further freaked me out, so I repeated my refusal, but he insisted, "Look, if it's money, don't worry about that, I'll pay for everything." SO SKETCH. I told him once again that I already had plans, and he finally gave up. But it was kind of unsettling and I spent the rest of the day on the lookout for him - I mean, Windsor's not that big so odds were good that I'd see him again. But luckily, I did not.)

Windsor Castle was cool, but my favorite part hands-down was Queen Mary's Dollhouse, which is a dollhouse built on a 1:12 scale with electricity and working plumbing. It was amazing. (No pictures allowed, though...sad.)

Windsor Castle, inhabited for over 900 years

After getting some lunch and buying some souvenirs, I walked over to Eton College, one of England's most famous public boys' schools. (In England, what we call "private schools" are referred to as "public schools." Yeah, confusing. I know.) The grounds were pretty but I was exhausted (I didn't realize it at the time, but I was getting sick.), so I didn't enjoy them quite as much as I might have otherwise. =(

Eton College

Monday, June 7th
Did basically nothing of interest all day, as I was getting sicker and also had to move from hostel #1 to hostel #2. Other than that, I just spent the day reading.

Tuesday, June 8th
Woke up early to take the train to get to Chatsworth, up to the north in Derbyshire, but when I got to the train station I got a terrible surprise: a one-way ticket alone cost £80 (well over $100 US). I was really bummed because Chatsworth was the one thing I wanted to see the most while I was in England. I decided to salvage the day, though, and go to Bath instead. I took the bus and got there in the early afternoon, at which point I did a quick tour of Bath because most of the attractions I was interested in closed at 5 pm, which left me only about 4 hours to hit them all. I managed to: 1.) eat a cinnamon butter bun at Sally Lunn's, which is famous for both the Sally Lunn bun and for being located in the oldest house in Bath:

Sally Lunn's - the line was almost always out the door.

2.) take a quick peek at Bath Abbey:

Built on the site where the first king of England was crowned

3.) tour the Roman Baths Museum:

No swimming allowed anymore... =(

4.) Sample some of the mineral water in the Pump Room (just like Jane Austen used to do! ... It tasted, to borrow the description of the woman next to me, like warm water with baking soda in it.):

Mmmm...?

5.) Go to the Jane Austen Centre!!

Yeah. Like I would miss going to the Jane Austen Centre.

6.) See the Royal Crescent, where some of the action in Northanger Abbey and Persuasion is set:

Where the rich people lived.

Unfortunately, this was that day in the middle of a cold when you hit absolute rock bottom and alternate between being too hot and too cold all day whilst sneezing, hacking up a lung, and constantly blowing your nose, so I didn't enjoy Bath as much as I'd hoped.

Wednesday, June 9th
As I was still not feeling fantastic, I slept in and bummed around the hostel all day long. I don't really feel like I wasted a day, though, because if I'd tried to go out and do something I wouldn't have enjoyed it, being sick and all, and I would have just worn myself out so I wouldn't enjoy the next thing or the thing after that. So really, this was the best option.

Thursday, June 10th
Feeling much better, I headed out to Salisbury to see Stonehenge. I ended up buying a ticket that also got me in to Old Sarum (which the snooty bus station ticket man told me was more interesting anyway). Funny story about the snooty bus station ticket man: he had such an obvious low opinion of Americans that it was actually very amusing. As he was showing me the prices for my different ticket options, he was like, "This covers admission and...'round trip,' in your language...When you get to Stonehenge, pick up an audio guide, I think they might even have them in your language." I really wanted to be like, "My language? You mean English?" but I refrained.

Anyway, Stonehenge was much smaller than one would expect (even after being told it's much smaller and preparing oneself for it), and it was set in like the middle of not quite a highway, but a bunch of roads, which was unexpected, but it was still cool. And Salisbury Plain, the area around it, is absolutely beautiful.

Getting blown away by the freezing wind on Salisbury Plain

Old Sarum was cool as well, although there really isn't much left of it, but being on a hill, the view was fantastic.

And then, true to form, I returned to the hostel and vegged out for the rest of the night.

Friday, June 11th
I managed to make it to Chatsworth! It certainly wasn't an ideal arrangement, as it involved almost ten hours on the road, one hour sitting around the Sheffield Interchange, and only about 2 hours and 15 minutes actually AT Chatsworth, but it was worth it. I'd really, really wanted to see it, and while it was (again) not what I'd expected, it was still really cool, especially since I could recognize certain parts of it from the adaptations of Pride and Prejudice. (In particular, the hall with the staircase. You might remember it from the 2005 version:)

Did I stand here picturing Keira Knightley walking through this hallway? Yes. Yes, I did.

I had just over an hour to walk around the grounds after going through the house, so I explored a bit (but not as much as I'd have liked...I didn't want to go too far and miss the bus).

Part of the house/grounds and the surrounding countryside...the rest of my pictures haven't been uploaded yet.

The 50 minute bus rides to and from Chatsworth from the Sheffield Interchange (where the coaches from London arrived and departed) were actually very pleasant: the area is smack in the middle of the Peak District National Park, so some parts are very pastoral and picturesque, while others are more ruggedly beautiful. Either way, I definitely had a good day, despite all the travel time.

And that brings us right up to now. It's quarter of two and I should get going to hostel #3 (the final hostel!!!) so I can have some time to actually do something this afternoon and/or this evening. I have no idea what the wifi situation is at Earl's Court, so this may be my last entry before I'm stateside again (!!!). If that's the case, I'll hopefully see you soon, and thanks for following my European adventures!

Lots of stuff happened while I was in Lyon

2010-06-09T17:48:00.001+02:00

...and it's probably foolish to try and fit the rest of it all into one blog post (it's gonna get all diluted and second-grade-book-report-summary boring), but oh, well. I mean, I have to write about it sometime, and like I said, writing about travels in France from my room in the US is just not as interesting as writing about them while I'm still in Europe. Granted, it would be even better if I were actually still in France, but England's not a bad runner-up. Plus, it's raining again (I'm not surprised; it's England, after all), and I've taken the day off from sightseeing in order to recuperate from the nasty cold that just slammed into me with all the force of a freight train full of bricks and lead and other really heavy things, so I've got the time to go back over the last few weeks and fill y'all in.

Okay...so...scrolling back through my iPhoto library to get some visual reminders...okay. Here we go. The Wednesday after my weekend in the south of France, our class went on a field trip to Beaune, a town that was, if I remember correctly, about an hour and a half from Lyon (very close to Dijon). It's known for its medieval hospital, Hôstel Dieu (don't pronounce the 's' in 'hostel'), or, more specifically, for the brightly patterned roof of said hospital:

Doesn't even come close to doing it justice. The colors are actually much brighter, especially when the sun's shining.

Anyway, we had a really nice day exploring the town and the hospital and eating lunch (the cold mushroom cream thing I ate = awesome. And since it wasn't vegan, I got to eat half of Kelly's too, since she couldn't.), and we all agreed that it was a lot of fun to do a nice outing with the entire group all together like that.

I miss everyone! =(
Also, why am I so freaking short?!

We all took the train back to Lyon afterwards, and most of us passed the time by napping, doing some reading for class, listening to music, or, if you're me and Amanda, trying to remember all the Kappa Delta info we had to learn for our new member test. Turns out we've already forgotten most of it, but what was most frustrating was that we couldn't remember the name of the shell that's supposed to symbolize the growth of Kappa Deltas. It was one of those things where it's on the tip of your tongue and you just can't remember it. It was incredibly annoying.

Anyway, the rest of the week passed without incident (except for the next day in class when I suddenly remembered that it was a nautilus shell and mouthed it to Amanda, who immediately knew not only what it was I was mouthing but what it was in relation to...ahh, sisterhood). One other cool thing we did that week, though, was attend an herb seminar from an American woman who's been living in Lyon for the past ten or so years and blogs about French cooking. We learned about different kinds of herbs used in French cooking and made herb broth, tarte aux fines herbs, and kir (with acacia flower syrup and verbena syrup rather than the traditional crème de cassis), and it was all delicious:

Behold my foray into French cuisine. Although, to be fair, I didn't really actually assemble any of this. I chopped parsley. That was my contribution.

That weekend was another long weekend for another Catholic holiday (Pentecost this time). Since everyone else had plans for the weekend, I decided to do a little traveling on my own. My plan included Grenoble, Annecy, and Geneva (aka Genève), and Chambery and Aix-les-Bains if I had time/wasn't too tired. Turns out that traveling in the heat and the sun is actually quite exhausting, so I only made it to the first three, but it was still a very nice weekend. I went to Grenoble on Saturday not quite sure what to expect. I'd come to France prepared to like Grenoble, since Aunt Michelle always speaks of it fondly and I was interested to see it, but when I'd missed the train there one weekend (my first attempt to visit it), Corinne had made a disgusted noise and said (in French) something along the lines of "Believe me, you're not missing out on anything." My host family lived in Grenoble for several years before moving to Lyon, and none of them had anything particularly nice to say about it. Mon père's evaluation: "The city is not pretty. The area around it is, though." Jacques: "It's cool when you're young and you want to ski and stuff, but other than that, it's not that great." Corinne: "It's ugly, it's dirty, and there's no history. It's a modern town, not like Lyon where there are old buildings and a lot of history. It's only for scientists and engineers. And the mountains just box you in." So, you can see why I wasn't quite sure what I was getting myself into.

The reality, as so often happens, fell somewhere between the two extremes. It certainly wasn't the hotbed of industrial filth Corinne had made it out to be. The streets were clean, and there were some pretty statues and fountains, but she was right about one thing: not much history. It wasn't a big deal, though, as I didn't spend much time actually in the city. I just walked through and got some lunch from an indoor market on my way to the famous cable cars of Grenoble, which I rode up the mountain to La Bastille, the 19th-century fort.

Aren't they cuuuuuute?!

I spent the rest of the day up there, admiring the views of the Alps, writing in my journal, taking in the smell of the flowers blooming on the trees (I don't even LIKE the smell of flowers, generally, since I think they tend to smell like a pile of compost someone spilled perfume on. But these flowers were literally the best-smelling flowers I've ever come across. I would go all the way back to Grenoble just to smell them again, seriously. And yes, I know I can probably find them in some other place. But I have no idea what they're called or anything like that, so returning to Grenoble seems like my best bet.)

At any rate, it was a really calm, relaxing, Zen kind of day (and, fun fact, the French use the word "zen" too...I heard it a few times while I was there). I'd love to go back someday in the future when I have access to a car, as I'm sure a lot of the more remote regions of the Alps are even prettier (albeit harder to access, especially when you're dependent on public transport like I was).

View from the parking lot area at La Bastille

I was too tired, as I said, to stop at Chambery on the way back...I'd gotten a lot of sun and was a little bit burned, and you know how a sunburn just saps all your energy. I went back to the apartment and I dunno, probably just ate dinner in my room and watched a movie (mes parents were in the country for the weekend so it was just me and Jacques).

The next morning I set off for Geneva, which was exciting - my first solo international journey! The train ride there was really pretty - at some points the train runs in ravines between mountains, and at other times it skirts along ridges on the sides of them, looking out over marshes, rivers, pastures, meadows...it's like a storybook setting. I took down the names of a couple picturesque towns on the way there, for someday when I return to France. (It WILL happen, I will make sure of it. France was too beautiful to visit once and never go back. I want to visit France as often as possible.)

Anyway, I wasn't particularly impressed with Geneva itself. Not that there was anything wrong with Geneva. And probably my lack of enthusiasm was at least partially my own fault, as I spent the first hour and a half trying to find a place to exchange my money (Switzerland uses Swiss francs instead of Euros) when I could have (should have) just exchanged it at the train station when I got in. And since I went on a Sunday, a lot of stores and museums (including the UN headquarters) were closed. But I did enjoy walking around, especially along Lake Geneva (or, if you're French, Lac Léman). The lake's claim to fame, besides being the largest freshwater lake in Western Europe (thanks, wikipedia!), is being home to the largest water fountain on earth:

It sort of looks like it's spouting from the boat, but it's not. Just trust me.

The major drawback about Switzerland, though, is that it's insanely expensive. My lunch, which I ordered from what was essentially an outdoor food stand, cost me 13 francs (roughly 13 US dollars...the exchange rate's pretty much even), and all it consisted of was a tomato and cheese panini (9 francs!) and a glass of beer on tap (4 francs...I'm not generally a beer drinker but Geneva's supposed to have really good beer and I was like, what the heck, while in Geneva, do as the Genevans do. After all, if you wanna really sample some beer, may as well do it in a place that's renowned for it, right? As it turns out, I still don't like beer. It was like drinking fizzy crackers. Not a fan.)

Anyway, my final verdict on Geneva was that it was fine to visit once, but I'm not exactly eager to go back. I mentioned this to Madison, and she was like, "Really? My parents went for two weeks and they loved it." So I was like, great, maybe I did it wrong somehow. But then I mentioned it to my host parents and they said, "Americans love Geneva for some reason, but it's not all that great." So I felt a little more justified after that.

Monday morning I soldiered on (despite having a pretty legit sunburn by this time) to Annecy, which was beautiful. The lake (Lac d'Annecy) is gorgeous, as is the Old Town with its canals and narrow, winding streets.

Lac d'Annecy

Vieille Ville d'Annecy

Basically all I did was walk around and look at stuff - no special activities or anything. I ate alone in a sit-down restaurant for the first time in my life, and I'm pretty proud of myself for it - I know that eating alone in a restaurant is high up there on a lot of people's lists of social fears, and I must say that while eating with other people is definitely preferable, it wasn't terrible. My waiter was really nice and my meal (ravioli and a glass of kir) was really delicious, so I can't complain.

After eating I decided to get some ice cream since everyone was walking around with ice cream cones and I thought it might be a good idea to follow suit, since it was really hot out. I tried to get a kiddie cone of mint chocolate chip, but it turns out in France that only kids can order kiddie cones (as the ice cream stand guy pretty nastily pointed out to me. Thanks a lot, jerkface.). I should have gone to a different ice cream place, though, as their flavor list was ridiculous:

Flavors include violet (yes, the flower), strawberry basil, orange flower, and Nutella.

And so I returned to Lyon that afternoon exhausted and incredibly sunburned, but happy with my weekend in the Alps.

The next week or so passed pretty much without incident; one Wednesday we were supposed to go to a chateau but that was canceled at the last minute, so we went to a fancy Lyon patisserie instead and Dartmouth paid (good thing, because my frozen chocolate soufflé or whatever it was was like 7,50 €:

Yum.

I also got to try some chocolate with REAL GOLD FLAKES on top. Yes. I have tasted the flavor of decadence, and it is AWESOME.

And that just about brings me up to my last day in Lyon, I think. Not much happened over my last weekend, as I was busy studying (read: procrastinating) and packing (read: trying to make myself feel better about not studying). But now I am DONE with classes (until June 25th, anyway, when I start my summer term), so yay.

And this was a pretty long entry so I'm gonna take a break. I'll probably come back fairly soon and bring this blog all up to date with the end of Lyon and the beginnings of England, since I'm still not feeling much like venturing out (stupid cold has stolen all my energy) but I'm not tired enough to nap or anything. So yeah. I guess that's that.

Overheard in Bath

2010-06-09T16:03:00.000+02:00

Is it just me, or is England the best country for overheards ever?!

Lady in the (very sturdy) bathroom at the Roman Baths: "Is is just me, or can you feel it [the building] moving? ... I could feel it when I was on the loo."

Chronological order is overrated

2010-06-07T18:15:00.001+02:00

I hope you agree, because I'm about to take things back to my weekend in the south of France again. It's true, I'm in London now, and it's true that the last two posts have been about London, but I've got some interesting stories from the south of France and blogging about them from the US is just not the same as blogging about them from Europe (even if I'm no longer in my beloved France...sob!).

So, where did I leave off? Okay. So Friday morning. We decided to go to Monaco for the day, and Yoshi joined us. We left around 10 am and made our way down the hill. ("How bad was this hill, Renée?" you may ask. "It's a HILL. Come on, it couldn't have been that bad, you complainer." Well, to give you an idea of how high up we were, here's the view from our hostel's porch.)

Okay, so it's not the most picturesque photo of the view, but it shows you how high up we were. We walked down pretty much to the coastline. Granted, we walked to the part directly in front of the hostel, not that bit off in the distance. But still.

We headed into Monaco and walked up the hill to where the palace was not so much to see it but to watch the Grand Prix qualifying race that was going on. And man, was it LOUD.

Coastline of Monaco with the Grand Prix circuit all set up. You can see a car if you look at bottom center/left-ish.

After doing that for awhile, we looked a a couple cute tourist-y shop streets in the Old Town near the palace and I simultaneously got ripped off and bargain shopped (5 € for a baseball cap, 1 € for a postcard that the shop next door was selling for 30 centimes). We headed back down into the city and walked around a bit before taking the bus (free because of the Grand Prix!) to the beach, where we got lunch from a little bakery/sandwich place before heading to the beach for a picnic lunch. Poor Nayab was so exhausted that she literally fell asleep as soon as she laid down on the beach, still clutching her sandwich. It was actually rather adorable.

Funny thing about the beaches in Monaco, though: they don't have sand. You'd think they would and that it would be the super luxurious, super-fine white stuff, but no, Monaco's beaches are made up entirely of pebbles. True story. It feels really weird to walk on at first (kind of tickled my feet), but after awhile you get used to it.

The lovely coastline in Monaco. (I miss it in this cloudy, cool British weather!)

Anyway, we ate and relaxed in the sun. I read a bit of Pride and Prejudice before walking along the shore and then finally swimming in the Mediterranean! It was absolutely lovely. After that I laid out in the sun again and, inspired by Jake's Phi Delt sunscreen tattoo, attempted to give myself a Kappa Delta sunscreen tattoo, which was an epic fail, especially when I forgot it was there and put my shirt on over it, thereby smudging copious amounts of sunscreen all over both my arm and my sleeve. Oh, well.

We played a bit with Wilson, the volleyball the others had purchased the day before, and after we were beached out we headed for the Monte Carlo to see about doing some gambling (since the legal age is 18 in Europe and hey, wouldn't it be awesome to say you gambled at the Monte Carlo? I think so.). It didn't open until 8, though, and it was only like 5 or 6, so we decided to get dinner and then come back. We went to a little sandwich shop/cafe-type place. Unfortunately there wasn't anything vegan for Kelly, but the really nice cafe workers made her a sandwich that was essentially a hamburger without the actual burger - lettuce, tomato, veggies, etc. on a hamburger bun. It was really nice of them, especially since it was one of those places where everything is pretty much pre-assembled. And then as we were finishing up eating, the workers came over and gave us four free fruit cups to split between the six of us, since they were getting ready to close and otherwise they'd just have to throw the fruit cups out. Like I said, they were really nice. We took a picture with them (the workers, not the fruit cups...although, actually, both are true I guess) before we left.

We returned to the Monte Carlo to find out that they'd pushed the opening time back to 9 pm instead, so we went to Häagen Dazs and got ice cream beforehand and Amanda taught us how to play Chinese Poker (which I still don't really understand...I have no idea why card games are so hard for me, but I just cannot wrap my head around them. My Card Game Repertoire consists of War, Go Fish, Slapjack, and building card-castles only two tiers high.). We went back to the casino at nine, managed to get in despite our decidedly un-classy manner of dress (beach clothes...everyone else was in suits, tuxes, cocktail dresses, and evening gowns). Seriously, these people were rolling up in super-expensive cars and were obviously quite a different sort from us. Regardless, we paid the 10 € entry fee, and then looked around. It was amazing (no pictures though, because cameras sadly were not allowed in)...so fancy! I set a 5 € limit for myself and played a slot machine. I was up about 2 € at one point, but then I lost it. =( It was a good thing I'd pre-set a limit for myself, though, because gambling really is addictive, especially when you see other people - ahem, Jake - winning all kinds of junk. I was super-jealous, haha.

The Monte Carlo at night

We headed back to the train station, checking out all the yacht parties going on in the harbor, took the train back to Menton, hoofed it all the way up the Giant Hill of Death, and went to bed. Well, first, I tried to get a train ticket back to Lyon. It wasn't looking good. I finally found one that would get me into Lyon around 10 pm Sunday night after leaving me in Avignon for like 7 hours, but at that point the wifi cut out and I was still ticket-less. It ended up being a good thing, though, because the next morning - and I have no idea how this happened or what I did to get so lucky - a ticket miraculously opened up on the 8 am TGV that went directly from Cannes to Lyon, the same train my friends were taking. EXCELLENT! I jumped around excitedly about that for literally about ten minutes. Getting back to Lyon at noon was soooo much better than straggling in at 10 pm. SO MUCH BETTER.

We said goodbye to Yoshi at the train station and headed off to Juan-les-Pins, where Kelly had heard about a bread festival. It ended up being a.) actually in Antibes, a 15-minute walk up the road, and b.) not much of a festival, as it consisted of one tent in the square where some people were selling like 6 different bread products. Oh, well. We got lunch from various places around town, sat on benches by the water, and ate, and then we went to the beach in Antibes (sand, no pebbles! Yay!) and hung out there for maybe a little under an hour.

Me, obviously super-psyched to be in Antibes. Props to Kelly for getting this on the first attempt.

A more panoramic view of Antibes, the sea, and the surrounding landscape.

After a quick ice-cream pit stop, we went to Cannes, which was insane because of the film festival. We went to a museum on a hill above the town since it was the Night of the Museums in France and all the museums were open for free until midnight, and we were hoping to check our stuff there. The scary mobster-esque guys running the place had a good laugh at that, and we went on our way. We got dinner at a yummy Indian restaurant in Cannes which played Bollywood music videos on a screen in the dining area, and then we set off on a Night of Adventures, since we had no lodgings for the night, nor did we expect or even attempt to find any. (Cannes books up MONTHS in advance for the festival.) First we wandered around, then we attempted to watch the red carpet for awhile (no celeb sightings that night...boo). Then we watched a film screening on the beach, where we sat in beach chairs and were supplied with blankets. Everyone else got little naps in during the movie (which was in Italian with French subtitles), but I couldn't fall asleep, partly because even with the blankets it was freaking COLD on the beach.

When the movie finished we hung around the red carpet some more (still no celeb sightings) and then just sat down near the Festival Pavillion, looking distinctly hobo-esque with our multiple layers (I was wearing pajama pants as a scarf) and stolen Cannes Film Screening blankets. (I couldn't bring myself to do it, but I was rather jealous of those who had, since those blankets were fuzzy and lovely.) Anyway, as we sat there, needing only some fingerless gloves and a fire burning in a barrel to complete the picture, a screening let out and all these people walked by in tuxes and evening gowns. It was a pretty ridiculous picture, as you can imagine. Two guys stopped to chat with us - they were Americans living in France and they'd been attending the festival for the past several years. They gave us a bunch of tips on how to actually get in next time, and told us that if we'd been wearing cocktail dresses and suits, we could have been partying on a yacht right now, which was simultaneously exciting and disappointing to think about.

Festival Banner

The red carpet after the festival was done for the night. It's still heavily secured, though, as we found out when a drunk guy tried to run onto it and was stopped by a police officer and a dog.

We walked along the shore and tried to catch a glimpse of some other the after-parties happening on nightclub boat thingies, but were deterred from attempting to crash them by a.) the scary-looking bouncers and b.) the fact that we had all our stuff with us still. And Lord knows nightclubs are crowded enough without baggage being involved.

We wandered a bit more until at around 1 am, we stumbled upon a Godsend - a cafe that was open until 4:30 because of the festival. We sat at a table outside under a heat lamp in a back corner and managed to stay there for the next three or so hours, making sure to sip our drinks or nibble our food every time we were within the waitress's line of vision. It was actually quite fun, partly because it was pretty late (pretty early?) and we were all pretty punchy by that point. At 4:30 when they closed we trudged to the train station and waited for it to open at 5 (it actually opened at 5:30), at which point Jake and Nayab stayed with the stuff and Amanda and Kelly and I went off to watch the sun rise over the ocean (turns out you can't actually see the sun rise over the water in Cannes). Amanda went back to the train station and Kelly and I checked out a market, and then we returned to the station, where everyone was fast asleep on benches. We caught the 8 am train back without any problems, and that was that. It was a wonderful weekend. I mean, we were sooo lucky in our choice of weekend: the Grand Prix and the Cannes Film Festival! People plan out trips for months without getting that lucky.

And although I was absolutely exhausted after staying up for like 24 hours straight (I took a two-hour nap on the train home) and then going my entire Sunday until 11 pm without a nap, it was totally worth it. What a fantastic life experience. =)

Overheard in London

2010-06-06T22:30:00.003+02:00

No time for a full post, so here are some overheards:

Tour guide at Tower of London:
"Any Americans here today? You enjoying England and this sunshine? Could've all been yours if you'd paid your taxes."

"All right, everyone, I need you to make a rather large gap so I can get through here. Not that large."

After a really specific list of places and dates: "I'm just making this up folks, you know that."

When there were some stragglers as the tour moved to a new spot: "Come on, you lot, stop sight-seein'!"

"On to the execution site, chop chop!"

"If you liked my tour, my name is Chris...if you didn't you can call me Kevin."

Little girl at the Tower of London: "I'm wearing my most cutest outfit ever!"

Kid at Tower of London, in regards to the Yeoman Warders: "Mum, can we go have a look at the weird men with the funky hats?"

Walking tour guide describing Henry VIII's jewels and finery: "He was a bit like a ginger Mr. T in the 1500s." (She was pretty much spot on, compare them for yourself: Henry VIII vs. Mr. T.)

Guy in Kensington Gardens: "He's got this thing where whenever he meets anyone his own age of the same sex he just hates them. He just instantly dislikes them, yeah."

Piccadilly Circus

2010-06-05T15:10:00.000+02:00

is the best name for any place, ever.

Let's back it up a bit

2010-05-29T13:38:00.001+02:00

...and go back two weekends to when I went adventuring in the south of France.

So. Looooong story but basically some of my friends had planned a trip down to the south and I begged to come along and they very graciously acquiesced. But because this was a popular travel weekend (four-day weekend for Ascension, the weekend of the Grand Prix, first weekend of the Cannes Film Festival) I couldn't find any trains to Menton, the town where we'd be staying. (The others had had a hard enough time finding trains, and they'd prepared well in advance of me.) So I was all bummed and thinking I'd have to figure out something else to do, when I had a stroke of genius. I found a map of train routes and started looking up trains to other towns in the same general direction, but not nearby, and then trains from those smaller cities to Menton. And as luck would have it, there was a train from Lyon to Orange around 7 am, and then another from Orange to Menton at 1 pm! (Sure, I'd have to transfer at both Marseilles and Nice, but whatever. I was gonna get there!) This plan would get me into Menton around 6:45 pm, and I'd get to explore Orange. Awesome!

That Thursday morning I woke up feeling not so great, rushed out of the house to the train station, made it in time, and went up to the platform at 7:20 to catch the 7:25 train. At 7:25, the station randomly decided to move the train to a different platform, so we all schlepped over there and then waited another 10 minutes for the train. When it finally arrived, I settled in happily (albeit still headache-y). I was on my way! (Little did I know that that would be the smallest travel problem of the day.)

I arrived in Orange absolutely starving, so I bought a pain au chocolat (croissant with chocolate in it) for 80 cents. It was still warm from the oven - awesome! Then I kind of explored the town - there was a market, so I walked around there for awhile, then I visited Orange's Arc de Triomphe. Now before you go thinking, "Hey, Orange, quit copying Paris and get your own damn monument," I should tell you that Orange's Arc de Triomphe is roughly 800 years older than Paris's. It's from Roman times and was built to honor the victims of the Gallic Wars. (Thanks, Wikipedia, for refreshing my memory on all that.)

The Arc de Triomphe in Orange.

After my trek out of town, I made my way back in to visit the Roman theater. Now by this point in my travels, I've seen a pretty fair amount of Roman ruins, and after awhile it's just like, Okay, here's another pile of rocks that used to be something important. It's really sad, but I've started to take stuff like that for granted a little bit. But this was FANTASTIC. The Roman theater in Orange is one of the best-preserved in the world (arguably THE best preserved in all of Europe), and is one of only three Roman theaters that still has its behind-the-stage wall intact. (The other two are in the Middle East.) The theater was, in short, really impressive and the audio tour was really good, too. That's how I learned this fun fact: See the statue in the alcove on the wall in the picture below? That's the statue of the emperor, put there to remind the people of Orange who was boss (since they were a conquered town). Even cooler? The statue's head was removable, so you could switch it out for another emperor later on down the road. Gotta hand it to those Romans, they were always thinkin'.

I spent a lot of time at the Roman theater (including a lot of time lying on the seats with my eyes shut and my head resting on my travel bag, listening to the audioguide and hoping my headache would disappear soon), so I made only a quick pass through the art museum across the street (my ticket covered both). I wasn't all that impressed anyway. Even though it was still a bit early, I decided to head to the train station. (It was a little outside of the center of town and I didn't want to get lost and be late, although it was fairly easy to find.) I was getting hungry again so I bought a croissant at the same bakery on the way back out of town, as the only other food around was at sit-down restaurants and I really didn't have time for that.

I got to the train station about 40 minutes before my train was set to leave, sat down with a book, and waited. And waited. And then waited some more, because my train was late. This was a bit of a bummer, but no big deal, since I had half an hour to make my connection at Marseilles. I'd been planning on getting some real food then, but if I had to wait until I got to Menton, so be it. (Nice would be a no-go for food-getting since I only had 10 minutes to make my connection.) The train finally pulled in and we set off. I slept a little bit and my head felt a little better. But then we remained stopped in one station for a long time. And then when we set off again, it was really slow going. And then we stopped again before backing up back into the station, where we then sat for the next ten minutes. Long story short: I was definitely going to miss my train from Marseilles to Nice, and I had no idea when the next one would be. Luckily, the conductor announced that there would be another train from Marseilles to Nice leaving at 3:57 pm (half an hour later than the original train). Thank God! Another woman in the compartment with me got out her cell phone to call someone and tell them she was going to be late, since she'd be taking the 3:57 train instead of the original one. Perfect, I said to myself. I'll just follow her.

Which is exactly what I did. We got to Marseilles and I creepily trailed this woman onto the train to Nice. I sat across the aisle from her and breathlessly asked, "Est-ce que c'est le train à Nice?" ("Is this the train to Nice?")

"J'espère que oui," she replied. ("I hope so.") We got to talking a little after that (I managed to carry on a conversation! With a stranger! In French! Hurrah!). Turns out she was going to Cannes to see her father, who was in the hospital, and she was dreading trying to get around the town with all the festival craziness. I told her I was from the US, near Boston, and she said she'd been there once and it was a nice city. She was also a student at Lyon, she said, "a long time ago," and I told her I was loving it but that I was really looking forward to meeting my friends for a weekend off...if I could make it there.

We sat in the train. 3:57 came and went. Then 4. Then 4:30. Then 4:45. Finally, we pulled out of the station at about five past five. RIDICULOUS. I was not pleased with the SNCF, although I hid it better than the guy sitting across from me, who muttered disgustedly every so often and scoffed at the conductor's apologies over the PA system.

So on we went. At least it was a pretty ride. Menton is in the Alpes-Maritimes area, which is exactly what it sounds like: The Alps come right down to the Mediterranean coast. This is so bizarre for me, because when I think of the Mediterranean I think of warm breezes and soft summery evenings and palm trees and generally a more let's-live-it-up kind of atmosphere, while the Alps conjure up images of skiing, quaint mountain towns, Heidi and her grandpa in a mountain cottage somewhere, and Julie Andrews twirling around in a field warbling, "The hiiiillllllllllllls are aliiiiiiiiiiiiiive with the sound of muuuuuuusiiiiiiiiiic!" The Alps, in my head, are traditional. Cozy. Straightlaced. The Mediterranean is more free-wheeling and fun. Thus the whole idea of the Alps and the Mediterranean together kind of messed with my mind a little bit. (And maybe made me realize that I was basing all my assumptions on stereotypes from movies I only half paid attention to.)

We had another random, stupid period of being stopped somewhere between Antibes and Nice, but at least the view was a lot nicer than it had been at the Marseilles train station. I finally made it to Nice, checked the board, and saw that another train to Menton wouldn't leave for the next 40 minutes. I sighed. Just my luck. I was supposed to have been in Menton for like an hour at this point, not just barely making it in to Nice. Stupid SNCF. I picked up a refund request envelope (if the train's more than 30 minutes late, you're entitled to a full refund for your ticket), but I don't think I have all the proper paperwork to actually obtain said refund. Again, I say: STUPID SNCF.

I went to the Relay store (the convenience store that's in basically every train station or airport) and bought dinner, aka Pims cookies. (I'd never had them before, and I stand by my decision to make them my dinner. I want some Pims right now. RIGHT NOW.) I bought a bottle of water from a cafe kiosk thing, and then realized that there was actually a train to Menton leaving in the next minute and a half, so I booked it to the platform, settled myself in, and inhaled about six Pims before I managed to slow down enough to chug 3/4 of the water bottle (the first liquid I'd had all day). Made it into Menton, got lost on the way to the hostel, walked up a gigantic hill (the wrong hill), walked back down the hill, got not-terribly-enlightening directions from the hostel worker my friends put me on the phone with when I called them, managed to figure out, based on said directions, the right way, walked up another giant hill, and arrived at the hostel, hot, sweaty, gross, and exhausted. (But not hungry because I'd just eaten about 12 Pims.) The hostel put me in a different room than the other girls, but Nayab and Kelly and Amanda talked to the guy and he agreed to put me in with them for the night, but said I'd have to move the next day since someone else would need my bed. Whatever, it was better than nothing. A few minutes later he told us he'd worked it out so I could stay in that bed both nights. Excellent.

We headed outside to sit around and chat and snack at one of the picnic tables, and we were joined by Yoshi, a guy the others had met before I got there. He was from Japan and was traveling through Europe for awhile, so it was really interesting to talk to him and hear about what he was up to. Then we were joined by a guy named Jeff who'd just moved back to France from Geneva. (Before that, he was living in Antarctica, working at recording, I think, seismic and geothermal measurements. Cool!) That's what I really like about traveling, particularly in hostels: you get to meet all kinds of people and learn all kinds of stuff. It's really fascinating.

We sat around for quite awhile, which was fun, but eventually I was getting tired and still feeling gross from my travel day, so I took a shower and went to bed (as did Kelly and Amanda, although Jake and Nayab stayed out for quite a bit longer and ended up sleeping outside for awhile before having to climb over the gate to get back into the hostel, since they'd forgotten their key. Oh, adventures.)

I would go on further, but a.) my laptop has 4 minutes of battery life left, and b.) I have a crapload of stuff to get done before Monday, when my last week of classes (!!!) begins. If I get enough work done, maybe I'll write some more later.

Only in Lyon...

2010-05-28T19:03:00.004+02:00

Currently (and for the past half hour at least) there is a man playing the tuba outside. Well, not so much "playing" as just "making noise with." I have no idea why, but there is definitely booze involved. Unless that was a bottle of apple juice he was swigging. (I have my doubts.)

Anyway, I realize it's been awhile since I've updated. Maybe later tonight I'll come back and fill y'all in on my trips to both the Alps and the Côte d'Azur. Stay tuned.

Lost - and found - in translation

2010-05-03T23:47:00.000+02:00

Nothing terribly interesting happened today (except for this morning - we went to a theatre and got a behind-the-scenes tour of the whole building! Made me miss doing plays.), so instead of relating the particulars of the day (boring) I thought I would instead talk a little bit about weird translations/things that just don't translate into French. I think it's pretty interesting stuff.

In French, "plein(e)" means "full," but one must never say "Je suis plein(e)" to mean "I'm full" after eating a meal, since in French it translates as "I'm pregnant" or "I'm sexually satisfied." Talk about awkward dinner convos. (Instead, one can say "J'ai assez mangé," which means "I've eaten enough.")

The verb "visiter" means "to visit," but it can only apply to places, not people. If one "visits" a person in French, things suddenly become a lot less PG, if you get what I'm saying.

If you try to translate the adjective "excited" from English to French, you might end up with the French adjective "excité(e)." Don't use it. Unless, you know, you wanted to tell the world that you're sexually aroused.

It may look like it means "preservatives" (and some translators will translate it as such), but don't be fooled - the French word "préservatifs" actually means "condoms." True story.

There's no French word for "anticlimactic." I found this out at dinner the other night, when I was talking with ma famille about Hitchcock films and I mentioned The Birds. Ma mère loves it, but I don't; "Je n'aime pas le fin du film," I said. "C'est...comment dit-on 'anticlimactic'?" (Translation: "I don't like the end of the movie. It's...how does one say 'anticlimactic'?") We were all stumped. But eventually mon père said (in French), "Oh, I understand what you're saying. In France, we say 'il finis comme la queue du poisson' - 'it ends like a fish tail.'" I looked it up later, and sure enough, "finir comme la queue du poisson" is pretty much the only way to say "anticlimactic" in French; the dictionary translates it as "décevant" ("disappointing"), which is not quite the same thing.

Bizarrely enough, the phrase "to fishtail," as in "I hit a patch of ice while driving and fishtailed across three lanes of traffic" exists in France as well as English. Sure, "I'm full" or "I'm excited" don't work, but "I fishtailed" does. Go figure.

The Week in Review

2010-05-03T00:42:00.003+02:00

Lundi/Monday
For the life of me, I can't remember. I think I just went to class, slowly died inside for six hours, and then came home. Yep, that seems about right.

Ooh! I did make my first trip to the discount grocery store, though, where I managed to get lunch (an apple, a yogurt with chocolate-banana granola included, and a six-pack of some weird chocolate-dipped waffle snacks) for a grand total of 1,88 €. Hooray for bargain shopping!

Mardi/Tuesday
The same, except today class lasted 45 minutes longer (and started 45 minutes earlier) and I only spent like 0,84 € on lunch, although after class I went out with some friends and bought a 1 € pastry, which I would have paid for in exact change had I not dropped my 50-cent piece into the grate surrounding a tree's roots as I waited in line at the outdoor counter. Boooooo. The people in line let me get back in my spot, though, after I ran to go get my purse (I'd left it with my friends while I waited in line). It was cool to be walking around Lyon that afternoon because there was a HUUUUUGE football (soccer) match that night, and Lyon was playing Munich, I guess to qualify for the championships or something. (I dunno, I don't follow sports...in this country or any other!) Anyway, there were tons of German fans in Lyon, wearing their colors, singing, chanting, and taunting the Lyonnais people walking by. There was definitely a buzz of excitement in the air, which was really fun.

I wanted to go to Place Bellecour that night and watch the game on the big screens set up there (not so much for the game itself but for the crowd and the noise and the fun), but we (Corinne, Philippe, and I) had been invited to dinner at Caroline's family's house. I figured if I could make it to Place Bellecour afterward, great; if not, tant pis ("too bad"). I never made it to the game; we were at Caroline's apartment until just after midnight, and it was a very pleasant evening; in addition to our two families, Laura (another friend from the group) and Prof. Tarnowski were there. We all had aperitifs and Caroline and her père unveiled the "Welcome, Prof. Tarnowski" sign they'd made together. (Seriously, the two of them are thick as thieves. It's adorable.) We had a very pleasant (and delicious!) dinner, and the dessert was especially good. I'll probably dream about that dessert for the rest of my life.

The downside was that little me couldn't handle my liquor. I didn't drink to excess and I didn't embarrass myself or anything - over the course of the evening I had two glasses of champagne and a glass of wine - but since I'm small and don't drink often my tolerance is basically nil. Unfortunately, alcohol doesn't really make me tipsy or silly or fun, it makes me incredibly sleepy and sometimes a little dizzy. I managed to bypass the dizziness, but it was hard to keep my eyes open from about 11:00 on.

But at dinner, Corinne said something that absolutely made my night. She said that they think I'm "the best," and that essentially I'm a good person to have around. "Bravo à tes parents," she said. (I don't think I have to translate that one, do I?) That put a huge smile on my face. =)

Oh, and by the way: Lyon lost. Boooooooooo. (It was the one time I actually cared about the stupid automated football-and-rugby-score texts that are constantly being sent to my phone at inconvenient times.)

Mercredi/Wednesday
Had class in the morning, spent lunch walking around with Kelly trying to find a suitably cheap and filling lunch (since we weren't near the discount grocery store...the reason why will be explained in a minute). We ended up each getting an avocado. I subsequently discovered that I don't really like eating plain avocados.

Anyway, that afternoon we were scheduled to visit the museum about the French Resistance movement in Lyon during WWII (or, as it's abbreviated here, la 2ème GM - for the deuxième Guerre Mondiale). So we got lunch nearby and ate in the plaza outside the museum, sitting and lying on the cobblestones to soak up the sun and the 80-degree weather. It was quite warm and lovely. The museum, however, while warm (it was super-hot and a little stuffy, probably because the AC isn't on this early in the season and it was hot outside), was not lovely. Not that there was anything wrong with the museum, just that the subject matter was grim. Mme. Villard let us get English audioguides because, she said, it's important that we understand everything. We walked around the exhibition, then watched a film of the trial of the Nazi Klaus Barbie in the late 1980s, and then we met with a Holocaust survivor who told us the story of his arrest and imprisonment by the Nazis. I was really impressed - this man, who is in his 80s, spoke animatedly and in detail about his experience, standing the entire time he spoke to us (maybe 30-45 minutes? I'm not sure, I'm a terrible judge of time) and gesturing to punctuate his points. I didn't understand a lot of what he said, since my French is still not up to par, but it was cool to hear his story and meet him.

I can't remember what I did Wednesday night...I guess it must not have been all that important?

Jeudi/Thursday
On Thursday we started class at 9:15 and ended at 13:45, but it felt SO SHORT compared to the three long days we'd started the week with (Wednesday lasted from 10 am until almost 5 pm). I got out of class and some of my friends were talking about going for runs, so I got inspired and decided to take one myself, since it was sunny and 80 degrees again. I ran up the Saone and crossed the pedestrian bridge on Quai Saint Antoine over to Vieux Lyon and ran back along the river on the other side, crossed back over at the other pedestrian bridge, then took a roundabout way back home to avoid getting ogled again at the construction site near the apartment. (And also because I was in the zone, man. Kidding(ish). Ha. Imagine if I were really like that.) Anyway, it was a nice run because there was a strong, cool breeze to cut through the 80-degree heat, and it was nice to be outside, looking at the trees blooming along the river and listening to my ipod and just kind of letting my mind wander. It wasn't a super-long run - three kilometers, tops - but it was quite pleasant.

I got back to the apartment, did some sit-ups, etc., cleaned up a bit, and then looked at the clock - it wasn't even three yet. I was like, "Oh my God, I've had so little free time in the afternoons that I've forgotten how to use it!" So I did what I always do - played around with facebook (the biggest time-suck I think I've ever encountered in my entire life).

Vendredi/Friday
Got out of class at 13h00 (wooohooooo!) and got pasta at a pasta take-out place with Nayab, Jake, David, and Rachel. Then they wanted to see Iron Man 2 so we checked out movie times. I had no particular desire to see it, but I figured I'd hang with them until the movie, since I had no other plans and let's face it, they're delightful company. We hung out in McDonald's for a little while, using the wifi, playing with dice, and doing card tricks, and then we walked to Parc de la Tête d'Or, which was near the movie theater. (It wasn't the closest movie theater by a long shot - there was one literally across from the McDo's, but all the theaters were showing the movie around the same time so we figured we may as well go to the one across town, since we could kill time in the park until the movie started.) We got to the park and went to the zoo, which was fun (still haven't seen all of it, though). Then we walked to Cité International, where the movie theater (and a hotel and some cafés and a casino) is. We got a little lost on the way but still managed to get there in time to see the movie (which I caved and watched, since I'd already come all that way and the ticket was only 5,95 €). The movie...meh. It was a lot of action, which is not really my thing, but I did enjoy staring at Robert Downey, Jr. for two hours. Yum.

After that, we took a quick look in the casino, walked back through the park (it's so cute!), and then I splurged 1,60 € on the metro to get home in time for dinner with my host brother, Jacques, as Corinne and Philippe went to the country this weekend to do work on the house. Jacques and I get along fine but never really hang out, so I wasn't quite sure how a dinner with just the two of us was going to go. (In the past when Corinne and Philippe have gone to the country for the weekend, Jacques's friends have come over for dinner or one or the other of us has eaten out.) But it was fine - first we bonded over our shared aversion to Justin Beiber, who was being interviewed on a French talk show, and then I told him about frats and sororities at Dartmouth, since they're a much bigger thing in the States than they are here. I spent the rest of the night just kind of hanging out around the apartment.

Samedi/Saturday
Slept in, studied, skyped with Mom, and then at night went to Place Bellecour to meet Kelly, Amanda, and Nayab to go out someplace. As I sat in Place Bellecour (I got there early), two French guys came up and sat on either side of me, and one said something to me in French, to which I quickly responded "Je ne parle pas le français" ("I don't speak French"), as I was not in the mood to be chatted up by random guys (which I thought was somewhat apparent from the fact that I was texting and listening to my ipod). At any rate, this fix didn't work since the other guy spoke English, so I ended up talking to them for a couple minutes, which was awkward a.) because I am a somewhat socially awkward person, b.) I never know how to react when I'm being hit on (which I was), and c.) I was really just not in a particularly chatty mood. At any rate, I was still polite and everything, but when they asked if I was in the city on my own I made it very clear that I was waiting for friends and then they sort of figured I wasn't interested and went on their way. Not taking any more chances, however, I pretended to call a friend and had a fake conversation until my actual friends arrived.

We decided to go to a karaoke bar, and we found one in Vieux Lyon. My virgin piña colada was definitely not worth the eight (EIGHT!) euros I paid for it, but we had fun singing karaoke and making friends with the bouncer, who insisted that we come and get him when it was our turn to sing. We accidentally forgot to get him, so he missed our screamy rendition of Mambo #5, but before we left he got the DJ to bump us up to next in line so we could sing agian. We sang "Wannabe" by the Spice Girls, and our bouncer friend danced. It was insane.

Walking home in the rain without an umbrella, though, was less fun. I returned home looking like a drowned rat, with my hair matted down and my brand-new, off-white shoes (the ones I bought in Paris) a mess. I washed them in the sink and used shampoo to clean off some of the dirt, which seemed to work (kind of). They're gonna be wet for like the next week and the next time I wear them in the rain I'll probably leave behind a trail of shampoo suds, but whatever, at least I salvaged them.

Dimanche/Sunday
Woke up on the late side, did not study, took a shower, and then headed out to meet my friends for lunch at a bouchon Amanda had made reservations at. After a long wait despite the reservation (the restaurant was very small and there was another big party before us that took a long time to leave), we were seated and a very nice waitress (who actually reminded me a lot of my host mom) took our orders. I had a Salade de Chevre Chaud (warm goat's cheese salad), which was one of the only vegetarian things on the menu, but it was really good - lettuce with dressing and three pieces of toasted baguette with melted goat's cheese. Corinne had made this to go with dinner once and it was really good - even better than the restaurant's, I think. (Corinne's food is better than most of the food I've eaten here, and that's really saying something, since almost all the food in France is delicious.) For dessert, I had fondant chocolat et crème anglais, which was like a very fudgy brownie with an eggy vanilla sauce. I did get to try other people's desserts, though - Amanda's tarte au citron (lemon tart), Marielle's tarte aux pommes (apple tart), and Jake's pain perdu (France's version of French toast - it translates as "lost bread" since they use yesterday's baguette, and it had chocolate sauce on top). All in all, it was a great lunch (I ate a ton of bread, both on its own and with the cheese I stole from Amanda and Marielle) and I was full all afternoon.

I came back to the apartment, procrastinated for several hours (see previous post), did a little studying, ate dinner with the family, studied a bit more, and then decided to write another blog entry "real quick before heading to bed early." And it's now twenty of one. Fabulous. I gotta go. Need to get up in time to get ready before the cleaning lady gets here tomorrow - last week I forgot to eat breakfast before she got here and when I got to the kitchen all the chairs were piled up on the table and there was no way I was gonna be able to sit down and eat breakfast that day. But not this week. I will outfox you this time, Nice Cleaning Lady! (Or, you know, just try not to forget that you're coming. Whichever.)

Spring Break, continued

2010-05-02T19:53:00.002+02:00

Oh, hello again. I'm back. I should be studying for my midterms (which are coming up this week), but I know I'm gonna procrastinate and I figure that procrastination by blogging is slightly more productive than procrastinating by creeping around on facebook, so here I am.

Let's see, where did I leave off? Okay. Here we go.

Day Nine: samedi le 24 avril (Saturday, 24 April)
Actually woke up in time to take advantage of the hotel's complimentary breakfast! (It was nothing special, but for 60 € a night for one person, one has to take advantage of all the freebies one can, am I right? I also took super-long showers and stole all the complimentary toiletries. But then again, I do that everywhere.) Anyway, having eaten my bread and cheese and croissant and jam and downed my double-tall shot glass of OJ, I was ready to go explore the city some more. The night before, I had written out a plan for sight-seeing, including the names of places, the nearest metro stops, and the metro lines the stops were on. I was Miss Organized Tourist 2010. And I started the day by heading toward Sacre Coeur, known in English as Sacred Heart Basilica, up on the top of the hill. I just kind of started walking after I left the hotel, and the red light district (located uphill of the hotel) quickly faded away into quiet cobblestone streets lined with tall, faded buildings, a lot of which appeared to be residential the higher up I got. I climbed a set of steep stairs, huffing and puffing and sweating by this time, and continued my climb uphill. I wasn't really sure if I was even going in the right direction at this point, but it was a nice walk and I didn't want to whip out my Tourist Beacon (map), so I just kept going. As long as I'm headed uphill, I figured, I can't really go wrong. And for once, I was right:

Sacre Coeur: it's gotta be one of the more unique architectural landmarks in Paris.

The basilica sits up on top of a huge hill overlooking the city (maybe you remember it off in the distance in that picture from the previous entry). The view is ridiculous: the entire city stretched out before me, fading into the humid morning haze:

Just another thing I climbed to the top of in Paris. No big.

I can only imagine what the view must be like on a really clear day. Amazing. And a little dizzying.

I went inside the basilica but you aren't allowed to take pictures inside. (You're also supposed to be respectfully dressed - aka no shoulders, ladies - but I definitely saw a woman wearing a tube dress in there. And I don't wanna sound mean, but this woman should not have been wearing a tube dress anywhere - the beach, the pool, whatever - let alone in a church. Still not as bizarre as the strapless prom dress-wearing lady I saw at Notre Dame, though.) Anyway, I bought a couple postcards, one of which showed the inside of the church, and then headed back down the hill by the more traveled, more touristy way (avoiding all the people asking me to sign petitions, take surveys, buy light-up paperweights of the Eiffel Tower, etc.). This particular route deposited me smack dab in the middle of a bunch of cheap souvenir shops. You know what I'm talking about - they're all selling keychains, postcards, baseball caps, and the same four shot glasses. But I gave in to the urge and did a little shopping, buying some souvenirs for myself, some postcards to send home, and a little present for Tracey. After I made it back down the hill, I exchanged my travelers' checks and rewarded myself by buying a really cute minidress/long top and some cute flats at a cheap-y, hole-in-the-wall store. (Shoes = 4,95 €. Dress = 10 €. Me = ecstatic.)

Shopping bags in hand, I continued around Montmartre - it's very pretty (and peaceful once you get off the tourist-y streets), with a lot of art galleries (as it is known as the artists' neighborhood of Paris) and, for some reason, a lot of cloth and textile ("tissu") stores. But I was on a mission: I wanted to find Amélie's café (from the movie). The film itself takes place in Paris, particularly Montmartre, where the title character lives. (In fact, one of the film's international titles is "Amélie of Montmartre.") The café Amélie works at, I'd discovered during my hotel research, is actually a real place, and I was determined to find it. The only problem was that I had no real idea where it was (only that it was somewhat near Rue Aristide Bruant), no real recollection of the name (something about windmills, maybe?), and only the foggiest recollection of what it looked like. (Unfortunately, half the cafés in Paris could fit my "foggy recollection.") Nevertheless, I was intent on finding this place, despite the fact that I had little idea what I was actually looking for and my map didn't include Rue Aristide Bruant.

My first break came in Place des Abbesses, where I found a posted map that included the road I was looking for - and it was only a couple blocks down! I set off, wandered back up the hill, found a windmill (Montmartre used to be covered with them - read all about it here), and in short had a very pleasant walk along some beautiful streets - but no trace of Amélie or her café.

Whooooosh.

All the streets not running "parallel" to the hill are steep and some are killer to climb.

I did, however, stumble across an SNCF boutique. Perfect, since I needed to get a refund on my return ticket from Milan (since I didn't ever make it to Italy) and get my ticket back to Lyon printed out for me. I waited in line for probably over half an hour (boring) and finally got everything taken care of. By this time it was around noon and I said to myself, "You'd better get going if you wanna do anything else in the city today. Just drop your stuff off at the hotel and take the metro over to the Eiffel Tower. You'll be mad at yourself if you spend the whole day looking for a café you may or may not have unwittingly seen already" (and I'd been taking pictures of all of them, just in case). I begrudgingly admitted to myself that this was good advice, and started wandering back in the general direction of the hotel. And there it was. No, not the hotel, you doof. The café!!! It was called Café des 2 Moulins, "The Two Windmills," because it's located between the Moulin Rouge and the windmill at the top of the hill. I recognized the name, but what's more is I recognized the big honkin' picture of Audrey Tautou on the back wall of the restaurant. What luck! I thought, and proceeded to take a million (or, okay, three) pictures:

Amélie's café!

So I returned to the hotel (after a brief detour to McDonald's to use the free wifi) feeling good. I dropped off my stuff and then headed to the Eiffel Tower. I got off not right at the tower but at a stop that was slightly further away (it was easier than transferring metro lines) and kind of blindly felt out my way toward the tower. I finally found it and approached it from the side with a very nice little park with koi ponds, etc. As I stood there, staring mesmerized at the fish, I got a text from my friend Nayab saying that a group of my friends had just returned from Prague and were in the city. I called her back to plan a time to meet, talked to Jake, and he agreed that they'd text or call me when they'd figured out their plans. I therefore figured I had some time, and I got in line to go up the Eiffel Tower - all stairs, baby, no elevators for me. Sure the stairs only take you up to the second landing (not the very top), but the student ticket was 3,50 € (as opposed to 11,50 € to go all the way up in the elevator). I steeled myself for a long walk and headed up. I made it to the first landing, took a crapload of pictures, and then headed up to the second landing, where I took another bunch of pictures of all the same stuff, only higher. Here's a sampling:

Let's play "spot the Arc de Triomphe"...

Keep in mind how this picture makes it look like you're close to the top...later you'll see that you're really not even halfway up.

Having had my fill of Eiffel Tower tourist-related hijinks, including, but not limited to: buying overpriced postcards (0,50 € each?!), counting the steps all the way down to the ground from the second landing (692), and listening to an American tourist make a failed attempt to thank a French security guard in his native language ("Gracias!"), I got in touch with the rest of the group (whilst fending off the million and one guys standing around trying to sell me yet another light-up Eiffel Tower paperweight) and found out that they were getting falafel, apparently at a restaurant called only "Falafel." I headed off in search of a metro station. Somehow I managed to get myself lost while doing this (despite the fact that there is a metro station at the Eiffel Tower - although it's really not the most convenient line for getting where I needed to go). As I was wondering around Paris, hot and sweaty and starting to get hungry, I got another text telling me that the restaurant was closed and that instead I should just text the group when I got off at the St. Paul metro stop. Okay. I found a metro, got on, transferred, rode to St. Paul, and was just about to send off a text when the group spotted me (thus saving me 20 Eurocents). We checked out St. Paul's cathedral and then went to Notre Dame (my second time, but the first time for some of the others). We walked up by the Pantheon again and then got Indian food for dinner, immediately after which we found a crêpe stand and bought crêpes (natch). It was starting to get dark, so we went back toward the Eiffel Tower to see it all lit up at night. Kelly and Nayab were absolutely enthralled. It was adorable. =)

We had a lot of fun taking pictures in front of the tower (Amanda and I took a bunch of pictures of us throwing the Kappa Delta sign, since I'm short and the sign actually covered my face in some of the pictures...booooo), and we got a fellow tourist to take a picture of all of us (he was super-nice), although the pictures didn't come out so great in the dark:

You can tell it's actually us and not just a random group of people because you can see me off on the right, being all short and whatnot.

La Tour Eiffel at night.

We explored the base of the tower a bit and briefly considered going up, but in the end we decided to just go grab a spot on the lawn to watch the tower sparkle, which it does every hour on the hour for a couple minutes. It was very nice. I believe we sang some Disney songs and Kelly and I split a bar of dark chocolate with quinoa in it. (It tasted like a super-delicious Crunch Bar.) And then the tower started to sparkle and there was a collective "oooh" from the crowd:

Ooh, that's right. It's a video. We're gettin' all high-tech up in here.

Believe me, the video does not come close to doing it justice. It's really pretty when it's all sparkly like that.

When the tower finished doing its thing, we went back to the metro station and took it to Pigalle so that I wouldn't have to walk in or near the red-light district by myself to get back to the hotel. (Kelly kindly offered to get me a discounted room at the Marriot with them, which would have been super-fun, but I'd already reserved three nights at my hotel so it would have been a waste of money. I was a little bummed to miss out on bonding time, so I took an extra-long, extra-hot shower to console myself, and then finished my book. Lovely.)

Anyway, people were also interested in seeing the Moulin Rouge, and I wanted to see it at night myself (something I would not have been able to do on my own). Since there were five of us (and we had a guy to protect us, haha), we braved the red-light district and made it to the Moulin Rouge, which looked all classic and whatnot lit up at night:

The (in)famous Moulin Rouge at night

Then everyone walked me back to Pigalle, at which point I said I felt like I could do the rest of the walk on my own. It was only across the square and down a side-street, after all, and there were people out and about that would certainly hear my distressed screams should I feel the need to make any. We parted with strict instructions for me to text Nayab as soon as I got back to my hotel room. Okay. Done. I started walking, whistle in hand just in case. I crossed the square. There was a guy walking close behind me, not following me per se, but muttering to me (at me?) in French as I went. I ignored him and crossed the street. He remained on the other side. Whew. Walk, walk, walk. I ignored another guy as he shouted "Excusez-moi, mademoiselle! Excusez-moi!" at me from across the street. Then my walking buddy crossed back over and walked behind me some more, continuing to mumble. It was a little creepy, but by then I was only about one door down from my hotel and could see the lobby light spilling out into the street through the open door, so I wasn't so much afraid as just a little freaked out. I walked into the lobby without turning back, got my room key from the desk, and looked around. The guy was nowhere to be seen, on the sidewalk or otherwise. I went up to my room, texted Nayab, took the aforementioned extra-long shower, and went to bed.

Day Ten: dimanche le 25 avril (Sunday, 25 April)
Woke up and went down to breakfast, where the waitress remembered me from the morning before and brought me my orange juice without me having to ask. I texted the group and, after checking out, met up with Kelly, Amanda, and Nayab outside the Louvre. I sat with them as they ate breakfast on the lawn and then they headed in. Since I'd already seen the Louvre and only had until about 2 pm before I had to head off to the train station, I opted to stay outside, catching up on some reading for class, listening to music, and sunbathing. I headed to the train station around 2 pm, bought some lunch at Brioche Dorée (my favorite French food chain, hands down), accidently ran over my new shoes with my suitcase wheels, leaving ugly black marks on the cream colored canvas, did some French swearing over that, and then waited for my train. Once I got on, the trip passed pretty much without incident. I caught up on most of my school reading (if only I could say the same today), and read a few pages of Pride and Prejudice (I like to read it every spring and every summer...I'm a little behind on that this year.). Once I'd arrived back in Lyon I decided to make the 40 minute-hour long walk home rather than taking the metro, since a.) I'm frugal, and b.) it was a beautiful day, even hotter in Lyon than it had been in Paris. I got home, texted Jacques (my host brother) so I could get into the building (since I'd left the key at home to keep it from being stolen), avoided the hobo that sometimes hangs around outside, lugged my stuff up the stairs to the elevator (yes, you have to go up some stairs to get to the elevator. I don't really understand the logic of it, either), and then crashed in my room, exhausted but tan (yesssss!!!!!!!) and happy with my spring break (even if I still harbor resentment toward a certain island nation and its lava-spewing mountains).

And that's it, I think! Whew, it's almost 8 pm and I still haven't gotten any studying done today. I should probably go get on that. Or upload vacation pictures to facebook. One of the two. If I actually get anything constructive done, I can come back here and give a run-down of what's been going on since I got back (a dinner party, a football match, a karaoke bar, and Iron Man 2 all come into play), and then I'll be all caught up! =)

Ta!

One of my favorite pictures of the Eiffel Tower from this trip. But, yeah. Check out how far the second landing is from the top. Pretty far, right? Not nearly as close as it looked when I was actually ON the landing.

I've jampacked this post like WOW

2010-04-29T23:05:00.003+02:00

So. I was traveling on spring break without internet for a week. (That's sort of a lie. All the McDonald's restaurants, or, as that say in French, "MacDo's," have free wifi. But my itouch has limited battery life.) Anyhoo, between dodgy internet and not having my battery charger with me, I couldn't do much in the way of blogging. Thus, here is an account of my spring break travel adventures.

Day One: vendredi le 17 avril (Friday, 17 April)
After class I attempt to "pack light." As usual, I fail. (It's all that girl-scouting "be prepared" nonsense. I've just about packed up when a little voice inside me is like, "What if your plane crashes in the jungle? Better bring bug spray, water purification tablets, and a machete. Good luck getting that through security, though.") Anyway, I ate an early dinner with the family (we usually eat between 8 and 9 and that night they ate at 6, just for me...they're so nice) and Corinne gave me a list of things to watch out for in Italy (pickpockets, pickpockets, being charged for bread and silverware in restaurants, pickpockets, and there was one more thing...oh. Pickpockets. Apparently they'll steal the ring right off your finger.). After that I gave them my house key (didn't want it to get stolen in Italy) and set off to meet Rachelle in Place Bellecour so we could walk to the train station and get the airport shuttle. Our flight didn't leave until the next morning at 7:10, but the airport shuttle doesn't run that early and a cab to the airport costs like 80 €, so we decided to just sleep at the airport. Which we did. First we checked the departures board. Despite the volcanic ash and a slew of flight cancellations, ours was unaffected. (SCORE!) We then went over to the airport hotel, went down to the fitness center, and sat on chaise lounges in the shower area (awk) to read Cosmo. If you ask me, the shower doors should have been a bit more opaque, but I guess when you sit on a lounge chair in the shower section you kind of get what you expect. Anyway, the staff lady that ran into us several times was very nice and pretended like she didn't know that we were totally freeloading (she talked to us like we were guests at the hotel although we clearly were not), and she only kicked us out of the fitness center at 11 when it closed, at which point we went up to the lobby and napped in their comfy chairs until like 1:30, when another kind staff member informed us that they needed to clear out the lobby for cleaning. We went back over to the airport, checked our flight (still on), and tried to find a place to sleep. Unfortunately all the food court booths and other prime sleeping spots had already been snapped up, and a guy had used the cafe chairs to make a bed. But we went up to the area outside a bar/restaurant on the second floor and found two cushioned(ish) benches all by themselves. No one else had apparently thought to try the second floor (SCORE AGAIN!). We went to bed around 2 and set our cell phone alarms for 5 am.

I can't say I slept well, considering I was sleeping in an airport and kept getting woken up and totally freaked out by a loud male voice (which was, each and every time, the announcement to remind people to watch their bags and report suspicious parcels to security). But all things considered, it wasn't that bad, and I was gonna be in ROME in less than 8 hours!

Day Two: samedi le 18 avril (Saturday, 18 April)
We woke up at 5, 5:30 and headed to the check-in area, only to pass a board where our flight status had been updated to a big fat red CANCELED. WHAT?! (ANTI-SCORE.) Turns out that at some point within our three hours of sleeping, they canceled all flights out of Lyon Saint-Exupery. And Paris. And Europe. Damn you, Iceland! Daaaammnnnnn yoooooouuuu!!!

We weighed our options. We could try to fly to Rome on Tuesday, but there was no guarantee that flights would be leaving by then and we didn't want to waste half of the break hanging around Lyon waiting for a flight that might or might not happen. (As it turns out, it didn't happen, so it was a good choice on our part.) This being the case, we hustled back to the train station to try and book a ticket to somewhere, anywhere. I waited in line while Rachelle checked the auto-ticket machines. She came back and said there were trains to Milan and Paris available. Milan? SCORE! We could just skip Rome and tour around Tuscany for spring break. Great! Wrong. We got to the ticket desk and the lady there informed us that the odds of the train to Milan actually going were slim on account of the national SNCF (railroad) strike. Damn you too, SNCF! Daaaammnnnnn yoooooouuuu!!!

We booked tickets to Paris (first class! - it was all that was left) as she said it was our best bet for a train that would actually function. And then we tried to figure out how to kill the time between then (8 or 9 am) and the train's departure (20h00). We went to the market in Lyon and bought cheese, bread, and fruit, then climbed up Fourvière and had a picnic brunch. Then we climbed back down, dropped our stuff at Rachelle's apartment (or, rather, her host mother's apartment) and went to Parc de la Tête d'Or. We relaxed in the sun (it was a gorgeous day) and I fell asleep (or so I assume, because Rachelle said I was snoring and I don't have any recollection of it). Rachelle decided to take a walk and I napped some more in the sun until I woke up from overheating. (I was still wearing jeans and a long-sleeved, FLANNEL shirt. Not the most fortunate choice of outfit for a 70-degree day.) Bored with just sitting around examining the contents of my purse and reading my passport, I walked over to the park's zoo and looked at the giraffes and some water birds for a little while before heading back to the spot we were in before, where Rachelle met up with me. We walked back to her place and relaxed there (her host mom had left us muffins and tea) before heading to the train station. The train surprisingly arrived on time with no problems, and we got to Paris on time. We headed straight to Rachelle's aunt and uncle's apartment, since they had kindly allowed us to stay with them. We got there and ate some fresh-baked cookies and I got to call home, since their calling plan makes free calls to North America. It was lovely.

Day Three: dimanche le 19 avril (Sunday, 19 April)
The next morning I slept in a bit (travel + stress = exhausting) and then accompanied Rachelle and her aunt to the Sunday morning market. Her aunt was really nice and asked me what kinds of veggies and cheese I liked, since I don't eat meat. It was really pleasant - I love the markets in France. We need more things like that in the US.

After the market, Rachelle brought me down to the train station and I took the train out to Versailles to meet up with some of my friends who were spending their breaks in Paris/stranded there because their flights were canceled. I was sooo psyched to see Versailles - it's been a dream of mine for years. And it didn't disappoint. The palace was beautiful and so were the grounds, which are so extensive that you literally cannot see where they end. We only got to walk through them a little bit before closing.

In the Hall of Mirrors (la galerie des Glaces) at Versailles.

The grounds at Versailles stretching on...and on...and on.

I got back later than I intended to Rachelle's aunt and uncle's and missed dinner, which I felt really bad about, especially since Rachelle's aunt had gone out of her way to make sure there was stuff for me to eat. They left food out for me, though, which was really nice of them, and the lentil salad Rachelle's aunt had made was SO GOOD.

Day Four: lundi le 20 avril (Monday, 20 April)
Rachelle really wanted to go to Normandy, so I decided to go with her. We went to the train station and waited in line forever to get a ticket for the 10:10 train to Caen. By 10:05, we were still waiting. At 10:07, Rachelle asked the lady in front of us if we could go ahead of her since we were pressed for time. She said yes, as did the lady in front of her. Now there was only one guy ahead of us, and he had to sympathetically decline our request, since he was trying to catch the same train. I started buying my ticket at 10:09. My credit card didn't work. I handed over my debit as quickly as possible and prayed that I wasn't overdrawing (and that it would actually work). It did. We ran like we were the next victims in a bad horror movie and managed to make it onto the train (which, praise Jesus, left four minutes late). As we stood in the compartment with two or three other last-minute passengers, we saw the guy from before. We all congratulated each other on our good luck and speedy running and then set off to find seats.

I really liked the way the train was set up. There was one aisle running down one side, along the windows, and then there were little compartment-type things on the other windowed wall, each consisting of eight seats (two rows of four facing each other) with a table between the two window seats. I liked it because it reminded me of old-timey trains like you see in movies, ones where the dashing hero or gorgeous heroine become involved in some kind of train murder-mystery caper in 1930s Great Britain or something. (Sometimes I think I'll never fully grow up, but that's okay. Playing pretend is wayyy too much fun.)

We got to Caen and asked some people where we could find the tourist office. "Down the street, to the left, behind the castle," is what we were told. I had to laugh because I mean, only in France would "behind the castle" be included in a set of directions. It sounds like a joke the locals play on the tourists, like how upperclassmen enjoy telling high school freshman to look for the swimming pool or that their classes are on the non-existent fourth floor or something. At any rate, we found the tourist office, ate lunch, got a hotel, and then took the bus to the Memorial de Caen, a really interesting museum about WWII, the Battle of Normandy, the Cold War, and just war and peace in general. They also had a temporary exhibit of political cartoons, all of which were very amusing:

"It's a cease-fire!"

We spent a lot more time in the museum than we realized, so we did a quick walk through the gardens (they were nothing super-special) and checked out the gallery of Nobel Peace Prize winners before taking the bus back to the town center, wandering around a bit, and treating ourselves out to dinner.

Day Five: mardi le 21 avril (Monday, 21 April)
The next morning we woke up early, ate the most delicious crêpes ever, and took the bus to Juno Beach, the beach in Normandy where the Canadians landed in WWII. It was freeeeeezing, especially since we only had lightweight cardigans with us (we'd packed for the weather in Italy, remember). While the morning was overcast and foggy, the sun came out around noon (or maybe a little bit before then) and it was gorgeous:

Juno Beach: I swear it was not as warm as it looks.

We had some time after that, so we went to Bayeux, which is known for its 900-year-old, 70-meter-long tapestry which tells the story of William the Conqueror's invasion of England. (They don't let you take pictures of that, though...understandably, the thing's literally as old as dirt. Well, some dirt.) Having learned all about William's grand journey to jolly old England and the jolly good time he had (spoiler alert!) shooting Harold, the wrongful king, in the eye with an arrow, we walked around Bayeux a bit before catching the train and heading back to Paris. That night, we met up with some Dartmouth girls studying in Paris and went out to a bar, but we had to cut the night short in order to take the metro home before it closed. Long story short, we still missed the metro and ended up walking all the way from Notre Dame back to the Eiffel Tower (which, if you've ever been to Paris, you'll recognize is a mighty long walk. And I was in going-out shoes. Hello, blisters. Nice to see you right at the beginning of my foot-travel-intensive vacation.). On the plus side, though, it was cool to see the city at night, and Rachelle pointed out a lot of sights to me, which was useful the next day...

Day Six: mercredi, le 22 avril
...as I walked around Paris on my own, exploring. Rachelle went on a day trip to another town, since she's been to Paris several times already (lucky her!) and the same old sites are getting a bit boring for her, I imagine.

Anyway, I walked from the Tour Eiffel (Eiffel Tower) to Hôtel des Invalides to Place de la Concorde, then through the Tuileries (formal gardens) to the Louvre, where I spent the afternoon walking around and taking an insane number of photos.

Obligatory picture of La Jocunde (the Mona Lisa). Don't be fooled; there was a GIANT crowd around me as I took this picture. But yeah, she's TINY.

The sculpture gallery, probably my favorite part aside from the Napoleon III apartments.

Outside the Louvre.

Day Seven: jeudi le 22 avril (Thursday, 22 April)
I pretty much did nothing of interest all day. Hung around the apartment until about 2 pm, when Rachelle left for the airport (she was going to Venice) and I went off in search of alternate lodging. I had a list of hotels I'd found online, but they were either impossible to find (and believe me, I looked and looked) or twice as much as they'd been advertised online. Fortunately, I found a hotel for 60 € a night. Still pretty expensive for just me, as 60 € was, at the time, just under $100 US. (The exchange rate is slightly more favorable this week. I don't know why, but I'm not questioning it.) At any rate, the hotel seemed a wee bit sketchy to me - not dirty or anything, but not clean. There was a hair in the shower. (It's not the hair itself that bothered me, but the fact that it meant the shower might not have been cleaned since The Shedder was there.) But I was too tired to care. I flopped down on the bed, fully intending to rest a minute and then head back out into the city. Ten minutes later, I decided to take a nap until 6:15 (it was around 5). At 6:15, I decided to extend the nap until 6:45. And at 6:45 I just admitted defeat, got under the comforter, and fell asleep. I woke up at 9, changed into my PJs, and went to bed for real, then slept until 10 the next morning. It was glorious.

Day Eight: vendredi le 23 avril (Friday, 23 April)
I headed out around 11 and decided to check out the Luxembourg Palace and Gardens. The gardens were not what I expected. I thought they would be all formal gardens, but most of it was actually a park with tennis courts, playgrounds, courts for boules (similar to bocce, I think), and souvenir/snack kiosks. Near the palace, there were formal gardens and a fountain, and I basked in the sun there for awhile before wandering off in the general direction, I hoped, of Notre Dame and the Pantheon.

Luxembourg Palace and some of the Gardens.

Luckily, I reached the Pantheon pretty easily. Originally constructed as a shrine to Saint Genevieve, Paris's patron saint, the Pantheon was secularized after the Revolution and is now the burial place for many of France's best and brightest; Voltaire, Rousseau, Emile Zola, Victor Hugo, the Curies, and many others are interred in the crypt under the Pantheon.

The interior of the Pantheon.

Once I'd walked around the Pantheon for awhile, I headed down Rue St-Jacques in the direction of Notre Dame, stopping every so often to check out things that looked interesting, like the garden at the Cluny Museum or a random church. When I got to Notre Dame, it looked different than I'd expected:

Notre Dame Cathedral

I hadn't expected it to be right on the river like that. And I dunno, I guess I thought it would be bigger. And I thought there would be stairs leading up to it. Although it's true that I'm basing all these assumptions on a Disney cartoon that I haven't seen in quite some time, so I guess I shouldn't be surprised that it's different from what I'd anticipated.

I walked around inside (it was free!) and then walked up to the roof (it was not free!). The roof was really cool; it had a great view of Paris and of the famous gargoyles that Notre Dame is known for. (Also unlike the Disney movie, these gargoyles did not sing, dance, and make wisecracks. Thanks, Disney, for bolstering the hopes of another generation so that reality falls short of film. Thanks.) They were still pretty cool, though:

Gargoyle at Notre Dame, with the Sacred Heart Basilica way off in the distance on the hill.

After Notre Dame, I took the metro to the Champs-Elysées (Paris's big shopping street) and walked up toward the Arc de Triomphe. I climbed up to the top of that, too (basically in Paris I just climbed to the top of lots of things):

The Arc de Triomphe. It was tough to get a good picture, what with its being located in the middle of a giant traffic circle and all.

View of the Champs-Elysées from the top of the Arc de Triomphe.

It was starting to get late-ish (it was around 7:30) and I wanted to get back to my hotel before dark, since I knew it was located in the general vicinity of the red-light district (although I'd yet to actually see the red-light district.) I took the metro back to Pigalle, which was closer to my hotel than the metro stop I'd been using previously, and it let me off - wouldn't you know it - in the red light district. A street full of sex shops, porno theaters, and peep shows stretched out before me. I almost turned on my heel and headed straight for the hotel, but it was still light out and there seemed to be plenty of non-sketchy people around (businesspeople, other single women, even a couple of families), so I decided to be daring and see if I could find the Moulin Rouge. It was actually almost too easy - straight down the street, one block (and one metro stop) away.

It's actually probably the classiest establishment on the street, apart from Monoprix (a supermarket chain) and McDonald's...which is kind of sad.

Having taken my pictures, I started to get the heebie-jeebies a little bit - I mean, I still felt safe, but I didn't quite feel comfortable - a girl can only take so much leering and weird noises directed at her before she starts to feel a bit iffy. So I went back to the hotel and went to bed.

And that's all for now. I realize that I'm behind and still have two days left to recount for spring break, but I'm absolutely exhausted and really should go to bed. I have a whole free(ish) weekend coming up, though, and hopefully I can get all caught up then. Until next time...!

Further adventures and blog-related demands

2010-04-13T18:37:00.001+02:00

Arg. Another day, another pastry. I'm legitimately getting fat. And yet, almost all the French people I've met are not only not fat, but skinnier than the average person. It's a mystery to me. (And I'm not the only one.) This Wikipedia article claims, however, that "Americans [tend] to lose weight while visiting [France]." Um, WRONG. I guess this is why you can't believe everything you read on Wikipedia.

At any rate, in the title of this post I promised adventures. And here they are:

On Saturday, I unfortunately slept in until noon (...thirty) because I'd been up until 3:30 in the morning doing absolutely nothing after having returned around 1:45 from a girls' night with Kelly and Amanda at Amanda's apartment, which consisted of us eating, scrambling to complete various time-sensitive tasks, and watching Pride and Prejudice. Anyway, after a slightly sketchy walk home (a guy drove slowly alongside me with his window open for about a block...I pretended not to see him whilst maintaining a death grip on the whistle Maria and Cynthia gave me as a going-away present for "scaring off the gypsies"), I made it back to the apartment and really just killed time while continually telling myself to get some sleep. I finally listened to me, but I was too late, thus the waste of a beautiful Saturday morning.

This story gets happier, though, I swear! I met up with Kelly, Amanda, and Laura, and we walked around the city in search of a bio-restaurant Kelly had heard about. We finally found it but discovered that they didn't do take-out for lunch, so we resolved to come back some other time and instead headed off for le Parc de la Tête d'Or, since it was a perfect day for relaxing outside:

Kelly, Laura, and Amanda (and me, haha) at the park.

We spent a couple hours at the park lying out in the sun (I have the faint beginnings of a tan!) and watching the antics of some nearby children before strolling back toward Place Bellecour, taking in all the sights of this gorgeous afternoon.

Bridge across the Rhône to the Presqu'île around 5 pm.

I had thought about going out Saturday night with my friends (not anything big...just a movie or something), but since mes parents were away for the weekend and mon frère was out for the evening, I decided to stay home and take advantage of the empty house to Skype with Jessalyn. (I feel bad Skyping when ma famille is here because, due to the time difference, Skyping always has to happen rather late at night, and everyone else here goes to bed fairly early. I don't want to disturb them.) Anyway, it was nice to spend a nice quiet evening at the apartment, although I still stayed up too late. Oh, well.

On Sunday, we (the group) had planned a picnic for lunch. The idea was to meet in Place Bellecour with everyone bringing something to contribute to the meal, and then walk either to the river or the park to eat. However, we ended up hanging around Place Bellecour for quite awhile waiting for everyone to arrive.

While we were waiting, we watched a group of students walk up to the statue in Place Bellecour, singing songs. We remarked on its being a little out of the ordinary and watched them with amusement for a little while. A few minutes later, we were talking about something else when a couple of guys from the group came over and explained that they were doing a scavenger hunt for the program they were traveling with and they needed a picture with some Lyon girls (I guess we qualified). Would we help them out? they wanted to know. "Sure," we said. The next thing I knew, one of the guys had taken my arm and steered me over toward the other guy, and was like, "Oh yeah, you guys have to kiss so we can get 100 points."

And I was like, "WHAT NOW?!" Because kissing strangers on the street is not one of my top five pastimes. It's like number seven. Eight, maybe.

I jest, of course. But still, I was pretty surprised. It was not how I had expected to spend my afternoon.

But still, they were pretty nice and the guy was pretty easy on the eyes and I mean, it would get them a whole 100 points. So I did it. I'm proud of myself. I think you'll agree it's an excellent story (unless I told it wrong).

After this brief detour from my usual character, we decided to accept the group's invitation for us to join them as they went sight-seeing and completed their tour around Lyon. (But first, Kelly sang "I Will Survive" with them in front of the statue.) It was pretty cool to meet other students (they were all, I guess, engineering students involved in a travel program on their spring break) from all over Europe. I spent a good chunk of time talking to a girl from Belgium, and there were people from Russia, Portugal, France, Germany, and other countries.

We walked around the city completing tasks (such as doing some kind of weird line-dance thing in the middle of a pedestrian street), and we visited the Cathédrale St-Jean in Vieux Lyon. (I still haven't gotten to see the 700-year-old clock do its thing. I did, however, get a couple of good pictures.)

Statue, undoubtedly of a saint or someone with better morals than I, in Cathédrale St-Jean.

After the Cathédrale I returned home to do some work, although this meant that I apparently missed the crowd-surfing that happened immediately thereafter. (Kelly told me about it and I saw pictures.) I went back home, cleaned my room, and then spent a lot of time putting off doing my reading by thinking of other "constructive" things to do. Finally I could avoid it no longer, and I spent the rest of the night reading. Haha, that's a lie. I did do some reading, but it was broken up by checking facebook, checking blitz (Dartmouth's email system), checking my email, eating another delicious dinner avec ma famille, watching two segments of a French TV show with Corinne, and chatting with four people at once. (Don't ever say I can't multitask.)

Monday was pretty ho-hum. Mondays are long in terms of class time (but not as long as Tuesdays...I'm exhausted). I did some errands after school and then went avec mes parents to the Welcome Dinner (which was actually aperitifs and hors d'oeuvres), which was fun. It was cool seeing all the parents and students together, and it was also interesting to see the profs outside of school, especially our two Lyonnais professors: Mme. Villard is adorable and M. Bonivard is kind of a goofball. They're awesome.

I do feel a little bad, though, because when we introduced our host parents a lot of people used adjectives to say how great their families were. Of course, no one told me beforehand that we'd have to introduce our parents, or I would have thought of something nice to say, too, because Corinne and Philippe are wonderful and super-nice, but my lack of confidence in speaking French combined with a touch of natural shyness meant that I was just like, "My name is Renée. I live with Corinne and Philippe. I'm from Massachusetts." The end. I hope they know that it's not for lack of sentiment that I wasn't gushier, but lack of vocabulary.

At any rate, I stayed up until almost 1 in the morning finishing the reading I'd put off (and cursing Past Me for having done so). This morning I woke up at 8, started class at 9:15, and apart from an hour-long lunch break at 11 (during which I schlepped all the way over to Place Bellecour to take care of spring break travel stuff at SNCF), didn't leave the university until 15:45. That's a loooooong day, let me tell you. Luckily, Tuesdays are the longest day of the week, so it's all easier from here on out. And then on Saturday morning I'm flying with Rachelle to ROME for SPRING BREAK!

Our original plans had been to take the train to Milan on Saturday, but fate had to mess with things: there was no cheap (or even remotely inexpensive) lodging available in Milan that night, and traveling on to another town was out of the question since our train would arrive in the evening anyway. We finally decided to fly to Rome instead. We booked the flight this weekend and exchanged our tickets today for tickets back from Milan (to Chambery, where we'll spend Saturday night before traveling back to Lyon on Sunday). Our travel plans are subject to change, but right now we're looking at this: Saturday, Sunday, and Monday in Rome (our flight leaves Lyon around 7 am and gets to Rome around 8, so we have pretty much an entire day there), Tuesday maybe at a beach (it's supposed to rain on Tuesday, OF COURSE. So these plans are, as I said, changeable.) Wednesday, heading up to Florence. Taking a side trip to Venice at some point, and probably seeing the Lakes District before getting to Milan on Saturday for the train back. It's a lot of stuff and we probably won't have time to do it all, but I guess I'd rather have lots of things to choose from than travel to a boring place. (Although, is there really such a thing in Europe?)

I am a little bummed that I won't be making it to Santorini while I'm in Europe, though. The prices of flights after this week skyrocket, so money-wise I just don't think it's doable. =( I'll see Santorini someday, though. I WILL.

In other travel news, Laura has proposed and researched a trip to Bordeaux at the end of May. It sounds like a lot of fun, and it will be easy on the wallet, too - the round-trip flight, accommodations, and wine tour only total about 160 € (just under $220 US). I mean, that's really not bad at all.

I still need to figure out what to do for the four-day weekend in May (yay, Ascension!). Anyone have ideas/suggestions/requests that I visit a specific place as you attempt to live vicariously through me?

Which brings me to the blog-related demand of the title. Comment! One of the main reasons I keep this blog is to keep in touch with everyone, and it's no use keeping in touch with you guys if I don't even know you're reading it. It's like writing letters and never sending them.

So, yeah. Start sending! =)

Time to eat the chocolate rabbit Mareike gave me for Easter. It's been staring at me all afternoon.

Man, I'm gonna get FAAATTTTTT...

A second birthday celebration, a long walk, and a lazy afternoon

2010-04-08T23:57:00.001+02:00

I am un peu fatiguée and therefore I think a straightforward approach will be best for this entry, lest I ramble off into incoherency. So:

A second birthday celebration (the first one being, of course, my bar adventure)

If you can call it an adventure, that is. For most people, it was just a normal evening out. For me, though, the Princess of Non-Drinkers, it was quite an adventure.

Anyway, as I mentioned before, Corinne had a birthday dinner for me. Caroline came over around 7:45 and we all started on aperitifs, or before-dinner drinks. (Apparently people in America use this word also, so please forgive me if I'm explaining an already-obvious concept. But I'd never really heard the term before.) Anyway, Professor Tarnowski, the Dartmouth prof in charge of the program (my French literature prof) came a little bit later and we continued to sit and have drinks for awhile. I tried to follow the conversation but it's still a little difficult. When people are talking to me it's easier for me to understand; usually they'll slow down and enunciate a bit more, which is great. But I have a really hard time following the conversations of others because they talk so fast and, with speed, the words all run together (as they do in any language).

After Jacques (my host brother) got home, we had dinner, which was delicious, as always. I don't know if I've ever stated explicitly what a great cook Corinne is, but if I haven't, let me do so now. She's awesome. I don't think she's ever cooked a bad meal. We had a cheese souffle and salad with tomatoes, avocados, and olives (which I avoided whenever possible...I would say I dislike olives, but that's not quite true. The truth is that I detest olives probably more than any other other food on the planet, and I include most meats in that statement. But anyway.).

After dinner we had cheese, like usual - camembert, Roquefort, and one other type of blue cheese, and then my host family brought out a chocolate cake with two candles. ("One for each decade," Corinne said.) Everyone sang "Joyeux Anniversaire" and then we ate cake. And it was awesome. I had more for dessert tonight. Seriously, it was really fudgy and delicious. I could eat this cake for the rest of my life.

After cake, I got presents! It was sooo sweet of everyone. Prof. Tarnowski gave me a really pretty blue scarf, which I wore today. (I love the color and I didn't bring any scarves with me, so it was perfect!) Caroline brought me a bag of chocolates from a nice chocolatier and some yellow roses, which she helped my cut and arrange in a vase. And my host family gave me a candle and a nice card, along with a flat wire "wreath" of sorts which you hang on the wall and use to hold pictures. "All you need is a little nail," Corinne said, "and you can hang it up in your room." She said they'd noticed how many pictures I have in my room, so they gave it to me to display them, which I thought was super-sweet. And, as Corinne pointed out, it will be an easy thing to take back to the States with me.

All in all, I had a wonderful couple of days of birthday celebrations, although I really did miss seeing all my family and friends at home.

A long walk

This is pretty self-explanatory, but whatever. After school today, we decided to go to SNCF to make some travel arrangements for spring break (Italy!). I don't know why we went all the way to the SNCF near Parc de la Tête d'Or (a 40 minute walk from the university) when there's a very nice SNCF right on Place Bellecour, but whatever. It wasn't a bad walk and we stopped at a patisserie/chocolatier on the way. (I got some quiche. Quiche over here is soooo much better than quiche in the US. Pizza, on the other hand, is not nearly as good.) At any rate, I didn't feel like walking all the way back by myself, so I took the metro and got off at the stop closest to my house, after which I "explored the neighborhood" (read: somehow managed to get lost) between the metro station and my house. (The problem was that I always just head for the river, because as long as I'm on the Presqu'île I know that if I head for the Saône I can find the apartment practically in my sleep. However, the metro station is stationed pretty much in the middle of the Presqu'île, so when I got out, I was turned-around and headed for the first river I saw, which happened to be the Rhône. Oh, well.) I found a really cool-looking antique store in my travels, though. I'll have to head back there some other time. (I didn't go in today because it opened at 15h30 and when I was looking in the windows it was 15h30 on the dot and I wasn't sure if they were actually open yet.) The window displays were ridiculously awesome, though, and the store (from what I could see) was literally crammed full of silverware, costume jewelry, cameo brooches, serving dishes, etc...a good place to find little treasures. =)

A lazy afternoon

After my long walk and voyage of discovery, I returned to my room with the full intention of starting my reading for next week and then just giving in to the sleepiness that would inevitably arise from such an activity instead of just powering through. However, I remembered that I missed last week's episode of Bones and that, while hulu actually doesn't work in Europe, that Dartmouth has a program that changes one's IP address to make it look like you're in America; thus, I spent the afternoon catchin' up on mah stories. The 100th episode of Bones is tonight, but I won't get to see it until tomorrow evening, what with the time it takes to get posted online after airing on TV and the time difference and my classes. Oh, well. Thank God for Dartmouth and its nifty little technical loopholes.

And now I am going to bed because I am exhausted. Too much excitement in this past week. (I still don't think I've recovered from last weekend's adventures in the south. This weekend, I'm sticking around, though, although I may not be much less busy than I was last weekend. Weekend plans include: going to this French bio-food expo that Kelly discovered, having a potluck picnic on the river with some of my classmates then checking out one of the clubs located on a boat on the river, and possibly making the long trek to le Parc de la Tête d'Or to walk around, relax, and possibly visit the free zoo there. (I don't like to pay for zoos since I'm not sure if I really support them, but since it's free I don't feel too bad about it.)

And now I'm off to bed...too late once again, I fear. Hopefully I can catch up on some sleep this weekend.

Bon anniversaire à moi

2010-04-07T01:31:00.000+02:00

So today I turned 20! No longer a teenager, nope, nope, nope. I feel like I somehow now command more respect. (Just let me have my little fantasy, mmkay?)

I just got back in after going out with some of my friends in the group tonight. We went to a bar (American...yay!) in Vieux Lyon and hung out for a couple hours (it really cleared out after the football - soccer for all you American football lovers - match was over). I got a drink to celebrate (the drinking age here is 16), and I remembered two of the main reasons I don't generally drink: 1. I don't really like the taste of alcohol (the drink was rum, OJ, pineapple juice, and grenadine, and it would have been PERFECT without the rum), and 2. it's freaking expensive. That one drink (which was maybe 1 and 3/4 cups, tops) was 7 € ($9). Yikes. It's Coca-Cola for me from here on out.

Anyway, my whole day was very nice. My classmates sang happy birthday to me when I got to school this morning, and Marielle (our TA) gave me a really delicious brioche. When I got home this afternoon, Mareike, the super-nice German exchange student who is also living here now, gave me a magnet from Paris (she went this weekend) and a little note written on an art nouveau postcard (coincidentally, she picked my favorite art nouveau design of all time: Le Chat Noir.) It was sooooo nice of her. She also gave me a little chocolate pastry/cake and lit a candle on top for me. I blew it out and then promptly dropped the cake but proceeded to eat it anyway. It was delicious.

Other than that, it's been a pretty low-key day. Classes lasted forever, but we don't really have any tomorrow; we have a group "outing" to a museum, possibly followed by lunch. This doesn't start until 10:40, so I have a little time to sleep in (which is why we all went out tonight).

This weekend, I'm gonna stick around Lyon and hopefully spend some time visiting and relaxing in le Parc de la Tête d'Or, as well as maybe spending a night out in one of the bars-on-a-boat-on-the-river things that they've got going on over here (drinking Coke, natch. I'm not made of money). But for now, I'm going to bed. I was going to try to get a little work done, but it's 1:30 in the morning and it's my birthday (well, technically not anymore, but you know what I mean). Reading be darned.

Crazy ACTION-PACKED weekend adventures

2010-04-05T21:52:00.012+02:00

Well, hello there. It's Monday night, I have to finish some schoolwork (including hand-writing a page-long response to my reading, Camus's "L'hôte"), but since my weekend was, as the title of this entry suggests, JAM-PACKED with ACTION and ADVENTURE, I wanted to get it out there before I forget it all. (Also, for the first time, I'm going to post pictures here before I post them on facebook. Blog readers, prepare to feel all privileged and exclusive and whatnot.)

Anyway, we ended up getting out of class a bit early on Friday (at noontime instead of 13:45) so I had plenty of time to return to the apartment and deposit my stuff from class before our 15:24 train to Arles. After that, I spent a fair amount of time trekking around the city with my overnight bag trying to remember how to get to Gare de Lyon Part-Dieu (the train station). Eventually I made it to the café where Kelly and Amanda, my fellow travelers, were sitting outside having lunch with some of our classmates. I bought a pizza from the boulangerie next door only to discover that it was not vegetarian (I thought it tasted like ham; the meat-eaters in the group who ate it after I offered it to them told me it was salmon. I haven't eaten meat for like 8 years, though, so what do I know?) Anyway, I finally managed to get quiche, a lemon tart, and some Orangina from across the street, so it all worked out okay.

We caught the train to Arles with no problems. The countryside on the way down was beautiful - picturesque towns perched on hills by the river, newly-planted fields stretching out to the horizon, clumps of barely-green trees flying past the windows. We arrived in Arles three hours later and were immediately thrown into the midst of Feria, or the Easter Festival. Arles goes absolutely nuts during this time, with extra bullfights, a carnival, lots of music, and tons of food. We walked around and immediately saw the ancient Roman arena where bullfights are still held today. It was smack-dab in the middle of the city and pretty un-missable:

The ancient Roman arena located in the center of Arles

After that, we set off to look for a restaurant Kelly had read about as being vegetarian/vegan-friendly (a big draw for us, since I'm vegetarian, Kelly's vegan, and Amanda's open-minded). We finally found it after circling around for quite awhile (which ended up being a common theme of our time in Arles). All the restaurants were cooking giant pans of paella outside in the street, and ours was no exception; the man cooking offered us some little shellfish from the paella, but what with our dietary quirks Amanda was the only one who took him up on his offer. We got dinner (and I got my first sangria - it was very different from what I'd expected, as there was cinnamon in it) and ate it sitting on the wall of a fountain in the square. Afterwards, we walked around Arles for awhile, admiring the scenery (gardens, churches, carnival, Roman theatre ruins) and cheerfully embracing the sketchiness ("Americans! You are welcome!" - random guy in group full of random guys) until we almost got pickpocketed (we think), at which point we didn't enjoy it quite so much.

At any rate, around 8:30 or 9:00 we started to search for the youth hostel we were staying at for the night, and our search took us past Les Alyscamps, an old burial ground just outside of Arles. There was a large crowd gathered at the gates, which was a little out of the ordinary because Les Alyscamps closes at night. We were standing nearby wondering what was going on when a woman came up to us and explained half in French, half in English that they were about to pray a vigil on account of its being Good Friday. She invited us to join them, which we debated for a little while, not wanting to be disrespectful and intrude, and also not wanting to have to leave early and interrupt the procession. When we explained that the curfew for the hostel was 11, the woman told us that we could leave early if we needed to, and that all we had to do was tell her and she'd open the gate for us and let us out. "It'll be an interesting experience," we decided, and we joined the group. It was pretty cool. We sang with the rest of the group and there were readings about the Passion as we prayed the Stations of the Cross. We left about five stations in to get to the hostel, and the man who ended up letting us out pointed us in the right direction.

We made it to the hostel, got our sheets, and made up our beds. Towels for the shower cost 50 cents, so we actually split one towel between the three of us, each paying a grand total of about 17 cents (yay for penny-pinching!). The room at the hostel was actually not bad at all, and we had it to ourselves for awhile until two Italian girls joined us. They went out again almost immediately though, so we had the room all to ourselves until we went to bed.

Our room at l'auberge de jeunesses (the youth hostel)

The next morning we woke up very early in the hopes that we could catch the bus to Le Parc Ornithologique de Pont de Gau, a bird park in the Camargue (the region of France around the Rhône river delta). We ran literally all the way across the city to the train station (where the bus supposedly left from) only to read on a sign that the stop was now in front of the Monoprix (a supermarket chain) down the street. We ran to the Monoprix, where another lady waiting for the bus told us we wanted to be back at the train station. We said no, we'd just come from there. The bus driver then told us we wanted to be at Clemencau, in the middle of the city. We headed for Clemencau and promptly got lost and had to ask some street-sweepers for directions. They were really nice and just walked us there. But because it was Feria, the Clemencau stop was closed. We finally figured out that the stop we wanted was actually only about a 5 minute walk from our hostel, and that we had just run around for half an hour for nothing. Needless to say, we missed the bus, but it ended up being all right, since we were up early enough to spend all morning at the open-air market (which only takes place on Saturdays). We got some breakfast and strolled around, browsing and occasionally buying things. I bought the best-smelling tea in the world from a spice-and-tea stand.

Tea at the market. The one I bought is in the front row, six from the left (almost out of frame). It's green and blue and awesome.

After the market, we visited a few of the sights in Arles, including Espace Van Gogh, a former hospital where the artist stayed that is now a museum dedicated to his work (I think that's the story, anyway), the church and cloister of St. Tromphime, a couple of art galleries, and the remains of some Roman public baths. We got some ice cream at a place called Soleileis, which Amanda's guidebook had recommended as having the most interesting flavors in Arles. (I got "fagoli" - honey, nougatine, and olive oil. It was pretty good, too.) They had sorbet, too, so Kelly was able to have some dessert as well. After that, Kelly and I dropped Amanda off at the Corrida (bullfight) and went to a café, where we sat for two hours resting our feet, doing some reading (Kelly), and taking advantage of the free wifi (me, using Kelly's ipod). We arrived to pick up Amanda from the Corrida just in time to watch the dead bull get dragged out of the arena by its horns (ewwwww) and to see the bullfighters leave the arena being begged for autographs by adoring fans, which led us to wonder: what do bullfighters do when they're not bullfighting? They have celebrity status so I'm sure they make excellent money - definitely enough to live on - but, as Kelly said, "Do they just go around Europe traveling from ancient arena to ancient arena?" It's a mystery.

We picked up Amanda, got food, walked around, got more food, and then went back to the hostel for the night, exhausted from our early morning. We went to bed before midnight and got up early (once again) to go to the Camargue. This time we actually made it to the bus in time, and we arrived at the bird park about 20 minutes before it opened. We spent the time walking around the fairly deserted stretch of road on which the park was situated, watching some water birds in the surrounding marsh lands (we'd already seen some flamingos - which are native to the Camargue - from the bus) and watching a dog "herd" horses on a nearby farm. We got into the park just as it opened and started walking. We weren't very far along the trail when the man walking up ahead of us whistled and yelled something to us in French. We couldn't figure out what was going on until we realized he was trying to show us this:

Mystery creature at the bird park.

I thought it was a muskrat but that idea was soundly denounced by everyone else present (including some British tourists), since they all said it was some sort of beaver. While we were watching, another one jumped right out of the water and ambled right past us, not seeming to care that we were there. It was pretty cool.

Also cool were the flamingos. I'd expected to only see a few, and probably from a distance, but they were EVERYWHERE, and they were LOUD.

Me and only a few of the flamingos we saw.

We went through maybe only one-third or half the park, since we really wanted to get to Saintes-Maries-de-la-Mer (on the Mediterranean) before we continued on to Avignon. So after some debate about how best to get there (there was no bus during the time we wanted), we started walking. We had been assured by the woman in the tourism office in Arles that the walk was "very easy," only about 2 kilometers. WRONG. The walk from the park to Saintes-Maries-de-la-Mer is actually 5 kilometers (just over three miles), which gave rise to all kinds of other adventures. Upon fianlly arriving, we headed straight for the Mediterranean, which was a bit underwhelming in the the clouds and drizzle, although on the beach we did get to chat a bit with an American couple from Wisconsin (and I put my feet in the Mediterranean!)

It was a tad chilly. And there was a spot on my camera lens, apparently.

We walked around a little and got lunch at one of the many restaurants near the sea before catching the bus back to Arles to get the train to Avignon. And, I kid you not, literally as soon as we got to the bus stop the sun came out and the town was bright and sunny and beautiful. I bet the Mediterranean wasn't underwhelming then.

We arrived in Arles in late afternoon and promptly discovered that the YMCA where we had reservations was waaaayyy outside of town. In lieu of trekking all the way there/being a slave to the bus schedule, we decided instead to just fork over a few Euros and stay at a cheap hotel in town. We found one, Hôtel du Park, a block or two away from the tourism office, and, not feeling like running around comparing prices, just booked a room there. (75 € altogether for the three of us - not bad.) We were a little concerned about what the quality of the room would be, since the reception area was rather dark and smelled like stale cigarettes, but the room was actually very cute and bright. We dropped off our stuff, changed into clothes that were more weather-appropriate (it had warmed up a lot since the morning), and headed out into Avignon. The first thing we did was visit the Palais des Papes (Popes' Palace), which was, to say the least, intense:

Not a very good picture, but to conserve my camera battery I'd shut off the viewer screen, which made centering, etc. pretty difficult.

We toured the palace and got dinner afterwards after searching for a vegetarian restaurant Kelly had heard about. (It was unfortunately closed due to its being Easter.) We ate at another place in town and then went to a place called Festival des Glaces to get tea and chocolates (Kelly), some hot chocolate (Amanda), and chocolate ice cream (me). We chilled there for awhile before going back to the hotel room, where we read and did homework for awhile before going to bed early.

We slept in this morning (until like 9:00...heaven!) and then headed out to a couple museums - the Musée Lapidaire, a museum of archaeological finds from Greece, Egypt, and the Roman Empire, and then to Musée Calvet, an art museum located in a renovated 18th-century mansion. After that, we visited the bridge commonly known as the Pont d'Avignon, which was largely destroyed by floods in the 1600s. As per French tradition, we sang the Pont d'Avignon song and danced on the bridge, despite the fact that we were all wearing skirts and the wind was super-intense.

A few minutes before setting foot on the Pont d'Avignon. You can get an idea of how windy it was by looking at our hair. (Well, my hair.)

After the Pont d'Avignon, we ate some lunch and got some more ice cream before catching the train back to Lyon at 16:12. And now I'm back in my room, in Lyon, wearing clothes that I haven't been wearing, in some form or another, for the past three days. (It's lovely.) I really do need to be getting down to work on my journal response, though, so I'd better wrap this up. Until tomorrow (which is my birthday, I just realized now), au revoir!

View of Avignon from the top of the Palais des Papes

In which je fais une promenade

2010-04-01T23:42:00.003+02:00

Okay. The plan is to make this a quick one, because it's already 11 and I really want to get to bed fairly...on time so that I'm not too tired tomorrow, because immediately after class I'm heading to the south of France! Unfortunately, the forecast calls for a fair amount of rain this weekend and cooler temperatures than we'd originally been promised, but, hey, I'm still going to the south of France, so I guess I should stop complaining.

Today was good. After class got out at 13:45, I planned to go pick up my train ticket at the SNCF boutique on Place Bellecour. Unfortunately, I'd forgotten to make note of my confirmation number after ordering online, so I had to schlep back to the apartment first. It turned out to not be such a bad thing, since I took the opportunity to move everything I needed to my purse so I didn't have to lug my giant schoolbag around.

Anyway, I went to the SNCF boutique and picked up my ticket. After that, I found a bookstore with a TON of English books on Place Bellecour. (As I was standing in there, staring at the familiar titles of crappy mass-market paperbacks, all I could think was, "I WOULD find an English bookstore in France.") Anyway, after that I went over to Amanda's apartment for a little trip planning with Amanda and Kelly. Some of the other people in the group were there also, planning for spring break; I didn't stay long because I'm not planning on traveling with them. They're going north, probably to Prague, Paris, and Germany (or some combination of the three). I want to head south. I'd love to see Santorini, and I'd also enjoy Italy, I think. We're trying to figure out right now if Santorini is possible, but Italy looks like a go. Yay!

After I left Amanda's, I went in search of a place to cash my traveler's checks. After trying two banks, I was directed to the Bureau de Change. I swear, when I found it it was like finding water in the desert. I was like, "Thank God." Now that I know where it is, it's really easy to find. And the guy who worked there was also named René. He told me so when he saw my ID. I think I should make friends with him. I do still have like 7 checks to cash in.

I celebrated my newly cash-filled wallet by buying some postcards: three to send home to Mom and Dad, Tracey, and Jess, and like a billion for my ever-more-disorganized postcard collection. My errands completed, I walked back through Vieux Lyon (Old Lyon), stopping to admire the view (which I had to climb a huge, steep staircase to see):

The view from partway up Fourvière Hill: Eglise St Paul, the Saone River, and the Presqu'île

...or poking around in a couple churches that caught my fancy:

The interior of Eglise St Paul, the steeple of which is visible in the previous picture.

The interior of the 12th century* basilica about a block from the apartment. *It says 12th century, but it doesn't look 12th century to me. But what do I really know about Middle Ages architecture?

I really like Vieux Lyon. It's very peaceful (for a city) and very quaint and pretty. My host mother told me that it's inhabited by a lot of artists and bohemian types, and that it's also home to a pretty large gay community. I just wanna say that I think they all have the right idea. I'd live there too, if I could. I mean, why wouldn't you want to see this every day? :

Vieux Lyon, near Eglise St Paul

And seriously, that's not even the most picturesque part. Not by a long shot. I actually wandered into some rather sketch areas of Vieux Lyon today. But obviously I made it out alive and with my wallet intact, so not to worry.

Seriously, though, walking around the city today I felt so confident, probably the most confident I've felt since I got here. I dunno if it was the fully French conversations I had with the people I encountered in the SNCF boutique, the bank, the exchange office, and the newsstand (sure, I didn't say much. But I said it in French!), the way I knew how to get around the city, the way I could just pop in and out of side streets without fear of getting lost, or what, but it was a great feeling. It felt so good to head back to the apartment, walking happily along, smelling the delicious scent of a boulangerie and feeling the sun on my back and hearing the familiar sounds of the city. The only way I could have felt more French was if I had a beret on my head and a baguette under my arm. (And, you know, some degree of competence in the language. But let's not split hairs.)

And now I think it's time for bed. I'm still maintaining the fantasy that I'll get some work done tonight, so off I go.

Blah, blah, blah, France.

2010-03-31T23:49:00.003+02:00

Today. An interesting day, today. It started out overcast, like pretty much every other day has so far, but by the time we finished classes at 13:45 (1:45 pm) it was gorgeous - warm and sunny. I'll even stick a picture as per reader request. (Hi, Mom.)

(The view from my balcony, looking up the River Saone)

After class, we went to the SNCF store (it's pretty much like a travel agency) to pick up our TGV tickets to Arles, and then we went off to find some chocolate, particularly chocolate fish, since tomorrow's April Fool's Day and fish are a symbol of the day. Apparently you're supposed to try to pin paper fish on other people's backs. I really hope no one pins one on me, because I won't know how to react (en français) and that makes for great awkwardness potential.

Anyhoo, we went to a chocolatier on Place Bellecour, the big square in the middle of the Presqu'île (the part of Lyon on the peninsula between the Rhone and the Saone...the name means "almost island"). I didn't get any chocolate fish, but I did get a truffle-y thing with praline in the middle. And, oh, yeah, it was BLUE. If you stick a blue truffle in a chocolate case, I'm pretty much gonna buy it, if for no other reason than the fact that it's BLUE. Seriously. Who can pass on oddly-colored candy?

At any rate, when I got home this afternoon around, I don't know, maybe 3:30, I was the only one in the apartment. It was kind of nice. Don't think that I don't like my host family; it was just nice to relax without having to be ready to think or speak in French at any moment. (Something a lot of people on the program have mentioned is how tiring it is - you never really get to relax because you're constantly trying to do everything in a different language; your brain is constantly working. It's sort of like doing homework all the time.) At any rate, I had been thinking of going for a jog since it was so nice out but I decided to take advantage of the empty house instead. And by "take advantage" I mean: admire the view, clean my room, listen to some music, and start on my reading for tomorrow. Exciting stuff, no?

By evening everyone was home, and I was happily distracted from studying by Brune, my host parents' six (seven?)-year-old granddaughter. She came into my room and poked through my stuff a bit. She really liked my mascara and wanted to put it on, so I put a little bit on the very tips of her eyelashes. (When I was little and I played with makeup, no one would ever put mascara on me because it so easy to get it in your eyes and have it sting. I thus grew up thinking of mascara as some kind of evil, painful thing, and when I finally started wearing it, I was like, "Oh hey, no big deal. Why did everyone make such a fuss about it?" And then a kid asked me to put it on her, and all I could think was, "Don't get it in her eye. Don't get it in her eye. Don't get it in her eye." It was a little nerve-wracking.)

Anyway, she was also really fascinated by my Neutrogena Wave Cleanser (no product placement intended), a little plastic thingy that vibrates to help get deep into your pores (or so the ad says). She washed her checks with it and then washed mine, and promptly freaked out because she realized that I have zits (or, as she calls them in English, "buttons") and was afraid that using the Neutrogena would give her zits, too. I told her she was too young to worry about that. Nevertheless, we rinsed her face off about six times.

After that, she played with my computer some more while I got some more work done. (We spoke English to each other, because when I speak French, she says she can't understand my accent. It was nice of her to say so, since the real reason she can't understand me is because I speak the worst French on the planet. But whatever. She did compliment me on my very nice English-speaking accent, however.)

After dinner, she spent a good chunk of time trying to scare me (and getting frustrated that "you're just being funny scared. You need to be real scared.") and having me try to scare her. ("You didn't scare me.") Then she played with the computer some more and Olympe, the youngest, wrote some random letters on my French literature syllabus (the first piece of looseleaf I had handy to give her). We watched three big boats go down the river. It looked like there were parties on all three; one was all lit up with teal neon lights. ("It's shiny!" Brune gasped in delight.) The two of them went to bed, I finished my reading, booked a return ticket to Lyon from Avignon, changed into my PJs, and sat down to do a little blogging. Or a lot, I guess, considering the length of this entry so far.

In other news, Corinne, my host mother, is planning a birthday dinner for me next Wednesday night (the day after my birthday). It's sooo sweet of her. She invited Professor Tarnowski, the Dartmouth prof in charge of our trip, and told me I could invite one friend, so I invited Caroline, my travel buddy. I'm looking forward to it. I'm also looking forward to doing something birthday related with the group - going out to dinner or something - since Rachelle's birthday is the day before mine and there was talk of doing a combined birthday celebration. I dunno, I guess we'll see. Either way, I'll have to find a bank or something soon - I'm down to like 20 € and I need to cash in more traveler's checks. (I only cashed one at the airport. I don't know what I was thinking. A $100 traveler's check only got me about 66 €. I guess I just wanted to get out of there so I could go crash at the hostel. But still. Bad decision, Past Me.)

Well, I should get off to bed. Class starts at 9:15 tomorrow and it's nearly midnight. I'm gonna look through my French guidebook for stuff to do in Arles and Avignon, read a chapter of my book (it was sooo hard to stop after one chapter last night, but I did it!), and then zonk out. I'm exhausted.

Dear Lord, I love the English language.

2010-03-30T23:13:00.002+02:00

So. Today. C'etait pas mal. But it certainly wasn't good either.

Class lasted forever. FOREVER. We got there at ten and didn't leave until quarter of four, except for our hour-long lunch break. I went with five other people to a little café. They all got croque monsieurs, which looked delicious. (For those of you not familiar with French café food, a croque monsieur is a buttery ham sandwich with cheese melted on the top, served hot. It's probably the only sandwich you eat with a knife and fork.) I got a cheese sandwich. It was Swiss cheese, which is probably one of my least favorite cheeses, so that wasn't so great. But the bread was DELICIOUS. Toward the end I contemplated just eating the bread and leaving the cheese, but I didn't know if that would be some kind of terrible French faux pas. Oh, well.

After class, I went to the store (I forget the name, but it was a super-store type: clothes, groceries, cosmetics, stationary, etc.) to get notebooks and folders for class. After that, Amanda and Kelly and I went on an unsuccessful quest for chocolate. (I know, you're saying, unsuccessful? In France? How can that be? Well, I didn't want to pay like €4 for a piece of chocolate, that's how.)

I returned home, once again struggled with opening the front door, managed to open it this time, and gracelessly blundered into the apartment to find that there was company. I probably made a fantastic first impression, what with my hair all crazy from the strong wind and my face all red and sweaty from power-walking from the opposite end of the Presqu'île, but whatever. At any rate, I went to my room to do some work. That was, oh, four hours ago, and I still haven't managed to accomplish much in the way of homework. To be fair, some of that time was taken up by dinner. The company I mentioned earlier included three young kids who are staying here through next week. They're really cute, but they totally own me in terms of the French language. (Sorry, Nicole, if you're reading this. I know you hate that phrase - "in terms of" - and I totally didn't use it on purpose, I swear.) The oldest, Edgar, corrected me at dinner. It's depressing and inspiring at the same time - depressing because this nine-year-old speaks both French and English and can correct my French grammar, inspiring because if he can by bilingual at the age of nine, then by God, I can accomplish it at age 20.

The two girls are younger and SO CUTE. I was sitting in my room doing work and they came in to see me. Brune, the six-year-old, was enjoying making the cursor move on my laptop, and she was having a ball when I let her type letters onto my desktop stickies. (If you aren't familiar with Macs - hi, Mom - stickies are like virtual post-its on your desktop.) Anyway, Brune was loving that. She also seemed to enjoy asking me who the people were in the pictures on my desk. Meanwhile, Olympe (4) climbed right up next to me on the chair, and both girls recited their full names for me. It was adorable.

As far as improving my French goes, I'm still trying. At Corinne (my host mothers)'s suggestion, I write down new words every night - sometimes things I heard during the day, sometimes things I wanted to say but didn't know the words for, and sometimes things I just find while flipping through the dictionary. It's come in handy a couple times already, but my reading last night nearly doubled the size of the vocab list and I can't remember half of the words. Or, worse yet, I see a word and realize that I know what it means, but for the life of me, I can't remember. Of course, then I just look in my notebook again, so ce n'est pas grâve, I guess.

This weekend (Easter weekend), I'm traveling to the south of France with Kelly and Amanda, two other girls in my group. (Amanda is actually one of my sorority sisters; we were in the same pledge class.) It sounds like my family in the States will be having nicer weather, though - the forecasts for Arles and Avignon call for rain and temperatures in the 60s. Temp-wise, it's not bad, but the weather could be nicer. But the forecast has said rain for the past three days, and while it does rain hard at times, it's just cloudy for most of the time and sometimes the sun even comes out (sometimes at the same time as the rain, which is what happened this afternoon. I looked for a rainbow, but no luck.). Either way, it's gonna be roughly ten degrees warmer than Lyon, and I can definitely get on board with that.

Unfortunately, it's looking like pretty much all the hostels in Arles are booked up, what with it being a holiday weekend (a long weekend here in France - we get Easter Monday off. Hooray for Catholic countries!) and Arles being famous for its bullfights (particularly its Easter bullfights, I understand). We've got Friday and Saturday covered, but we still need one for Sunday night. Got any ideas? Anyone? Anyone? Bueller?

I'm not sure how I feel about the bullfights. It would be cool to see one, I guess, but I'm pretty sure I'm morally opposed to them. Plus, I don't want to make Amanda go by herself (Kelly's not sure she feels up to seeing the bullfights, either). But still, moral opposition is a pretty legitimate trump card, right? It's why I've gotten away with not trying any meaty food here.

Besides, Amanda says that the Arles bullfights don't kill the bull (which I definitely would not be able to handle), but still, the idea of antagonizing some animal just for fun...I don't know if it's something I can get behind/monetarily support (with my €16 admission fee).

Arg, it's 23:03 (11 pm). I should really get to work on my grammar homework and then go to sleep. As a reward for getting through another day without any major incidents, I'm going to allow myself to read one chapter of my book. I was reading 2-4 chapters a night, but I realized that at that rate I'm going to run out of fun (read: English) books really quickly. So one chapter it is. I doubt I'll stick with it. I was thinking of maybe trying to find a French translation of a familiar English book in a librairie (here, a librairie is a bookstore and a bibliothèque is a library) and reading that. It would be educational but kind of fun, since I'd already have a basic idea of what I was reading and I wouldn't be getting graded on it.

And my English books are pretty much the only bedtime chill-out activity I have these days. Journal-writing is more of an exercise than a relaxing activity now that I'm journaling in French, and it takes me so long to look things up in the dictionary (yes, I'm old-school, no online-translator journaling for me - I learn better this way) that by the time I've done all the set-up for the anecdote I'm about to tell, I'm too tired (lazy?) to finish up. And then I proceed to read four chapters of my book. Bof.

Anyway, that's why I'm really liking the blog right about now. It's a nice outlet for my feelings/thoughts and a good record of my time in Lyon (more dependable than my journal, considering how terrible my French is). But now I really need to get to work, since there's only an hour left in the day and I still have some grammar work to do. (It's not a heck of a lot, but I should probably get started on my Thursday reading as well. And we still have to find a hostel for Sunday night. And I need to get back to Amanda about the bullfighting. Argggg, too much to do, too little time!!!)

La vie en France: It's all about the numbers

2010-03-29T21:59:00.001+02:00

1 = number of phones I bought today (hurrah! phone-less no more!)

2 = the amount of phone numbers I have for said phone (it has to do with SIM cards and getting 5 € of free pay-as-you-go minutes...that's all.)

45 = minutes I spent sitting in McDonald's outdoor café today

4 = number of times I was asked for money by people begging as I sat outside ("Je n'ai pas des espèces! Je suis desolée!").

1,90 € = cost of a McDonald's cheeseburger in France (about $2.55 in the US)

1 = number of items on the French McDonald's menu called a "Chicken Shake" (We think it's like a shake-and-bake kind of deal: chicken with breadcrumbs and spices.)

1.5 = hours I spent in McDonald's taking advantage of the free wifi to plan potential spring break trips (Greece! Et peut-être les autres pays!)

5 = number it tries it took me to unlock the door to the apartment, even with my host mother coaching me from the other side

3 = number of pages I have to read (in French, obviously) before tomorrow

4 = days until my first potential trip out of Lyon (peut-être to the south of France! Ooh là là!)

8 = days until my birthday (just deposit the money in my bank account, thanks) =)

Day Two

2010-03-26T08:46:00.000+01:00

So it turns out that yesterday when we arrived in the midst of a warm and sunny, albeit windy day, it was just Lyon lulling us into a false sense of security because today it is POURING. And thundering. And we have to lug our stuff all the way back to Lyon Part-Dieu, which involves a few blocks of walking and riding the tramway for several stops. Boo. Accuweather says we should have a two hour window of no rain between 1 and 3 pm (or, if you wanna get all French about it, 13h00 and 15h00), so hopefully we can make that work.

So far, though, I'm liking this trip. The hostel is really nice, aside from the fact that we don't have any hot water (or warm water. Or lukewarm water.), and I like the city. From what I can tell so far, it has a different vibe than American cities.

We haven't done a lot of real sightseeing yet, although we did walk around yesterday after getting dinner at a boulangerie et patisserie (bakery and pastry shop). I got cheese quiche and flan. The guy who worked there was very nice and didn't speak English, which forced us to use our French. He helped us out, though.

We walked around a little before heading back to the hostel for the night around 6. I stayed up until 11, though, to try and establish a normal sleeping pattern. I woke up around 8:15 this morning, so so far, so good. I'm a little tired still, but nothing a good night's sleep tonight won't fix. Hopefully.

I'm meeting my host family this afternoon. I'm still pretty nervous about this, since I don't feel like I have enough conversational French to really get to know anyone. Although I'm already realizing that I can get by with my French in public, so maybe I'm not as incompetent as I think.

Well, I should probably get up and get ready so I can head down to breakfast before it ends in an hour. And then I should figure out the best way to lug my stuff around so that both it and myself are not soaked through by the time we reach our destination.

Switzerland FTW

2010-03-25T21:50:00.000+01:00

Zurich's airport had...
- 2 establishments boasting chocolate fountains
- complimentary chocolates on board every Swiss Air flight
- a Toblerone store that practically hits you in the face upon entering the airport
- no less than five chocolatiers offering free samples (truffles, Toblerone, fondue, nougat, etc.)
- a giant statue of a unicorn
- the cleanest, nicest-smelling bathrooms I have ever had the pleasure of using
- a view of the Alps
- did I mention the chocolate?

Lyon's airport had
- a shuttle whose radio was playing Tik Tok by Ke$ha.

I think we all know who wins this one. Je suis desolée, France.

It's hard to write a title when your post is this random.

2009-12-06T23:12:00.000+01:00

Oh, well, look, isn't the Dartmouth campus just beautiful all covered in snow after yesterday's first snow of the season?

No. No, it is not.

I have come to the conclusion that there is a distinct difference between snowing and just plain snow. I like the former. The latter can go straight to Hades. (I know that that's not possible for snow, being melty and all. But I can fantasize.)

So while last night was beautiful and all silent-night-holy-night-y, today I'm left with some dirty gray crud all over the ground, making it impossible to walk anywhere without running the risk of slipping and falling and looking like a tool that hasn't lived in New England for the past 20-odd years.

Before the snow came along to liven up my travels with all the risks associated with walking on it, however, I had to find other ways to entertain myself as I walked around campus. "Haven't you ever heard of an iPod, Renée?" you might say. Well yes, snarky inquisitor, I have. But it's hard to listen to your iPod when you consistently leave it at home. And while phone calls are a good way to pass the time, they don't work so well when the potential recipient of your call is already most likely asleep. (No good conversation begins with, "Did I wake you up?" "...Yes.")

At any rate, I had to make my own traveling fun. And so I came up with the following: three word movie summaries. Try it the next time you're in line to badger Santa with your increasingly selfish and elaborate list of Christmas demands. It's actually quite challenging and relatively amusing. (Not as amusing as, say, a phone call or a Lady Gaga song, but whatever.)

Pride and Prejudice: First impressions lie.
The Princess Bride: True love forever!
The Silence of the Lambs: Cannibals know everything.
Bend It Like Beckham: Hey! Soccer's fun!
Dune: Get the spice!
Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End: What. The. Hell.
Pursuit of Happyness: Being poor sucks.
I Am Legend: I am angsty.
Crash: Everyone is racist.
Atonement: Liars kill people.
Roman Holiday: Italy is romantic.

See? Fun! And simple! I need simplicity after the term from hell. And finals. And after writing my literary theory paper about class consciousness and patriarchy in Gilmore Girls. Seriously, I will never be able to watch a Friday Night Dinner scene again without contemplating Rory's deep entrenchment in the middle class. I think I may have ruined (for the foreseeable future, anyway) this show for myself. Or made it more interesting. I'm not sure yet.

At any rate, I'm finished until March (woohoo!), at which point I will begin taking all my classes in French (oh $#!%). The bright side to that is that I'll actually be in France, which is I guess sort of a consolation prize for the major confusion I will be most likely be suffering at that time.

And Christmas is coming! The goose is getting fat! Please put a penny in the old man's hat! (What, really? I'm the only one that knows that song?) Except if you're going to put a penny anywhere, could you maybe put it in my Bank of America account? Kappa Delta dues really cleaned me out this term.

If you haven't got a penny, a ha'penny will do. And as the song says (I'm paraphrasing here), if you haven't got a ha'penny get the hell out of the way, you're of no use to me.

Aaaannnd merry Christmas.

An Update for Kelly

2009-09-22T08:43:00.004+02:00

Things I Suspect My Upstairs Neighbors of Owning, Based on Noise Level Generated
1. An anvil
2. Bowling balls (yes, plural)
3. Clogs (the big honkin' wooden Dutch kind, not the hippie Birkenstock kind)
4. A dorm-room-sized Mack truck
5. Many trophies recognizing the resident as International Foot-Stomping Champion
6. A pet elephant/rhinoceros/yeti.

Things My Upstairs Neighbors Will Soon Own If They Don't Knock It Off and Go To Sleep Already (For Pete's Sake, It's Two in the Morning)
1. Several mildly threatening notes
2. An ice pack for the black eye they don't have...yet.
3. My high-heeled black pumps (since I assume they won't give them back after I hurl them through the doorway and run).

Market Basket Quote of the Day

2009-07-25T08:19:00.002+02:00

Bagger, to adult male customer: Would you like these bags in the carriage or will you carry them?
Man: I'll take them.
Man's elderly mother: Put them in the carriage! *mutters in disgusted tone* Don't be a hero.

In which the public, the media, the CPD, and others all gatz out

2009-07-23T15:15:00.000+02:00

Normally I don't blog about serious issues - unless you count my Market Basket adventures as serious - but after all the hullabaloo (it's so rare I get a chance to actually use that word...) over the arrest of Professor Henry Louis Gates, Jr. in Cambridge, I wanted to chime in.

The story is basically this: Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates, Jr. was returning home from traveling last week. When he arrived at his home, the door was jammed shut, so he was forced to break into his own home. A neighbor saw this and, not realizing that Gates was the homeowner, called the police to report a possible break-in. Sgt. James Crowley responded to the call. Now this is where things become muddled. According to the police report, Sgt. Crowley asked Gates for ID. Gates refused and shouted, "This is what happens to black men in America!" He also apparently told the officer, "You don't know who you're messing with."

There's a gap in the police report as the officer filling out the report left Gates's home to go speak with the person who called about the possible break-in. When the officer returned, Gates and Crowley were on the porch of Gates's home and Gates was still shouting at Crowley and calling him racist. By this time a crowd of about seven had gathered and was watching the incident. Gates was arrested for disorderly conduct.

According to Gates, his "disorderly conduct" was to merely demand that Sgt. Crowley give him his name and badge number.

Since then, the charges have been dropped and almost everyone up and down the totem pole - from the Cambridge Police to the Mayor of Cambridge - has apologized to Professor Gates. Arresting officer Sgt. James Crowley has not apologized, however, and says, "There will be no apology."

In his speech last night, President Obama remarked that, while he didn't have all the facts about Gates's arrest, he believe that the Cambridge police acted "stupidly" by arresting someone who'd already proven that the house was his own, and commented that, despite the fact the the role of race/racism in the arrest was unclear, the incident served as a sad reminder that minorities, particularly African-Americans and Hispanics, are more often the targets of criminal suspicion and unjust arrests.

Sadly, it is true that minorities are more often the target of suspicion and arrest. I'm not disputing this fact, and I doubt that there are many people who would. Race relations in America are far from perfect - in many places, they're far from acceptable, let alone perfect. But in this particular case, the question is not "Does America have a race problem?" but "Was Sgt. Crowley wrong to arrest Professor Gates?"

As far as I'm concerned, the president himself acted "stupidly" when he commented on an event that a.) was a local - not a national - incident, and b.) he openly admitted he did not have all the facts on. If I were making a speech on national TV, a speech that would be heard by people both in America and around the world, I would want to make damn well sure that I had my facts straight, for the sake of personal and national integrity and for the sake of my own political well-being. I've been inclined to approve of President Obama up until this point - I did vote for the man, after all, and I will admit to celebrating his win with much cheering and hugging and jumping around - but this was a major political faux pas. Scratch that, it wasn't a faux pas - "faux pas" makes it sound too cutesy - it was a major political mistake. Please redeem yourself, President Obama. I don't want to give up on you just yet, but know that I won't forget your horning in on an event that - race-motivated or not - did not and does not officially concern you.

Moving on to the broader issue of the arrest in general: Sgt. Crowley is accused of racism for arresting Professor Gates. Let's lay out the facts of the case: A police officer responds to a report of a possible break-in. When he arrives, the suspect is already inside the house. The officer doesn't pull his gun. He doesn't yell at the suspect to get on the ground. Instead, he asks the suspect to step outside and requests ID to ascertain if the suspect is indeed the homeowner.

According to the police reports of both Sgt. Crowley and the officer accompanying him, Professor Gates initially refused to provide identification. According to a statement released by Gates's lawyer, Gates told the officer he was the homeowner and a Harvard professor and when he was asked to prove it, he walked to the kitchen to get his IDs from his wallet. I obviously don't know which of these stories is correct, not having been there. It's entirely possible that both stories have some degree of the truth in them; it's also entirely possible that stories are way off the mark. It's easy to misinterpret actions or words, and the situation is obviously a stressful one for everyone involved - for a police officer, any call can turn violent in a matter of seconds; for the suspect, one false move or perceived threat can mean arrest or having a gun pointed at you. (That sentence is not meant to imply that police are trigger-happy, merely that they have to worry about their safety when responding to reports of suspicious behavior.)

At any rate, if Professor Gates had merely furnished his ID without a problem (as his lawyer's statement claims), this would all be over and done with. And maybe he did show the ID immediately; again, I don't know, I wasn't there. However, it's what happened afterward that led to his arrest. Because Professor Gates wasn't arrested for breaking and entering; he was arrested for disorderly conduct.

According to his lawyer's statement, Professor Gates followed Sgt. Crowley out onto the porch, calling after him repeatedly to get his badge number and name, which Sgt. Crowley never provided him with. Once Gates stepped out onto his porch, the statement says, he was "astonished" to see several more police officers standing there. He asked the other officers for Sgt. Crowley's name and badge number. (Apparently none complied with his request.) Officer Crowley apparently then said, "Thank you for accommodating my earlier request [for ID]," then arrested Gates.

The abruptness of the last bit sounds fishy to me, especially when Gates's lawyer's account fails to mention the fact that by this time, several witnesses (according to the police report) had gathered outside. If it weren't for the witnesses, I might be more inclined to believe this part of Gates's story - after all, police intimidation and racial bias are nothing new (in general or in Cambridge), and it's entirely possible, theoretically, that some racist dirty cops could gang up on an innocent man and arrest him simply for the color of his skin. It's happened before in America and it will sadly no doubt happen again.

HOWEVER, are we to believe that seven witnesses stood by and watched as a calm man was inexplicably handcuffed on his porch and led from his home for no reason at all? Are we going to contend that ALL these witnesses are so racist that they would allow the CPD to infringe upon some of the most basic rights of American citizenry? I could maybe believe that power-hungry police attempting to play God could arrest a man they were biased against for no real reason. What I have a very hard time believing is that said man's fellow citizens would allow it - knowing, as they do, that if one innocent person is the victim of power-hungry police, anyone could be the next victim.

According to the police report, Professor Gates was yelling at the officers and causing a scene. No witnesses have disputed this (although, in the interest of fairness, none have confirmed it, either. Why isn't the media talking to these witnesses? Why haven't they been made part of the investigation?). Although almost every report of the incident points out that it is not illegal to yell at a police officer, what is the very definition of disorderly conduct? According to FindLaw.com, "Almost every state has a disorderly conduct law that makes it a crime to be drunk in public, to 'disturb the peace', or to loiter in certain areas. Many types of obnoxious or unruly conduct may fit the definition of disorderly conduct, as such statutes are often used as 'catch-all' crimes. Police may use a disorderly conduct charge to keep the peace when a person is behaving in a disruptive manner, but presents no serious public danger."

Everyone has agreed that Professor Gates "present[ed] no serious public danger." If the police report is indeed correct, however, and not biased (as many people have pointed out is possible), Gates was most certainly "behaving in a disruptive manner"; after all, the whole situation drew a crowd of witnesses and prompted Professor Gates's neighbor to snap the now-infamous photo of the arrest. Calmly conversing with officers and complying with requests just doesn't draw attention like that.

The question now becomes, was Professor Gates's outrage warranted? Was he indeed the target of racial discrimination, thus igniting the angry and indignant behavior that led to his arrest? If he were the target of such discrimination, did he really believe that yelling at the police about it was going to make the problem go away? Whether or not other aspects of this situation were racially motivated, the disorderly conduct arrest in and of itself appears to be totally justified. If Professor Gates felt that he was targeted as a result of discrimination, there would have been ample opportunities for him to address the issue in court rather than from his front steps.

The charges against Professor Gates have since been dropped, but Professor Gates is still demanding an apology from Sgt. Crowley, who refuses to acquiesce. If he was indeed the target of racism, I can absolutely understand Professor Gates's demand for an apology; my only question is this: if he truly believes that he was the target of racism AND he believes that his arrest was totally unwarranted, why isn't he pursuing this through litigation rather than in the court of public opinion? I feel like his point about the racism entrenched in the American criminal justice system would be better taken if he could achieve some kind of official decision on the matter, rather than a "Gee, I sure am sorry (but not really)," from the arresting officer.

The biggest problem of all in this case is the media and public whirlwind surrounding the case, which has only made headlines because - let's face it - one of the men at the center of it happens to have his own page on Wikipedia. If Joe Nobody had been arrested on the same charges in the same situation, there would have been a couple angry letters to the editor about the sad state of American race relations and that would have been the end of it. However, because Professor Gates is well-known in academia and is friends with many poiticians, including Massachusetts state governor Deval Patrick and President Obama himself, the entire incident has been whipped up into a media frenzy of finger-pointing and speculation (and here I must apologize for my blogger self's part in all of it). What would be best would be for both parties could just drop the specifics and move on, while the rest of America uses this not as a debate over who was right and who was wrong (again, I'm as guilty of this as the next person, but I'll try and contain myself from here on out) but as an opportunity to take a hard look at race in modern America - as far as we've come, we still have a looooong way to go.

Aaaaand...you're welcome.

2009-07-13T21:30:00.001+02:00

New text from Roger
Sun Jul 12
4:53 pm

You inspired my cousin to start tweeting in haiku

Exhuming Creativity

2009-04-16T06:27:00.003+02:00

Yes, that was a play on words - the creative juices are flowing (you might say I'm exuding creativity) and I am posting a new entry, thereby resurrecting this blog (exhuming it).

Okay, that was weak. It's 12:29. I'm smack dab in the middle of a bunch of work, and I'm sleep-deprived (and, by staying up this late when I have to wake up for work at 6:30 am, I am not doing anything that is conducive to solving this problem). Give me a break.

Anyway, I hadn't written any haikus in a while and inspiration struck me, so, without further ado, I bring you...

BRIEF SKETCHES OF LIFE EVENTS THAT HAVE OCCURRED SINCE I LAST BLOGGED

I. Ode to Facebook Friend Requests
Just because you know
Forty-seven of my friends
Does not make us buds.

II. Ode to Friends Who Plan Me a Surprise Birthday Party
Michelle and David
Are clearly super awesome
I so love you guys.

III. Ode to Getting Stuck Behind George H.W. Bush's Limo on a Narrow Maine Road
Just driving along...
Uh-oh, security car!
Better turn around.

IV. Ode to the Warm Weather
I love that you're here
Please never leave me again
Flip-flops make my life.

V. Ode to My New Job
Walking to my job
Takes me longer than doing
The actual work.*

*But I like it.

Oooh, I'd better get back to doing some real work; it's getting late. Plus, my fingers are cramping from all the 5-7-5 syllable counting I'm doing. Peace out.

Oomis Gloomis

2009-02-19T03:22:00.001+01:00

I am one of those strange people that occasionally relishes being sick.

I am a very busy person but deep down inside I am very lazy, and being sick offers one the rare opportunity of being totally sedentary. Not only do other people accept this, they encourage it. So you can understand my point of view.

I have some fond memories of being sick. In ninth grade when I got colds, I'd snuggle under the covers and watch Law and Order: SVU on DVD while eating tomato soup (with cheese, sour cream, and bacon bits - which, if you buy the right kind, are actually 100% vegetarian) and drinking orange juice. When I went to Florida in May and my stomach decided to stage a full-on rebellion and I almost had to get an IV, I still got to watch Shanghai Nights in a hotel bed, all nice and comfortable (except for the yacking-into-a-wastebasket portions of the day). And in between yackings, I felt tired but otherwise okay.

You might be wondering why I am boring and disgusting you with a history of my prior illnesses. I'll tell you why: because I'm sick right now and it is NOT FUN. At all.

After three days of hacking cough and intense throat pain and two nights of night sweats and weird, half-awake dreams, I schlepped over to the campus health center, expecting (almost hoping) to be diagnosed with some kind of ominous-sounding ailment. (I say "hoping" because having some kind of sinister disease at least makes your misery justified in a sense, whereas having a boring old cold is just a cruel, anti-climactic cop-out.) Thirty minutes, 20 questions, and a throat swab later, I was told that - basically - I have a cold.

I reject this diagnosis.

To the health center's credit, the nurse was really nice, and she didn't at all imply that I was a wimp for making such a fuss over a cold; in fact I think she genuinely realized how miserable I was (and am). But still, it was disappointing. In the throes of a night-sweat-induced semi-hallucination, I had diagnosed myself with bronchitis coupled with a sinus infection. And to be told that I didn't even have a lousy case of strep was just plain disheartening.

What I do have, however, is another sleepless night of chills and sweats to look forward to, followed by another day in which I will not leave my bed. This is actually getting boring.

I KNOW I have work to do. It's just a question of mustering up the motivation to make myself DO it. I have to select all my classes for next term by 4 pm tomorrow...I haven't even looked at the course catalog. I have only the vaguest of ideas of what I'd like to take. I could have taken care of all that today and crossed it off the ever-growing list of Things I Have To Do, but noooo. Similarly, I have not started the English paper I have due on Monday, have not sent my history prof a more detailed version of my term paper outline, have not sent my religion notes to the classmate who asked me for them two days ago, have not been keeping up with my "readings journal" for history, and have not finished reading Huck Finn for English. On the bright side, however, I DID finish (finally!!!) Anne of Windy Poplars, my least favorite of the Anne of Green Gables books, so I can move on to Anne's House of Dreams, which is one of what I believe to be the better ones. (My favorites, though, are the original Anne of Green Gables and Anne of the Island. Anne of Avonlea didn't seem to me to have much of a plot to it. I know all the Anne books are pretty much just vignettes, but that's my opinion and I'm sticking to it.)

And now I am off to read some Anne's House of Dreams. Before I do, though, I want to thank my friends - on the off-chance that they are reading this - for all their help over the past couple days, bringing me food (thanks, David!), running errands for me (thanks, Mich!), surprising me with OJ and cough drops (thanks, Michelle!), and just checking up on me and offering to help me out with anything I need. You guys are the greatest!

Them Talkies Sure Are Swell!

2009-01-23T05:08:00.002+01:00

More movies you should or should not see in your spare time.

The Bucket List
See it if you must. I mean, it was somewhat better than I expected, but I'm not about to rush out and buy it on DVD. Basically Morgan Freeman and Jack Nicholson are both dying (in the movie, not in real life!!! Calm down, for Pete's sake!!!) and they make a list of stuff to accomplish before they die. Or, rather, Morgan Freeman makes a list which Jack Nicholson then steals and edits to suit his own purposes. Madcap adventures ensue. We can learn several lessons from this movie:
- Don't be an ass about the way you manage your hospitals, because karma dictates that you yourself will soon be hospitalized in one of those dumps.
- Always check the weather before attempting to hike in the Himalayas.
- Men: when a woman much younger than you (and when I say "much younger" I mean "could be your granddaughter") hits on you in some random Asian bar, assume that your friend sent her.
- Ladies: if your husband has heart problems and you suddenly cannot find him, do not assume that he is "hiding." He is actually lying on the ground behind the bed convulsing just out of your frame of vision.
- When you have a terminal illness, abandoning your family to travel the world with some rando will kind of piss them off.
- Ditto for hiring guys to make your daughter's husband "disappear."

Dune
Long, confusing, and really, really weird. Jess and I only managed to make it through the movie because Jess's mom happened to be watching with us and explaining all the plot points (if, in fact, there actually were any). The basic idea, I guess, was that that in the deserts of Arrackis there is some kind of valuable spice and that interplanetary economy and politics were controlled by the mining thereof. I think that's what it was, anyway. And then there was...Paul. And he had dreams that were actually visions. And the bad guys (led by Sting and Creepy Fat Guy) killed his father...or, no, wait. Somebody (the Traitor...with a capital T) implanted a fake tooth in Paul's dad's head so he could kill the bad guy leader (aka Creepy Fat Guy) by biting down on it and blowing the poison inside said fake tooth (because who wants a fake tooth if it's not full of poisonous gases?) into the bad guy's face, thus killing him. However, Paul's dad, being apparently not the brightest bulb in the bunch, blows the poison into the face of the bad guy's minion, not the leader, thus pissing the bad guy off even more but not accomplishing much else other than that. (Seriously, Paul's Dad, what kind of leader are you that you can't even tell the difference between your arch enemy and his minion?! Really?!)

Anyway, Paul has been creepily dreaming about some girl, and he finally meets her and is all, "I've dreeeeeeamed about you (creepily)!" And the girl's all, "Really? Sweet. Let's make out." Meanwhile, her tribe or whatever makes Paul's pregnant mom their leader, she gives birth, and they ask Paul and his mother to teach them "the Weirding Way," not necessarily in that order. (Apparently, Paul and his mom are of Weirding descent, which is I guess some sort of race or ethnicity or something, and they have special powers. Can I just say though - the Weirding Way? Really?!) Anyway, Paul's sister is creepy and her facial features glow blue, which is - sadly enough - probably the least creepy thing about her. Seriously, I'm going to have a nightmare about her one of these days.

But yeah. Oh, I forgot to mention that Paul has managed to defeat/control the giant sandworms (think those giant sandworms in Beetlejuice) that live in the desert and prevent the easy acquisition of that pesky spice. (I italicize "spice" because that's how everyone always said it in the movie, with a really obvious emphasis, in case the audience hadn't yet realized that the spice was important to the movie.) I also forgot that every time any character had a thought, it was represented by a close-up of their face and an intense whispering voiceover.

But after speaking to other people in their heads for awhile (because that's the Weirding Way, natch), Paul, his mom, and his creepy sister manage to defeat the bad guys and make it rain on the planet Arrackis, which was apparently the goal all along (or not...? It's hard to tell. Plus I was pretty tired by that point.).

This movie literally changed my life. For example, using Arrackis as a metaphor for a middle eastern country like, oh, Iraq, I surmised that someday our crazy competition over the resources (the oil) there will lead to interplanetary--or at least international--warfare (oh, wait...). I also learned that whispering your thoughts in a very intense, urgent manner is always amusing. Jessalyn and I spent a good while practicing our own version of the Weirding Way:
Jess: Wow, I'm tired.
Me: I wonder what I'll have for lunch tomorrow.
Jess: I don't understand this movie.
Me: What exactly is "the Weirding Way?"

And so on. And then we imdb'd it and were amazed at its moderately good rating. Crazy stuff, man. Crazy stuff.

Roman Holiday
Ever since I saw To Kill A Mockingbird, I've loved Gregory Peck. My one question about Roman Holiday is this: WHY DID I WAIT SO LONG TO SEE IT?!

Gregory Peck = LOVE. I only wish I'd been born like 70 years earlier.

Splendor in the Grass
As much as I love Gregory Peck in Roman Holiday (or, okay, anything), that's how much I hated Bud's dad. My hatred for him is rivaled only by my hatred for Deanie's manipulative psycho-bitch of a mother. I hated her even more than Bud's dad, who earned points with me when he threw himself off a building. I spent most of the movie yelling "SHUT UP!!!" at the screen whenever either he or Mrs. Loomis was present.

Other than that, Splendor in the Grass was all right. It's one of Mich's favorite movies, and I will admit that Warren Beatty was quite the looker back in the day, and that Natalie Wood really has the whole "crazy eyes" thing down pat. It was okay, I thought. Not my new favorite (sorry, Mich), but okay.

Rachel Getting Married
It was good. It would have been better if it had been about 20 minutes shorter--there was way too much uninteresting footage of extras dancing around, etc., but the movie really made you feel excited, like you were one of the wedding guests, and Anne Hathaway's performance was incredible. It was such a different role for her, and I hope to see her in other interesting roles (ie, not the cookie-cutter good-girl princessy roles she's been wont to play in the past...the Princess Diaries, Ella Enchanted, etc. I am excluding Brokeback Mountain, of course, but she was only a background player there.)

Anyway, the movie's billed, I believe, as a "dark comedy," but it's definitely a drama. I didn't really laugh, but I definitely cried. And not just because I had a giant blister on my foot from using the walk to the movie theatre to break in my new boots.

Girl With A Pearl Earring
Yes, I finally saw it!!! Colin Firth was as sexy as sin, but other than that it was nothing special. I didn't really pay attention, to tell you the truth. The cinematography wasn't bad, but all in all the movie wasn't anything to write home about.

Little Miss Sunshine
I know, everyone and their mom has already seen this, but I finally got around to watching it over winter break--and it was nothing like I'd expected. It was funny, heartbreaking, touching, etc., etc., etc. If you haven't seen it yet, do it. Do it now.

The Librarian: Curse of the Judas Chalice
Ridiculous. It involved Noah Wyle going around like an Indiana Jones knockoff, being all, "Hello, ladies, I'm a librarian."
Ladies: SWOON!!!

No, seriously. And he was trying to stop some sort of evil plot involving (you guessed it) the Judas chalice, the chalice Christ supposedly drank from at the last supper. And he's helped by some French chick who turns out to be - gasp! - a vampire! Just like the bad guy! Just like his minions! And just like Judas (allegedly). And then they got betrayed by someone - I don't remember who - and then at the end Noah Wyle's vampire lover kills herself by sitting with him on a bench at sunrise (which incinerates her, for those who aren't up on their vampire lore).

And there was a guy who kept calling Noah Wyle "Mistah Pro-fessah Man," which was demeaning on so many levels. Come on, now, people.

And I think that's about it...for now.

A Crime of Italics

2009-01-07T06:20:00.001+01:00

I promised Mich I'd finish reading my stuff for religion class, but this is just ridiculous. The author of this very boring manifesto on cosmology is very fond of using long, flowery words with no dictionary definitions. (Words like "hierophany," for example. WTF does that mean? Why will you not explain, O Crazy Writer?!)

But that's not the most annoying bit. Oh no, that honor goes to the author's apparent obsession with italics, especially italics that make no sense. I'm quite sure that I've gone through entire books that were effective, clear, and direct without using italics AT ALL. So why does this author feel the need to italicize not only random words, but entire sentences?! It's indescribably annoying. But, hey, maybe it's fun to do. Let's try it out, shall we?

Today is Tuesday. This morning I woke up at quarter of ten because I didn't have class until two in the afternoon. Thus, I got to sleep in (you know you're totally jealous). I went to the gym but I'm so incredibly out of shape from all the eating I did over break that I wussed out after twenty minutes on the bike. I took a shower and met my two favorite on-campus Michelles for lunch at Collis. At two I went to class. After, I just hung around at home.

See?! Isn't that ANNOYING?!?! The worst part is that I'm not even exaggerating. It's that bad.

But I still need to finish, as "excessive italics" is not a valid excuse for failing to do the reading.

Right?

Thumbs Up/Thumbs Down: Winter Break Edition

2008-12-15T00:57:00.000+01:00

And...here we are again.

THUMBS UP: That history paper from the last blog entry? Got a B on it!

THUMBS DOWN: It only took me until 2 am the day it was due because my printer decided to start omitting random letters from every page, and my prof probably wouldn't have been too pleased to hear about "King eorge." (That's "King George" for those of you who don't speak demented-printer-ese.)

THUMBS UP: The printer problem has since been taken care of...

THUMBS DOWN: ...but part of solving the problem involved canceling three weeks' worth of papers in queue. Oh, well.

THUMBS UP: Finals are over (and have been since Tuesday)!

THUMBS DOWN: I'm still not home yet...

THUMBS UP: ...because I'm in Boston on tour with the Subs.

THUMBS DOWN: A crazy ice storm hit New England, leaving people - including my family and much of my town - without electricity, running water, phone service, and heat.

THUMBS UP: I'm in a well-heated, well-lit Hampton Inn.

THUMBS DOWN: My friends' fish that I were taking care of over break? They weren't quite so lucky.

THUMBS SUPER-DOWN: Lots of dead fish.

THUMBS WAY, WAY DOWN: I have to break the news to said friends.

THUMBS UP: My friends are very understanding people. This is partly why I love them.

THUMBS DOWN: Remembering why I love them reminds me of how much I miss them.

THUMBS UP: I'll see them again...!

THUMBS DOWN: ...but not for two weeks, six days, and a few hours.

THUMBS UP: I get to see my friends back home...!

THUMBS DOWN: But not until they get out on break in like a week. Or five days. Whatever. It's a long time, okay?

THUMBS UP: Michelle, the peanut butter to my jelly, has a blog! As does Kelly!

THUMBS DOWN: Said blogs are not updated nearly enough to suit my creeper tendencies. =) (Get on that, would you, guys? Just kidding...ish.)

THUMBS UP: I finally got wireless access here on the fourth floor of the Hampton Inn...

THUMBS DOWN: ...but I have to sit on the ground next to the bathroom door facing the wall in order to get any signal at all.

THUMBS UP: There's a mirror on the wall, though, so I can indulge in narcissistic admiration of my own reflection.

THUMBS DOWN: This doesn't change the fact that sitting on the floor makes my butt hurt.

THUMBS UP: Going home tomorrow!

THUMBS DOWN: House is without heat, running water, power, phone, and any other amenities, making it feel more like an Navy SEAL exercise in torture endurance than home.

THUMBS UP: At least I'm not a fish?

Thumbs Up/Thumbs Down

2008-11-13T22:09:00.000+01:00

Today sees the introduction of a new feature to this blog (possibly the only feature on this blog) entitled Thumbs Up/Thumbs Down. It's pretty self-explanatory.

THUMBS UP: I finished my Jewish studies paper and my proposal for the final paper.

THUMBS DOWN: I have a history paper due Monday at 10 am. I haven't really started it...ish.

THUMBS UP: But Monday at 10:01 will be the most glorious moment of my life, after which I only have my final Jewish studies paper as far as intense assignments go. And that'll be much easier than my history paper.

THUMBS DOWN: There are approximately 3 days, 17 hours and 51 minutes between me and the sweet glory of 10:01 on Monday.

THUMBS UP: Some people's bodies respond to stress by losing weight.

THUMBS DOWN: My body's response to stress is, "OMG!!! Eat your feelings!!! Look! An OATMEAL CHOCOLATE CHIP COOKIE!!!"

THUMBS UP: It was a really good cookie. Mrs. Fields...mmmm.

THUMBS DOWN: The sheer amount of work I have to do precludes my going to the gym to possibly feel less guilty about eating said cookie. Plus, there that whole "lacking endorphins when I most need them" thing.

THUMBS UP: My prof gave me a lot of good tips on paper-writing when I went to his office hours today.

THUMBS DOWN: It was totally intimidating hearing about all this stuff I didn't know to begin with.

THUMBS UP: Amrita did a project on the same topic in high school and she has offered to be my sounding board/editor of sorts.

THUMBS DOWN: WHY AM I SUCH A PROCRASTINATOR?!

To sum up: kiddies, no matter how quickly you usually work and how much you usually procrastinate, DON'T anymore. Or, if you must procrastinate, comment and let me know that you have been similarly screwed over by a class assignment (read: yourself).

The Follower: An Identity Revealed

2008-11-05T06:52:00.000+01:00

I love you, Kelly.

Stereotypical Political/Election Post

2008-11-05T06:50:00.001+01:00

I was going to update all evening, seeing as this is a historic (or, as some people insist on saying, AN historic) event and all, but then I got caught up in eating cotton candy and drinking generic cola in the common area downstairs while watching Indecision 2008. When the results came in on CNN, everyone jumped up and started screaming and hugging. It felt like New Years, but with some actual cultural significance. Here's hoping Barack Obama is better at keeping resolutions than I am.

So, in the spirit of excitement, Michi and David and I decided to walk to the Green, expecting that there would be some sort of gathering there. Wrong. We did, however, have fun lying in the (empty) street and taking pictures of us imitating the pedestrian symbol painted on the ground near the crosswalk. We then proceeded to walk around campus and return home in time to watch Obama's speech on Dee's laptop (yay for streaming television!). Apparently there are people on the Green now. I can here them screaming from all the way across campus. Jeez, you miss out on so much when you're ahead of your time like the three of us were. I seriously don't know what I'm going to do without Michi and David when they go to the Latino conference this weekend. I mean, we've already christened me an honorary Mexican. I should be an honorary candidate, too.

They're letting off fireworks now? Seriously? I mean, I know we're in New Hampshire and it's therefore legal (unlike in my lovely home state of Massachusetts, where people just drive fifteen minutes over the border to legally buy fireworks and then proceed to illegally set them off - loudly - in Massachusetts at inconvenient times, such as when one is trying to sleep or have a phone conversation), but come on! I feel so left out!

I have to be up at 7:00 tomorrow morning for 7:45 drill, and I still have some reading to do, so I'd better get going. But one more exciting (?) thing before I go - my blog has ONE follower.

Thanks, Mom, but I don't need your pity. That's why I moved out.

Just kidding. I don't know who this person is because I haven't bothered to check yet, but thank you. You are my light, my self-esteem-booster, my--

Oh shoot, I left my laundry in the laundry room. I haven't switched to the dryer yet. Now I have to leave it there overnight.

Fiddlesticks.

Some Political Commentary for You, Sir or Madam?

2008-10-09T17:04:00.002+02:00

In celebration of the fact that I registered to vote yesterday (and got two stickers saying so which I proudly wore around campus), I'm going to share some in-depth political commentary from Jess and me (mostly Jess, because she actually watched the debate, whereas I'm still trying to figure out my cable hookup).

Jess is green, I'm tan.

McCain's catchphrase is "my friends"
look, my friends
see, my friends
it goes like this, my friends
...
i can't keep up with these two, they just bounce around
"by the way, my friends"
oh, john mccain
...
"we've got to drill offshore my friends"
they are basically ignoring the questions and attacking the other and defending against the other, lol
well, that's politics for you
...
obama just talks and talks and talks
he has one minute
and then like
he just goes
and goes
and goes
and goes
does he now?
he does
xD
when is this supposed to end?
no idea
tomorrow at 4am at this rate

Odes to College Life (So Far)

2008-09-30T17:45:00.004+02:00

I'm feeling poetic today, so I figured I'd go back to my true literary calling: haikus. I did them once before (about working at the MB) with great success (honk honk*), so why not do some more?

(*the sound of me tooting my own horn)

Of course, I haven't worked at the Basket in, oh, four weeks on account of the fact that I now live two hours away from it, so I needed to find a new topic, and that new topic is college living. So, without further ado...

Ode to the Drunk People Outside
I know you like beer
I know you like to party
But I want to sleep

Ode to My MacBook
It took me awhile
To learn how to copy/paste
But it's all good now.

Ode to the Weather
When I don't have class
Sun shines. When I do have class
I walk in the rain.

Ode to Drill
Seven-forty five:
"Parlez français avec nous!"
Shoot me, s'il vous plait.

Ode to My Mini-Fridge
You make weird noises
But you hold all my junk food
So I love you lots.

Second Ode to My MacBook
I procrastinate
But now with my new MacBook,
I do it way more.

Ode to Febreeze Extra-Strength Spray
Without you, Febreeze,
My dorm room would still smell like
Dust and sweaty feet.

Ode to My Parents
I love you so much!
Life's not the same without you!
Please send more money!

The Joys of College Living

2008-09-18T00:14:00.001+02:00

1. My college ID picture is far more flattering than my drivers' license picture.
2. Free food everywhere. EVERYWHERE.
3. Free stuff, too - key chains, magnets, pens, clips, mini flashlights, drinking cups, bags, tee shirts, condoms...you name it, someone is giving it away.
4. With the miracle of mini-fridges, one never has to make the grueling walk from bedroom to kitchen in the middle of watching TV.
5. New MacBook!!! (Fun fact: My MacBook's spellchecker keeps telling me I'm spelling "MacBook" incorrectly, which is funny because I just copy it directly off the logo under the screen that says "MacBook.")
6. Skype! (Although this is also a downside, because if all my friends and family were still around there would be no need for Skype.)
7. Always something to do. I usually opt to go chill in my room, but should I ever feel the need to play pong at 1:30 in the morning, I could.
8. I can drink orange juice straight out of the carton (and not just when it's almost gone...today I opened a brand-new orange juice - Tropicana, the only good kind - and unapologetically drank it straight from the carton. Sorry, Mom.)
9. Added perks for me: giant room to myself in a quad with a common room and full bath. My suitemates are all wicked nice, too.

Now, if only I could figure out what to do about those pesky classes...

Quick Post

2008-09-13T06:31:00.000+02:00

A quick round-up of the events of this past week:

- Went hiking on pre-college freshmen trip. We backpacked over 22 miles of the Appalachian Trail in New Hampshire. It was moderately intense, which is still more intense than I was prepared to deal with. Luckily, we managed to miss most of the bad weather from Hurricane Hanna, because we got to sleep in CABINS!!!

- Met Daneille, one of my suitemates. She and her mom came over for dinner, which was nice. I think this year will be a good one, living-situation-wise.

- Second episode of Bones was leagues better than the season premiere. Still not quite up to snuff, though. And seriously, people online need to go easy on Sweets. He is becoming one of my favorite characters.

- The one week I miss Psych (last Friday, see above, re: backpacking) is the one week USA doesn't post the episode online. And it was also a good one, apparently.

- Tonight's episode of Psych was also good. I'm bummed that it won't be back until January, though.

- I am done with working at the Basket...until Thanksgiving/Christmas, anyway. I still need to go pick up my paycheck, though, so I can buy a sicknasty pair of Chucks. Or, you know, use it to pay off some school-related expenses. One is fun; one is responsible. I cannot decide which to go with.

- Facebook's new layout sucks. Just saying.

Now I'm off to clean up my disaster area of a room, maybe do some packing, and catch the 12:30 re-run of the Soup. Later, dudes.

Spoiler Alert!

2008-09-04T15:25:00.002+02:00

I am about to commit television blasphemy: I was not happy with the season premiere of Bones.

I waited for it all summer (after a season finale whose plot mainly consisted of "Booth - Zach - Gormagon - WTF?!") and I had high expectations for the season premiere - even though, statistically, most of the shows I watch tend to be weakest in their fourth seasons -Buffy, Gilmore Girls (until the seventh season, which was far worse), and so on. Nevertheless, I thought Bones might be able to somehow sidestep the mud puddle that is a show's fourth season.

If the season premiere is any indication, then the answer is: not so much.

I was excited about the on-location filming in England, but it ended up feeling gimmicky. The Angela-Hodgins breakup (I told you right in the title of this entry, spoiler alert! Don't whine because you didn't pay attention to the warning!) was waaaayyyy too rushed. They're like, "I love you." "No, I love you." "Awww, kisses!!!!" "Wait, you don't trust me." "Well, I don't trust you either." "Let's break up." "I don't want to..." "Me neither. "...but okay." Seriously? SERIOUSLY?! They've gone through two seasons of relationship hurdles and all of a sudden they break up in a diner? In thirty seconds?! Come on, now. If you're having second thoughts about getting married, then DON'T GET MARRIED YET. You don't just break up with your longtime partner over one problem. Go to therapy, for crying out loud. Dr. Sweets - remember him - is a shrink with two doctorates. GET SOME FREE THERAPY FOR PETE'S SAKE.

Everything felt rather off. No one seemed upset about Zach anymore, which I found really weird. I mean, the guy went to Iraq for a couple months and no one could stop talking about it until he returned. The guy kills another human being, betrays the team, is tried for murder, and is sentenced to rot away in a mental institution for the rest of his life, and no one seems to care (apart from Brennan's brief mention of it at the beginning, which I totally didn't buy, by the way...talk about airing the dirty laundry in front of company. It felt like what it was: a quick recap for the audience about the events of last season. Seriously, splurge for a "Previously on Bones" montage. Don't bother with this contrived "let's just put the recap right into the script!" crap.)

Also, the first hour ended abruptly...or did it even end? We never found out who really committed the crime (was it the butler in the sitting room with the fireplace poker?). Not only that, but we never saw anyone all that invested in solving it. It's been established that Booth hates "privileged people" getting away with things. Wouldn't he be out there trying to prove the duke's guilt if he had even the slightest suspicion of his (the duke's) guilt?

And also, the lord was doing his sister? Gross. And yet, no one seemed all that upset about it - even the lord (and his girlfriend's) father, the duke. Are we supposed to believe that the British are just okay with incest for the most part ("Cheerio, this tea is rather cold, and that bloke shags his sister. Two distasteful things in one day. Oh, well.")?

Onto things I didn't hate quite so much: I could buy Cam sleeping with Grayson, and I could buy her feeling guilty about it. I didn't quite like the way things actually unfolded, but I can't put my finger on what it was I didn't like.

There were a few highlights of the episode, though. I liked Pritch (I'd seen the actress in something else - Bride and Prejudice, and it was nice to see her playing someone who wasn't a biznatch), and I wouldn't mind seeing more of her, although not as a love interest for Booth (not just because I love Booth/Brennan, but because I didn't think that he and Pritch had much romantic chemistry. Ian and Brennan had more, and I hated the thought of them together. I didn't like Ian all that much.). I thought the bells ringing when Hodgins and Angela kissed was cute and a nice touch. And pretty much everything with Sweets was good. (I'm one of the few who actually like him, I guess.) I was sad to see Clark - the new addition to the team - go, although I fully understand his reasons. There is far too much drama at the Jeffersonian. It's only a wonder that a smart man like him didn't figure it out way earlier - like last season, when he was there for Max's murder trial. He didn't pick up on the drama then?

All in all, though, it was a lackluster season premiere that hopefully is not an indication of the rest of the season's strength. I think that if the show doesn't get better, I'll have to place it's "jump the shark" moment at last season when they shot Booth. Everything went downhill after that.

But I'll be watching again next week. Hopefully I won't be disappointed again.

Dishing It Out, Taking It In, and Blogging About It All

2008-08-29T00:56:00.000+02:00

I often write about dumb things people do at Market Basket, so in the interest of fairness I think I should put it out there that when I got off my shift yesterday, I went through the checkout line to buy junk food...but didn't have any money.

This is embarrassing enough in and of itself, but to do it in front of all your coworkers certainly jacks things up on the Embarrassment Scale. It's not even a funny embarrassing story, like the other day when I accidentally ran two WICs through without hitting the WIC button, which led to my needing time-consuming voids for each failed WIC order. Apparently, I am the first employee to do this. Ever. Well, at least I have a claim to fame.

As if that weren't enough, when I was running out to my car to drive home and get cash, one of the baggers saw me and yelled, "Run! Ruuuuunnn!" much in the manner that Jenny would have to Forrest, except without the affection. He also repeated it to me as I left the store again twenty minutes later AT A NORMAL PACE. I suppose some jokes - like running in the parking lot and screwing up WICs - will just never get old. The only thing is that I only found one of them at all amusing. I'm willing to laugh at my own flakiness. I'm not willing to laugh at my running to my car (which, as per the order of the Market Basket Powers That Be, was parked about as far away from the store as was possible while still being on company property). Physical exertion is never funny.

After the WIC incident but before the no-cash debacle (back when I was young and carefree...aka two days ago), I got a few CDs from the library for the sake of broadening my musical tastes (and, okay, broadening my iTunes library cheaply and quite possibly illegally). I picked up The Barenaked Ladies's (the apostrophe s IS grammatically correct in this context, just believe me) Stunt (which I've borrowed before and LOVED) and Maroon, as well as Deathcab's Transatlanticism (which has earned high marks from Maria). I was sifting through the CD racks (the library has a TON of U2 CDs, which actually doesn't matter too much to me at this point because I have both volumes of The Best of U2 already) when I came across a CD by a band called Squirrel Nut Zippers. I have to admit that I borrowed it based on band name and album cover art alone. I mean, a band called Squirrel Nut Zippers sounds just bizarre enough to be absolutely fan-freaking-tastic. And they are. Fan-freaking-tastic, I mean. It's kind of hard to describe the music, but I'd say "Big Band-esque" is the closest, especially for the first song, "Suits Are Picking Up The Bill." "Low Down Man" sounds it would be a song on the program in a 1920s jazz club, while "Ghost of Stephen Foster" sounds mysterious and gypsy-ish, mostly because of the kick-ass violin-playing. Those of you who know me know that I do not use the phrase "kick-ass" very often, and even less in relation to violin-playing, despite the fact that I myself have played it for nearly thirteen years now (even though I have the skill level of someone who's played for maybe two years). I should have played cello instead; it's so deep and soothing and pretty and smooth and sultry, while violins - particularly when played in positions other than first - can sound squeaky, whiny, and all-around grating. (I know that skilled violinists don't play squeakily, but let me tell you - the majority of the population playing violins is not skilled musicians. Just trust me on this one. Also trust me that I was grammatically correct in using "is" just now instead of "are." I was right, even though it sounds absolutely disgustingly wrong. Yay, English.)

Maria and Cynthia stayed over Tuesday night as a sort of last-hurrah before they leave for school. (Seeing as I am attending Dartmouth, the Ivy League's black sheep school, I don't even have to be on campus for another two-and-a-half weeks.) On Wednesday Tracey, Maria, and I went to the beach. I worked on my tan (ha. ha. ha.). I'm now about the color of whole-wheat bread (2 for $5) instead of KING WHITE ($1.59), which is progress, I guess. Okay, so to be honest, it's more that I'm approaching a wheat-colored skin tone than actually possessing one. Maybe my crazy four-day hiking extravaganza will help put some more color in my cheeks, so to speak. Although I won't be hiking in a bikini, so we're probably talking about a farmer's tan as opposed to a beachy glow. Well, I suppose I'll take what I can get. Besides, hiking in a bikini would leave me open to both bug bites and ridicule.

At any rate, the summer is winding down for most people. Jess and Maria are leaving tomorrow, Ashley (C) apparently left today, and Cynthia and Ashley (T) move in on Saturday. Most of my other friends are already at school. Meanwhile, I'm busy thinking of ways to occupy myself for the majority of the friendless, school-less weeks ahead. I'll probably start jogging again. Maybe I'll volunteer or substitute teach at the school where my mother works, which might be fun except for the fact that a.) kids are more difficult than most people give them credit for, and b.) I'd have to file out a CORI form and get all background-checked so everyone would be sure I wasn't some sort of creepy child molester. Which, obviously, I am not, thus the fact that a CORI would be - for me - an annoying waste of time. I guess if I were a parent, though, I'd want to make sure that everyone my kid came in contact with was on the up-and-up.

So I'm now killing time waiting for Jess to come over. She's taking a break from packing to come visit for awhile so we can say our goodbyes. I'm sooooooo bummed out. Plus I just read two Traveling Pants books in two days (another product of my excursion to the library). If you've ever read the Traveling Pants books, you know that they are TEAR-JERKERS. If they aren't making you cry about sad things, they're making you cry about happy things or sappy touching things, and that's a lot of crying to do, especially when you're already feeling sappy and blubbery. So it's probably just as well that the library didn't have the fourth book in.

Well, I need to go gather together everything for Jess (her belated birthday present, my yearbook so she can sign it, something - I can't remember what right now - that I borrowed from her and need to give back). S0, I'm out.

Stranger Things Have Happened...No, Wait, They Really Haven't

2008-08-26T04:15:00.000+02:00

I wanted to write but nothing too noteworthy happened today, so I will instead make a list of bizarre (but absolutely, 100% true) things that have happened at the Basket.

1. A man walks into a Market Basket supermarket...
...wearing a business suit and wool socks. No shoes. Just socks. It had rained recently. There were puddles. I'm just saying.

2. What's the big deal, anyway?
I give a woman her change. This is our post-sale interaction, verbatim.
WOMAN: Oooooh.
ME: What?
WOMAN: You gave me a Canadian quarter.
ME: ...
WOMAN: ...
ME: Do...you want me to...change it?
WOMAN: Yes. That'd be great.
So I have to go to the signout menu, hit the "no sale" button, and type in my password just because this lady has a thing against quarters with moose on them. Let me tell you something, lady: no one else in the world cares whether your quarter is Canadian or not. It came out of my roll of quarters. It's fine.

3. Didn't I used to have another kid?
A woman just strolled out of the store without her son once. The poor kid stood in the front of the store screaming "Mommy!" I might be mistaken, but I think someone had to go chase after her to get her to come back. For HER OWN CHILD.

4. Gee, what's that sound?
Another one in the category of negligent parents: A woman just stands by as her son flips the handle on the emergency exit door, which results in a loud, piercing, and - most importantly - annoying sound. Said woman calmly collects her children and strolls out without so much as an apology to the employees trying to figure out how to shut the alarm off or a reprimand to her precious child.
I amended my customer "hello-how-are-you" speech from "have a nice day" to "have a quiet day."

5. Scoot off a cliff, why dontcha?
Third in the Parental Negligence Series: a kid (around ten, maybe) will sometimes come into the store around 8 at night and ride his scooter along the front of the store (inside, not out) for no apparent reason, despite the fact that he's been kicked out multiple times for doing so.

6. Could I change four ridiculous hissy fits for one full-fledged tantrum?
A man asked me to make change in fives for his twenty. I politely told him that I can't make change (it's against store policy/rules) and that he could get change at the courtesy booth. He promptly exploded all over me.
ME: I'm sorry, sir, I can't make change.
MAN: What?! Don't give me that! I can see in your drawer; you've got a ton of fives right there!
ME: I'm not allowed to make change, sir. You can go over to the courtesy booth...
MAN: I don't WANT to go to the courtesy booth!
Well, I don't want to be having this conversation. Life just sucks for us both, I guess.
ME: I'm very sorry, sir.
MAN: They make change for me all the time at the [insert name of other town here] store!
Does this look like the [other town] store?! No. I don't care about what they do at the other store; I care about what my bosses tell me to do HERE. And they told me not to make change. I value my paycheck more than your constant need to have things your way.
ME: I'm sorry.
But not really.

7. Yummy!
A woman came through my line munching on dog biscuits. I was rather alarmed. I've been informed since, by someone I know, that dog treats are actually quite tasty. I suppose they'd be sort of like meat snacks (like jerky or whatever), but I'm a vegetarian - what do I know?

I still think it's weird, though.

I thought I had more stories than this. Poo.

Rambling Before Work

2008-08-16T23:29:00.000+02:00

Okay, real quick before I head off to work:

Did you know that Best Buy has The Hills filed under "Comedy Central"? It just struck me as amusing, considering that...well, The Hills claims to be a drama but all I do is laugh at it when they show clips on The Soup.

Also, something that has been bugging me about Katy Perry (besides, you know, her really irritating song): Her CD is called "One of the Boys" but her song is "I Kissed A Girl." Doesn't this totally void out the whole "shock factor" of "I Kissed A Girl?" It's not that big a deal for "one of the boys" to kiss a girl (and like it). So what gives?

Sorry for wasting your time and all, but I wanted to get that out there.

The Downside

2008-08-13T19:15:00.001+02:00

"The other day, Jess and I were watching music videos, and this one came on and we thought it was Metro Station but it wasn't but then we actually saw Metro Station and they really needed to shampoo."
"I know. I read that in your blog."

"You know what? Your boyfriend was so desperate for a brownie that he tried to make out with me in order to take the one I was eating."
"Yeah. I saw that in your blog, too."

My conversation starters = fail.

Thanks a lot, technology.

In the Future, Everyone Will Critique Famous Things for Fifteen Minutes

2008-08-02T06:08:00.000+02:00

August is depressing. It means that the summer is half over.

The summer is HALF OVER, and I've only been to the beach three times! (And of the three, I only actually went swimming twice, because the first time I went - with Maria and Ashley in June - it was raining and cold and we just walked along avoiding all the fishermen and then went out to lunch.)

So, to clear up the mid-summer slump, here are various opinions on various multimedia productions (TV shows, music videos, and movies).

Since Jess and I both had yesterday off, we got together to veg out since we haven't done the whole "we're-best-friends-so-let's-get-together-and-do-nothing" thing in awhile. Since one of us was broke and the other was stingy, we sat in my family room and watched TV/movies for five-and-a-half hours, whilst eating leftover stroganoff, DiGiorno pizza, and Betty Crocker brownies that we baked (using applesauce instead of vegetable oil because I didn't have enough oil left).

Anyway, we took in such cinematic gems as:

The Rescuers Down Under
Fun children's movie that we watched in order to fulfill our poking fun/reminiscing quota for the week. Joanna the strange lizard was creepy. Frank - the other smaller, less creepy, not-evil strange lizard - was rather annoying. I think kids would've liked him, though, which was the point I guess. The villain was one-dimensional and stupid, and are we really supposed to believe that his giant tree-crushing, cage-carrying vehicle (I hesitate to actually label it a "truck" because it was oh-so-much-more than that) somehow managed to escape the notice of the Australian authorities? Come on, now.

I liked the Australian non-mouse. (In lieu of actually figuring out what type of animal he was supposed to be, I just call him "the non-mouse.") And of course, I liked Bernard and Bianca simply because I liked them when I was a kid.

Jess and I decided it would be fun to count the Australian stereotypes in the movie. We got up to four and gave up because they were coming in so quickly that we couldn't possibly keep track of both the plots and the stereotypes. A few highlights, though:
1. Bad accents (or, in the case of the Australian boy, disappearing accents)
2. Non-essential shot of the Sydney Opera House
3. House in the middle of the Outback for no reason whatsoever
4. Stereotypical Australian hat for stereotypical Australian authority in the form of The Non-Mouse
5. There was lassoing involved
6. Cameo appearances by kangaroos, koalas, wombats (ahhh! so cute!) and other Australian animals that really served no purpose except to remind everyone that "hey, in case you guys forgot, we're in Australia!"
7. Excessive overuse of the word "mate" and phrases like "g'day!"
8. Even more excessive use of a didgeridoo. Like every three-and-a-half seconds.

Come on. I've done my googling; I know that Aussies have way cooler slang words than "mate" and "g'day." Although you probably can't use a lot of them in a G-rated Disney movie.

After the Rescuers had done all their rescuing to a rockin' didgeridoo soundtrack, we watched some music videos on MTVH. (I don't know what the H stands for. This channel comes somewhere in between MTV and MTV2.)

Selected commentary:

Veronicas' Song That I Forget The Name Of
Jess: They're twins. They look exactly the same...and they sound the same too. ... Wait, are they holding hands with that guy or with each other?
(In case you were windering...it was the latter.)

Katy Perry's "I Kissed a Girl"
Me (for the umpteenth time): This song is so stupid. I hate it. And everyone only sings those two lines -
Jess: "I kissed a girl and I liked i-it/The taste of her cherry chapstick..."
Tracey (having just come in): This is creepy. I don't like this.
Jess: But at the end she wakes up with her boyfriend, so it's okay.
...
Tracey: I don't like it. It's weird.

Video of Guys We Thought Might Be Metro Station But Turned Out Not to Be
Jess (making up her own lyrics): Oooh, we're greasy, ooh, we need shampoo-ooo...
Me: Is that Metro Station?
Jess: I dunno. They need to wash their hair.
Me (as video ends): Oh, that wasn't Metro Station.
Jess (as clip of Metro Station is shown): Doesn't matter; Metro Station needs a bath, too.

Miley Cyrus's "Seven Things" or whatever it's called
Jess: Eew, Miley Cyrus.
Me: Eeew.
Jess: This song is so spazzy.
Me: Huh.
...
Me: I don't want to, but I kind of like it. And I like her outfit. I want it. Especially those knee sock things.
Jess: She's not wearing knee socks.
Me: Whatever kind of socks they are. I like them.

The Pussycat Dolls' "When I Grow Up"
Jess: Look, it's their signature dance move: the Boob Thrust!
Me: The what?!
Jess: Well, what else would you call that?
Me: Yeah, you're right.

Alicia Keyes's "Superwoman"
Jess: Wait, I'm confused. Is she ALL of these people?
Me: Look, we know it's an Alicia Keyes video, because there's the piano.
Jess: Well, when your last name is "Keyes," if you're gonna play an instrument it sorta has to be a piano. ... At least this isn't as annoying as that song she sings, the one you hate because you say it sounds like she's straining her voice.
Me: No one, no one, no wuh-uh-uh-uh-uh-uhn...blech.
Jess: Ohmigod, they're REAL PEOPLE!
Me: That's so cool!
Jess: Wow.
Me: That was an inspiring music video. Good on you, Alicia Keyes.

Danity Kane's "Bad Girl"
Jess: They're just like the Pussycat Dolls. Look, they even do the Boob Thrust! Although, it's not quite as intense as the Pussycat Dolls'.
Me: That girl kinda looks like Christina Aguilara.
Jess: No, she doesn't.
Me: Yuh-huh!
Jess: Just 'cause she's blonde?
Me: She looks like her, okay?
Jess: Ooooo-kay...

Random Good Charlotte video
Jess: This had no plot. If videos don't have plot, I get really bored.

Girl Jess Thought Was Avril Lavigne But Wasn't
Jess: Is that Avril Lavigne?
Me: No.
Jess: I thought for a second this was "Sk8r Boi."
Me: It's not.
Jess: What is she wearing? I don't like it.
Me: I can't say as I'm a fan of her eye makeup. She's blonde and it's too dark.
Jess: I don't think she can pull off those aviator sunglasses.
Me: She just keeps striking out as far as eye fashion goes.
...
Me: She kinda looks like Christina Aguilara, too.
Jess: Do you say that about EVERYONE?!

Nelly's "Ride Wit Me"
Jess: Ride WIT Me. Not WITH me. Huh.
Jess and Me: ?
Me (on seeing one of Nelly's posse picking up a newly-married hitchhiker): Well, that bodes well for the marriage.
Jess: ?
Me: ?
Jess: What is this video even about?
Me: They're...partying...and blowing stuff up? Why?
Jess: You ever notice how girls in rap videos don't even have to be pretty, as long as they have this (gestures) going on?

Rhianna's "Disturbia"
Jess: Wow. This is kiund of creepy and...disturbing. I guess it goes with the song, then.

Kate Nash's "Foundation"
Me: OH MY GOD, I LOVE KATE NASH!!!
Jess and Tracey: ...
Jess (in reference to Kate's video boyfriend eating the decorations off her cake): That's so annoying.
Me: Just wait, she'll do what you've been wanting to do since you first saw that shot.
Jess: She slaps his hand?!
Me (as Kate slaps video BF's hand): There it is.
Jess (at the end): Wow, Kate Nash, tell it like it is.

Okay, moving on. Today I finally saw MAMMA MIA! It. Was. Awesome.

Everyone was raving about Meryl Streep's performance, and I was all, "She's doing a good job, but she's not above and beyond the rest of the cast or anything." UNTIL..."The Winner Takes It All." She was AMAZING. I got chills and teared up. Seriously.

Unfortunately for me - MAJOR SPOILER ALERT. If you haven't yet seen Mamma Mia!, don't read this paragraph. At all. So yeah, unfortunately for me, MICHELLE LIED TO ME. I asked her if Colin Firth is the gay guy, and SHE SAID NO. She lied. (Tracey: "In Michelle's defense, she doesn't even know who Colin Firth is.") Doesn't matter, though; I still loved him. The entire cast was fantastic, in fact. I haven't seen the show on stage, but I thought the movie was great - well-cast, fun, touching, and only a little cheesy (but every musical has its cheesy moments).

So, yeah, the only sad part was not being able to get up in the theatre and sing and dance along with the movie. When it comes out on DVD, I am totally having a viewing/sing-along party. Totally. I will even provide hairbrushes for my guests to use as imaginary microphones.

TV:
Tonight's episode of Psych was good. Not awesome. Too little Shawn/Jules stuff. And where was Shawn's dad? Besides the flashback at the beginning, he wasn't in the episode at all. I sorta missed the old killjoy. (Although, in his case, "killjoy" most likely translates to "voice of logic.")

A nice thing - I thought - about last week's episode was how they showed that they haven't abandoned the Shawn/Jules storyline, even though they didn't do much with it. However, "not much" is still better than the half-season of nothing we'd had since they'd almost kissed oh-so-long-ago. After that it was, what? One episode of awkwardness and then everything was back to normal, except there was no more silly Shawn/Jules banter/flirting. Sad.

However, getting back to tonight's episode, I must say that Shawn's speech at the end was good (even if it was just a teensy bit melodramatic). It's kind of cool how the show has been showing a more serious side of Shawn lately, what with his mom coming back and that whole thing with that girl he liked in high school. Veddy eeenterestink (bad accent).

That's about it. Things have been rather quiet at the MB, lately, so nothing much to report there. However, I am working four hours tomorrow before I leave on vacation Monday. Perhaps I'll go out with a bang.

Or maybe everything will go perfectly and I won't have anything to blog - or stress - about.

We shall see.