Where does the time go?

Reasons I haven't posted (being the quintessential self-indulgent blogpost)...

• spending most of my time on the couch vegging with Hulu or Netflix instant watching
• spending the rest of my time grading and fighting with Paris expense stuff
• hot
• spending a day's worth of time going to Charlotte to IKEA
• spending a little time putting new IKEA dressers together
• laptop that went to Paris is sick and refuses to go online at all, which dissolves the possibility of watching Hulu or Netflix instant watch on one pooter WHILE blogging/emailing on the other, as is my wont :(
• spending a fair amount of time trying to figure out what is wrong with the sick laptop
• doing lesson plans, grading leftover Paris stuff, writing tests (why do I always do new ones instead of just using the old stuff - especially at times like this when it would really be quite justifiable to save myself some effort?! gah! too late now - I not only revised my syllabi, I did it so that there is a different number of tests so at the very least I have to re-edit them to use any of the old exercises) - gah! as usual my perfectionist/overachiever side always tackles stuff first, just long enough and far enough to leave a big mess for the lazy/procrastinator side (and yet probably the more healthy of my psyches) to have to take care of
  
• spending a truly scary amount of time cleaning random things that turn up mysteriously completely icky, cruddy or otherwise soiled so much that task/interest at hand must be dropped right then to go clean
• spending a lot of time trying to figure out what outfits I can still fit into since I haven't been spending any time yet exercising to get rid of my Paris gut
• spending a little time mystified by the fact that I actually LOST 3 pounds in Paris and my butt is slightly smaller and more rounded (yay 4th floor apartment with no lift as well as running around Lutèce doing errands like a poule with my tête cut off) yet my stomach gained considerable surface area and I have to leave certain waistbands unsnapped in order to wear them (even on garments whose seat is now quite loose!) - honestly this is quite befuddling!
• spending huge amounts of time petting and hugging (to their displeasure but what of that?!) and playing with Sam & Lucy, who seem to me to be about 4 million times more beautiful and fun than they were before I left - I guess it speaks to how incredibly busy I was in Paris that I wasn't pining away for them - here in SC I couldn't stand their not being around, honestly
• spending a lot of time making and eating popcorn
• spending a lot of time being really distracted and having to do things over or check things to see if I did them yet or staring into space to figure out what to do next or having to scramble to get stuff done due to too much staring into space
• yesterday spending a lot of time scouring the popcorn pot since I got distracted and went outside to shake rugs while an entire batch of popcorn popped and subsequently burned to a crisp
  

Guess that covers it. As soon as I am all pooter-ready again I have loads of pix on the sick computer (which I'm too lazy to copy onto a usb to upload from the other computer of course - or, on days where I'm not lazy, too distracted) that I can put here and on FB, so you've got that to look forward to. :)

Coming clean, le 15.vii.09: yes I changed "3rd" to "4th" above, after the fact - I forgot I was thinking in French, where 3rd floor really means 3rd story not counting the ground floor :)

wish it were 10 hours from now

What I got done last night:

• cleaned out gmail (from 213 down to 12)
• cleaned up the kitchen
• organized Paris gdocs files and school email files with info and ideas for 2010
  
• sorted thru France gifts for people
• ran virus software thing on the slightly newer laptop
• figured out the slightly newer laptop is just plain sick and virus thing didn't help at all
• listened to "Un Dimanche à la campagne" about 5 times
• dug out all my Paris receipts
• changed the cat litter
• two letters
  
• sat on the floor petting Sam & Lucy for about an hour
• journaling
  
• figured out what to wear today (this took a really long time since I'm feeling fat - even tho numbers-wise I weigh 3 lbs less than before France, but all the walking over there made my legs and butt get smaller but let my gut get much bigger)

What I didn't get done:

• 202 test written for today
• Paris budget report done for today
• sleep

I actually had acquired a pretty dependable work ethic by the time I left Aub*rn. No idea where it went. If it doesn't come back I'm either going to waste away, have a coronary, or need to switch to a non-homework job (she said, for the millionth time).

Some Entertainment

La Pucelle Armée

La Pucelle is the French term of endearment for Joan of Arc, or Jeanne d'Arc, je veux dire. Jeanne came through Tours in 1429 on her way to Orléans to pick up new armor. She picked it up here in this house:







Voilà. Nothing earth-shattering today but quite cool, no? If anyone wants me to show them around Orléans and Rouen, two other significant Jeanne d'Arc locales, just let me know the salary and grab me in time to put in my notice for fall. Kidding! Unless you think it's at all workable...? We'd have to take the cats of course...

She's baaaaaack... a.k.a. Mitrailleuse de la rentrée

Here's my gauntlet o' re-entry remarks...

• house kind of scarily icky upon arrival midnight Sunday but only in spots; I nonetheless stayed up til 4am cleaning bathroom, kitchen (esp. fridge, which looked as if someone had been inside it preparing fried chicken and spaghetti numerous times), floor, and pretty much all horizontal surfaces, after saying a long teary hello to the kits, that is - they seemed somehow comforted by my doing crazy late-night cleaning; I think they took it as proof that things were back to normal at the old homestead :)
  
• unpacked as of yesterday altho not put away exactly... most stuff is strewn on my bed and I go dig when I need something - thank goodness for the 3-day weekend coming up
• my feet when I finally got horizontal in the wee hours Monday were frighteningly swollen - I've never seen feet like that since after one of Mom's surgeries - I elevated them all day Monday and most of yesterday and drank lots of water and tried to avoid salt - as of yesterday midday they were almost back to normal and last night all was well - I have ankles again!
• can't figure out how to re-plug all the TV/vid stuff in - grrrr.
  
• my laptop went a bit bonkers the last two days in Paris and wouldn't go online - still won't here altho the other one is fine (except it's the slow one) - guess I'll be spending money on some fricking helpline tonight... :( once again, is it too much to ask for some nice my-age-kinda French guy who is cultured and doesn't smoke and has a little country house somewhere in Touraine and knows computers to have fallen head over heels for me in the last six weeks?!?! or better yet, not to have fallen head over heels for me even but simply to have picked me out as an impromptu charity project?!?!
  
• Chanel Coco Mademoiselle :)
• lots of pix of course and numerous France remarks leftover in a couple of blogpost drafts for you - guess that will be good in case I start posting less again like last year here in Clems*n - I can always throw a dose of France your way (and enjoy it myself à la fois)
• today is claw-clipping day as well as Frontline day - the kits are going to be sooooo happy with me in a few hours :)
• the good thing about going to the grocery in the U.S. after returning from France: you don't buy hardly anything because nothing looks good
• the good thing about having the munchies after returning from France: you make numerous trips to the kitchen and only eat something little on the 6th or so trip because all the stuff you're really craving is on the other side of the pond...
• the good thing about having a hankering to eat out after returning from France: you end up defaulting to something simple at home because once again you were craving the salade niçoise from Café Patios, or the faux filet du Café de la Grande Armée, or just a nice poulet-crudités sandwich from the little sandwich stand dans la rue St. Jacques...
• yeah, next time when I say I'm taking a duffle bag on the side to fill up on my way home from France, someone remind me that that is a colossally bad idea and I should stick to my old one-suitcase rule... probably partly to blame for the ankle issue
• nice last day of visits with friends: Chris, Samia & Bill, and Christina... I stayed for another glass of wine with the latter instead of doing any more shopping, then headed home to start sorting stuff
• indescribably happy that as I was trying to figure out how to get 15 kg of books (in three boxes) to the post office Saturday morning I remembered I had a roller suitcase!
  
• indescribably happy also that at the post office Saturday morning, working with the youngster who had no idea how to do overseas shipping but wouldn't admit it, there was a (quite pleasant-looking, to boot) middle-aged guy who did.
• not happy at all about the new "system" at French post offices where there are no longer windows or a counter but just a couple of people meandering around helping you at freestanding computers - no one knows where to line up, there is no room for filling out your forms, etc. - gahhh! whose idea was that?! the P.O. used to be one of my favorite places in France - so quintessentially French, and arguably the most efficient place to have to do business (at least in my experience) but now it is awful - plus they no longer sell boxes there except for express mail, dangit.
• am very happy however that the youngster at Gibert Jeune told me about BHV (le Bazar de l'Hôtel de Ville) which did have boxes, of a sort anyway, and which is a truly wondrous store - as Christina put it - it's the closest thing they have now to Samaritaine, which is long gone, sadly - probably a good thing I didn't find out about BHV until my next-to-next-to-last day; next year anytime the students can't find me I'll probably be at BHV.
• crazy amount of work to do, as usual - some new, some leftover - remember when I used to say that certain people in Tucson were addicted to stress even tho they seemed always to be unhappy about their overwhelming workload, etc.??? please tell me I'm not one of those people... lots of choices in the last year tho have kept me firmly in the totally stressed completely overwhelmed club... I hope it really is situational and that in another year or so I will be breathing easier and seeing various profits (not just monetary) of all this - granted Paris time was already a big profit, work notwithstanding :)
  
• off home - s'posed to stay and work in the office all day to force myself to actually work - but the one person who was to stop by did so this morning plus I just realized I think I left the AC on higher than I meant to (turned it up to cool off the house this morning and meant to turn it back down)... there's a chance I already turned it back down, but I also just don't want to stay here... of course.
• salut.
  

6/09 thanks

1^er.vi.09 - petit beurre

2.vi.09 - revived internet

3.vi.09 - Orangina & CVK & the Opéra Garnier

4.vi.09 - le bus

5.vi.09 - un monsieur super gentil à la gare Montparnasse

6.vi.09 - super journée et soirée à Tours; super gentil monsieur à la FNAC, super après-m avec Mme B, super hôtel, super dîner

7.vi.09 - super petit déj, super brocante, super monsieur vendant de la brocante - oh là là

8.vi.09 - good reflexes

9.vi.09 - shiny bread in Tours

10.vi.09 - tremendous students

11.vi.09 - Ionesco

12.vi.09 - Sempé

13.vi.09 - la grotte de Marie-Antoinette, et CVK

14.vi.09 - cool flea markets

15.vi.09 - advil

16.vi.09 - the fact that colds always eventually start to move on

17.vi.09 - sun

18.vi.09 - attitude adjustment

19.vi.09 - soleil pour notre balade à Caen, de supers repas, et surtout de supers amis

20.vi.09 - la belle campagne normande et la conversation à table comme font seulement les français

21.vi.09 - déjeuner dans le jardin et les vieilles maisons de ferme

22.vi.09 - Carmen à l'Opéra Comique de Paris

23.vi.09 - Laurent Fignon

24.vi.09 - fun coffee with Jim & improved mood thanks to students & pharmaceuticals

25.vi.09 - concassé de tomates à la mousse au parmesan

26.vi.09 - Gibert Joseph

27.vi.09 - nice visits with friends, esp. nice relaxing time with CVK

28.vi.09 - not being one of the obnoxious Americans at CDG and seeing the kits again, mmmmmmmm

29.vi.09 - sleep & fluids

30.vi.09 - cleaning & restocking & more vegging

Maisons en colombage à Tours...

Comme c'est beau.

Allons à Tours ensemble!

A la gare de Tours...


We used to have to always change trains at a little burg called St. Pierre des Corps but one of the many things that have changed in France in my 10 years' absence is the TGV actually comes in to the main station now. Crazy!


La rue Nationale - it always looks smaller to me than it did in college. Je ne sais pas pourquoi.


La rue Colbert - it has become more restaurant- and bar-filled and less store-filled. It's now a pretty active night fun zone for townies. Tourists and students still go to the Place Plumereau, which you'll see bits of further down...


Fun building in la rue Colbert...


Some cyclotouristes - kinda wished I were with them. :)


My favorite crêperie - still yummy. I went there Saturday night during my stay and absolutely pigged out. Also drank a whole demi-pichet of cidre. Next door there is still a bar called "l'Hédoniste" which I should have got a shot of, if only to illustrate what my whole weekend was about - pleasing MOI :) altho I know Mme Baudry had fun, too, with all our time together.


Part of the Musée de Beaux Arts, the former archbishops' palace.


Le château de Tours - never open when I lived there before. Something to visit next time.


Le pont St. Symphorien, or le Pont de Fil (the Wire Bridge) as the locals dub it - strictly for non-motorized transport. Toulouse and I crossed it together many times.


Encore...


Encore...


La belle Loire, seen from the wire bridge... looking eastward here.


Southwest-ish... this is only half the river. On this side it's divided in half by the Ile Aucard. The large building on the far left is the city library. The next two buildings farther along are university buildings. Tours is home to l'université François Rabelais.


The other half of the westward view of the Loire and the rest of the Pont de Pierre (this bridge has never had any other name that I know of) "the Stone Bridge."


Cleanest phone booth I've seen since getting to France. There are lots more around still than in the States but most seem to have defaulted to urinals or homeless shelters, at least in the big city.


Lebanon cedar tree planted by Napoléon in Tours in 1804. It's gigantic. Check out the posts supporting the lower branches. The trunk is over 7 meters around.


Stable of the old archbishops' digs now houses a favorite stop for local kids...


Fritz, who came to town with Barnum & Bailey in -I think- 1902, broke loose and ran raging through town. He was shot and someone decided to have him stuffed and put on display. He's been in his stall in the stable here ever since.


Le jardin du musée, one of my faves - so simple and clean and peaceful...


...n'est-ce pas?


Different garden now. This was one of our favorite spots to eat lunch and do homework in 1982.


It's the Parc François Sicard, but we called it the Jardin Christophe Colombe, because of this statue. Who cares that it took us several weeks to realize we had the wrong Colombe?! It wasn't for Christopher Columbus but for a Tourangeau sculptor who happened to share his name. We kept calling it Chris Columbus Park anyway just for giggles. No idea why they don't have a statue of François Sicard (another Tourangeau sculptor) instead of Monsieur Colombe.


Much less why they would then add to the confusion by putting a memorial to Balzac there as well. Thank goodness there are other memorials to Balzac (another artsy Tourangeau) in town because if I were him I'd think this one was kind of anticlimactic. Fun idea but having photocopies of his handwriting on the pillar basically invites graffiti, so now his handwriting and elegant words have some somewhat less elegant company scrawled around and within.


I always love the simplest fountains the best. This water runs through the entire garden actually, another reason we loved it so much.


Ronnie, Kim & I used to stop in this tea room occasionally way back when.


Irish pub I frequented a bit last time I lived in Tours.


Some fun medieval architecture - most of the older architecture in Tours (you'll see in another post or so) is timber frame style (think Elizabethan), this is one of the less common examples.

Fun street nearing the Place Plumereau - tune in later and I'll have more Touraine eye candy for you...

hmmm

Might be further slight delays to your getting more pix - Versailles Saturday blew any blogging I would normally have had energy for that evening... but in a good way :) Yesterday and today slight sore throat and low-grade fever that goes away with a single Advil but comes back when it wears off. I have loads of work to do the next couple days. Pretty much did no work all last week aside from wee daily troubleshooting and our excursions, etc. Have to catch up on grading and on updating the budget today and tomorrow. Weds and Thurs I plan to start scoping out a hotel for next year. There's no way I'm putting the students out in BFE again, and it's silly to pay Novotel prices when there are other perfectly wonderful places to stay. First choice is the MIJE. Anyway general poopedness but pretty content despite it, notwithstanding the fact that I have less than two weeks left. Don't think about it! Plus I do miss the kits, so whenever I'm sad not to be in France I'll go pet Sam or Lucy and see if they have any ideas about how the three of us could move here.

Versailles is still long from my favorite thing in France. I loved the gardens as usual and Christina showed us a bunch of the Marie Antoinette stuff that I had never had a chance to see before - her little theater was charming. My favorite part of the whole day, tho, might have been having a beer with Christina after we finished.

Flea market and Pompidou yesterday. The antique fairies were with me again - great gifties for some more people. Tremendous Calder exhibit right now at the Pompidou. I looked at a few other things and went thru the Kandinsky exhibit, too, but was getting tired by then and my Advil was wearing off again so I enjoyed it less than the Calder. Then home to my favorite sandwich shop and then fries from my falafel guy and collapsed in the flat.

Rain today, pretty steady. I don't really mind it except for logistics for classes sometimes. We're too big a group usually to be able to just go to a café together, especially when half the people (or more) don't order anything and/or bring in outside food and drink which mortifies me but for some reason my reminders that that is rude have gone unnoticed. So anyway we often default to my house, which is not always convenient depending on what state I left the flat in that morning. Ahem. The rain is supposed to continue all week, but at least we had good weather for Versailles and much of this week's outings are indoor things.

Journey tomorrow night, walking tour in the Marais Weds., touring the Opéra Garnier with Christina Thursday, then Ionesco at Théâtre de La Huchette that night. Off to Caen Friday to see Lydie & Pierre, and Véro & family. Would almost rather stay put here, but at least I have that last Saturday in town, altho I'll probably be running errands and madly finishing packing... along with nervousness about the kids getting off OK on their various voyages.

Rambly but at least it's in English!
salut!

l'Opéra Garnier...

J'ai oublié de vous mettre le photos... Je m'excuse!

maturity

ha! I guess I have more than I did at 26 but the amount I have at 46 is not the amount I thought I would possess by now. I'll give you another update at 66 maybe. Meanwhile might as well give you some more shoe shopping therapy peeks...



I almost never buy anything in brown but who could resist these? The other choice was off-white. Right. Out.

Musée Rodin today. Yum. And the weather seems to have cleared which not only means we will be able to picnic in the gardens there but also that we won't have to default to class in my apt. again today, which drives me crazy. So yay.

And of course whatever arrives, we're in Paris... so... um... yeah... big daily yay. Dreamt last night that Sam & Lucy were here. That would be an even bigger yay altho the good thing about their being home is when I get back there will be one big aid to fighting re-entry culture shock and depression.

more from la Belle Touraine... l'église St. Julien

I don't know why churches called St. Julien are always my favorites... :)

well since I was speaking English most of the evening

it's a good time to post. Tomorrow I'll strive for a non-English day...

Wine and dinner and more wine with a bunch of students this evening (shhhhhh, don't tell Clems*n :) Really great evening. We went to the Crypte Archéologique du Parvis de Notre-Dame this afternoon, then I met with the 210's, then we met some others for dinner. Wine during 210 class. Have to say teaching in Paris has definite advantages. Of course I could meet for class in Clems*n at a bar or something but it's much more blatant that way than in a café here.

My throat is getting a little sore. I hope it's because of the weird tickle I got at the museum and had to keep clearing my throat and coughing like crazy for about 15 minutes. But I fear my glands are a little swollen, as well. Hope it's not all the sleep deprivation from the first two weeks catching up with me in the form of a grosse rhume!... hmph.

Tomorrow is the Louvre, again :) and Thursday is the Musée Rodin, which is one of my faves. Of course the Louvre is a nice little museum as well. nyernt nyernt. Friday we're having apéro at my house and Saturday we go to Versailles. The Versailles people are so incredibly nice - I'm not sure why - it's not that the other museum staffs are mean or anything but the Versailles people have all been incredibly warm and personable on the phone. Sunday is slightly up in the air still - might give people a choice between a few things; some of us want to go to the Marché aux Puces tho in the morning, too, before our official group outing. Might find some more fun gifties for people...

Off to the copy shop to fax some stuff and print a copy of my Versailles reservation to have with me Saturday. Promise Tours pix soon... possibly sans commentaire so I can stick to my English moratorium, or I'll wait til the next English day...