(no subject)

How strange. Livejournal has suddenly decided that it wants to be in French, too. Clearly the disease Ujournal had is catching; I guess it's a virus.

Anyway, I'm going to be completely daft and type up this journal entry now rather than later. This is daft because I have to wake up nice and early tomorrow in order to help Sandrine with her paper again. Yippidy-doo-dah. (Oh, and the stupid printer is fucked up, so I had to take ages longer doing something tonight than I should've. So not fair.)

( Museum of Wine )

It was only 1 in the afternoon, and I wasn't going to go to the Louvre until at least 3, because tickets were more expensive prior to that. ( So I went to the Eiffel Tower )

I left the Tower and headed to a métro station so that I could go to the Louvre. On the way, I stopped at a phone box and talked to my parents for a while; my mom told me the names of various chocolatiers she thought I should visit. One's near the AF, it turns out, so I may well do that at some point. (After all, who'd pass up a visit to a chocolate store?) The conversation took long enough that it was already 4:30 or so by the time I actually made it to the Louvre.

( My *third* Louvre visit )

I managed to get out of the museum by about 8:45 or 9 and went looking for dinner. I ended up at a Chinese restaurant just off the Boulevard Saint-Germain; I couldn't be bothered to look for something French, I was too hungry and tired. (Annoyingly, I later saw a crêpe stand a couple of blocks away. I'm sure it hasn't been there before at this time of night.) But before I actually went into the restaurant, I very randomly encountered a girl from UC Women's Chorale with her father and her friend. (I knew her to be in UCCE 'cause she was wearing her Chorale shirt.) She was on that wonderful, windy, sopping wet Christmas caroling trip to SF and had apparently talked to me and Ari a bit. She looked vaguely familiar, but apparently she remembered me far better. And she told me her name again tonight and I've already forgotten it, 'cause I'm terrible with names like that. Gah. Her father's name was Doyle, though, I remember that much! (Hmm, wonder why I'd remember that name...)

So anyway, I had dinner, and then decided to splurge further because it might be my last time in that specific area, so I had the hot chocolate from Les Deux Magots. Which was nice, and certainly better than your run-of-the-mill hot chocolate, but no better than something I could make myself if I used melted chocolate and cream rather than nonfat milk and powdered chocolate. :) One of the chocolatiers my mother is urging me towards reputedly has the best hot chocolate around, so a comparison test is hereby to be initiated.

Having said which, I shall take myself off to bed, 'cause I'm really quite stupidly tired, and am now only going to get about five or six hours of sleep.

Edited: added hyperlinks

Bloody flakes

So Sandrine sends me a message yesterday afternoon saying "I'd rather meet Thursday afternoon/evening than Thursday morning, is that OK?" Then she sends another saying "Please confirm that I can come in the evening." I don't get either of these messages until about 10:30, because I didn't get back home until then. So I send her a message saying "No, sorry, can't do the evening, you'll have to come in the morning, and you won't get this message in time anyway."

She doesn't show up. I finish correcting pretty much everything she's sent me as an attachment, and go back to the computer room. Lo and behold, an e-mail is awaiting me, saying "Oh, I didn't get your message until this morning, I'm really sorry."

Now, is it just me, or wouldn't you assume that you should show up at the originally confirmed time if you've not gotten a response to your e-mail? This means I didn't have to get only five hours of sleep, because she wasn't coming anyway. I want a nap!!! But now I have to wait for her to show up at noon. Maybe I'll go sleep out on the couches in the lobby, but I won't be able to actually fall asleep there.

*grouse*

(no subject)

This is the first time that a plan has simply had to be cancelled outright. That would be visiting the Musée d'Orsay, and it was because of the new strike. I got there and there were signs up saying "The late opening is cancelled on account of the strike".... On the other hand, this may be a good thing, because it will enable me to get a sensibly early night. And I am severely lacking in sleep, at the moment. I'll have to go back to the museum at some point, though, 'cause I didn't manage to see the Impressionists! If worse comes to worst, I can almost certainly convince my dad to go with me when we're back in Paris for a few days in July. He'd do anything to go look at Impressionist paintings. But I'd rather do other things for those few days, like explore bits of Paris I haven't bothered to go to 'cause they're so incredibly expensive. :)

I might point out, incidentally, that the only sign I've seen of the current strike (which started today) is various signs around the place saying "There's a strike." The trains have been running fine. Well, except for the one I was on this morning that stopped randomly at Montparnasse-Bienvenüe and just sat there for an age, but someone said that was something to do with electricity. Or at least that's what I understood them to say. ;) I really have no idea. Of course now that I've said all this, the trains won't run at all tomorrow.

Saturday is the Fête de la Musique, which should be loads of fun. And the strike has to end by then (or be temporarily suspended) because there are signs up everywhere saying how there will be trains running all night long (rather than stopping at 1-something AM) for the Festival.