Stills of Flat (formerly titled: "Video of Flat")

First the warning... I'll be blogging regularly in the French blog Va te faire bloguer (linked in sidebar of HOV as well if you lose it and are interested). But I will be blogging less and less often here b/c I want to really be controlly about my English use during this year's program. I think I may take it down to certain times of day only and for extensive English use on the internet I'm going to limit that to one day a week. So what I might do here is either just post pics with French titles and then I might go back periodically and add more details, or I might go crazy on the weekend and plan a few English posts in advance, to actually post during the week little by little... We'll see. So color yourselves forewarned altho most of you can deal with it pretty well I think, at least my standard passel o' readers :)

As a prize in advance for putting up with the upcoming few and far between bits of English, I tried to post a really bad video (technically speaking) but nice views of my apt anyway. Mostly it was to play with uploading from the Flip camera (the students don't know it yet but they will be videoing their walking tours [they have to do one walking tour each week - something they found online or in a guidebook or whatever, plus another with Christina and me, then towards the end they have to create their own - something with a personal connection to them and a very clear context: historic, thematic, whatever] as well as interviewing on video their Sorbonne profs and host family members or other Frenchies they may know - questions re culture - part of the culture component of the course "History and Culture of Paris" yadda yadda yadda).

By the way I have some weird allergy thing going on but just way high up inside one nostril, not both. If I were home I'd think I had a cat hair up there - maybe I got one from the street somewhere. Didn't see any kits altho lots of fun little store dogs were in evidence, as well as a bunch just walking around with people and hanging out at the Café du Métro, where I had my second croque monsieur in as many days for lunch :) (with a salade verte this time at least).

ANYway...... feast your eyes and then I have GOT to go!!! You guuu-uyyyyys, I MEAN it!!!! (invoke 10-yr-old voice :) - or tee hee - just invoke my voice since it still sounds the same :) nyernt nyernt). Surprisingly productive morning - must not lose momentum and there's the whole JET LAG thang, ya know.

Lefthand window looking out from living room.


Right hand window and my desk in front obviously - this is the office corner of the livingroom.


TV etc. between the two windows, desk again to right.


Note right edge of desk, so you see we're really dealing with one room, 1/2 living room, 1/4 office, 1/4 bedroom :) Anyone who ever saw my Aub*rn apt. (the last one), or my casita in Tucson, knows that I actually kind of like smaller living spaces. (This will be a problem if I can ever afford to buy and try to aim for something too large, but somehow it makes me scatterbrained to have too big a space to contend with. My 2BR apt in C*ntral is just about the limit. I'll have to work on this.

Anyway my bed here is super comfy - nice and firm like I like and I guess the Susan Shui is cool b/c I didn't feel weird like I couldn't figure out what position to sleep in, etc., which is what it takes forever to do if a bed is situated weird in a room. Sometime I'll take a pic for you of the inside of the wardrobe - before I buy anything - I'm really proud of myself on this year's packing; some would say spartan, but 4 tops, 3 skirts and 3 capri pants seem like plenty to me (fully half of the items are super thin jersey or linen or gauzy so they packed down super tiny too!)


Turning to our right again, here is the LR half, in front of the lefthand window. The fireplace is too frigging cool for words, honestly. The black suitcase you see there can be regarded as scale (it belongs to one of the two students who came in yesterday too and went to travel in the south before we start our program next week) - that suitcase is pretty deep but its height is that standard one between the little carry-on roller bag and the one that is kind of the standard large one.

Wow that was totally incomprehensible.

Let's try: it comes up only to my mid-thigh and I'm 5'3" so... anyway it's not a huge suitcase and yet look how big it is next to the fireplace.

The weirdest thing about this whole spring/semester/year/couple of years (pick whichever you think most accurate) is that thing in my head that used to let me keep hold of the most buried, 400-digressions-ago, convo or writing point is in pretty much total meltdown.

But I digress.


On around, obviously. Here's the couch. As Tracy-chan pointed out earlier in the spring it is exceptionally uggo-scuggo with that leather thing on it. Come to find out it is attached - it's like a faux cover made of faux leather but which produces, unfortunately, an anything-but-faux ugliness. Ah well. It's fairly comfy except I have never liked leather or vinyl furniture much anyway so normally I'm sitting at the desk or on my bed.


Vooooiiiiiilà, now you see how the room comes full circle, so to speak. The thing that looks like a fun louvered room divider is actually a floor to ceiling radiator. Then the end of my bed. Straight back the middle is the mini-hallway towards the kitchen, bathroom and front door.


Entering the bathroom. Unusual to have the toilet in the BATHroom actually, traditionally. But lots of these little apt's in big buildings have things scrunched together in unorthodox ways.


Farther in.


My fun French-style shower. Love it. Did I tell you guys I installed a pomme douche (handheld shower thingy à l'européen) in the shower at home this spring? I also put one of those little valve things so you can turn off the water for a few minutes but not have to re-calibrate the stupid hot/cold water ratio (my tub water knob adjuster thing - mélangeur in French, so succinct!) is crazy hard to adjust right - one of those clear plastic ball kinds - whenever Sam & Lucy & I buy a house we are replacing that shit toute de suite if the house has it, make no mistake. Likewise in the kitchen I think there should be a law that kitchen faucet handles have to be the long lever kind where you can do them with your elbows - and one per temperature - OK I'm done now). ANYway the shower test this morning proved quite satisfactory, good water pressure, good temp on the water heater (Barmy Barbie, the landlady, had told me I could turn up the temp if desired but it seemed fine to me) and fun bright shower. Nice that they had installed a shower curtain at some point - that's the one thing I am not very good at - taking a TRUE French shower, i.e. sans shower curtain, without getting the entire room wet.


More bathroom.


Heading back out - another part of my tremendous packing: 3 pairs of squishy shoes! OK sure part of packing light is so I have lots of room to buy stuff to take home so it's a given I'll have at least twice as much clothes (and shoes probably too) on the trip back.


Turning to the right as you exit the bathroom here's the front door and coat rack, plus two step stools - one for use in the hallway there (the shelf you see at the very top has a twin facing it which is holding my suitcase :) The super tall step stool is for the kitchen shelves (see below :)


I have a washer! For some reason I never remembered seeing mention of it in the original ad and when it dawned on me I just decided to bite the bullet and go the laverie route if nec. But I was really happy to see this. The only weird thing is I asked Barmy Barbara if there was something upon which to hang wet clothes and she looked at me like I was from outer space. It was finally decided I would hang them on clothes hangers and hang all those from the shower curtain rod. I'm thinking of buying a drying rack tho at BHV or somewhere else cheap.


Way more prep room than last year, plus more stove burners and three of them are gas!! yay!! I have to find time to cook more than last year now since I get to do so on gas, which I haven't had since leaving Alabama. Yay! Fun lived-in cutting board, electric kettle and 3-way window (love those and they always remind me of those Ibis waitressing summers. I didn't get a picture but one of those crazy bleu-blanc-rouge Obama magnets is on the side of the microwave. (I'm all for Obama, actually, just think it's funny for another country to sell magnets of OUR prez).




Scene from the balcony - Notre-Dame contending with some fog this morning, just a tad.


Looking out the balcony to the left right (full disclosure -I'm editing this 8 hours later than when I originally posted - I was literally falling asleep while doing the captions earlier and will be amazed if this is the only thing that turned out wacky).


The right hand view again but closer up - I was hoping you could see the incredibly fun little cafe down there on the right, where it looks like a driveway; very fun little cafe in a shady impromptu square kind of thing. Other cafés and restos abound around this house tho; probably plenty just as charming in different ways.

I'm off for a quick café near last year's flat then a couple of errands over there. Probably will trek past St. Séverin then and head over to say hi to Notre-Dame, which I have yet to do this time (crazy! in the 5^e for 29 hours and no view of N-D yet except via the balcony).

***** later - um, yeah, never made it - conked out completely right after that - it took me about 12 tries to finish those last two sentences in fact because I kept nodding off and dream-typing... you can imagine how comprehensible that stuff was. :) then I'd wake a bit and try again, etc. etc. etc.