Busy, busy

From Ile-de-France Walks - 2009

The weather has been fantastic. I can't believe it's only April and Paris. Hardly any rain. It's been warm and sunny! That's been great to get out on those Wednesday walks. If anyone is more interested in them, Ed has set up a blog to replace the e-mails he used to send out: http://idfwalks.blogspot.com/ and then there are my pictures: http://picasaweb.google.fr/elebelle/IleDeFranceWalks2009?feat=directlink
Yesterday, I went crazy and bought lots and lots of fabric. I think I'm in a sewing mood. Sewing is no longer really economical and there are fewer and fewer shops with nice fabrics. Even the Marché St. Pierre (for me that's the big Halle aux Tissus St. Pierre and all the other shops in the neighborhood) seems mostly upholstry and curtain fabric. There's not much nice selection for clothes any more. The rue de Steinkerque only has 2 or 3 fabric stores left. It used to be only fabric! I got a remnant at one of them -- they're closing and switching into a souvenir shop, like everyone else on the street. Anyway, I found enough at another remnant store to get myself busy.
Last week, we had the new lawn laid in. It looks great! We took advantage of the work to have an automatic sprinkler put in. The whole job just took four days -- unbelievable! So, I've been working a little on my tan. The idea is not to have aspirin-white legs in August.
Claire was a bit worried about the slow rate of reply to the wedding invitation, so I created a survey on line using surveymonkey.com. It's gone really well, I think. We didn't have e-mail addresses for everyone, but for all the requests sent out, there's been a 65% rate of return in a week. Some are from people who had already replied by post and some from people who had spoken to one of us but had not formally replied and some from who were spurred into action.
I had lunch yesterday with a fellow tech writer. In fact, she's the person now at KDS. I'm glad I left. I think the working atmosphere has not gotten any better. They haven't filled the second tech writer position and never will, but she thinks she needs back-up and asked me if I might be interested in freelancing occasionally for them, if she can get the idea approved. It's something I would have done easily shortly after leaving, but now I wonder. We're going on vacation, then there's the final build-up to the wedding and to the baby.... And it might not be a great help to her, either, if I were to show up.

Parc de Sceaux

It was a beautiful day. Funny, only women showed up for this walk. I haven't been on any walks so far this year and I think I picked the perfect day to get back into the swing of things. For one thing, it wasn't a difficult walk at all -- starting from the Antony RER station, through the Parc Hellard along the "coulée verte" (the green run) that follows the Bièvre for a little bit. Then into the Parc de Sceaux where the cherry trees were in full bloom and we had our picnic lunches underneath. Delightful conversation, as usual and just great fun to be out again!

From Ile-de-France Walks - 2009

Reading

The group of high school friends has got a bit of a reading list started. So, I culled the messages and listed the books and went off to the library. For once I was looking for specific books, not just browsing.

But first I wanted to finish J.G. Ballard's Kingdom Come. A long time ago, shortly after the movie came out, I read Empire of the Sun. And then a couple other of his books. A few weeks ago I read his autobiography, Miracles of Life, that he finished shortly before his death. Kingdom Come is a recent book, 2006, I think. It's very realistic. You can easily imagine the mall, the suburbs, the mentality. All to frightening to imagine.

I just finished one of the books from the list that I had with me: The Last of Her Kind, by Sigrid Nunez. It was interesting. Here I am, the same age as the narrator, entering college the same year and all that. I think I missed out on much of what was going on. It just passed me by, somehow. Was I apathetic? I don't think so. And yet, my experience was so different. Maybe it's because the book's action is in New York and I was in California. But so much of what was going on at the time was in California, that I couldn't have missed it. I remember the Black Student Union and the Hispanic Student Union and the Cesar Chavez strike and Women's Studies. I remember the war protest marches, too. But I was mostly a by-stander. I took very interesting classes -- that I didn't cut; they were really interesting. I pulled all-nighters to write papers, but without the help of drugs. There were drugs, but the only one I really noticed was marijuana. I could smell it a mile away and, unfortunately, got migraine headaches everytime I did, so I never went beyond smelling it, except for the one time I ate some brownies and got so sick that whoever it was who brought them to the dorm finally told me there was some grass in them and maybe I was having a reaction. I have trouble understanding the problems with their families that are related in this book, even though family was one of the prime motivations to go to school in California, about as far from Philly as I could imagine. I read it; I don't know if I enjoyed it.

Right now, I'm reading The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down, but Anne Fadiman and it's much more to my taste.

Busy month of March

March was certainly busy. Preparing the STC France conference (March 20 & 21) took a lot of energy! And I wasn't even putting in as much as I usually do or should have done. It was a great success. Okay, it lost a bit of money, but not nearly as catastrophic as it could have been. The speakers were wonderful and spending Saturday with the students at Paris VII was enriching for all. Almost made me want to go back to work!
At Francine's I spent March finishing up a painting of one of Louis' night photos from the Empire State Building. I think it's done -- meaning I can't look at it anymore.
Francine is producing an original musical -- Anne le Musical -- based on the story of Anne Frank. We in the painting class have been following its progress and it was wonderful to finally see a performance. It's excellent! Paul and I went with Louis and Gwen last week, along with several others from the class. Yesterday evening I returned with Rosette and Emma. It was just as moving as the first time. It's been a success, so they are now in the process of moving it to a real theater -- from April 17 at the Théâtre Dejazet. Right now, it's a matter of getting a professional to take over from Francine, who has taken it as far as she can.
Last Saturday, Paul and I went up to England to pick up Emma from Stansted and then on to Northampton to visit Claire, Geoff, and Charlotte. We had good weather and a very nice visit. We got to hear the baby's heartbeat. Claire looks great -- just starting to show. We had a little tour of the wedding venue, the Village Institute in Harlestone, just a few minutes from either recommended hotel (we stayed at the Premier Inn, an adequate budget motel, and took a tour around Sedgebrook, a more resort style hotel with pool, tennis courts, snooker, spa, ... ) and Duston.
It's great to have Emma back!