Mitraillette #1067, or: lots of tidbits that mostly point to the current funk

It's that time again - hodgepodge of tidbits to catch you up since I've been exceedingly lame busy as usual.

• So Adrienne had mentioned googling herself today on FB and it sparked me to google myself since I hadn't in a while. Top thing is from stupid Rate My Professor (which I never thought was that stupid til I came to Clems*n since at Auburn it was a nice mix of positive and negative) and even tho I didn't go onto the site, the stupid Google blurb quoted enough to send me into a teaching ego nosedive, or at the very least helped my utter fed-up-ness with my job to resurface. 
• So I've got THAT going for me.
• No work done tonight. Double yay.
• Supposed to go to the flea market tomorrow; I have no gifts for anyone yet and it is starting to look like I will only be able to afford stuff for a small handful of people. Hopefully some fun trinkets will shout out to me at the marché.
• So missing the kits tonight. Two weeks and two days. Ridiculous to be anything but ecstatic here but I forget every year how hard it is going to be without any social life here and mostly broke. Two conditions which do not exactly enhance five weeks' time in Paris.
• Major stupidass program bank account problem this week which really made the last few days extra fun.
• Nice rains lately (as in mostly avoiding the times I was out and about :) France really needs it so even if it poured on me I honestly wouldn't mind that much (especially as most of our outdoor promenade excursions are overwith).
• Good lunch with Christina today; same place as last year, a little resto called Dédé la Frite. Maybe we should make it a tradition. Very yummy altho I have apparently completely forgotten how to eat a non-deboned fish. 
• That was pretty much it for the restaurant budget; I started with enough for about 1.5 smallish restaurant dinners per week, used up too many of them at the beginning while Natalie was here, and it looks like the last two weeks I'll be reining back on café stops. Probably no meals at all there and definitely just coffee au Lutèce a few times a week instead of daily (or more) like I'd really like. (Le Lutèce has the cheapest coffee I've found so far: 2€10... $1.41 to a euro today so you do the math - too depressing for me.)
• I think I've lost a little weight. Weird since I usually either gain or stay the same here. I've been walking considerably more than normal even tho we have our metro cards; it helps too that virtually every place I would need to go I have to change metro lines at Chatelet, which I hate, so I almost always talk myself into walking rather than dealing with that.
• Today tho I took the bus about 3 times, which is always kind of fun. Still, will not make it too much of a habit.
• Thinking of the next couple weeks makes me tired, but thinking of teaching again right away when I get back makes me tired, too.
• I just need to hold on another two years I think to be in a place financially where if I'm still no more content with the job and Clems*n I'll be able to afford moving and finding something else to do with my life... assuming the economy is a little better by then so there are jobs...
• What an uplifting post! My mood is mostly better than last year but still not exactly 24/7 rosy-ness, and I usually think if I don't have some positive stuff to remark on I just shouldn't even write.
• On the bright side I am journaling WAY more again, which feels really good and is probably at least partly due to not blogging so much (it feels like there's a lot more to it than that tho which bodes well for my continuing - also a fair amount more postcards outgoing and lots more letterwriting the last few weeks before my flight over, so hopefully once I'm back there and not having to worry about paying 5€/pound for apples and get into kind of a routine for Summer II maybe whatever little contentment path I was on in the spring will reveal itself again.

Salut.

mitraillette au whisky

Haven't done the machine gun post for a while. Haven't done any posts for a while but oh well.

• It's really "mitrailleuse" but I like it better "mitraillette."
• And in English it's really "whiskey" but in French they omit the "e" for some reason. Wacky French - never know what they're going to do to English words when they adopt them.
• Sammers is next to me in the extra fake sheepskin catbed that I bought when Nina was with us but which no one else would sleep in until it had been washed THREE times.
• The two older catbed thingies are still on my bed and one of them is being spurned lately but I don't know why; I'll try washing them altho usually S&L don't really care when they're dirty as long as they're dirty with their scent and not someone else's.
• One week til spring break and I REALLY want to bring Griz in; at the least I'd like to get him to the vet and doctored up and hopefully neutered and released when he's well enough. But truly I'd like to keep him - just not sure there's enough time to socialize him sufficiently before I leave for France and feel safe leaving him with catsitter, etc. Rather, not safe for him really but safe for the catsitter and for S&L. Chances are he will simply be too wild and will have to go back outside anyway. He is really really looking the worse for wear these days tho. Maybe neutering him will at least keep him out of so many fights if he has to go back out.
• Determined to get TC to the Gr**nville Humane Society b/c I still feel she could be resocialized without too terribly much effort and she's such a cutie; she's been letting me pet her a bit more often but still usually just gets super close but hates actually being touched. She will often just meow at the door to get some attention even when the food bowls are stocked. Then when you open the door it's as if it's all she can do to keep herself from rubbing on you - she does everything but.
• Slightly toasted. I haven't been drinking nearly as much as the last couple of years. That makes me sound like an alkie but what I mean is I've generally been drinking 3-8 glasses of wine a week the last couple years until this winter. Just kind of fizzled out for some reason. But tonight I really wanted something and I have no red wine right now, so I opted for Dewar's... purchased last year during yet another attempt to get myself to like scotch and/or whiskey. The fact that I've had the bottle of Dewar's for about 9 months and it's only 1/3 down should tell you how successful I'm being with the current tack. Usually half the glass or more gets tossed actually (and truth be told I just really like how it looks in my fun Crate & Barrel highballs) altho this evening I ate a little chocolate with it and it was pretty good, altho not as good as with red wine.
• Really I wanted margaritas but I didn't feel like making them, plus I can't make a marg with less than 3 shots of tequila and I really was only hankering for a shot or so of something.
• For some reason I am watching season after season of Weeds on Netflix lately. I don't like it any better than way back when when I watched the first two seasons with Andy. That is I really liked the first season but 2 and 3 I still find pretty mediocre and I think they kind of jump the shark every couple of episodes - even tho it's the early seasons. 
• Fun workshop day today with the hiking club - we talked about water filtration and camp food and snakes, etc. I did kind of a mediocre presentation on essential daypack ingredients, but we really had almost no beginners anyway so it wasn't super necessary. We got to make alcohol stoves with Bill out of pop cans and we made cooking cozies with Marianna (plastic/alum insulation stuff made into an envelope). You can have all your dehyd. meals mixed up in freezer ziplocs, then you boil water and pour it into the freezer bag and put it in your cozy so it is insulated and continues to cook and you can reheat more water for the next thing or use the rest of your water for something else. Great day anyway, for seeing everyone and yacking plus great weather and Oc*nee State Park is always so restful for some reason.
• Four tons of work of course for France altho at least this time I (a) have a better idea of how to go about everything and (b) actually feel capable, as opposed to the last two springs, respectively.
• Otherwise school pretty crappy - more and more discontent actually with my job. Partly it's the students and partly it's me and partly it's because I'm starting to see that the student attitude is never going to improve, which makes my outlook descend accordingly... vicious circle, yadda yadda yadda.
• There is one really cool thing tho - I weigh 7 lbs less than I did 3 weeks ago. Been gyming more or less regularly since August but pretty much completely incapable of controlling calorie intake. Understatement of the century - less a case of not being able to control intake and more flat out eating as much as I possibly could week in, week out, up to 3 half gallons of ice cream a week, a gazillion baked potatoes with butter and sour cream, lots and lots of egg sandwiches with tons of mayo, lots of fast food esp. french fries, you get the picture. Pretty much anything super rich and yummy with loads of dairy or other fat. All these months I have been thinking that it was weird I hadn't lost at least a little weight, despite the intake, but now I see that the exercise was definitely keeping me from gaining more at least, based on how quickly the downtrend took hold when I finally started controlling calories. So yay.

Bai.

elevator moratorium

This year I have an elevator but I've successfully eschewed it no matter how tired every day and no matter how many times I stop back at home for stuff or to drop things off.

NB: I'm on the 6th floor (US) of my building (5th FR).

yay.

I even took the stairs the two times students have needed to stop over with me real quick - one time I BEAT them to the apt. even tho they took the elevator (and got in the same time I started up the stairs); the other time I got up to my floor just as they were exiting the elevator. Yes, my elevator is fairly old and slow, but still... not too shabby I think.

If I don't get in shape this summer it won't be my fault!