Archives: June 2006
« May 2006 |
Main
| July 2006 »
1. I am obsessed with the World Cup and am currently in withdrawal. I know the players need to rest (two days? Aren't they professionals?) but I NEED MY FIX.
1.a. Wasn't the France-Spain game beautiful?
1.b. I can't believe Beckham played for 90 mins and then puked his brains out. I feel like a wuss now. If I even feel remotely nauseous I am in bed and bitching.
2. Reason #4,278 that I love my job: my boss has decided that I need to learn how to become a professional photographer. I'm not sure why he wants ME to be the professional photographer (as opposed to, say, a professional photographer being the professional photographer) but he's all set on it, and it there's one thing I've learned at this job it is that the boss decides things and THAT'S IT. No arguing. He's The Decider, if you will.
So he's decided that I am going to become a professional photographer and that he's going to not only PAY FOR MY CLASSES but also PAY ME WHILE I GO TO THEM. Sweet Jesus, pay me to go to school? For photography? Golden.
Classes start in two weeks, and I will take them for a few sessions in the mornings (before work) and then the professor is going to come back with me to work and help me set up "The Studio." It will be as if I had my own little Sears photo scene, but I'll be taking pictures of lithographs instead of gurgling babies.
3. Often at work I walk a certain stretch that gets a lot of pedestrian traffic. I walk to and from three doors that all correspond to our store. There's a lot of back-and-forth, and I spy a lot of interesting people during my mini-commute.
Somebody caught my eye today, an attractive young man who was obviously there on some sort of construction job-related task. Paint-splattered pants and a typical blue suit gave him away. We made eye contact, and I thought nothing of it, but then I thought that I might have maybe caught him pointing me out to his friend...
I have been MIA from everything. Just - seriously - it's pathetic how I have managed to seperate from the rest of the world for the last week or so without even noticing it.
I still don't know what I have been doing with my time. Two big things come to mind: 1) the setting up of a database for the bookstore and 2) the reprogramming of the assistant site. Computers are funny that way. A small task that you start at ten am suddenly finds you still sitting in the same chair at six pm. Mysterious.
But that doesn't explain entirely where I have been for the last ten days, pretty much not phoning or calling or going out or ANYTHING. Yet, I've managed to see people, usually if they call in the middle of the day and I decide to go into work an hour later (TheKnitter did this effectively, as did The Minnesotian). I also had a programmed art contest thingiemajigie with Kathypath, so we grouped several social encounters in one and I packed in five or six coffees/hang-outs/chit-chats in one afternoon.
I apologize to those to whom I owe phone calls (Hi Julie! Hi Vegas!). There's no real excuse for my absence other than that I didn't realize it's almost July.
On a totally unrelated note: I did my laundry for three hours the other day (and was thankful to have some time to sit in the laundromat and think in peace) when I noticed that the dryers said something a little peculier:
I get the meaning. My first thought was, "What a terrible translation!" but then I realized that it wasn't a translation at all. It was the original sticker on the dryer that was then later translated to French. But from then on, all I could see was a little cartoon dryer bitching about how much he hates camping, or maybe how many misquito bites he's gotten.
That was one helluva game. The boys and I were screaming at the television, and we all simultaneously jumped when we thought the US brought the score up to 2-1.
Before the match, The Boy told me he didn't think he would watch because it was a "no contest" game. I'm proud of the Americans. And three red cards! It was a madhouse on that field.
We were very happy about the Ghanian win, as the boys are obviously all routing wildly for any African team they can. It was an exciting evening - first with Ghana's victory, then with the US tie (which felt somewhat like a victory, given the circumstances...). Those Italians were crybabies. Even the Italian fans have to admit that was a little over the top.
After a particularly difficult day at work, I decided to empty my brain of any substance whatsoever and go see "American Dreamz."
It was bad. Very, very bad. Bad in ways that made me cringe.
For example, I blinked repeatedly when we saw the terrorist training camp on the Afghan-Pakistani border where everyone spoke English with a generic Middle-Eastern accent.** Sure, sure, it was a comedy, so it's all for fun anyway. But I didn't find that aspect particularly fun, especially since the whole master plot involved a poor young Afghan who just wanted to sing Broadway show tunes, but was asked to strap a bomb onto himself instead. Again - I'm taking comedy too seriously. But in order for me not to do so, the actual shtick has to be funny on SOME level, and this just wasn't.***
Hugh Grant, meanwhile, is sitting dangerously on the fence seperating the young and attractive from the old and creepy. I know he's not actually all that old (46?), but I do think he's too old to be putting the moves on Mandy Moore. They didn't even bother covering up his wrinkles. I normally find his wrinkles sort of cute, but something has shifted in his face and I just don't think he can pull of the The Typical Hugh Grant Character anymore.
And as for the whole presidential side-story: meh. First off, if they're going to make such a fuss over the presidential aspect to this whole gig, they should follow through and make him have a reasonable role at the end of the film. For all of the bruhaha they made over his "enlightenment," he could have had some glorious moment of coolness/intelligence at the end. I won't give away the ending (EVERYBODY DIES!!! Aha hah ah ahah. Ok, just kidding) but I wasn't impressed with the president's realization that he doesn't have to be Dick Cheney's - er I mean, the Chief of Staff's - mignon.
Overall: not a good film. It's summer now, and I still have my unlimited movie pass. I have a bunch of movies I haven't discussed here, and I'm thinking about doing a sub-site (like with the books) that I update once in a blue moon. If I get around to it, I'll update them there.
Do any readers in France know if An Inconvenient Truth or The Heart of the Game will have a public release in France? Both are documentaries that premiered in Cannes, and have been released in the US.
Read more »For years, I have been able to predict the rain. Nobody believes me when I say this, but I say, "Shhhh... listen to your body, it will lead the way..."
Ok, for reals now, I know that not everybody is as gifted as me when it comes to biologically determined meteorological predictions. But I have a secret, dear Intenet:
My feet swell. Every day, before a rainfall, my feet swell -- and I can often feel my heartbeat in them.
I know a lot of people will dismiss this as hippie rubbish. My boyfriend took a full three years of 100% rain prediction accuracy before he came to belive that my feet can determine what the skies will drop tomorrow. By now, he has come to ask ME, before consulting the weatherman, what the forecast is tomorrow.
Last night, however, I doubted. Sometimes my feet have a hard time determining the difference between an excessively humid day and the rainfall. As the last four days in Paris have been very humid, I assumed the throbbing that began around 19:00 was simply due to our 90% humidity problem.
I mentioned in passing that my feet were throbbing, and The Boy said, "Oh là, looks like rain tomorrow!" and I corrected him, reminding him about the humid vs rain difference.
But hélas... this evening things are cooling down and there is a pleasant bit of rain throughout the city.
My feet were right again. It'd be cool if I could fit them back in my sandals, now...
It's awesome having psychic feet!
I wrote something but erased it, because I think the video needs to speak for itself.
And with that, I will bring you: Bush mocking a legally blind man for wearing sunglasses. I'm still digesting this one.
Well, that was embarrassing.
Holy shit, it's hot here. We didn't get any warning, either. It was like, "Ok guys, we're gonna do the cold spring thing for awhile - cloudy days and all - and then we're just going to springboard directly into summer!!! Who's with me?!?!"
But I think I can speak on behalf of most people when I say that this change was a little too sudden. Where were our 76°F and sunny days? Could we get some of those, first?
I'm about to go to work where we have no air conditioning, no circulating air, nothing. It's going to be great. I also run up and down stairs a lot while carrying piles of books.
Speaking of running up and down stairs a lot, I spent out first scorching hot day helping a friend move. He's an artist, and the majority of the things we moved were paintings. Big ones. That we had to carry a certain way. Up lots of stairs. There were only three of us, and we were just disgusting by the end of the whole ordeal, literally dripping sweat. The best part was that I couldn't go home directly afterwards, so I got to hang out with my own salty skin for awhile. It reminded me a lot of when we were in Cambodia and we could inspect the salt lines on our clothes at the end of the day.
Apparently, it's going to be this way at least until Wednesday...
UPDATE: I was wrong!!! So blessedly, wonderfully wrong!!! My "office" has air conditioning. I wore a sun dress to work and was COLD. This is awesome!!! I want to work every day!!! More exclamation points needed, after this sentence!!!!
So this is one of the crazy things I didn't have the time to talk about during my (useless, apparently) exam prep:
My friend Kara and I thought it would be great to go to India together. We have been speaking very vaguely about this until a few months ago, when we both confirmed that we weren't just talking out of our respective asses. 80% of our conversations on the matter have been done via cross-continental text messaging, so it seemed fitting that the final decision was made (for me, anyway) when I received a texto that said, "India it is! Should we go north or south?"
She is an airline stewardess, and thus she gets free(ish) airfare. She also doesn't exactly know what flight she'll take and when, as it all sort of depends on free seat space. The airline is generous, but not so generous as to give preference to non-paying flyers. In other words, her date and times are TBD, and will be approximative until she actual gets on a damn plane headed east. That means I'll have something like 15 hours of advance notice.
So this all lead us to come up with August 12 as a potential date for meeting up in Delhi. Kara warned me that she might not be able to make it to town until the 18, but she thought I should go ahead and get tickets because they're not getting any cheaper. And she's pretty sure she can get there on the 12th. Maybe. We hope.
I started checking prices, and they were floating happily in the 700-something range for awhile. But then they started going up, and I started panicking. And then I checked again a week or so later, and there were only two flights in the 700-something range and the rest were well into the 1,000+ range.
My decision was to possibly reserve a flight, but only if I read that I could change the dates with little trouble. So I clicked on a 700 euro Air India flight and I got a message to the effect of "We're sorry, we cannot access your flight information. Please try again later." So I figured, ok, maybe they're updating the site or something. I'll try again in 20 mins. Which I did, of course, but I still couldn't access the flight info, and other flight prices were rising.
I freaked and called Air India, who then referred me to a travel agent. She was very nice and helpful, and she also informed me that Air India is really weird about online reservations, and that they'll give you ticket info but not always let you reserve online. They pretty much require you to go through a travel agent. Before I knew it, I heard myself saying, "Well, as long as I have you on the phone, could you tell me what the real prices -- for planes with actual seats available - might be?"
And suddenly she was saying frightening things like, "Only one seat left at that price... " and "Friday there's absolutely nothing at all... " and "The only other option is over 1,000..."
And wouldn't you know, I reserved myself a ticket. For August 10, actually, so now I am not only running the risk of spending some quality alone time in Delhi, I am pretty much guaranteed to do so. But, the chick got me a super sweet deal (even 50 euros than the flight I had seen online!) and it would have cost 200 euros more to fly 30 hours later, and I just couldn't justify it.
Honestly, this is all a bit unexpected, so we'll see how it all goes down. I've never really done the travelling alone thing. I mean, sure, in Europe, but that so doesn't count.
Read more »It's kind of painful to go through 6.5 hours of exams only to walk out and be sure you failed.
And for those who know me, don't do that thing where you go, "Oh, no... I'm sure you did fine, you probably just didn't get a great grade, but surely you passed." Because, really? No. No, I did not.
As a matter of fact, most likely, 92% of my comrades did not pass either. My school has an 8% - yes 8% - success rate. Which means two things: 1) it's not easy and 2) I really can say with certitude that I failed.
In France, luckily, this is not a problem. The glory of the French system is that you can take the exams - again - come September. So I'll be reviewing Arabic over the summer in an attempt to NOT blank on three words necessary for my translation today. Walking out, I realized I made at least 15 stupid, stupid errors. On a test out of 20, that's just not good.
Anyway, tomorrow is the oral exam. I was going to prepare for it rather intensively, but I have decided that if I'm going to have to go through this whole process again anyway, there's not much point. I'll review some more this evening, but I'm pretty much just counting down the hours until 10.30 am tomorrow when this whole business will be over and done with.
Until September, that is.
Stephen Colbert was invited to give the commencement speech at Knox College in Ilinois. You can read about it here. It's funny in the way Colbert is funny, but without the visuals or the delivery.
However, the closing paragraph of the article made me chuckle:
"Stephen, Congratulations on being asked to speak at the 2006 Knox College Commencement. This is an enormous honor and on behalf of the people of Illinois, I'd like to welcome you to our state. As you know, I was invited to speak at Knox after my keynote address at the 2004 Democratic National Convention and subsequent election to the United States Senate. Your convention speech must also have gone really well to have been invited. It's weird that I didn't read about it somewhere."
I'll admit to having slacked a bit this year when it comes to my Arabic. I don't want to, mind you. I love studying the language and can already tell that I'm getting better and better at it. I want to continue after this school year, if possible.
But the thing is, we have 10 hours of grammar per week. And, outside of those ten hours, we probably have another 15-20 hours of homework. But as I have a job that takes up most of my time, I pretty much turned those 15 hours into five hours, and considered my homework done. There was just no other way.
I'm paying a hefty price for it now. My exam is in two days, and I am just now sitting down to memorize 15 chapters' worth of vocab. I've got the grammar points down. On a practice test, I whizzed through the grammar and kicked some serious ass. But as soon as we get to the translation part of the exam, my jubious momentum from the grammar section grinds to a screeching halt. I just don't have the vocabulary memorized. When I read the words, I know what they are. But every time I have to come up with a word on my own, I miss a letter or change a vowel or SOMETHING. And to the graders, making one spelling error means you never really knew the word in the first place.
So I'm cramming. Seriously, hard-core cramming. I have at least 100 flashcards. Today is going to be a fun day.
I can't wait for Wednesday! Whether or pass or fail, I'll be free on Wednesday. I can always take the exams again in September...
Every morning, I sit with a coffee and read the news. I also check up on the liberal "blogs" -- I know I should diversify my sources but so should everybody else. Like most lefties, I spend a lot of time gawking at the crazy things coming out of the mouths of our leaders, and often out of the mouths of our journalists and media.
Last month, I posted the Bill O'Reilly/Letterman interview. In that same vein, I'm posting a clip from "Countdown" that I saw via Crooks and Liars - probably my favorite left-wing site, if only because I don't have a television and at least this way I get some highlights.
I think it is important to spread around this type of thing, if only because regular viewers (not just of O'Reilly, but of any program) need to see how the facts are sometimes just flat out wrong. Lots of people look to O'Reilly for the truth, or for the "fair and balanced" facts, but this clip proves that to be a dangerous idea.
Keith Olbermann disrobes O'Reilly in a way that I really hope is simply not debatable: O'Reilly was wrong, never excused himself, repeated his error, and then changed the words of his transcript after the fact. This type of thing just cannot go unexplained - or unremarked - on a major news channel. Watch the clip - Olbermann at his best. (Quicktime required)
