Virtually Home

Grace decided to come visit me on her spring break. And so she arrived, after having missed her international connection in Atlanta due to weather and about five hours late, for a pretty calm evening. We walked around the city a little. We ate delicious crêpes (galettes, really) at a place very near my house. We drank cider. And then we slept until she no longer felt tired. Her resiliency to jetlag, on a first time abroad, was to be commended. That afternoon, we had a lunch of thoroughly French cheeses (some of which were growing Penicillium) and bread, and Vianney met us, complete with rollerblades, at my place. He brought a milk bottle full of canelé dough, which was delicious and which inspired us to get some canelés while we were in Bordeaux. We climbed the 231 stairs of the Tour de Pey-Berland, which is associated with the cathedral right next to my apartment. The view was spectacular, though there was some considerable haze obscuring the horizon line. We walked to Place des Q...

I tried to go to bed relatively early last night -- and by that I mean around 2 a.m. Instead, I was awake until sometime after 5 a.m., and woke up when my alarm went off at 10 in a haze of dream-confusion and grainy-eyed pessimism. I got online and bought a plane ticket from London to Geneva to meet up with Rachel on Christmas Eve. The next plan was to head over to the SNCF office and get a ticket from Bordeaux to London to visit Tom, since their website has been steadfastedly refusing to show me train schedules for days now. But after a comically cold shower, while on the point of pouring cereal into a bowl, I was surprised by a phone call from our landlady regarding the washing machine problem. Yes, the washing machine problem is ongoing. Yes, this is three months. And of course, since I can't stand letting cereal sit in milk for any length of time longer than strictly necessary, I halted my breakfast preparations. As it turns out, Auchan mailed the estimate to my address in ...

This is going to be a long and rambling post. Most of it is going to be specific information about the two concerts I saw this week. Don't say I didn't warn you. Last weekend was a rather nocturnal one for me. Sunday night found me trying desperately to sleep "early" and utterly failing until 7:30, which made going to class at 1 pretty painful (and believe me, I know how sad that is). Monday night I didn't manage to sleep until 2 a.m., and woke up on account of a too-early alarm at 4:30 before getting up at 5:30 to start my epic London adventure. It was a really foggy morning. You probably can't tell very well from this photo, but even in the train station there was fog about the rafters. I would have appreciated it a lot more had I not been so exhausted. The train ride to Paris passed in a haze. I arrived at Paris Montparnasse and had to cross the city on the number 4 metro line to change trains (not to mention going through all of the metal detecting...

So about an hour ago I was panicking that I hadn't yet received my tickets to the Monsters of Folk show on Tuesday in London. So I called their office, told someone my problem -- he got a superviser to change my tickets to will call (apparently they don't mail things to France, and didn't bother telling me that when I ordered?), sent me a confirmation email -- and the problem was solved in under five minutes. Why, oh WHY can my washing machine problem not disappear in the same way? Tomorrow I will call them...when I have gathered my willpower...and put more money on my phone. Somehow I doubt my 30 seconds of credit is enough to resolve this problem.