Particularly Babbly Mitrailleuse #779

In no particular order, as usual, and not particularly interesting, so you've got that to look forward to...

• I have been craving raisin toast lately - thank goodness for Pepperidge Farms! Yum! It is helping with my new resolve to eat better. This week I had a banana and a slice of raisin toast with margarine and a 1/2 glass of tomato juice and my habitual coffee for breakfast each morning (plus my vitamin and calcium which I am so bad at remembering). I'm trying to jumpstart my metabolism by actually having breakfast (which I blew off most of this month er summer er most of my life except for times in France - because, let's face it, baguette and café au lait is enough to get the most breakfast-skippy of us to eat breakfast every single day, if not four or five times a day) - plus it helps with the new fitness strategy (I finally am back at the gym almost daily, too) since I've been taking lunch as well (which I also was blowing off all of July and August and caused me to binge eat upon getting home each eve, after which I was anything but wanting to go to the gym).
• I do find it frustrating that at my age I still have to reteach myself self-care every year or so. I'm running out of time for it to help in the long run if I am not able to make it a permanent trend one of these years soon.
• I wish Chris Noth hadn't gotten eye surgery. I know it's been years but I only just noticed since I'm watching old episodes of Criminal Intent online. Let's hope he stops there at least; it's not too noticeable probably to most people but I find him a good chunk less charming (which is fun to say really fast) that way. Actually I remember now I noticed it first when I saw him in the Sex & The City movie last year, but I had probably blocked it out as too painful to dwell on.
• Random inexplicable thought of this one tabac close to my apt in Paris where I went a couple of times the first few days in May. I got my phone recharge there one of the times; it was by one of my less-frequented cafés (due to their extremely slow waitstaff, which is why I normally went to Café Notre Dame where the guys were not only faster but more courteous). I made a mental note to keep going to that tabac because the Franco-Chinese guy who ran it was kind of goodnaturedly jokey with you as you paid. Anyway the third or fourth time I dropped by I found them not only boarded up but the victim of an apparent fire - smoky windows and a few melty bits of ware just visible through the stains. Plywood over the door and smoke streaks coming out above the door. Freaky. And sad since the owner was particularly nice.
• Two out of my three surface-mail book boxes arrived within two weeks of my return to SC (read: first couple weeks of July) and in pristine condition even tho surface mail can take anywhere from 4-16 or so weeks and usually looks like it's been through Armageddon by the time of arrival. Third one took 8 weeks and arrived having been repair-taped pretty extensively by some very very nice postal worker somewhere in the world, although not, apparently, before a few key items had fallen out. I admit it was my fault - I was worried about all of them in fact because I meant to double tape everything like usual but was so freaked out getting to the post office on time that day that I completely forgot. (I've always covered every single inch of surface France >> US pkgs with at least two swipes of packing tape in the past but this time I had just done the initial hold-the-box-closed swipes.) In my defense, it was almost time to come home and I had lots of fin-de-programme stuff in my head. Probably I had used up all remaining un-spoken-for brain cells that afternoon in my bright idea of using my rolly suitcase for the trip to La 14-minute-walk-away-from-my-flat Poste - particularly good call given that I mailed 3 book boxes each weighing just under 7 kilos (a little less than 40 lbs total).
• Saddest thing missing from third box: fun 1963 (i.e. same age as moi - kee) mini Larousse French-French dictionary, hardcover with cool orange and black glossy cover; best part - I had found it in the 1€ bin at Gibert Joseph, except it was only €0.80. :)
• Most inconvenient thing missing from third box: notes from my meetings with Study Abroad person last spring so I would know how to do the transfer credit forms for the Paris students when we got back; luckily I remembered I had email-scanned all but one page of them to myself just before leaving for France. Far more luckily, the part I hadn't scanned, the part that explained the conversion from European contact hours to Clems*n credit hours, I had explained to a colleague via email a few days after my meeting at Study Abroad. So I was able to look back in my mailbox and get those details, too.
• Finally have a new/second crêpe pan. It was on my Paris purchase list but I never got around to looking for one until the last week and by then I didn't feel like schlepping it home... so yay for Bed, Bath and Beyond, which had a very nice one 3 weeks ago on sale. Now when we do crêpes for French Club or just for the heck of it we can have more than one pan going at a time. Plus it's the slightly smaller one so if you ladle in the correct amount of batter it forms your perfectly circular and just-the-right-diameter crêpe with no pan-swishing to spread the batter around, or at least no crêpe spiders. Those of you who've had my crêpes know what I mean. Admittedly crêpe spiders are just as yummy as the standard form but still one likes not to have too many of them happen.
• So much to do I can't hardly see straight. As usual. :) So I'm blogging. Hmmm. Not even blogging anything necessarily interesting... Much more justifiable if I had something earth-shattering to talk about like French tractor-pulls or something. har.
• Or maybe my motivational energy just can't be aimed at two areas at once - it's all being used up with healthy eating habits and fitness trends right now so it can't be focused on work? It's a theory.
• The house is a Big Mess and I bet you a dollar Sam & Lucy didn't clean a single thing today.
• Yeah, watching DVDs on the laptop now. Susan the Somnambulist unplugged all the TV/VCR/DVD player connector cords and Susan the Conscious cannot figure out how to get them plugged back in to any functional success. It is pissing me off quite a bit actually. I go play with the cords occasionally for a few minutes until I get frustrated (it takes less time each time now of course to reach that point) and then I clench my fists and jaw as I physically remove myself from that part of the room or stomp outside to run an errand or something, fearful of succombing to the tingling urge in my fingers to launch a piece of A/V equipment out the window. It's utterly ridiculous; the moreso, undoubtedly, since I really very rarely come up against something I can't get the better of.
• Still no sign of that stupid Blockbuster DVD by the way. It was a virtual unknown (of course) Brit (of course again) flick called French Film. Yeah, I had never heard of it either. Plus it was one of those "featured Blockbuster exclusive rentals" or whatever, which are usually dreadful (two other such rentals come to mind: I Want Someone to Eat Cheese With, and I Really Hate My Job, both abysmal - granted I should have figured as much by the crap titles but...) But the actors intrigued me so (I mean, come on! What self-respecting anglophile can resist Victoria Hamilton and Hugh Bonneville in something that is kind of Frenchified to boot!? Not me, at any rate)... Anyway I cannot of course tell you how it was since STS hid it before I had had a chance to watch it. I have searched in every drawer, cupboard, laundry basket, shelf, etc., and there is no sign of it. I looked in the trashcans as well... Just dawned on me I have yet to check the oven, the washer, the dryer or the piano bench... hmmm. It's due tomorrow so if no sign I guess I'll stop and pay for it Sunday. gah!
• Off to munch, canoe, and gab with a bunch of the UHOA gang tomorrow over at Bill & Marianna's on the Tugaloo. Yay on all counts.
• Three million things to grade and read and respond to and rework on the Paris budget excel and post on BB and otherwise Do! and it's already 4. I might actually have to break my non-work weekends resolve and come in on Sunday for a while. Especially as I am obviously NOT in the mood to be productive today.
• Chinese food night I think. I am SO craving fried rice. And I finally might dig into Harry Potter et le prince de sang-mêlé...
• And you know, it just dawned on me... the lack of excitement in my own life, or this post at least, aside - anyone still reading by now must need distraction even more than I!

The Good, The Bad, & The Whatever (when applicable, for "whatever" read: "WTF?")

You can decide which things are which, but don't tell me about the results. Blogging at all is probably the biggest tell about my mood being slightly better I guess but I'd rather not stop and keep score as to how much good, how much bad, etc., ya' feel me?

• One of our elevators in Str*de is labeled "Godot." This might be the absolute top fun thing around here, which could be scary or not, depending on one's outlook.
• The other elevator is labeled "Desire." Does anyone know what this means? Is desire something one actually awaits? (It's probably another literary reference but I don't know it. The English dept. is over there, too, and it would be like them to try to outdo our Godot elevator joke.) I thought one awaited things as a result of desire... Don't even start on how you have to be proactive where desire is concerned - I had a pretty frigging proactive spring and look where that got me! Oh, don't start - I can be ironic if I want.
• I've lost 12 pounds since August. (Nevermind that I had gained around 5 over the summer - doh.) I enjoy this fact even tho planned, healthy, eat-light/right diets are generally better than losing weight due to too much work and lack of rest. Still it's the one thing I can kind of be happy about on the worst days. Of course (TMI ALERT) I'm going thru this thing the last week or so where whatever I eat makes my abdomen bloat up kind of drastically which detracts from the newfound slim and trimness...
• We have an outdoor feline friend/neighbor. I call him/her TC because s/he is a tuxedo cat and b/c it makes me laugh that people might think s/he's named after Magnum, P.I.'s, buddy. S/he's is mostly feral so I can't catch him/her to take him/her in for shots and neutering but I'm going to keep trying. S/he comes up for food on my back porch and near as I can tell gets out of the weather under the front porch of the people across the street most of the time. S/he is itching to come closer and does come pretty close during meals but only enough for me to just barely brush his/her fur before s/he scampers a couple feet away to wait and make sure I'm not going to dare it again so s/he can finish his/her snack. I posted a flyer at the mailboxes but no one has responded that s/he's theirs. (I took pix and sometime soon when I catch you up on all the pix I haven't been posting you can see him/her.) The vet said I can just call and give them notice if I catch him/her and they'll move their schedule around to work in a surgery and will discount it for me. Pretty cool. In a way it's good s/he's not tame since then I'd have to figure out how to fit a third cat. Meanwhile I'll just try to get him/her as healthy as possible for outdoor living.
• Speaking of the vet, Doc Turner says Sam & Lucy can stop actively dieting now. Brace yourselves. When they were weighed at their first annual checkup here I couldn't believe they had lost so much. I called the Aub*rn vet to make sure their starting weights a year ago which I had written on a post-it were accurate. They were, which puts us here:

Starting weight Sept. 07 : Sam 14.0, Lucy 14.3
Current slim and trimness: Sam 11, Lucy 10.9
!!!!!!!!!SKINNY MINNY CITY!!!!!!!!!!!

• Would that we all had someone who bought us super fat free food and kept it in a bin and only let us eat a fraction of what we wanted day in and day out for a year or more!... Hmmm. It sounds kinda grueling when you put it like that. But still more dependable than will power. At least mine. They look fantastic, truly. I have pix of them as well but have been trying to find just the right pre-diet pix to do a fun Before and After post... can't find just the right pix, but mostly my mood has been in the way of a serious search, I admit. BTW don't tell them how skinny they are or they'll start questioning the fact that they are still eating diet food (sometimes mixed with regular), especially as they, like me, are freezing in our house nowadays.
• Three day week this week thanks to our mini-break I mentioned last post. I really could do with always having 3-day weeks. This is quite manageable I must say.
• Hiking has been a little scarcer lately, only due to my wacky schedule and some weird weather one weekend which made everyone cancel all the group plans, even tho it turned quite nice at the last minute so a couple of impromptu hikes came about at the last minute which were very nice. Kayaking/camping the Edisto was canceled tho :( along with my planned visit to Pree & Brad's. :( :( Anyway we did a great hike Sunday. I have pix from here and there so I'll post them sometime. It's gorgeous out these days. We get the not-super-cold temps so hiking is comfy right now but we still have leaves turning. Best of both worlds.
• A student introduced me to hulu.com. The same one who introduced me to Flight of the Conchords, which should have been a clue... Bad bad bad. It's leveled out somewhat now but at the beginning I spent 3 days or so straight watching gobs of old episodes of current shows. Good thing it half coincided with the fall mini-break. Now I'm caught up for the most part and thank goodness you can't get everything on there. Consequently I have about 8 shows queued - 8 shows a week isn't too scary compared to many people I don't think. Luckily they have 30 Rock and The Office. I've been pretty good at not just watching stuff for the sake of watching something, which is why I can't be trusted with TV/cable. There are certain funkinesses about watching on the computer that preclude my getting too attached to this mode, thank goodness.
• My neighbor is moving in with her man, so now I'm holding my breath there will be an equally good neighbor sharing my firewall come Jan. 1. Anyone know decent, quiet, and (dare I add?) fun non-smokers in my area who need an abode?
• And in case that's not already too much to ask, if anyone could start thinking of all the potential house/cat-sitters they might know in the area for during Paris next summer that would be mighty helpful as well.
• I'm going to make a curry this weekend. And a pie. I've been invited to spend Thanksgiving at Bill & Marianna's (two hiking buddies) and I'm on apple pie duty so I need to practice up. I have yet to start this year's weekly pie-bake. I'll probably take Great great grandma Jamison's cranberry relish, too.
• Being social instead of hermit-y the last couple of Thanksgivings went moderately well. I used to hide on T-day b/c it tends to be the worst Mom-memory (or the best -- again perspective is key) day of the entire year. So anyway I'll be social again this year and see how it goes.
• I should grade so I can stay caught up. I have another hour before my ritual Thursday pre-French Table visit to Subway.
• I just want to be home.