This is how much I am addicted to coffee tables...

I never knew that if I am sitting on a couch I absolutely HAVE to have something in front of me upon which to put all my crap!  That's a plastic drawer organizer thingy if you can't tell. I don't have nearly enough clothes to fill the two other dressers in the bedroom let alone that thing, luckily. It's actually doing a pretty fair job as coffee table stand-in.

This doesn't have anything to do with the coffee table, I just think my toilet paper rocks. Unfortunately it comes in a six pack of rolls of which three are this, and three are  FLOWERY :(  plus it cost: 2,77€  ($3.92 by today's rate). The rolls are downsized, like everything over here except the cathedrals :) , about 2/3 as big as our rolls (1/2 if you like those jumbo rolls the sell in the U.S.)

Then again I'm drinking a very respectable red wine from Ardèche which only cost 2,30€ but came in a normal-sized bottle so it all evens out :)

The apartment is not as charming as last year or the year before but it is quaint and has lots of fun quirky French aspects. I'll probably do a vid this weekend sometime.

des meubles! (furniture!)

Well! My after-the-fact per diem for Paris was considerably larger than I expected (the fact that there was one at all was a surprise, actually, but well - at least this time something I hadn't grasped during the spring worked to my advantage instead of resulting in extra work or stress for once) so most of it is going to bills but a bit of it went towards a huge antique deal Saturday.

I got a slightly decrepit but full-of-character oak table & chairs


and an oak chiffonnier with bad finish and a few chips.

The flash did an interesting spirograph effect on the mirror, no?

At first glance both look fine but they will need refinishing in a few years (well they need it now but this is a project that will require garage space). I love them of course, regardless. The chiffonnier is quite similar to one Grandma Booth had, and I've had my eye out for a table for a while altho I was going to hold off a few more years til I had a bigger kitchen or a dining room. But the nice couple at The Lamb Antiques are fixing to sell their property and move to a smaller space so they were in the mood to offer me a deal I could not refuse to induce me to take both. Tully has been holding my little Target kitchenette set in his rump (I thought that would be funny to say but really it sounds kind of gross, which is, in turn, funny...) since Saturday eve; we'll deliver it to Helping Hands today.

Certain members of the household who were a bit taken aback by having big dark different-smelling things moving into the house and the accompanying bustle of Murphy's Oil Soap-washing of same, are now re-acclimated and have their minds back on important issues like how anytime I happen to be in or near the kitchen it must be time to eat... Or at least worth a try.

Can't you see we're wasting away?!?!

Mitrailleuse #4711

• Week improved resoundingly, thank goodness. Meeting with dept. head where she saw my evals and showed me that actually there were only a couple of awful comments and everything else was quite strong; plus most of the awful comments were about how hard I grade which, conversely, is something the dept. likes to see gripes about (at least instead of bunches of people saying you're really easy). So sometimes if your perspective is torqued, someone else can lend you theirs, which is nice. :)
  
• New couch is fantastic. Buying Carrie's IKEA Klippan loveseat that she didn't want to lug back to Atlanta. My little foldout PierOne loveseat I bought from Elizabeth a few years ago was being held together by duct tape (thank goodness for the cover!); still usable but I was getting tired of how short it was for lying on (altho I persisted!) and the cushions were getting squishier and squishier. I'm donating it to the Language House - it's good enough with the cover for people to sit on at occasional parties and events still. I took a pic the other night to send to Elizabeth so I'll post it one of these days and you can have the full before and after effect.
  
• The IKEA piece doesn't really go with my furniture super well but I'm not too worried about it. And tho they call it a loveseat it is about 40% longer than my old one was; really more of a small couch. It has a black cover right now - big mistake in our house! I put my big red striped throw over the whole thing to help with cat hair and since the cover is all squares and rectangles I plan to use it as a pattern to make a more fun one after France. Had been aiming for another quilt project but I doubt I'll have time with teaching, plus since Tasha is staying on for Summer II it will be close quarters for having quilt stuff spread out everywhere.
  
• Getting a healthy handful of things done for Paris... bit by bit... still not where I wanted to be with planning by now of course (Mrs. Susan Perfectionism's calendar is rarely able to be adhered to consistently) but really fun that Kelly dropped in yesterday and when I listed the stuff I still didn't have set yet, goes: "Oh I didn't do any of that til I got to Paris!" So, while I still want to get that stuff done before leaving, it did make me feel better that if I don't get it all 100% done, the program will still be OK.
  
• Weird, but I'll take it. My biceps are still quite hard even tho I haven't done upper body weights since fall.
  
• Nescafé rocks.
  
• The students are soooooo excited - another reason to be thankful for Google. I set up a googlemap to show everyone where all their families are and of course since Wondrous Streetview is accessible there as well they have been having loads of fun looking at their neighborhoods, etc. Technology really is amazing, I have to say.
  
• Speaking of lodgings, a few people apparently missed the posting of my apt link, so here you can feast your eyes again on my miracle flat. Oh yeah.
  
• Equally miraculous is the fact that none of my students have yet tarred & feathered me for being so behind on grading. I've set a new career record on this this semester and in particular the last couple of weeks. So you know what my weekend looks like I guess. :)
  
• So fun reminiscing about bike touring to get ready for my French Club presentation yesterday. Fun scanning gobs of old pix (project to be continued after Paris) and ideas of perhaps getting an unofficial cycling trip organized for before or after the Paris program in 2010 or 2011... Will depend on money of course and on summer teaching schedules. As long as they can give me classes Summer II then I pretty much have to come back and teach to keep filling our coffers but one of these days maybe there won't be a class for me or maybe I'll be organized enough with Paris by then to manage a cycling trip prior to the program, after spring finals. Stranger things have happened... It's a good goal anyway and I bet a handful of students would be interested. Plus Toulouse is quite upset that he can't come this year with his new tires and all... I can't even look him in the eye when I go in the office these days.
  
• Shorts!!!
  
• Loads and loads of catpix to catch you up on. Might just start posting them willy nilly. My mood is obviously better but my freetime isn't so this recent blogpost surge will likely not be a lasting trend... the better to toss crazy cat shenanigan photos at you in the interim!
  
• Uh oh, just realized I have yet to check with Molly about whether I have to move all my office crap home for Summer I yet. So dread the answer... (Ordinarily a few of our desks have to be available for others' use during that session.)
  
• Really wish I could snap my fingers and have my iTunes issue all resolved. It makes my head hurt.
  
• Also have yet to sit down and figure out my Palm > Outlook > Moto transition. Basically know how to do it but no time to get it done. Oh, it SOUNDS easy online but they don't tell you that if your contact address data categories don't match Outlook exactly, then after you export the excel you have to change all the column headings so that they are exactly the same or it doesn't work to import it into Outlook. This is particularly pissy since I only use about 6 out of the 14 or so stupid categories, but in order for it to import correctly they all have to match even if they're not being used. Partially the fault of my Palm Pilot's being 4 years old (more recent models apparently use the same headings as Outlook), but still...
  
• Oh and there's the slight worry about how every time I plug in the laptop which is slated for France anywhere out in the livingroom or dining room, it throws the breaker. I can see the headline now (translated for you):

Last Night's Mysterious Power Outage All Over Latin Quarter Fault of Stupid American Using Too Much Electricity

• The other (heavier and far less dependable) laptop causes no power problems. Ahem.
  
• Au boulot! Salut