Ready, Set, uh oh

I didn't go to Washington. This is very disappointing. I was all excited about it and there was a big delegation going. Unfortunately, a volcano in Iceland disrupted plans for me, several other delegates, and thousands of other passengers.
Last week started on a sad note, with Christine's funeral. I wrote afterwards to Ken, Sandy and their network of shared friends with the Touzés:

"We went to Christine's funeral today. We've been to quite a few neighbors' funerals there and have never seen it packed as full as it was today. St. Saturnin is one of the biggest churches in our department. It was quite something. But knowing Christine and how she was, it was not really surprising. We saw friends, former neighbors, current neighbors, her colleagues, probably some patients all grown up and some parents of her patients. Steve came, for Julien, and Rosette because of fond memories of Christine. And family. Christine's sisters spoke, Emmanuel prepared something but had someone else read it because he just couldn't. It was, indeed, very moving. Christine died just on the eve of his birthday. Julien and Jacques also spoke, and if they did not break down, I think we nearly did. She will be missed. You already know and feel it.

"We came home and I immediately made a batch of my cracker brownies and as soon as they were cool enough to cut, we went over to the Touzes' with them. The house was bursting at the seams with people, but since it's a beautiful spring day, the garden took the overflow and is as beautiful as always. 

"By the way, Julien and Gaetan are expecting a baby girl towards the end of May and they are moving back to France. They've found a place in Montreuil."

Tuesday was Anne's birthday, but since it was Tuesday, we didn't get together. She had dinner plans with friends. I went from the library, at 6:00, to the AARO board meeting across the river, which I left a little after 7:00 to return to the library for the movie night. In the series of cinema adaptations, she presented Schindler's List. A little background story of how the book got written, how the movie got made, comparisons between the book and movie with some reading and a few scenes from the movie. What can I say. With just a few scenes, the whole movie came back to me and I wasn't the only person in the audience with tears. 

Wednesday was a day to take care of me: hair, nails,etc. And packing! Thursday and Friday were taken up entirely with the STC France and STC Trans-Alpine chapters' Content Strategy Forum. This was the first time that I wasn't so involved with organizing the event. It was a great conference. The workshops and conference sessions were fully booked. In fact, they had to add 20 additional seats and could have probably filled more. (http://www.regonline.co.uk/builder/site/Default.aspx?eventid=766137) I didn't get to really attend anything as I was volunteering at the registration desk. I did get to two conference sessions as room monitor. I did get to see many friends, including David Farbey, who wrote a great review of the conference and Mike Hamilton, who manned the MadCap table. Mike came with his wife and I hope they had a good stay in Paris before heading to Amsterdam. I hope they are able to fly back home to California without any problem.

Rahel Bailie, one of the keynote speakers, was stuck in Paris. We spent some time online on Saturday to find a hotel room and then we met on Monday for some fun. We met at Denfert-Rochereau and walked north, through the Jardins de Luxembourg and St. Germain des Près to the Louvre, where we took the metro to the Grand Palais. There we went to see two exhibits: The way of Taoism and Turner and his painters. Well, I thought the jade carvings were extraordinary, but the silk paintings looked all very much alike and, of course, I couldn't read any of the texts. Since I know very little about Taoism, I was intrigued but not enough to spend a lot of time. Then, we went to the Turner exhibit. I'm not a great Turner fan, but I do see how he could be a considered a precursor to the Impressionists. In this exhibit, his paintings are side by side with painters who influenced him, such as Le Lorrain, and later, by those he influenced. I preferred the painters who influenced him in landscapes. It's not until you get to the really late paintings that you get those fantastic skies of his.

Today, I was planning to go on the Ile de France walks hike, but I ended up on the wrong train. Stupid me. So I came back to Paris and hiked home from the Bibliothèque François Mitterand, through the Bois de Vincennes.

Summer, at last

Summer has arrived. We've had some tremendous thunderstorms and a few days of really hot sun.

Yesterday, the STC France board held its annual planning meeting in our yard. For me, the whole STC thing is slowly leaving my system. I'm still on the board and will volunteer -- at least until next year's conference -- but after that, I'll let go completely. I think it was a good meeting although we left with lots of unfinished business. Next year's conference planning is well under way and we decided to have just one big meeting before that, a career day in October. Must remember that it should not conflict with WICE's Money Matters for Women conference.

Last year, in October, I think, Francine was starting a new painting and I fell in love with it and said I wanted to buy it for Paul's birthday (end of Dec.). We look at it and see a casbah. She finished the painting, but since it was one of a new series, she held on to it for the gallery exhibit. But then she got caught up in Anne Le Musical (just ended its successful run) and never quite completed the series. So, at last, she decided to have Paul's picture framed, let me buy it and I will lend it back to her whenever the exhibit happens. Anyway, the framing is absolutely perfect and the painting is beautiful. It's opposite the couch and as the light goes down at the end of the day, the blues become gray and the white stands out even more. (No, I'm not putting a picture of it up, for now.)

I'm trying to find time and patience to scan old photos, but it's boring, so I always manage to find something else to do.

On Facebook, I've been enjoying Dick's pictures of Anja's and his trip in the Rockies with the Model T.

Last weekend we all (Emma, Anne, Louis, Gwen, Paul and I) went down to Toulon for Paul's mother's birthday. She's 100 years old. Claire, Geoff and Charlotte came in from England. It was a great little family reunion. Claire, Geoff and Charlotte stayed the whole week, in fact, in the annex at Pierre and Gillette's. Pierre and Gillette came up to Verrières on Sunday for their annual check-ups and to be here when Nadine and the kids arrived from China. I got to see them all in Verrières on Friday, when I went to have lunch with my friend from KDS, Pascale.
Pascale has gotten a raw deal from KDS and the whole thing just makes me sick. Most of my KDS friends are now ex-KDS and from what I hear, the whole atmosphere has changed. I'm glad, again, that I left when I did. Even if I felt pressured into coming to the decision to leave and realized, too late, that it was a form of harrassment, I was in no condition to stay and fight.

Encore un mois jusqu'au vacances

Libres des contraintes du travail et des vacances scolaires, nous partons en Australie le mois prochain, le 17 avril. Nous avons payé l'accompte et il nous reste à donner nos passeports à l'agence pour les visas et il faudrait aller à la sous-préfecture pour faire faire des permis internationals. J'ai prèsque fini de lire The Fatal Shore et j'ai lu Bill Bryson. J'ai bien parcouru les guides. J'ai hâte de partir.

La semaine dernière, j'ai subi une dernière intervention chirugicale. Ca c'est bien passé, mais une intervention est toujours une intervention et je dois être patiente encore un peu avant de retrouver ma mobilité. D'ici un mois, ce sera parfait.

En rentrant de l'hôpital, j'ai vu une annonce pour un contrat de six mois à partir de mai. Cela me conviendrai, je crois. J'ai envoyé mon C.V. et en ce faisant, j'ai reconnu l'adresse email d'une copine. On verra si je suis prise. Ils souhaiteraient quelqu'un qui commencerai au début du mois, pas vers le 19.

J'ai raté la conférence STC France. C'est décevant, vu le travail pour la rendre un succès. Il parait que c'était un grand succès. C'est dur de rester "professionnelle" quand on ne travail pas et qu'on n'en a pas trop envie. Mais je continue. Je suis les listes et les "communautés" sur l'internet.

Demain, c'est le deuxième tour de l'élection municipale. On se retrouve avec la liste de J. P. Martin (qui s'est allié avec l'indépendent du premier tour), la liste de Marie-Anne Montchamp qui s'est alliée avec son ennémi, Debaeker, et en dernier, la liste socialiste. Je serais tenté de voter pour la liste socialiste pour les renforcer dans l'opposition. Martin a besoin d'une opposition forte pour le tenir.

S'il fait beau demain, peut-être j'irais voir les équipes qui préparent le début de la saison de baseball. Je ne m'occupe plus d'organiser le scorage cette année. On verra si on a besoin de moi. Ce serait bien d'être plus libre. Pour l'instant je ne pourrais pas le faire de toute façon.

Groundhog's Day in the States, Chandeleur en France, and my Birthday Everywhere Else

I'm late getting to this today because so many of you have sent birthday greetings and I've been answering them. Thanks. It also meant that I started to write you about things that I then repeated to the next one. I finally remembered that that is what I was writing this blog for.

Yesterday, the mayor of Pittsburgh, Luke Ravenstahl, was in Paris to promote Pittsburgh. I went because of our Pittsburgh connection and Jon sent me a question to ask, so I did. Yes, the mayor went to Amsterdam and met with officials from KLM to discuss opening a single direct line between Europe and Pittsburgh with Amsterdam as the European hub. The audience applauded when I asked if they were hoping to reconnect Pittsburgh to the rest of the world, meaning there were several people present who were familiar with the current obligation to connect through Philly or Cincinnati. The thing is that the Amsterdam hub doesn't really change things for us Parisians because we'd still have to connect.

I also learned some things about Pittsburgh. It's a remarkably green city and trying to become even greener. It's growing again - very big in the health-related industry, robotics and sustainable development. I remember him mentioning BPL (making more efficient use of power lines, office in Paris,...) and that Louis should look into them. And for Emma, there are several links: Sustainable Pittsburgh, the Urban Redevelopment Authority and the e-mail address of the person to contact for any interest there. I also spoke with Maureen Guttman, Executive Director of the Governor's Green Government Council.

I read that the mayor is being criticized for this trip; it's being called a vacation. Well, what I saw on Friday morning was not someone on vacation. Looks more like someone on a business trip. He's very curious about other cities and how they manage difficulties. It sounds like he's been getting some flack about the US not having signed any of the international agreements on the environment, but he did a good job explaining that in the US, the movement is bottom-to-top, and that a city, like Pittsburgh, has much more leeway to find its way to becoming a "green" city. In Europe, he has seen much more top-down management. He was so proud to show off the bike paths in Pittsburgh, but he said that, after almost being run over by the bikes in Amsterdam, he realizes that the Pittsburgh bike grid is not that much of a to-do. So, he touted "flex-car", which works like Paris's "velib" except that it is short-term car rental instead of bikes. Someone in the audience asked about public transportation and he explained that it was virtually non-existent, except for the bus lines and a rapid transit project between the universities and downtown. He also explained the need to look for more space for university (Pitt and CMU, at least) expansion and that former steel mill sites were being investigated for that. Someone else in the audience is thinking of returning to the States to live because the dollar has dropped so far as to make it too expensive to continue on here -- she asked about the cost of living. There was a shocked gasp when he told us the low cost of a family home. I'm bad at estimating attendance; I'd say there were about 75 people attending this early morning presentation.

What else is going on? Not much. I'm still drawing - I did a landscape based on a photo Paul took in China. It forced me to work on shading. I don't have the patience. I think I'm more a line-drawing person.

The STC France conference is coming up. I'm still working on it, but I won't be able to attend.

That's it, for now.

Odds & Ends

I got distracted over the weekend and forgot to write. Sorry. I seem to get more and more distracted, though.
I have managed to go to my art classes. I'm learning how to draw at long last. It's not quite as exciting as I had hoped - especially the Paris Sketchbook. We go to museums and draw from sculptures. I think I want to learn how to do fast sketches from life. I don't seem to have the patience for spending several hours trying to draw a sculpture. We'll see how this works out.
Last week, I signed up at ASSEDIC and the ANPE to make sure I get unemployment benefits if I'm entitled (I don't think I am.) and appropriate help in finding what I am looking for. I'm looking for short-term contract work. Yesterday, I managed to get off my CV for a job.
Also yesterday I made our ferry reservation for England at Christmas. I'm looking forward to that. But I've got to get some shopping done!
Yesterday, there was a walk in the Fontainebleau area, but I had to decide against it because my arm was hurting too much - same for the catch-up art class at the Louvre in the evening. It meant that I was able to "attend" the STC board meeting on Skype. For some reason, our Skype voice meetings are not any good anymore and we have to resort to typing. Very frustrating and I'm just not interested this year. It turned into a virtual shouting match and since I can't spend so much time at the keyboard these days, I dropped out. I will still try to cull the minutes from the conversation and post it.
What else? Jon has been in touch and it looks like the estate matters are winding down. All that's left is taking care of taxes. He will be so relieved to have that done with and, although it hasn't been any work for me, I will too. I think that what is bugging me about everything else is that I'm not able to really spend the time I want on the papers. Now that the rest of the papers and photos have been delivered I want to do that full time. But after half an hour, my arm is ready to fall off.
We did get the Suzie DePoo (Zuzek) wood panels up in the living room and they look great! (I took these pictures before we hung them up.) I'm thinking of having the Bruce Mitchell jazz musicians and my old circus copied. They were done in marker, which has faded to monochrome nothingness.
Time to get up and out.