Scrap a la Mode

I've moved!

2006-04-23T15:41:00.000+02:00

Everybody say, "Goodbye, blogger.com."

It's time to move on.

Weep not, for a far more colorful world awaits you.

And yes...it has a three-column layout and a calendar linked to past posts.

*faints*

SCRAP A LA MODE
Click it, and be happy.

Guest blogger

2006-04-22T17:19:00.000+02:00

To celebrate the grand opening of my new blog tomorrow, my Mom will be guest blogging! Well, I guess technically she's already done it. She wrote up a funny little piece about what she learned when she was visiting me and I'll be posting it tomorrow on the typepad blog. Woohoo! I'm excited to finally launch that thing. It's very colorful, just to warn you. Also, you should know that the 100th visitor to the new blog will win a brand new car!

Ha. TOTALLY kidding there. You won't win anything for reading my blog, except my ever-lasting love and gratitude.

And isn't that reward enough?

Recap

2006-04-22T09:54:00.000+02:00

This is pretty sweet. It's 9am and my host parents are AWAKE AND OUT OF THE HOUSE. For those of you who don't know...I always wake up before they do on weekends. They never get up before 10:30, and sometimes it's closer to noon or 1 if they had a dinner party the night before. They went out to do some food shopping, which means that I can play music and clean my room. Woohoo! It's pretty much a pigsty. I haven't cleaned up my stuff from my artist's date on Thursday and I went shopping yesterday. Plus when I was gone on Thurs, the housekeeper moved a rack of my laundry into my room and I haven't bothered to put it away yet. So yeah, I gotta take care of that stuff.

This is my last weekend of true vacation. I know you guys don't feel sorry for me, and you really shouldn't, but I don't want to go back to doing homework, minimal as it is. I don't even remember what I was supposed to do over break, so today and tomorrow are the days that I'll be cleaning, writing, probably some scrapping, doing some yoga, and a bit of homework to boot. So do you want to hear about Thursday and Friday? Of course you do. Here we go.

First of all, I just wanna say that Thursday was AMAZING. I was a tiny bit apprehensive just because I didn't know the town where I was going at all and I was going to be spending a whole day there by myself. It was actually a piece of cake. I went to the tourism office when I got there and asked for directions to the outlet mall. The nice lady there pointed me in the direction of the bus and off I went. Granted, I almost got on the bus going in the wrong direction, but that was ok because I had nothing but time. Nothing that had to be done, no one I had to meet, just a whooooooole day to do whatever I wanted.

When I got off the bus, this is the sign I saw. Isn't it glorious? "Marques" means brands, by the way. Four whole buildings filled with nothing but outlet shops. I spent more than half the day there, but amazingly enough, I didn't buy anything. The problem with outlet shopping is that they have a lot of ugly stuff that people didn't buy last season and won't buy this season either. Or they only have size extra extra small, which even the French women can't wear. There were a couple of things that tempted me, mainly a gorgeous black and white dress and a purple, black and white skirt, but they only had one size and it was one size too small. I think if I had sat down the dress would've ripped in two. But it looked so good when I was standing up!! Haha. I just couldn't justify it.

After I was done wandering the outlets, I took the bus back into town and wandered around taking pictures. I went into a bunch of little shops, found some churches and interesting doors to shoot, and then bought a sandwhich for dinner and ate it in the park. The weather was perfect - it was sunny and warm with a little bit of a breeze. I got a lot of funny looks when I was walking around with my camera...I don't think Troyes sees a whole lot of tourists, not compared to Paris. I think what drew the MOST funny looks (you'll appreciate this, Mom) is when I was practically lying down on an island in the middle of a traffic circle, trying to shoot a statue and also get the flowers at its base in the shot. I was doing that with the 35mm, so I'll let you know how that turns out.

Yeah, it was pretty much a perfect day. And yesterday wasn't half bad either. My friend's dad had commissioned me to do some family portraits in front of the Eiffel tower, so I went and did that yesterday morning. Her siblings were really cute, even though the 3 year old was afraid of cameras. I'm sure I got some good shots of them. It was really fun...definitely challenging for me but really enjoyable and a good experience. I'm really excited to see how the shots came out. Gotta finish that roll this weekend to get it developed on Monday.

After that, I dropped off my camera stuff and headed to the mall. SHOPPING SHOPPING!!! I had budgeted a certain amount to spend at the outlets, but after about half an hour in Promod it was all gone. I ended up buying two skirts, a tanktop, a pair of shoes, and a pair of earrings. You have got to see these skirts, they're the most adorable things ever.

I am so loving this style. It's not tight and it's good for short people with stumpy legs. The only thing you have to be careful of is wearing a shirt that's really long, as is in fashion now. If you wear a shirt like that with a skirt like this, it makes your butt look like it's about 3 feet wide. Trust me, that's how it looked in the dressing room.

Anyway, I met up with a couple friends after I was done shopping and we took a nice stroll around Paris, bought some stuff for dinner, and made salad and pasta. Mmm. We went to the movies after dinner...Ice Age 2!! I would highly recommend this movie. Hiliarous. It actually seemed kind of scary for a kids movie. There were definitely some sinister elements there. But yes, you should go see it. Pixar makes amazing movies and that's all there is to it. The Incredibles? Anyone? Anyone?
**eta**thank you whoever pointed out that Ice Age 2 is actually NOT a Pixar movie. Oops lol. One of my friends told me it was and I don't really pay attention to stuff like that.

Alright, I gotta clean my room now. And I have an announcement! TOMORROW will be the launch of my brand spankin' new typepad blog. You all better go see it, 'cause I gotta start paying for it in 3 days. I figured there was no sense in not using it once the free trial expired. So yes, check back tomorrow for a brand new blog, including a brand new scheme, seeing as I'm incapable of not fixing what's not broken.

Oh, ok, just for good measure, here's the shirt I bought.

Ponytail envy

2006-04-19T20:28:00.000+02:00

Yes, I admit it, I have ponytail envy. I actually have my hair up in a ponytail right now, but it's kind of pathetic. I had to use 7 bobbypins just to hold all the hair back. And it hardly counts as a ponytail, because a ponytail is supposed to drape. Mine just sticks straight out of the elastic band, and it doesn't move. Not at all. If I shake my head to try and get it to move, it just looks like one of those little ridiculous dogs whose whole backend wags when they try to wag their tail. I'm working on growing my hair out...I'm hoping to have a bit more of a ponytail by the time I come home for the summer. And that's only 34 days away, can you believe it? Wow.

I scrapped today! I have to say, I'm getting a little irritated with Photoshop. For some reason, it super-saturates whatever I have open. Or maybe my computer is dying and the colors are dim in everything except Photoshop. But it's really a pain, because I'll do a layout or do some color correction on a photo or something like that and then as soon as I open it in the finder or another program, it's all washed out. Anybody know what's going on?

Anyway, here's the page I did this morning. Kraft paper by Sara Carling, stitches by Gina Miller. Font is Plantagenet Cherokee.

I also went out and shot for about 2 hours. A lot of it was documentary type photos - the restaurants where I eat, the view from my metro, different signs near my house, etc. I also went up to La Defense and took a bunch of shots there. Here are some of my favorites. Some of them are blatant rip-offs from stuff Mom did last week. Thanks, Mom.

I think the lil froggie is my favorite. He's sitting in the mouth of a bigger frog. Sooo cute. Also, I realize that the multicolored fountain thing is totally blown out - I like it that way. Anyway, tomorrow I'll be gone all day and it's rather doubtful I'll post tomorrow night. I will be shopping and shooting all day and I am SO excited. It's an extended artist's date, really. I think my train gets back into Paris around 10pm, so I won't be back home til almost 11. Yeah, I don't think I'll be blogging tomorrow.

Just so you know, this is totally unlike me. The whole daytrip thing, I mean. I usually wouldn't even dream of doing something like this alone, but it's good for me to step outside of my comfort zone. Hopefully I'll come back with some cool shots. I think I'm bringing both cameras and my tripod - I have the time, why not be patient and set up the shots? So yeah...cool beans. When was the last time you heard someone use that phrase? I bet it was a long time ago. I'm sorry, I'm rambling. I'm hungry. My host dad just informed me that he's going to pick up my host mom from work and then they're going to go food shopping, so I'm on my own for dinner. That's good on 2 counts. One, I don't have to eat endive salad, and two, there will actually be food in the house. And they're buying me avocados!! Yay! I think I might have told him to buy me a couple of lawyers instead of a couple of avocados...I'm still not sure about the pronunciation difference between those two words. Anywhoo, I'm gonna go find something to eat. Maybe the rest of the pancakes I made this morning...I was going to save them for tomorrow, but I can hear them calling my name from down in the fridge.

I must answer the call.

Canard! Canard!

2006-04-18T18:49:00.000+02:00

Ok, I have some pictures for you! I decided not to do a recap of the whole week. It would take too long and I don't think anybody would really be interested except for me and Mom. So, I'll just give you some pictures instead. Like I said yesterday...Mom took all of these.

This one was taken at the top of the Arc de Triomphe looking down into the staircase. We were standing up there trying to get a picture of the spiral when all of a sudden most of the lights went out. Mom whirled around, thinking that I had backed into a lightswitch or something. Nope, wasn't me. Turns out the whole thing lost power. We got to stay up there for maybe 10 minutes before all the guards came around and said that they were closing and we had to leave. Man, that was disappointing. At least she got this picture. She did take a couple from the top, but I like this one the best.

No, I'm not taking a picture of my hand. It's called bracketing. And it looks funny.

I know I look really pissed off here, but really I wasn't. She caught me right when I turned around to give her the cone and I wasn't expecting her to be taking a picture. Oops.

Ok this was definitely one of the most hilarious things we saw all week. We were shooting at the Palais Royal gardens near a big fountain. While we were there, a few little kids showed up with their grandparents. This little girl noticed the ducks in the fountain. She started to lean over the water and shout at the ducks, trying to get them to come over to her. She just kept yelling "Canard!! Canard!!!" (Duck!! Duck!!!). Needless to say, the ducks didn't really want to go see her. She didn't care. She just followed them around the fountain, yelling at the top of her lungs. Maybe you had to be there, but trust me, it was hilarious.

Mom's drug of choice. Normal coffee (essentially coffee that's not espresso) is a little hard to come by in France, especially if you want a cup to go. We went to this cafe near our hotel and Mom thought it was the cutest thing ever. Of course it pretty much was, and I love this shot. PS - just because the croissants are sitting in a basket on your table does not mean they're free.

And I think that's all your getting for now. I took a lot of the same shots that Mom did and hers came out well, so I'm really excited to see mine. I just won't think too much about how much it's going to cost me to get all the rolls developed. At least I'm just getting negs and not actual prints. I think right now I'm going to do some yoga. I'm sooo stiff from walking around so much last week, paradoxically. I think it actually had less to do with the walking and more to do with carrying my bag or my backpack (full of camera stuff) all week. Plus I just feel so groggy today. I went for a brief walk (really brief, only half an hour) this afternoon, hoping the fresh air would wake me up a bit. It didn't. The next step is doing some yoga. I have some pics from last week that I'd like to scrap after dinner, if I get around to it. I don't see any reason why I wouldn't. I'm actually getting back on the Artist's Way bandwagon today, and it turns out that I'm jumping right back into the week of reading deprivation. That means no reading other people's blogs, no going on scrap sites, no reading magazines. I'm on vacation - I should be finding ways to amuse myself other than filling my head with stuff other people have written. I'm actually doing a solo daytrip on Thursday to Troyes, a medieval type town that has 3 outlet malls on its outskirts. Woohoo!! I badly need some new shoes. Plus I have a lot of low self-esteem outfits in my closet that I'd really like to replace. Yes, Will, I will be replacing them, not adding to them. What with the costs of bringing my luggage to Germany I'll have to pitch old clothes as I buy new ones. But I digress! I must do some yoga now.

Later dudes. Enjoy the pics.

I'm baaaaaack

2006-04-17T20:45:00.000+02:00

Hello all,

Sorry to disappoint, but this is not going to be a long post. I'm kinda bummed about Mom being gone and I'm a little tired. Rather than making this a long whiny post, I will give you this picture to hold you over until I do a big recap of our week. I'm not even sure if a recap is necessary, because this is what we did:

We came.
We saw.
We shot.

And then, ate a croissant.

By the way, this is one of Mom's shots. I used the 35mm all week, so all the pictures you see will be hers. We were shooting at Palais Royal, which is definitely one of the coolest places photo-wise in Paris. Incidentally, this is also the only picture we have of the two of us. I love it.

I'll do a better post tomorrow, I promise.

Oh, one more thing...I will definitely be launching the new blog this week! Watch for it! Well, after I give you the address, which only a select few already have. Everybody at the Inn...you'll laugh when you see the addy. Anyway, keep checking back, I'll be back to my regular posting schedule tomorrow.

Happy Monday!

2006-04-10T22:35:00.000+02:00

And a good monday it was! I really thought today would go by sooooooo slowly, but thankfully, it didn't. Could be partially because I've only been up for 12 hours (it's 10pm now). I also spent a bunch of time this morning packing a duffel bag for Mom to take home. Actually, I think packing is the wrong word. "Cramming" is more like it. My poor little duffel bag is practically exploding at the seams. It kind of looks like it's in pain, honestly. It probably is. I'm guessing it weighs almost 50 pounds. If you could see it, you'd be very surprised something that small weighs that much. Seriously, it's only about 2 x 1 x 1 (feet, that is) and I can barely lift it. It's almost completely full of books.

*Sniff*

I'm saying goodbye to all my scrapbook idea books and magazines. I'm also sending home a huge pile of letters that I've been sent since I've been here, mostly thanks to Gram (thank you!!), my big honkin' French dictionary (seriously, that's almost 5 pounds right there), a truckload of makeup stuff that I never use, all the CDs I have here, my beloved 2nd season of Arrested Development (really gonna miss that, but everything that isn't an essential had to go), all my knitting supplies, and any other random memorabilia that I want to keep but don't want to put in my luggage in 6 weeks.

That's right, 6 weeks, and I'll be gone. Holy crap. This semester has gone by soooooo fast.

Anyway, I don't want to get all mushy on you, so I'll just explain why I'm saddling my mother with an extra 50 pounds of luggage. Hmm, I could've sworn I blogged about this earlier this semester, but apparently not. So here's the story:

When I came back to Paris, I flew in on Air Berlin from Germany. I did not read the fine print about the baggage allowance for EU flights. I thought you were allowed 20 kg per piece of checked luggage.

Wrong.

You're only allowed 20kg per person.

Oops.

Anybody want to guess how much I had, seeing as I had packed for a month?

Ok, I'll just tell you.

33 kg.

Now of course Air Berlin doesn't have a flat rate like most American airlines do, like if you're between 1 and 25 pounds over, it's this much money, between 26 and 50 it's this much, etc. Nope, they charge you by the kilo.

I had to pay them 50 euro to get my luggage on the plane. And they definitely felt sorry for me and bent the rules a little, because technically you're not even allowed to have more than 30kg no matter how much you pay. So suddenly my bargain basement flight of 30 euro turned into an 80 euro trip.

Yes, you guessed it. I'm flying Air Berlin back to Germany with EVERYTHING I OWN at the end of the semester.

Enter Pack Mule Mom.

I'm hoping that with most of the heavy stuff gone, I won't be over by quite so much. I really didn't want to fly Air Berlin again because in addition to the luggage fiasco, they had some major problems with my credit card. I don't really want to get into the whole thing in the interest of time, but it involved some very sketchy emails about them not being able to process my credit card and asking me to send them my bank information and me not believing said emails, even though it turns out they were real.

Customer service isn't a strong suit of Air Berlin's.

Anyway, enough of that. Mom will be here in roughly 13 hours! Hooray! I haven't packed yet, so I should probably go do that now.

Just to let you know - we will not have internet access at the hotel. I probably will not be posting again until Saturday. I know, it's sad, but true. I hope to post lots of pictures then. Me and mom are making dinner at my house on Saturday night because my host parents will be away and they gave me permission to use the kitchen, so I'll probably steal a bunch of mom's photos for my own personal use. You probably won't see any of my shots because I plan on using the 35mm all week. Just cross your fingers that the good people at the airport didn't make my mom put the film through the x-ray machine (she's bringing me 10 rolls).

I hope you all have a fabulous week!

A Samedi!

Comments

2006-04-09T20:19:00.000+02:00

So I heard the other day that a few of you were having trouble posting comments to the blog. Mom has emailed me my own blog several times, and while this is entertaining, I know that's not what she's trying to do. Let me do a brief tutorial to clear up any confusion.

Do you see the bottom of the post? It should say posted by Alexis at whatever time, x comments, and then an envelope icon.

The envelope icon does NOT post a comment. It emails the blog entry to whoever you want. To leave a comment, click on "x comments". A little box will pop up and you can put in your comment. Your choices for leaving your name are your blogger id, other, and anonymous. I'm assuming most of you (my relatives) don't have a blogger id. If you click on other, you can put in a name for yourself (like "Mom"). If you click anonymous, I have no way of knowing who commented unless you put your name in the BODY of the comment.

There. I explained it, Mom, all better now? lol

I'm kind of tired and a little hungry too. My host parents are going to be here tonight so I have to wait for them to eat. It's now 8pm and no sign of dinner yet. Guess I'll just keep typing until they call me.

I actually went on an artist's date today!! I haven't done one in so long. And this was something that was totally out of the ordinary for me. I took my sketchbook, some pens, and some colored pencils and went to the jardin du luxembourg, where I sat for almost an hour sketching ponies. In almost all of the gardens in Paris, and also on the lawn in front of the Eiffel tower, there are strings of poor ponies tied together, waiting for some little French kid to see them and then beg their parents (the kid's parents, not the ponies, mind you) for a ride. They charge an arm and a leg for the rides, but there's always a line. Today they had 2 strings of 5 ponies each. Actually, they weren't all ponies, there were a couple donkeys in there too. The poor things, they looked so sad and forlorn and just stood there staring off into space while they waited for the next batch of screaming children to be deposited on their backs.

So I drew them.

The sketches are pretty much awful. I discovered how difficult it is to draw an object that is constantly moving, even if it's not moving a lot. A slight shift of the legs, turning the head ever so slightly, and the perspective that I was so carefully sketching out no longer exists.

I would've liked to spend more time drawing in the gardens, but I was getting frustrated by the movement of the ponies. I would've drawn some trees or flowers or something, but the gardens weren't especially pretty. It was also windy. But mostly, I was getting greatly discouraged by my lack of skill.

I resolved to get better.

When I came back I googled "learn to draw" and found a website that's mean to help elementary school art teachers do their lesson plans. I can tell you that I succesfully completed four lessons meant to refine a 10 year old's technique. Woohoo. It was fun, though. I've never really been taught about perspective and vanishing points and all that fun stuff. I know the general concepts, but as far as applying those to a drawing? Yeah right. So yes, the site was helpful and I occupied myself for several hours doing that.

Guess what? I'll tell you...Mom's coming on Tuesday!! Yay!! I made up a pretty detailed itinerary including where we're going to eat and the prices of all the places I want to take her. Yeah, it's gonna be an expensive week, I'm not gonna lie. But it'll be FABULOUS. I'm especially looking forward to Wednesday night. Since my host mom is gone on a business trip all week, she won't be here to put on a dinner for me and Mom like she did for me and Will. Guillaume absolutely cannot cook, so he's taking me and Mom out to eat. It should be an extremely entertaining dinner, especially if he wants her to try different French foods. I have a sneaky suspicion he's going to take us to the most typically Parisian bistro he can think of and make her try escargot. I'm going to tell him not to, because I want to be the one to make her eat snails. haha. But anyway, it'll be a a good week. The only thing I'm disappointed about is that the trip to the D-Day beaches fell through. The train ticket prices went up, we would've had to rent a car, it's a long ways away...it just got too complicated and expensive. I'm just going to go to the train website on Tuesday. That's when they post special 50% off fares good for that week. I'll pick a random destination, hopefully somewhere south of here, and that's where we'll go on Thursday. Who knows where we'll end up? It'll just be for the day because we already have the HILTON booked for the whole week she's here, just in case you forgot about that.

Yes, it'll be amazing.

If I don't starve to death before she gets here. Where is my dinner??? Haha just kidding, I'm in no danger of wasting away. I wish I were a *little* but closer, but I'll settle for being more toned. And I'm getting there! I did yoga twice today. I really impressed myself. My arms are totally getting stronger. Every time I do yoga, I do about 20-25 pushups in the course of the practice. For a girl who's never really done pushups, that's a lot. But it's been getting easier and I could swear that my arms are slightly more muscle-y now. Not too much, don't worry, Will. Female bodybuilders frighten me - I have no desire to look like them. It would just be nice not to be a size XL when I buy anything here.

Seriously, in France I am an EXTRA LARGE. Can I just say how ridiculous that is? But looking around, it's true. I'm bigger than almost every single woman that I see (except the pregnant ones, but that's kind of a hollow victory). It only bothers me when I go to buy clothes. But I don't feel like ranting about that right now, I'd rather focus my energies on praying that dinner will be ready soon.

No word yet on the job I applied for...and no idea when I'll have word. But I'll keep you all posted, no worries.

Shopping shopping!

2006-04-07T14:47:00.000+02:00

So I promised Mom that I wouldn't do any shopping before she got here because we're going to go together next week.

Oops.

I was inspired by my dear friend Emily (you little enabler, you). She went shopping yesterday before grammar and came back with three of the cutest shirts I have ever seen. Of course, I had to go check out the store today. I've walked by it a million times in the mall but never gone inside because it looked too expensive. But it's not!! The store is called Promod and they're on the web if you want to check them out.

So here's what I got:

And one other shirt that I can't find on their website. And that's really too bad, because it's my favorite one. It's a brown halter with beads and embroidery and stuff. Way cool. And I got a bracelet that goes with all 3 tops. I really did need to go shopping (sure, sure, I can hear you all saying). It's true. I was taking stock of my closet the other day and everything that I have that's for warm weather looks like crap on me. Either it's just a tiny bit too short, or it's fading, or it just doesn't fit quite right. I don't want to be uncomfortable in my own clothes for the rest of the semester.

There. That's my justification and I'm sticking to it.

I need to go take care of my laundry now. Seeing as I have nothing left to do all day, I'll probably scrap and maybe work on the new typepad blog. I hope to launch that in a little over a week, so stay tuned!

A bientôt!

Thankful Thursday

2006-04-06T22:51:00.000+02:00

It's that time again! I missed it last week because I was lazy and also because I had a lot of stuff to take care of before the weekend en Provence. But I did it this week! This week's theme is spring. It's approaching...or rather, it's trying really, really hard to approach. Somehow winter keeps bludgeoning spring away. It's kind of irritating, really. One day it'll be gorgeous, the next I'll leave the house bundled up in my winter coat and scarf. But the important thing is that it's almost spring weather. Hopefully it'll be warm for when Mom's here.

I don't really remember what I used for fonts and stuff. If you have a burning desire to know what my supplies were, email me or leave a comment.

And speaking of comments...wow! I am so thrilled that so many people have responded to my call for affirmations. Even people that I don't know. It's really touching, seriously. Even though there aren't a whole lot of comments posted here, I've had people email or message me wishing me well and saying that they're keeping me in their thoughts. Thank you!! My resume and cover letter got sent on their merry way today. I think they'll do just fine. But I will keep you all posted, no worries.

Well that's about it for me tonight. I don't really have anything else interesting to talk about because I was in class all day today. Oh, yes, I know what else...I'M ON VACATION NOW! Wanna hear something really funny? Of course you do. When my host parents came home tonight, they asked how my day was. I said that it was really good because my vacation started after my last class today. My host dad gave me a quizzical look and said, "This whole year is a vacation for you."

HA.

It's funny cause it's true.

I'm going to sleep now.

Just say no to endive salad

2006-04-05T20:55:00.000+02:00

Seriously, this stuff is nasty. I don't know how you can eat it without making a face. That's what happens to me whenever I try. My host parents went out for the night and I was really looking forward to making dinner. I was going to make pasta. Mmmm pasta. Well, I guess they felt bad about leaving me alone for dinner, so my host mom made something before she left. She heated up some frozen crêpes-in-a-box. She also put out the leftover endive salad from last night. Ugh. I figured that if I smothered it with dressing, I'd be ok.

Nope.

Still disgusting.

So now I'm eating my boxed crepes and dipping the bread in the salad dressing. I'm not sure what to do with the salad. I'll probably scrape it into the trash and cover it with a napkin or something so they don't see. Man, I wish we had a garbabe disposal. That would make my life so much easier.

Enough about my dinner.

I did a layout for the first time in a week! I really like it. It's totally graphic, I didn't use any embellies at all. I think it looks like a magazine layout. I attempted to do something cool like adding shadows so it really looked like a two-page magazine spread, but then realized I'm not yet that talented. So much for that lol. Here is what I could do, however:

Man, I am so not feeling these crêpes. She made me 4 and I've eaten one.

Anyway, I think I might have some homework to do for tomorrow. I should check on that. If not, I need to start packing my duffel bag for Mom to take home. Last time when I flew Air Berlin, I had to pay 50 euro to get all my luggage on the plane. I am unloading as much as possible while Mom is here to get the costs down. I'll still probably have to pay at least 40, but we'll see.

I'm gonna go do something mildly productive and hopefully work up an appetite to finish these crêpes. I might need an affirmation for that too haha.

Affirmations

2006-04-05T11:12:00.000+02:00

Ok everybody, I have a favor to ask.

I'm currently applying for summer jobs. Something has come up that I am reeeeaaaally interested in. I don't want to go into detail, but trust me, it's a pretty sweet gig. I am in the process of affirming to myself that I am qualified and will get the job, but it wouldn't hurt to have other people doing the same thing.

So here's what I need.

Just say this to yourself a couple times:

Alexis is well-qualified and will be hired.

That's all. You may be rather skeptical, but if I believe that there are other people out there rooting for me, it makes it that much easier to believe in myself.

In the meantime, I have stuff to do. I've been tweaking my resume and writing a cover letter all morning and I need to double check with some people that I can indeed use them as a reference. Lots of preparation, and the affirmations are part of that. As Julia Cameron says in The Artist's Way: pray to catch the bus, and then run like hell.

That's what I'm doing. Wish me luck.

Of cabbages and kings

2006-04-04T10:05:00.000+02:00

I decided to put everything that I did this weekend in one post and then do a separate post about what has happened since then just for your convenience, dear readers.

Do you want the good news or the bad news first? I'll give you the bad news because I'd rather end the post on a happy note.

I registered for classes yesterday, which in and of itself is not a bad thing. I was able to register for everything I wanted except photography. I was still waiting on an email from the professor because I don't have the prerequisite. At my school, you have to take a basic into art class before you can take photography. I'm taking photo here, so I didn't think it would be a problem to get signed into the class.

I was wrong.

The prof sent me a rather snooty email saying that if he let in everyone that didn't have the prerequisite, no art majors would ever be able to take the course. So, no, there's nothing he can do.

Jerk.

If I had no experience with photo, then I would understand. I would be sad, but I would accept his reasoning. But I'm taking photo now and this is potentially something I want to spend the rest of my life doing. I'm going to talk to my photo prof today and see if there's anything she can do. I suspect there isn't. I've heard that he can be a not-so-nice person at times, and that's being EXTREMELY diplomatic. I'm consoling myself by saying that even if I can't take photo, I can still work in the darkroom with the photo club. Plus, I had a contingency plan just in case I didn't get in - I registered for the prerequisite. That way, I'll definitely be able to take photo in the spring, scheduling permitting. So, yeah, I was quite disappointed, but I'm trying to look at it in a positive way. If I can't take photo, at least I'll have the prerequisite. And I'll learn stuff in that class. That will definitely be challenging for me. and challenge is good, right?

Anyway, on to the fun stuff.

WE GOT THE APARTMENT!!!

Woo hoooooo!!! I cannot tell you how exciting I am. I want to send out a great big THANK YOU to Ryan and Will for handling all this stuff while my future housemate and I are abroad. Will told me that when they got to room selection, they had all their stuff so organized and Ryan is so tight with the ladies that were running it that they got ushered through the line and got to draw FIRST!! They picked the apartment that's closest to campus, I believe. They've assured me it's in a super location and I don't doubt them. Wanna see some pictures? Of course you do!

Bathroom

bedroom
And why yes, that IS a fullsize bed you see! Good bye, extra long twin!

ultra cool doorlock

track lighting...sweet

is this kitchen amazing or what?

the apartment complex...it's obviously not finished yet, but it will be!

How awesome is that. I am super psyched for next year. It is such a relief to have room selection AND registration completed (mostly) successfully.

Ok, this has been a big blogging morning, and now I should actually get some stuff done. I unexpectedly gained a whole morning because my fiction professor called me at 8am to tell me that he couldn't make it to class today. There's a big strike again, surprise surprise, and there are no buses running where he lives.

I'm not sure exactly what to do this morning, but it'll probably involve laundry and maybe some scrapping. We'll see, I guess.

Until I post again you should look at the apartment pictures and floorplans. Because that's probably what I'm going to be doing.

Better late than never

2006-04-04T09:31:00.000+02:00

...right? That's the theory, anyway.

Well, I'm back! I have SO much to talk about but I guess I'd better start from the beginning. I've broken it up into sections so if you don't really care about what I did this weekend, just skip down a bit.

~En Provence~

We arrived at the train station between 6:30 and 7am. Yikes, that was a little bit early. We had 2 people not make it, unfortunately, even though the train left almost an hour late. We are all so exhausted that we fell asleep once the train started moving and dozed pretty much the whole 2 1/2 hours. I adore the TGV (train de grand vitesse = really freakin' fast). One of the professors told me it goes almost 250mph. So yeah, we got pretty far in 2 1/2 hours. After we got of the train we switched to a bus and everyone fell asleep again. We were tired. We got off in some little town called Orange, I think. The whole weekend was so long and we spent so much time on the bus and visiting little towns that it all sort of blended together. We saw a mini Arc de Triomphe. That was kind of cool, but we were all sort of like, eh. We've seen the real one. Back on the bus, head to Arles. We visited a huge Roman theater that could hold several thousand people. It was pretty impressive, I have to say. We all got these little audioguide things so we could listen to a British woman with a soothing voice talk about the theatre. I abandoned her and wandered around taking pictures. I took almost an entire roll while we were there. You'll get to see some of the pictures eventually.

After that we went to the Pont du Gard. It was BEAUTIFUL there. The weather was gorgeous all weekend, but it was downright hot at the Pont. Of course, NONE of us had brought swimsuits. Gilles (I'll explain more about Gilles later, he might require another post all of his own) the history professor was mad at us because we didn't bring our suits. We asked our housing director why nobody had told us there would be a place to swim.

"Oh, the weather looking like it was going to be bad, so I didn't think you'd need them."

ARRRGHH. That was irritating. Most people waded in the river. All the boys (2 students, Gilles, and our director) actually went swimming. That was entertaining.

Ok, this is where I should explain about Gilles. He is of indeterminite age. We think he's in his 40s but it's kind of hard to tell. He is SO boring when he's trying to teach you something, but he is absolutely HILARIOUS when you're not in class. He is French - very French. He has no problem stripping down to his underwear and then changing into a bright red speedo not too far away from where our entire program is sitting. When asked about Gilles propensity for not wearing pants, our director shrugged and said very simply, "Il aime d'etre nu." (he likes to be nude)

But I digress. After basking in the sun by the side of the river, we all got back on the bus and headed back to the Abbey where we were going to be spending the next two nights. Yes, an Abbey, and there were monks there. Surprisingly enough, the rooms were really nice. Two to a room, a private bathroom and shower in each room, twin beds, and extra blankets and pillows. Not exactly luxurious, but if you had seen the hostel we stayed at in Normandy...let's just say we were overjoyed at the accommodations. We ate dinner at the Abbey. We were rather frightened at the prospect of authentic French food, but it was actually pretty amazing. Per usual, we ran through our repetoire of French drinking songs with Gilles. Sadly, I wasn't able to really enjoy it because I had had a headache for most of the day. Red wine isn't so good for headaches, so I just had water. French drinking songs are not so entertaining when you're sloshing around a glass of water. Shortly after dinner: blissful sleep. We'd been up for a heckuva long time.

DAY 2
Up early. Unnecessarily early. We were all ready for 7:30 but it turns out the Abbey doesn't start serving breakfast until 8. Man, if you want to piss off a crowd of college students, rob them of half an hour of sleep. If we hadn't been so tired we would've started a manif right there. That's probably why they keep us on such a tight schedule - we're more docile when we're overtired.

After breakfast we hopped back on the bus and went to Arles, another tiny town that looks just as fake as every other small town in the south of France. We visited another theater that was not nearly as impressive as the first and were then cut loose for a good part of the afternoon. There was an absolutely fabulous market going on while we were there. We wandered for so long, sampling the jams and other stuff that the vendors had out to entice you to buy stuff. It would have worked if I hadn't been trying to save money. There was sooooo much cool stuff there, I really wanted to buy presents for people. But alas, I am a poor college student. Anywhoo.

When our free time was up we visited some church. Honestly, we've been to so many cathedrals and churches that I really can't keep them straight or remember specific details about any of them. So, forgive me for not giving more information about the church.

We drove through a wildlife preserve on our way to the next town. Did you know that there are flamingos in the south of France? Neither did I. Did you know that flamingos can fly? I didn't know that either. I did enjoy the wildlife preserve but it was a rather harrowing experience quand même. Gilles kept instructing the bus driver to pull over so we could look at herons and bulls and flamingos and cowboys. In the process I swear to god we almost tipped the bus over. He had her drive onto the shoulder of the road which was really just a glorified marsh right next to the water. SO scary. And then everybody was running to that side of the bus to look at stuff. Eeeeee I was nervous and somewhat relieved when we finally left.

After that it was off to La Camargue, a small town on the Golfe du Beauduc that reminded one of my friends of the Jersey shore. I wandered around and took some pictures, we got ice cream, and then sat on the beach for a while and watched as some very brave (or maybe dumb, sometimes it's hard to tell lol) people from our group went swimming. This was when Gilles was wandering around with no pants on. It was so bizarre. He got out of the water, wrapped a towel around himself, and changed under that. He put on his shirt and then his sweater (which thankfully was pretty long) and then went around and picked up the rest of his stuff WITHOUT PUTTING ON HIS PANTS. We were all sitting there shielding our eyes but we couldn't help but look. One girl said that it was like driving by a car crash - you don't want to look and you know you're probably going to be scarred for life but you do it anyway.

It's always an adventure with Gilles.

When he'd finally put his pants back on, we got back on the bus and went to dinner. Again, a potentially scary dining experience that turned out really well. Wow, our group got smashed. I wasn't drinking again, but man...all the other tables? Whew. Our table was pretty sober, but after dinner was over you could really see it in the other people.

When we finally got back to the Abbey most of us crashed, although I heard rumors of some people staying up til 3 and finishing off a bottle (if not more) of wine that they had bought earlier in the day.

DAY 3
Up bright and early again! Sunday was the day we visited the Baux de Provence, which are huge cliffs with a castle on top. I was pretty frightened being up there on these narrow, twisty road in a huge tour bus, especially since there were no guardrails. I missed a lot of the views on the way up because I refused to open my eyes. I have a thing about heights like that. One we got out of the bus and climbed to the top on foot, I was much better. It was so beautiful up there and amazingly enough the weather was STILL cooperating with us. We didn't spend too much time there because we were on a tight schedule and we had to get to Glanum. Isn't that the weirdest name? Doesn't really sound French to me. Anyway, we went there to visit an archeological site. I'm pretty certain it was a Roman city or temple or something like that, but don't quote me. That was pretty cool even though it wasn't terribly exciting. We were all getting pretty hungry and a little tired of all the history lectures, so I'm sure some of it was wasted on us.

When we were done there we headed to Avignon, which is not nearly as pretty as you'd think. Honestly, I didn't like it. Turns out my host mom hates Avignon. I guess I can see why, there wasn't a whole lot there except the Palais de Papes, and the town itself isn't very nice. I think the most entertaining part of the whole visit was lunch. I went to a restaurant with Emily and Leslie and me and Emily got crêpes for dessert. The menu said the ingredients were apples, ice cream, nuts, and something unknown to us in French or English. We shrugged and ordered it anyway.

Turns out the mystery ingredient is calvados. Does that sound familiar to anyone?

If not let me enlighten you. Calvados is a kind of alcohol that makes your crêpe taste like somebody has poured nailpolish remover into it. Ugh. It was all concentrated in the center of my crêpe so I didn't notice until the very end, thankfully. I would've been pissed off if I paid that much for a crêpe that tasted like nailpolish remover.

Did you know there's a room in the Palais des Papes that's called the Jesus Room?

That was the most interesting part of that visit.

After that we went to the train station and went home. It was a good weekend, but a long weekend. Kind of like this post. Bravo to you if you made it all the way through.

Thankless Thursday

2006-03-30T22:27:00.000+02:00

I know that it's Thursday and that I'm supposed to be posting the board today, but forgive me, it'll have to wait til at least Sunday. I had class til 6:30, didn't get home til almost 8, and I honestly just didn't feel like doing it. I had to pack for this weekend. Besides, as soon as I post, I'm going to bed. I have to get up at 5 tomorrow. We're supposed to be at the train station at 6:45 and then leave for Provence at 7am. I'm not certain exactly where we're going, but I know we're staying in a monastary. How cool is that? I will be taking lots of pictures but unfortunately I don't know when you'll be able to see them. We're only going for 2 nights and I didn't want to be responsible for two cameras, so I'm only bringing the film one. I would probably bring the digital if I didn't have the lenses for the film camera, but I don't want to be responsible for that much camera equipment. Besides, practically everyone else on my program has convenient sized digital cameras, not a hulking monster like the one I have, so I can just steal some of their pics from facebook to show you.

I went to the coolest bookstore ever today. It's pretty famous, but I'd never heard of it. Shakespeare & Co? Anyone? Anyone? Well, it's awesome and I am definitely bringing Mom when she comes. It's been around for a while, I want to say like 50 years or something like that, and some really famous writers have been there and even stayed there. There's a loft type place over the bookstore where the now-famous people used to stay. The place it just bursting with character. And books, it's bursting with books, too. And here's the cool part: they're all in ENGLISH. It's run by a British woman. At least, I think she's British. Lots of English speakers there, might be a cool place to meet other Americans. While I was waiting for the rest of my class to get there (we went in lieu of holding an actual fiction class), the people that worked there wheeled out these huge carts full of used books. Since I had nothing better to do, I started browsing. If my class hadn't been late, I would've been fine. But noooooo they MADE me look through the books and I ended up buying one to read on the train tomorrow - Velocity by Dean Koontz. Because I have no self-control, I started reading it when I got back to school.

It's all finished now.

Oops.

Guess I'll be sleeping on the train tomorrow.

Ok gang, I gotta go do my morning pages and then go to bed. I'll be up again before most of you tuck in for the night, so maybe I'll talk to you in a couple hours. Hope everybody has an awesome weekend!

A dimanche.

Trade-Offs

2006-03-29T23:14:00.000+02:00

A day off seems like a lot of time, doesn't it? On Tuesday, my Wednesdays seem like a gloriously large amount of time in which I can accomplish absolutely everything I want.

Ha.

That only works if you get out of bed before 10am. But really, 10am was good considering that I didn't get to bed til 3. You saw that post lol. I spent what was left of the morning working on my new blog. It's not up yet (well actually it is, but it's not done so you can't have the address), but hopefully it will be within the next two weeks or so. I'm setting up a new blog over at Typepad. I like blogger but there are a lot of things that I want to be able to do that a) I just can't do because I don't know enough HTML or b) I can do but it takes me literally a whole Saturday to figure it out because I don't know enough HTML. Typepad just makes things a lot easier. And although I enjoy spending a whole day figuring out how to make a background and place it correctly on the blog, I would be saved a lot of frustration if I didn't have to mess around in the template. Enter Typepad. It's not free, unfortunately, but it's cheap enough and I enjoy blogging enough that I can justify it as a personal expense. So yes, hopefully that'll be launched in the next couple of weeks, and that's what I was working on this morning.

I finally got dressed around 12:30 and headed to school because today was LUNCH MONEY DAY! Woohoo!! It was a larger distribution that I had planned on because Kim was nice enough to give us a little extra for this weekend. Oh yes, I should mention that. This weekend we are going on an excursion en Provence. We are leaving at the butt crack of dawn on Friday morning and coming back around 8pm on Sunday. I will not be blogging this weekend unless I finish my grammar paper REALLY quickly on Sunday night, so tomorrow's post will probably be it til Monday.

But I digress again. I went to school and hung around until the person with the money showed up, then took said money and went to Monoprix and bought some highly exciting stuff, like hairspray. Yippee. After that, I walked home. Yes, I walked all the way home. I cannot take credit for the motivation. I walked more than halfway there with two of my friends. After we got to their house I continued on. All told, it took me about 2 1/2 hours. I walked from the center of Paris to the other side of the Seine. It's a long way, let me tell you, but it was highly enjoyable. The company for the first part, probably about an hour and a half but I didn't look at my watch, was awesome, and so was the rest of the time spent with my iPod. I think that counts as my artist date. Along the way I stopped in a mall-like place and found a Borders-like store. I was in the market for a sketchbook. Now, those of you who know me are probably scratching your head and going huh? What does she need a sketchbook for, she doesn't draw!

And that's where you're wrong, my friends.

Last night I found Rhonna Farrer's blog. Rhonna is an amazing digital designer, contributer over at 2Peas, and has her own product line from Autumn Leaves. I was so totally inspired by the artwork on her blog that I started doodling. Go read her blog NOW NOW NOW - it's in my blogroll. I drew for probably 2 hours last night. No masterpieces, I assure you, but it was FUN. It was hands-on creativity, something that I am severely craving right now. Man, what I wouldn't give to have my scrap supplies here right now. I feel a wicked urge to make an art journal. Anyway, drawing really helped calm that craving. I decided that I want to get better at drawing. The reason I'm not so great is because I've never really DONE it. Not since like fifth grade, anyway. And I don't know why, because I do find it fun. So I made an executive decision and bought a sketchbook.

Ok, I guess I bought more than one. I couldn't resist. The store had moleskine journals and the prices were actually pretty good. I could either buy one large journal (240 pages), or a pack of 3 (same size, 120 pages each). I went with the 3-pack. They also had MINI ones in packs of 3. I'm a sucker for anything that's cute and tiny, so I got those too. They're the perfect size for my purse or even my back pocket. I don't want to carry the large one around because that draws too much attention and at this point I'm VERY self-conscious about my drawing, but the little ones are PERFECT for doodling on the metro or writing down cool quotes and stuff like that. I also bought a pack of 18 colored pencils for a little over a euro. Not bad, huh? I was so excited to use them when I got home that I promptly filled up an entire pages with doodles. It felt good.

So why is this post titled trade-offs? Well, I chose to walk home and not take the metro, so I lost a lot of scrapping time. When I got home, I chose to call some of my family members and draw and not scrap or do work. And then I read through every single blog on my blogroll and didn't do anything constructive. At least I can truthfully say I finally finished my work BEFORE I started posting this.

Aight, that's enough for tonight. I'm peacin' out.
(What do you think, am I ghetto fabulous enough to pull off talking like that? I totally think so.)

This is what happens...

2006-03-29T02:43:00.000+02:00

...when you scrap til almost 3am. lol. Inspired. Yeah, you're probably thinking. Inspired. BY CRACK.

Flowers by Jen Wilson. Fonts are Garamond Light and MA Sexy.

Good night.

My photos!

2006-03-28T20:33:00.001+02:00

Since I know you've all been dying to see what I've been doing in photo, I brought home some prints to share with you. Keep in mind that I don't have a scanner; I put the prints on the floor and photographed them with my digital and a tripod. So, the color is a little off. The color of the pyramid photo is closest to how all of them look in real life. The pyramid and the two statues were both taken at La Défense. The reflection in the puddle (yes that is a reflection, it's not blurry or upside down) is of the Louvre. I will probably post more later but I just wanted to get these up. Enjoy!

And how cool is that little copyright symbol.

Love it.

My ears are burning

2006-03-27T22:22:00.000+02:00

No, seriously. I'm sitting here waiting for the remaining 21 minutes of my time to be up, and then I can go rinse my hair. I went to the mall today and I bought "L'Oreal Couleur Experte" (that's L'Oreal Color Expert for those of you who don't speak French). I am a big fan of this hair dye even though it costs almost $20 a box. At least, that's what it costs here. I think in the states it's closer to $15. I love it because I really can't mess it up, and it comes with highlights. Twenty dollars is still a heckuva lot cheaper than getting them done professionally. And here's the secret: if you dye your hair on the same day you get it cut, everyone will think you paid lots of money to have the good people at Franck Provost do it for you.

So that's what I did. I bought my hair dye and went right to Franck Provost. I always get my hair cut there even though it costs $44 once you do the conversion. I don't trust cheap hairdressers with my hair. It's short enough so that if someone bungles the job, I look like a man. I don't really want to look like a man. I said that to Will and he said that he didn't want me to look like a man either. I was glad we were in agreement on that one.

Getting your hair cut there is an experience. I've never been to any other place in Paris so I don't know if the routines are quite as elaborate, but here's how it goes chez Franck.

You go in and tell the receptionist what you want. You have to specify if you want your hair to be shampooed and blowdried, because if you just say you want a haircut they do just that: cut your hair and send you on your merry way with dirty hair that hasn't been styled.

The receptionist then takes your coat and puts a robe on you. And no, it's not one of those plasticky things that looks like a tacky picnic table kind of table cloth, it's actually a robe. And these are SPECIAL robes. They have a plastic pocket on the sleeve where the receptionist puts the paper that has what you want to have done written on it.

She sends you over to the row of sinks where a row of girls wander up and down, pull our your card, look at it, and then walk away. One of them will eventually come over and wash your hair. Be careful here, if you go to Franck Provost. There are two kind of washes: one with a SPECIAL conditioner, one without. If they ask, tell them that you just want a normal shampooing. If you go for the deluxe version, they charge you two euros more.

After you're done with the shampooing assembly line, they send you to a one of those spinny chairs where you will sit and dangle your feet and look rather dumb sitting there in your robe with a towel wrapped around your head because if you are as short as I am your feet don't touch the floor. Eventually a stylist will realize you are there and will come over and ask you what you want.

At this point, an elaborate pantomime and a mix of broken Franglais ensues as you try to convey to the stylist what you want. "No mullet," you try to say, but then you realize you don't know the word for mullet. You say "comme ça" a lot and make lots of gestures like your fingers are scissors. The stylist will look at you, slightly bemused, and then do pretty much whatever the hell she wants to your hair. But it always ends up looking good, so I don't complain.

After she cuts and blowdries your hair (provided you remembered to specify blowdrying to the receptionist) she will lead you back to the front desk and hand over your card. She will walk away and you will pay the receptionist and leave, all the while wondering if you were supposed to leave a tip.

And that is how it goes chez Franck. Now after all that, don't you want to see the results? Of course you do. Now this picture was obviously taken BEFORE I dumped a bottleful of dye on my head. I will take a picture of the dye job tomorrow and post it. It won't be too much different from the color I have now. It'll be reddish, I guess auburn would be a good description, for a couple days but it will calm down to a dark blondish color with highlights, I promise. At least, that's what I've assured Will will happen. He doesn't like it very much when I dye my hair. Just a personal preference, I guess.

I just rinsed the dye and put in the highlights. Those will be done in 20 minutes. And I think that's all I have to say about my hair.

On an unrelated note, IT'S FINALLY SPRING!! I define it as being spring because I went to the center and back today WITHOUT WEARING A COAT. So exciting, I cannot even tell you. It was sooooo beautiful today and I really, really hope the weather holds for when Mom is here. The warm weather really has me itching to buy new clothes. Almost all of the warm weather clothes I have hear scream "mug me, I'm an American." Seriously. In the beginning of the year it was really hard to tell what was "in" in Paris and what was not because there are SO many people wearing so many different styles. Not like back at home where if one person starts wearing a popped collar pretty they'll be EVERYWHERE within a week. So the whole time it was warm I just resigned myself to look really, really American.

I refuse to do that for the rest of the time I'm here.

I went shopping after I got my hair cut but it was really disappointing. I must say, the spring fashions don't really suit me all that much. Even though I like to pretend I'm leggy and have a tiny, tiny waist, I do have to keep in mind that I'm actually pretty stumpy. Parisian fashion does not look good on stumpy people. Sigh. Guess I'll just have to keep shopping until I find some dresses that don't make me look like I'm either 12 or 80.

Ok, I think that's enough about fashion related stuff. I'd like to scrap tonight, but it's already 11:30 and I probably won't finish whatever I start. Either that or I will finish but won't go to bed until 2.

Oh yeah, there's supposed to be a huge manif tomorrow. That's what the French people call the demonstrations, or manifestations. And we're talking HUGE. The students have conspired with the transport people, who are ALWAYS on the lookout for a chance to strike, and only 50% of the metros will be running. Same goes for all the trains, planes, and automobiles. Ok not really, I just remembered that book title and felt like using it. But seriously, my host dad told me that a lot of the air traffic controllers as well as some of the people who work at Air France at going to be striking tomorrow, so the airport will be affected. Ugh. This is really irritating. Not only that, but the people who were burning cars in the riots last time have piggybacked onto the student's cause and are following them around breaking stuff and stealing people's cell phones. Yes, tomorrow will be a fun day. I only have one class but it'll probably take me at least an hour and a half to get there. I'm not too thrilled about going to that area, because it's sort of-kind-of-roughly where the manifs are going to be, but I'm sure it'll be fine because the metro stop is only a minute away from where I have class. So no worries.

Ok really that's all.

Sunday Morning

2006-03-26T15:08:00.000+02:00

Ok, so it's not really morning, it's really closer to late afternoon. But we changed the clocks back today, so it feels a lot earlier than it actually. So I think I'm just gonna go ahead and call it morning, ok? Ok.

And a good morning it was! I didn't go to bed til 2 last night (or rather this morning...as you can see my temporal sense is not so great). I was planning on going to bed early because I was still pretty wiped from the night before when I stayed up and watched Rob Roy til almost 3. Don't ask my why I did that, because I can't explain it to you. It was a bad movie and I was exhausted and I was finished with my scrapping by the time the movie was about half over, so there was absolutely no point for me to be up that late. But I digress. Last night I had some people over for dinner and we made that amazing salad I told you about, except I forgot to buy the corn so it wasn't quite as amazing as last time. But it was still a pretty kick-butt salad. They left around 11:30 and I had every intention of going to bed. But somehow I picked up my Feb issue of CK (Creating Keepsakes, a scrapbooking magazine) and then before I knew it I was doing a scraplift and I didn't finish til 1:30. My problem is I still feel really creative even after I finish something, so I still have all these ideas floating around in my head. I just have to squash those ideas enough to go to sleep, but sometimes it's difficult. Hence, I didn't get to sleep til 2am.

This morning I woke up around 10, but it was actually 11. One of my friends told me today that all you guys in the US don't change the clocks til next week. Is that true? That's kind of silly. Well, I changed my clocks and then decided that no matter what time it was, I was NOT going to lose my morning. So I went downstairs and made myself a pancake breakfast. And then I made a page about it! So here's that page, and the page I did last night. The Vienna Zoo page is a blatant scraplift and I think it's just ok. I really need to work on multiple photo layouts, because if you scroll through the layouts I've posted here, ALL of them only have one photo. I'm not totally satisfied with the layout, but I like the pictures and I was glad to finally do something with them.

Everything on the "Taste of Home" page is by Shabby Princess. Fonts are Garamond Light and CK Cursive. Wild Things: papers by Jen Wilson, Ams Digi Scraps, Gina Miller, Sandra Boddington, and Theresa Hernandez Fonts are ebola and marker felt. Flower by Jen Wilson, paper flower by Theresa Hernandez.

The whole time I was scrapping this morning I had the same CD on repeat, a CD I discovered the day before yesterday and one that you should definitely check out. The artist is KT Tunstall. I'm not sure if they're playing her stuff in the US yet, but if they are and you're already sick of her, just disregard this. I was watching the French version of MTV the other day and they played a video of one of her songs, "Suddenly I See." I had the song downloaded within 2 minutes and I've been playing it on repeat ever since. Download it! Another good song is "Black Horse and the Cherry Tree." Get the radio version of that one. Those are the two most upbeat songs on the CD; everything else is a little mellower.

Wanna hear something exciting? Today is the first Sunday in, hmm, 3 weeks, maybe 4, and I DON'T have to go out and do my photo assignment! Woohoo! I actually went out and did it yesterday. I don't think my pictures will be very inspired. Our teacher sent us to a bunch of passages where there are stores. All the passages are fairly narrow and there were a lot of people. I HATE taking pictures of people. They're so unpredicable and they can totally make or break your photo. I prefer to get 'em out of there and take my time with the shots, but that wasn't possible. I guess I'll find out on Tuesday.

It is now almost 4 and I have not showered or changed out of my fleece pants, so I really should do that. And guess what, by the time I get ready for the day and read through all the blogs that I stalk daily (see my blogroll), it'll be time to start making dinner! Haha. It's such a hard life being a college student, n'est-ce pas?

Oui, bien sûr.

Woe is me

2006-03-25T11:15:00.000+01:00

Here's something that will make you feel really sorry for me, the po' college stu'ent.

This is where I'm living next year with Will and two of our friends. These are the floorplans of the brand spankin' new apartments that our college is building. They're going to be ready for our class in the fall and are only open to juniors and seniors (I'll be a senior! Pick me, pick me!). There are 3 different kind of units, this one being the best choice for 4 people. In the other model, two of the bedrooms are on the ground floor, which could be problematic if somebody wanted to have people over, but someone sleeping downstairs wanted to go to bed. Anyway, there are 30 of this kind of unit. My college uses a lottery system to assign housing. Each person gets a number, and every year you get a number that's in a different bracket, i.e. one year it'll be between 1-200, another 200-400, another 400-600, or however many people are in your class. The lower the number is, the better off you are. I had sucky numbers last year and the year before, but it didn't really matter because I applied to be in substance-free housing and the people there don't have to go to room selection. But this year, the first year that I actually have to go to room selection...my number is...

30!!!!

Sweet. So even if EVERY SINGLE PERSON ahead of me wants the same apartment, it is mathematically impossible that we won't get one. Also, have a look at the amenities. This'll really make you feel sorry for me.

Gotta love that person photoshopped into the background. Read carefully....wireless internet!! Woohoo!! I am psyched beyond belief for these apartments. Senior year is gonna rock.

Anyway I need to go do my assignment for photo and then go food shopping. A few people are coming over for dinner and we're going to make the same fabulous salad that we had last time, avocado and all. Maybe I'll take another picture and start a series of prints about avocado salads. I'll sign them and number them and have Dad frame them and you'll all want to buy them, I'm sure. I gotta hop in the shower now, but I just wanted to gloat a little bit about my apartment for next year. Also, I just wanted to prove that this is NOT the blog of a "cranky college student," as SOME people *coughgregcough* might have said. Haha. I think overall I'm pretty happy in my posts. Pretty happy in real life, too. I know I sound cranky and whiny sometimes, but you have to consider the fact that it's all relative. I have nothing major to complain about, so I whine about the little things. Besides, I'm in France, and whining is like the national pastime or something like that.

Followed closely by setting cars on fire.

Liberté, Egalité, Flammibilité!

Holy productivity batman!

2006-03-25T00:17:00.000+01:00

I got soooooo much done today and I am so proud of myself. It's late and I'm tired so I'll just give you a quick list:

called Mom and Dad
called Gram
called Mom and Dad again to let them know that I'm not as scummy a granddaughter as they think I am
did my taxes
made myself lunch (sort of, I put some fish sticks and a hamburger patty into a frying pan)
did yoga (45 minutes worth thank you very much)
wrote my morning pages
cleaned my room (this is a bigger task than it sounds, I COMPLETELY sorted everything in my closet, cleaned off my desk, everything, took me over 3 straight hours)
made dinner (mmm pizza)
did not one but TWO layouts
watched Braveheart (in English, woohoo!!)
called my aunt

and now i'm posting! Pretty impressive, huh? Well, now I'm really tired, all this productivity really wipes me out. I'm half-watching Rob Roy right now. It must be "Scuzball-English-soldiers-raping-Scottish-women" night on the movie channel. I'd never seen either Braveheart or Rob Roy before, but that seems to be pretty much the plotline. Disturbing, probably not something i should be watching right before going to bed. ANYWAY here's something slightly less dark: my layouts!

Everything for the first page is from Jen Wilson's kit "Growing." Fonts are tweed and Minion. The little bit of background paper you can see on the second page is also by Jen Wilson from her Sunlight kit. Font is Courier.

I was digging through my pictures looking for something to scrap and I found that one from inside the cathedral at Chartres. I'd forgotten how much I love this picture. Something about it just sends shivers up my spine. I hope that you can sense some of that when you look at it. I think the quote really fits well with the picture. At least I hope so, I spent almost half an hour searching for a good one. Anyway, I'm rambling, it's time for sleep.

Night all!

Ta-da!

2006-03-23T23:16:00.000+01:00

I have a feeling that most of you won't be nearly as impressed with this as I was, but that's alright because it's another one of those "me" things that I've decided to do. Without any further ado, I would like to introduce you to...

The Thankful Thursday board!
I was ruminating the other day (that's a way cool word, btw) about how much I have to be thankful for. I mean, truly. Wow. And I should really be documenting this stuff. Even if it's just a little thing like a warm spring day (which will hopefully arrive soon), there is ALWAYS something to be grateful for. Always. I know I'm sounding sort of like my mom here, but it really is true. So, every week I will make a layout and post it on the Thankful Thursday board every Sunday. Lol just kidding, every Thursday (can I say DUH?). I made the board itself using Gina Miller's BYOBB kit. Everything else is by Shabby P from the Flea Market kit, except for the staples, which are from the Shabby Smiles kit. Fonts are Artistamp, Minion, and Steelfish Outline. I know the font might be kind of hard to read in the preview, so here's the journaling:

Every week I can always count on the arrival of one of Gram’s letters. Sometimes she makes me a card, sometimes it’s a store-bought card, and sometimes it’s a regular notecard. She almost always includes newspaper clippings from the local paper or funny photos. I love getting her letters because they’re a way for me to keep in for me to keep in touch with the real world outside of Paris. Even if it’s just a letter telling about what she did that week, I love to read it because it keeps me connected and up-to-date about her and other people that I miss and don’t get to talk to. I’m not nearly good enough at writing back to her, but I’m so thankful that she continues to write to me nevertheless.

The ironic thing here is that she won't see it unless I print it out and send it to her in a letter. That's why she writes to me - she doesn't have a computer. I guess one of the impetuses (impeti?) for doing this was so I'd have to write her a letter and include this. I am so awful at writing back to people, it's amazing they still send me stuff.

Well, I haven't done my morning pages or any yoga today because I spent all my time after dinner doing the layout, so I'm gonna go do that now. Tomorrow I have no class, per usual, and I'm really looking forward to getting a lot done. I need to do my photo assignment, a bit of homework, and I really should do my taxes. That and write letters to all the people that have written to me. It'll be a good day!

Now let's all go around the blogosphere and say what we're thankful for.

**edited to add** Oops! I forgot to mention yesterday that I got the inspiration for the board from Margie. She makes a "Blessing Board" every day and posts it on her blog. If you want to check it out, you can find it here.

Something wicked [awesome] this way comes

2006-03-23T14:58:00.000+01:00

So watch for it later today. I'm posting this now so I'll HAVE to finish it and post it before the end of the day. So yeah...check back later! It'll be cool, I promise!

Oh, the horror

2006-03-22T20:46:00.000+01:00

I just finished writing my paper for grammar, and I use the word "paper" loosely. The assignments that we get for grammar are like going back to third or fourth or fifth grade, maybe, if you were in the slow class. Case in point: for today, we were given an article of 375 words (I know that because it said so on the bottom of the page, NOT because I counted. Sheesh, I'm not that anal) about "le cinéma fantastique" (exactly what it sounds like). We had to write a short summary, and I mean short, around 120 words, and then answer the following question. Now, don't read this too fast, it's extremely complicated and your head might explode:

Aimez-vous le cinéma fantastique? Quels genres de films a votre préférence? Pourquoi?

And yes you are probably translating that correctly. Do you like fantastic cinema, and what types of movies do you prefer and why?

Am I writing a grammar paper or a personals ad?

I know the point is to get us to write grammatically correct French, not to write a brilliant and thought-provoking paper. But come on, it's hard to squeeze 2 pages out of your movie theatre preferences.

And while I'm on the subject, can I just say that I hate the way they handle the housekeeping end of writing papers here? And what I mean by that is, THEY ARE ALL HANDWRITTEN. My professors will NOT accept a typed paper. So, for all my grammar work, this is what I do: I write it on the computer, take advantage of the spellcheck, and then write it out by hand.

How is that helpful for the professors? I don't understand. There are nine people in my grammar class and I think every single one of us writes on different sizes of paper, because none of the notebooks are standardized here either. All of the handwriting is different and runs the gamut from "chickenscratch" (moi) to "grade 3 cursive instructor" (definitely not moi).

ARGH. It kills me, it really does. One of my professors, bless his archaic little heart, refuses to use a computer for anything. Everything he gives us is written by hand.

Photocopies.
Exercises.
Tests.
Homework.
Everything.

Thank god the man is a machine and his handwriting looks like a font. If it were free I would seriously scan in a handout and make a font out of his handwriting. Compared side by side with his freehand writing, I bet you wouldn't be able to tell the difference.

Anyway, that's your French culture lesson for the day. On a scrapping note, I bit the bullet and subscribed to digiscrapdesigner today. They have a whole area of their website reserved entirely to tutorials that you can only access if you buy a yearly subscription, which actually isn't that bad (only $35). And they have tuts for pretty much everything you could ever want to know that deals with designing your own stuff: textured paper, metal elements, lace, buttons, bottlecaps, fibers, and tons tons more. I spent pretty much all day working through the tutorials and the results are pretty cool. One of the tuts teaches you how to make your own bling, which I think is absolutely fabulous because I always wondered how they did that. This is the one I made following the tut exactly. I think it came out ok, but I'm looking forward to playing around with it and seeing what else I can do from that basic framework.

Also, I found out the other day that most of my family is on aim. Or ichat, rather. I think that is pretty much the coolest thing ever. They're online more than some of my friends, seriously. I have screennames for I think 4 or 5 of my relatives and I've talked to them all over the last couple of days. You saw the conversation with my uncle from yesterday lol. This is so cool that they're online and I can talk to them even though I'm so far away. I have such a big family and I really do miss everybody. I don't like being so far away from all my cousins and my aunts and uncles and grandparents and definitely not my immediate family. But such is life, right? And I have to admit, I am living the good life here. I have practically no work, I get handed an envelope full of money every other week, and I can see the Eiffel Tower whenever I want. And for the icing on the cake...my host family has a housekeeper that cleans my room twice a week.

Sweeeet.

Kind of weird. But still pretty cool.

I'm off to play with some more tutorials. A demain!

This will be my last post

2006-03-21T23:55:00.000+01:00

...because sadly, my head is about to explode from the praise I got from my photo teacher today. Ok just kidding, I'll keep posting, even if my brains are leaking out my ears. Class was pretty much awesome today. She liked the negs that I brought in, suggested I minor in art, take a drawing class, and continue developing my own work over the summer. She wants to work with me to make a portfolio because she thinks it's something I should have. I think she thinks I could actually have a future in something photography-related if I wanted to and if I put in the week. *cue happy dance* I was thrilled. I love photography and I love that class, but I never thought I could be good enough to do it professionally. Obviously I'm not there yet, I've got a LONG ways to go, but now that I'm learning how to develop my own prints a lot of new avenues have opened up that I might want to pursue. Anyway, it's just a thought.

Here's a layout I did tonight in PHOTOSHOP. I'm still so thrilled that I have it - especially since I know that it won't expire on me in a month. Background paper by Shabby Princess, fonts are Ariel and Pierre Tryout. Speaking of photoshop...I had an interesting conversation with one of my uncles a few minutes ago (the one that I had the chat with yesterday), and apparently there was some debate as to WHICH uncle I was referring to. When I told him that it was indeed him that I was talking about, this is the conversation that followed. I thought it was hilarious so I decided to post it. I've changed our screennames to "uncle" and "me."

uncle: SWWEEEET
uncle: I'm famous, he's not
me: but he's the one that sent me photoshop and i had that in the same post
uncle: anybody can send a copy of store bought software.
uncle: But sharing the latest technology is true kindness
me: haha i guess so
uncle: It's like a homemade birthday cake versus a McDonald's cake. Are you still with me here?
me: lol not really
me: does mcdonald's even make cake?
uncle: You've never had a Ronald McDonald cake?
me: no, never
uncle: I'll paste the image
uncle: hold on
*he sent me a picture of a cake with ronald mcdonald on it*
me: ok that's not a mcdonald's cake, that's a hannaford cake
uncle: Exactly. A store bought cake. Now what was I talking about?
uncle: Gotta go back to work.

So bizarre, but so hilarious at the same time. See, now you really are famous lol.

Ok, it's after midnight and I'm pretty tired, so I think I'm gonna go to bed now. Everybody's mission for tonight is to THINK SPRING!! It was sooooo cold here today. I won't tell you the actual degrees because everyone in New England will probably hate me for being a wimp. But trust me, it was cold, and I didn't like it. So everybody needs to concentrate really, really hard and hopefully that'll be enough to raise the temp here. You can even do a spring dance if you feel like it, I won't object.

Hip hip hooray!!

2006-03-20T22:16:00.000+01:00

First of all, I need to start this post with a great big CONGRATULATIONS to my little sister, who was just accepted yesterday by her TOP CHOICE COLLEGE!! Woohoo!! She's been working hard these last couple of years and I'm really proud of her. If someone would like to take a picture of her holding up her acceptance letter (hint, hint, Mom), I'd be happy to scrap it. But since I don't, I just whipped up this little card type thing. Ok, I suppose that "whipped up" is stretching it a little bit. I'm half watching a movie, half paying attention to the computer, so it took me a lot longer than it should have. Everything is from Sara Carling's "Authentic" kit and the font is Stamp Act Jumbled.

And nextly (yes I have decided that "nextly" is now a word), I would just like to say that I made it using the full version of photoshop!! Woohoo!! My wonderful uncle gave it to my wonderful parents who sent it to me! Sooooo nice not to be in Elements anymore. Elements is a nice program, but I've definitely outgrown it as far as digi-scrapping goes. It's not CS2, it's just CS, so I am considering purchasing the upgrade. I can get it for $150 on newegg.com. I probably won't get it right away since CS is pretty amazing by itself, but I would like the FULL full version at some point.

Hmm I feel like there was more that I wanted to blog about. Ohhh yes. Y'all remember when I posted my last story? Well, I have another one to share. Our assignment was to write a full-length story and I wasn't sure that I had when I re-read my work this morning, but then I read it in class and it got good reviews from my prof and the other people in my class. So, here it is for your reading pleasure! It doesn't have a title, not yet anyway, so feel free to suggest one. It's a little bit different from the stuff I usually write, but I really like it. It definitely needs work and could stand to be fleshed out a little, but that's a project for another time.

He stared at the notebook in front of him and tapped his pen against the page, thinking about the way her hair fell over her face when she dipped her head to read something. Those beautiful strands, hanging delicately and brushing against her eyelashes until she blew them away with an irritated burst of air or pushed them back with a quick swipe of her hand. There was poetry in that gesture, in every gesture she made, and his heart ached with the beauty of it all. He wanted to capture it, to lasso those words that would represent her, that would be her, and trap them within the swift strokes of his pen so that everyone could see those gestures as he did.

He just needed a beginning. And an ending, too. Or maybe it didn’t matter, maybe for him they were one and the same, for either one meant he had to put pen to paper, and that was an act that seemed far too sacred for him to accomplish. There was something gloriously tragic about an unfinished poem. After all, was it really necessary to finish poems to be considered a poet? He thought not. A poet, he believed, was a sensitive soul, one in whom the rhythm of language beat strongly and the music of words flowed freely. Yes, he was a sensitive soul; he was a poet. He was bursting with words, with metaphors and images and gestures like her pushing her hair back from her face, but he could not release them. He was swollen; gravid with these words, but strain as he might he was not able to bring them into the world.
He liked that. Could a poem actually be born? He chewed on the cap of his pen and thought about whether he would be its father or mother or midwife. Probably the mother. He carried the poems but never to term, always aborting them and flushing their remains from his mind. He mourned each death and paid homage to their passing by spending hours contemplating the blank notebook page, a tombstone to mark the potential of a life that had not really begun. Each pristine page was like the soul of an unborn child, completely and perfectly untarnished.

And forever would they remain untouched. At least, that’s what she had said, but she hadn’t said it quite so poetically. Will you quit playing at being a writer and get a real goddamn job, she’d said. But she was wrong. He wasn’t playing at it; he was a writer, a poet, an artist. He was a craftsman, breathing energy and life into everyday objects, actions, gestures, and turning them into works of art. She would be immortalized, couldn’t she see that? She would be famous and everyone would see her beauty, would know her hands and her face and the way her hair fell across it. She would live forever.

But she didn’t want that and he couldn’t understand why. He would like to be immortalized, but there was no beauty in his hands or his face or his hair. Maybe if she were a poet too, she would have seen it in him, would have recognized in him an artistic counterpoint.

He slouched over his desk and rested his head in his hands. He supposed it didn’t really matter; it would be difficult for two poets to live under one roof. It was enough for him to be a writer. It was a burden but also a gift to appreciate the beauty, the poetry of every day life. When she had said those things, he had read the frustration in her eyes, heard the disappointment in her tone, and felt the slight tremor of the apartment as she had slammed the door. He had thought that it would be best expressed with a metaphor of the keening cry of the loon.

Or maybe not.

Maybe he had seen her eyes, heard her voice, and been so shaken by the slamming of the door that it was he himself who was the anguished creature, crying wordlessly because he had no words; they were all aborted and buried.

And finally, some general housecleaning stuff. I changed the font back because I received some complaints that it was too small. I previewed the blog with the old font and compared it to the new one and whaddya know, it IS quite a bit smaller. So, I changed it back. I also fixed the background image in the center of the page so if anyone was having viewing problems they should be cleared up now.

That's about it for today! Now that my money-spending binge of last week is over, I'll be staying in this week and catching up on my scrapping. I don't have class until 2 tomorrow so hopefully I'll be able to do a layout tomorrow morning and post it tomorrow night.

I hope everyone had a good first day of spring! The weather is finally starting to get a little warmer here - you can definitely tell that spring WANTS to be here. Is the time change this weekend? I think it is. I hate that I lose an hour of sleep but let's face it, when you only have class 3 days a week no one really has any sympathy if you have to get up an hour earlier. So I won't complain! The extra hour of sunlight will be FABULOUS and I really can't wait. And guess what else! My mom will be here in three weeks!! I can't wait. I have a lot to do between now and then in terms of planned. We'd like to do a daytrip, possibly to the American Cemetary in Normandy. I went there first semester with my program but I'd love to go back. It is such a deeply moving experience, I can't even begin to describe it.

Anyway, I'm off to have a video conference with one of my uncles. Isn't technology grand? Man, I am so lucky to have all this stuff while I'm abroad. I can't even imagine only being able to communicate with people through letters. That would pretty much suck. I'll take Skype and video conferencing, thank you very much!

Tired and cranky

2006-03-18T22:59:00.000+01:00

...never a good state to blog in. But it's Saturday and I never blogged on Wednesday (I never promised that I would, mind you) and I know that you all must have missed me terribly! So, I am posting. Also, I'd like to explain some of the changes that I've spent literally all day making.

The side borders: or, if you're viewing this in firefox or internet explorer, side border. For some reason in those browsers it's only showing up on the left side, and in ie it's all squished up against the text. In safari, which is what I'm using, it's perfect. If anyone is good at css and would like to help me out here, that would be great. I just sort of pick this stuff up as I go along and a lot of it is trial and error, so feel free to shoot me an email or leave a comment.

New font! Not so different, but I felt like changing it.

No navbar! It interfered with the background and didn't really match the new scheme.

New counter. Also didn't match the scheme, and it still doesn't. Oh well. Also, it's gone up by almost 100 today. Not because my blog has suddenly caught on fire, oh no. It's because it took me so frickin' long to figure out the background and I had to preview it with every change that I made.

So, those are the blog changes. I think I'm done changing the template for now, unless I decide to add a clock or a calendar or something else mildly entertaining like that. If you know of any cool things that would be neat on here, let me know.

Now why am I so cranky, I'm sure you want to know. Well, Will left today. Or I suppose it would be more accurate to say that I left Will at the airport. I haven't heard from him since around 3pm so I'm assuming everything is going smoothly. It was sad leaving him today, but my mom is coming to visit me in 3 weeks and I'll be done with Paris 6 weeks after that!! Holy toledo batman! That was a comforting thought and it definitely made it easier. We were really lucky weather-wise this week - no rain! It was a good week overall. Granted, there were a lot of little things that didn't really go according to plan, but overall it was good.

Par exemple: on Wednesday the plan was to go see The Producers, eat out, and then climb l'Arc de Triomphe. Wednesday was also the day that we had to switch hotels, so I had all my stuff with me when I went to the center to get my lunch money. When we went into the RER station to go to the hotel, I was walking down the stairs with my big duffel bag in front of me and thought I was at the bottom when I wasn't. I missed the last step and twisted my ankle a little bit. I'm fine now, no worries, but I had to ice it when we got to the hotel and I definitely wasn't in any condition to monter anything. So that was disappointing, definitely.

I made Will try escargot! We went to Chartier's, which is probably my favorite restaurant in Paris. It's this crazy, crazy place where it's so busy that the waiters just write your order on the tablecloth and have all the prices memorized. It was so packed and for some reason all of America had decided to come to Paris and sit at the table directly behind us, loudly talking about how at this restaurant one could have a true French dining experience. Sorry gals, hearing all of you babble on VERY loudly in English and completely butchering the French language did NOT help my French dining experience. Anyway, I ordered escargot and I made Will try half a one. He didn't like it, but I thought they were absolutely delish and can't wait to go back there with Mom.

Yes Mom, if Will can try the escargot, so can you.

Also during the week, I completely neglected my morning pages, my yoga, and my schoolwork, and I ate out just about every night. So now I'm tired, sluggish, behind on my work, and I feel like a cow.

And I spent all day working on my blog template.

Ah yes, back to that dang prioritizing again. I'm not very good at that, in case you haven't noticed.

Now somebody gimme some chocolate. I'm cranky.

New look!

2006-03-12T00:17:00.000+01:00

Ok, I lied, but I swear, THIS is my last post til Wednesday. I had a lot more time on my hands than I thought this evening after I finished packing and I was just so happy about the page I did today that I decided to give the blog a new look! After all, it's been the same since December, and a lot has happened since then. Change is good! I know a lot of people are giving their blog templates an update and making them more springy - not so much here. But I adore this picture and this color scheme so I decided to try it out for a while. I'll probably change it again in 2 months, but that's the beauty of it being my own blog - I can do whatever I want!

Alright, I need to get some sleep. I don't have to get up too early tomorrow (8am), but it's early enough that I should be in bed within the next 10 minutes (12:30). Good night and bonnes vacances to everyone that's on spring break!

Productive in a non-productive sort of way

2006-03-11T15:09:00.000+01:00

That means that I'm scrapping when I should be doing other things. Bad that I'm not getting other stuff done, but good that I'm creating pages. I really like this one. I don't normally do 12x12, but it just fit. I took this picture back in November and couldn't figure out exactly what to do with it. I decided to make it inspirational. Will's mom gave me a really cute notepaper holder for my birthday that has a 3x3 space for a picture in it. I think I might print this one and stick it in there so I can see it all the time. This is probably one of my all time favorite photos that I've taken and one of my favorite quotes. Et voila!

I made the crackle background myself. The vellum squares are by Gina Miller from the Rugged Little Prince kit (available at SBB). Fonts are Zapfino and Minion.

So, what should I be doing now instead of this? Well, my photo assignment for one thing. I actually tried to do it this morning, but as soon as I got to the place where I was going to shoot, it started to rain. As soon as I walked back home, it stopped. Grr. I might try again in a while, but it's still raining right now. I HATE THIS WEATHER. It makes it pretty much impossible to do my stuff for photo. So yes, there's that to be doing. I also need to pack. I haven't done my yog aor my morning pages. I still need to do up an itinerary for this week, because I am just that OCD. There are at least 4 people I need to be emailing. I think that's it. But have I done any of those things? NoooOOooo. I've been scrapping.

Like I said. Productive in a non-productive way.

Anyway, I would like to say ta ta for now to all of you, because I will not be posting again until at least Wednesday, maybe next Saturday. I will be checking my email probably once a day, but I won't be able to post. Until then, have a fabulous week!

Another addition to the Ralph Gallery

2006-03-10T00:33:00.000+01:00

Yes, I am a scum daughter and I missed their anniversary. I'm not even in the right month, that's how far behind I am. But look at what I did! Isn't it pretty? *ralph* haha.
Flower stitching from Gina Miller's "Softly Grape," everything else from her "Classic Pale" kit. Well, except the background, that's mine.

Bad blogger!

2006-03-09T21:53:00.000+01:00

Yes, I know, I've been an awful blogger this week. But it's not my fault! I've been busy! When did I post last? Monday? Well, let me give you a quick recap of my week so y'all know what I've been up to.

Monday: Headache got much, much worse. Went home and went to bed around 9pm.

Tuesday: My first real photo class! AWESOME. We're learning how to develop our own black and white photos. Our instructor is so fun and cool and sooooo talented and I'm so thrilled to be learning from her. And plus, she liked my photos! (the ones I took of the bootylicious ballerina and her bf the postman) After photo, I went to a play with my program (well, most of us, anyway) - Mollière's "L'école des femmes." If anyone knows what this is about, email me, because I didn't catch any of it. Well, I caught a few words, but not enough to really understand what was going on. Discovered that in France, you're expected to tip the ushers. Good to know.

Wednesday: No classes! Got up at a reasonable hour, did some yoga, wrote my morning pages...what else did I do, hmm...not much. Oh I scrapped a page about Will, but I'm not going to post it here because it's another one of those make-you-want-to-throw-up pages. If you REALLY want to see it, leave me a comment and I might send you the link to the gallery where it IS posted. And if you're family, don't count on getting that link lol. I would much rather share my work with total strangers. Love you guys! lol. Wednesday was mine and Will's TWO YEAR ANNIVERSARY!! Wow.

Thursday: Oh, that would be today. Classes pretty much all day. I'm just a little bit stressed right now because my major pretty much exploded in my face today.

Here's the story: I am a self determined major. That means that I pieced together my own program (in linguistics, incidentally) from courses at my school because they don't offer the major that I wanted to do. Because I have a self determined major, I HAVE to do a big senior project. That can be a thesis, or a research thing, whatever, I haven't decided yet. In order to do said project, I have to take a yearlong class that plans it all out. Including those 2 courses, I still have 5 courses to take when I go back next year.

Ok, not a problem, I had it planned out for the next two semesters. However, the schedule was posted today, and two of the courses that I was planning on taking in the fall are now not being offered.

And I couldn't find my advisor on the schedule.

I emailed her, and she emailed me back. She's going to London for the fall semester as part of some program for the freshman. NOT GOOD. Since I'm self-determined, she IS my department. If I can't take those two courses in the fall, I don't think I can graduate with this major. So yeah, I'm just a little stressed right now. I'll be in touch with my advisor and hopefully we can work something out.

Ok, that's enough of that. Happy thoughts! Will is coming on Sunday! Hooray! I'll probably post again tomorrow, but I have a bunch of stuff to take care of. I'll probably get in one more post before he gets here, and then you probably won't here from me for most of the week. But I promise, I will have lots of pictures to share next weekend!

Paris weather

2006-03-06T18:11:00.000+01:00

You see my banner? Ok Will, I know you can't see it, but everybody else? That's pretty much what Paris has looked like for the last 2 weeks. Ugh, so gray and rainy and ugly. I hate rain. I will take snow over rain any day. The Parisians treat them both the same: they pull out the umbrellas. It's so weird! I mean seriously, can you picture anyone in New England whipping out an umbrella when it started to rain? Bizarre.

Anyway, it's been raining here and I don't like it. But Will is coming to visit me on Sunday! That makes me happy. Hopefully the weather will improve, because it's kind of awful right now.

Tonight I have to go to a play with my program. Ok, I guess I don't really have to, but I was tricked into going. The secretary told me and a couple other people that there was a free play and wanted to know if we were interested in going. Thinking that I should probably take advantage of something cultural like that, I said yes. I did not know, however, that there is also a MANDATORY play tomorrow night. That's two soirees in row. And I gotta tell you, they're usually not that captivating. I just don't have the attention span for 2 theatrical outings two nights in a row. And I have a touch of a headache. But, that's enough complaining for now.

I'm probably headed to chez MacDo for a super classy meal.

A demain, if I feel like posting.

SUCCESS!

2006-03-05T18:27:00.000+01:00

Just to warn y'all, this is gonna be a doozy of a post. I've been a bad blogger this weekend and I need to make up for it.

Finally! I finished my photo assignment! This weekend was pretty much a disaster as far as that went. My assignment was the same one that I didn't do the other day, it should be a couple posts down from this one. Yesterday afternoon when the weather wasn't so bad I went walking towards my town hall to find something to take 36 shots of. I found this really cool carousel with wooden horses and I started shooting that. Well, I didn't realize when I started that the carousel was actually RUNNING that day. I take like 3 shots and then I hear this loud buzzing noise and the stupid thing starts to move.

So, I'd sit on the bench and watch the carousel go around. I was probably creeping out the parents that were there. I was trying to make it really obvious that I was NOT photographing their children, but I still got some weird looks. When the carousel would stop, I'd scurry up to it, take between 1 and 3 shots, and then scurry back to the bench when the buzzer sounded. What fun! To add even more fun to the afternoon, I ruined 3 rolls of film.

Roll one: already in my camera when I started shooting. It was really dark so I decided to switch to a higher speed film. I hadn't taken any shots, so I was just going to rewind it and use it some other time. Well, I was winding it the wrong way and didn't realize it, so when I opened up the camera to take it out, I exposed about 3/4 of the roll.

Roll two: After I exposed roll one, I put in a roll of 3200 speed. By that time the sun had come out and seemed like it was going to stay there for a long time, and as hard as I tried I just couldn't make the light meter happy. So I decided to switch back to the 400 speed. This time I was careful about which direction I was winding the film - so careful that I wound it completely back into the canister. Mom told me that you can buy these little itty bitter tweezer things that can retrieve the film, so I might have to ask Terry if she has a pair. I do NOT want to have to throw away a completely unused roll of 3200 speed film. Anyway, then I moved on to...

Roll three: Seemed to be going really well. I actually pulled out the manual for my camera to make ABSOLUTELY CERTAIN that I was doing it right. I loaded it fine, started shooting fine, albeit very slowly, and it seemed like the third time was going to be the charm. Until I looked down at the camera and realized I had put the ISO setting on 3200 for 400 speed film. Um, yeah, definitely not going to work. Totally undevelopable.

Totally discouraged and ready to start a bonfire with the camera, I decided to go food shopping for my dinner party.

My host parents were out of town this weekend and they told me I could have friends over for dinner if I wanted. So Emily, Leslie, and Sarah all came over. We made this delicious salad, and yes that is avocado! I'd never had it before last night, but I thought it was pretty good. We were going to have fettuccini alfredo afterwards, but we were so stuffed from the salad that we just moved right on to dessert. Unfortunately I don't have a picture of our dessert. It's really a shame, because it was just so classy that I'd love for you all to see it. We took brownie mix, added eggs and water, mixed it up, and (if you guessed "cooked it" you'd be wrong) spooned it into 4 bowls. Then we watched Pretty Woman and ate our brownie batter right from the bowl.

Mmmm.

It was a really good evening and it made me feel so much better after my disaster of a day. Those girls are so awesome and I'm really happy we were able to do something like that. It's such an amazing validation to know that hey, maybe I CAN cook after all. Not serious cooking, but I have a much larger repetoire that I did before I came to Paris. I've become much more resourceful and I like it.

This morning I woke up before my alarm went off and noticed that the sun was shining. I literally vaulted out of bed, threw on some clothes, and ran back to the carousel to do my assignment.

It was closed. There was a big metal gate around it.

I was angry.

I walked up the road a little bit and I found these guys: a postman on a bicycle giving a bootylicious ballerina her letter. I thought they were kinda funky and pretty cool, so I decided to use them as my subject. I took 19 pictures and then my camera died. I don't think it suffered much, so that was good. But I had no extra batteries.

I was angry.

I came back home and frantically emailed my prof. She sent me back a few places that might be open on Sundays, and thankfully I was able to find one of them. It was on the Champs-Elysée so I definitely paid more than I would've liked to, but it meant I could go back and finish my assignment. And now it's done! I feel much better now. And on the way home, since I had my digital, I took a few shots of the trees outside my house. I think this is a good sign, don't you?

Procrastination

2006-03-01T22:07:00.000+01:00

If you couldn't tell from my earlier post, I'm having trouble getting my work done. Translating websites into Snoop Dog-ese is infinitely more entertaining than writing exercises for grammar and fiction. I was supposed to start doing my work about an hour ago, but it hasn't happened yet. Instead of actually doing work, I figured I'd share a page I did yesterday.

Leslie had me take this picture of her wearing our dad's motorcycle goggles and leaning against the fridge in our house. She's so strange. Lol I love you, Leslie, you know that. I know the journaling isn't that creative but I didn't want to put a huge block of text there. Plus, what else can you really say about this picture? I could go into a big long thing about how she's always marched to the beat of her own drummer, blah blah blah, but I really don't think it's necessary. Everything is from Holly McCaig's kit, For the Boys. Well, except for the brads. I made those myself to match the ribbon.

On an unrelated note, I failed miserably when I went on my picture taking expedition earlier today. I set out with my heart full of hope and a backpack full of camera lenses and returned with a stomach full of McDonald's fries. It was so cold and gray. The light (what little there was) was awful, the wind was bitter, and I didn't want to be outside. I went to school for a while, played around on the internet, and then went to chez macdo with my friend. I haven't had McDonald's in a long time...I think the last time I had it was back in Germany, actually. I feel heavy now...if I have time tonight I want to do some yoga. I made a to-do list today (no, not on the computer, it was a real list) and assigned priorities to each item...for example "take shower" was a high priority, while "update blog" was a low priority. My homework was also a high priority, so it makes perfect sense that I'm posting and my work still isn't done. Oops. lol.

Artist's Way update: I've gotten back on the horse as far as the morning pages go. I did them religiously for 2 1/2 weeks, then they got really, really sporadic...write a day, skip two. Write for two days, skip a day, write half a page and stop. Also, I haven't gone on an artist's date since I went to the Pompidou Center like 3 weeks ago. But I'm going to remedy that! Sometime before the week is over I'm going to go to Sephora, have them do my makeup for free, and buy myself one item. Of course that'll probably set me back 30 euros, but we just got our lunch money today and I never spend that much on food. And plus makeup is just so fun! Not that I'm justifying this...because this is fun and it's for me and I'm going to do it! I'm just fascinated by Sephora in general. I love all the makeup displays - the colors are so enticing and the packaging is so cool. More so for the perfume bottles, but I prefer to look at the makeup. So yes, that is what I shall do for my next artist's date.

Holy cow batman, I need to do my work. If it doesn't go well...there might be another post tonight. But hopefully not.

Check this out

2006-03-01T20:50:00.000+01:00

It's my site, as done by Snoop Dog.
Fo Shizzle
Warning: there is explicit language. Just so you know. But it's pretty hilarious so you should look at it anyway.

Just shield the children's eyes first.

Blue Skies

2006-03-01T13:31:00.000+01:00

Wow it's not snowing or raining! Time to scurry outside and do my photo assignment! I really have no idea what to do. The assignment is to take a whole roll of b&w film of ONE subject. And it can't be 36 picture of the Louvre or the Eiffel Tower or something like that. It has to be something no larger than a metro stop, and preferably no bigger than twice my size. Our prof gave the example of one student who took 36 pictures of a bicycle on the street. Something I could circle around is definitely desirable, because that totally opens up the possible shots I could do. She also said we could use different lenses. I figure I'll just load up my backpack with film and every lens that I came here with, find something intereresting, and just play for a while. I really want to experiment with the telephoto lens. I think I read somewhere that if you zoom in while you're taking the picture, you get a cool gaussian blur type effect. I'm pretty certain that the gaussian blur filter is actually supposed to imitate this...so that could definitely be cool

Anyway, I'm gonna bundle up and head out! I'll bring my digital so I can take one picture of whatever subject I find and post it when I get back. Wish me luck!

Fyoosh

2006-02-28T10:38:00.000+01:00

That's a big sigh of relief, in case you were wondering. And the reason I am so relieved is because everyone coming to visit me now has a hotel!! I FINALLY booked the hotel for when Will visits. I was having such trouble with it and I don't know why, but I finally took Ryan's suggestion and split up the stay. So now we're staying in one hotel for the first 3 nights and a different one the second 3 nights. I'm super pumped and I'll show you why. Here are the posted prices of the hotels where we're staying:

Hotel 1 (3 nights): 396.00 USD
Hotel 2 (3 nights): 468.00 USD

For a grand total suggested retail price of: $864 USD.

Ouch.

But no worries! Here's what I actually paid for two 3 star hotels, thanks to priceline and to Ryan.

Hotel 1: $230.78
Hotel 2: $208.05
Total: 438.83

That's a total savings of $425, for those of you who don't want to do the math.

Not bad, not bad at all I say.

Ah, blissful productivity

2006-02-28T00:17:00.000+01:00

I finally scrapped tonight using one of the kits I bought for Shabby Princess' grand reopening. Are these not the most fabulous colors you have ever seen? I adore this kit. I have to say, I am very proud of this lo. I know that the "let's list adjectives about ourselves" format isn't particularly original, but I think the design is good and not too overpowering. No that's not facepaint, I took one of SP's Colorful Corners and put it on my face because, well, I just thought it looked cool like that. It was actually a mistake. I was trying to figure out where to put it and I just dropped it right in the middle of the page. I was like hey, that looks kind of cool. So I distorted it to fit the contour of my face and lowered the opacity so it wouldn't look too clownish.

Once again I did a lo with a fair amount of white space and neglected to put a background around it. Well, you're smart people, you can figure out where the lo ends and where the rest of the post begins.

Well, I'm off to bed now. I'm going to attempt to get up early tomorrow. I know I have to buy film before my photo class, but everything else that I'm thinking about doing is a "should do" rather than a "must do." We'll see how much gets done.

Oh yeah, credits. Everything is from Shabby Princess and the font is MA Fishy.

Feelin' the love

2006-02-27T20:58:00.000+01:00

Today in fiction class we all read the stories that we had written. I was nervous because I haven't read a whole story to anyone since senior year, and everyone in my class is a really good writer. But man, we were all AMAZING today. Seriously, everyone's stories were so good. And we all couldn't stop complimenting each other. "Your story was amazing" "No, YOUR story was amazing. "No, YOUR story..." You get the idea. And since we all loved each other's so much, I decided to post my story. Feel free to leave comments. It is a rough draft and could definitely be improved upon, but it's not so bad as far as rough drafts go. So here you go!

The Winner

Andy crouched in the shadow of the tool shed, warily eyeing the boy who was leaning against the doghouse in the middle of the yard and counting to 25. He had found his hiding space before Jimmy had even reached “7,” a space where there was just enough room for a small boy to squeeze in between the warm brick of the house and the rough, wooden planks of the shed. He waited anxiously, the sheer exhilaration and anticipation of the game shortening his breath and making his heart flutter.
“Twenty-five!” Jimmy called.
Andy pulled his limbs close to his body and waited. Living at the end of a dead end street, his backyard was larger than most in his neighborhood. Even so, there were a limited number of hiding spots. The most obvious choice was to stand behind the maple tree. That was a prime spot because of its proximity to home base, the doghouse. From there it would be easy to jump out, tag the base, and commence his victory lap around the yard. Andy had shunned it for that very reason; it was the first place Jimmy would look.
The other location was underneath the steps leading up to the second story deck. Andy usually hid there and he usually lost because he would become so engrossed in picking up the fat, pink earthworms that burrowed there in the dark soil that he would forget to watch out for Jimmy.
Not today. Today he felt hopeful as Jimmy called out, “Ready or not, here I come!”
Andy watched as Jimmy set off confidently in the wrong direction, poking into the shrubs that bordered one side of the yard. He balanced on his heels, waiting for his chance to run to home base. He wasn’t sure if he should make straight for the doghouse, legs pumping, chest bursting, his veins flowing with pure adrenaline, relying solely on his speed to carry him to the safety zone. Perhaps it would be best to take a roundabout route, zigzagging unseen across the yard until he could just touch the doghouse.
He chewed his lip as he thought. Suddenly a solid, furry mass nudged his back and sent him sprawling out of his hiding place and into the bright sunlight. That idiot dog! Andy froze, his eyes glued to Jimmy’s back. Jimmy continued his search of the perimeter, seemingly oblivious to Andy’s abrupt appearance in the yard. Andy wondered if it were possible that Jimmy hadn’t heard. He did not move, but maintained his prone position on the grass. He watched as Jimmy reached the edge of the yard and started to turn.
There was nothing for it, now. If Jimmy saw him, there would be no way to reach the doghouse without being tagged. Andy lurched to his feet and exploded into motion. He saw Jimmy start to run, too. If he didn’t go all out, it seemed as if Jimmy would get him before his outstretched hands would make contact with the assemblage of planks and nails that meant safety.
He leapt.
He knew he would win, then. He felt himself fly through the air, past Jimmy’s grasping hands. Even as he connected hard with the doghouse, he was exhilarated. Even as he fell backwards, reeling from the force of the impact, he was triumphant. And even as the sky began to spin and he heard the slam of the screen door and his mother’s footsteps flying down the stairs, he was elated.
He was victorious.
He was the winner.

That's it! Hope you enjoyed it. Leave a comment! I love comments.

Still got the mojo

2006-02-26T23:39:00.000+01:00

Yes that's right, I've still got it! And by "it" I mean I can still write. I'm taking a fiction writing workshop and it's pretty much the coolest class ever, but until Friday we haven't had to write an actual story. We've just been writing short exercises that aren't really supposed to go anywhere. But for class tomorrow, we're supposed to have an actual, full length story. Of course that length wasn't specified, nor was the topic. And if you know me, you know that unspecified lengths and topics freak me out. There really isn't anything you could tell me that would be worse than "write about whatever you want." I find that very difficult. I need rules, I need guidelines, I need specifications. I don't work well without parameters. But in spite of all this and spending a whole weekend procrastinating because I was scared to actually sit down and write, I just finished a story! I will not be posting it here because it's an extremely rough draft. I'm just so happy that I actually finished something I had to share the good news.

Switching topics now. We had Alain's birthday dinner last night at a pretty swanky Italian restaurant in the Latin Quarter. Alain is our director, if you don't know. The food was good and the ambiance was really nice, but we ended up paying more for the dinner than we all expected. It wasn't anybody's fault, it was just miscommunication, mostly. It was just sort of irritating because I ended up paying almost 18 euros for the dinner, and that was WAY more than I wanted to spend.

Dinner tonight was much cheaper. Leslie and I went to a Chinese place close to my house (you know you missed our town, even after one day) and it was only like 9. And they gave us an aperatif! They have the BEST aperatifs at that place. I don't know what it is, but it's pink and tastes a little fruity and has the most delicious berry in it that I've ever had in my life. Seriously, they just drop a giant berry into the glass, and I have no idea what it is. I think somebody said it was cassis, but I don't know what that is. Anyway, it's amazing and I would highly recommend it.

Today was a pretty lazy day. Other than dinner, I only left the house to check out Leslie's new apartment, which is gorgeous. I hung out there for a while with her and Emily, then came home and procrastinated until dinner. But now everything is done! I think I finished everything on the list I posted yesterday. It wasn't an extremely productive weekend, but I got everything accomplished that had to be done (except the scrapping), so I guess that's what counts. I'm really looking forward to not having class Wednesday or Friday since I'm going to be firm with Alain tomorrow and tell him I'm NOT going back to the Sorbonne, so those will be my days for taking photos and scrapping. I am so pumped for all this free time, it's really gonna rock.

I'm also pretty pumped to go to bed. It's freezing here and I'm tired. Here's a useful French expression, and then I'm gonna go: Il fait froid d'un canard. Translated literally, it means "It's a duck's cold" or "It's the cold of a duck," roughly. It just means, it's pretty frickin' cold.

And there's your phrase of the day.

Night, all.

Lists

2006-02-25T14:55:00.000+01:00

I *love* making lists. Whenever I get stressed out, I make a list and it really does help me to relax. Overall I am a very concrete-thinking person. I don't really like to deal with abstracts, but ESPECIALLY in terms of what needs to be done. That should NEVER be abstract. In that spirit, I've decided to make another one of my lists and post it. If everyone sees what I *should* be doing, chances are I'll get around to it sooner. I'd hate to think that everyone reading this sees me as a slacker, right?

I am loving the fact that Gina Miller has totally enabled my list-making obsession with her "Note This!" kit. And look! It comes with pink paper! How amazing is that. I love it.

I probably should've titled this list "Things That Won't Get Done Because I Wasted My Time Making To-Do Lists And Posting Them Online," but that's alright. By the way, that is my actual handwriting, and that is the reason why I never include it on lo's. Isn't it awful? And no, the tablet didn't make it worse. That's how my handwriting really looks.

I am also loving Photoshop for its "make me look better that I really do" capabilities. I took this picture of myself a couple weeks ago and it was one of those where it could be kind of cool, if it weren't for that and that and that, etc. So I fixed it up and now I actually really like it. It definitely won't win any photography prizes, but I like it. Here's a before and after comparison:

I probably should've fixed up the hair a little more so it didn't look quite so raggedy, but I didn't want to put THAT much time into it. Hair is hard to fix up when it looks like that! Trust me, I've tried, and it always ends up looking really artifical and weird. Oh well, that just means I need to practice more. Now that I'm looking at them side by side, the white of the eye looks a little unrealistic. But you know what?

I don't care. Haha.

Ok, that's all for today. It's 1:30 and I'm still in my pjs, so I'm thinking I'll hop in the shower and then get started on the list. I probably won't get anything done today. I'm helping one of my friends move today (well, sort of, there's not that much effort involved on my part). It's kind of a long story and I won't get into it today, but here's to a better second semester! Also, there's a birthday dinner tonight for our director, and after that I'm gonna go check out Leslie's awesome new apartment. I hope everyone is having an awesome weekend!

I'm peacin' out.

Creepy

2006-02-24T18:42:00.000+01:00

I found this amazing time wasting site that has a bunch of little mini quizzes that you can take and then it gives you the code to put on your blog. I took this really stupid one about "What's your ideal hairstyle?" and this is what it told me:

Your Ideal Hairstyle:

Flicked Out

What Hairstyle Is Right For You?

How creepy is that? It's pretty much EXACTLY what my hair looks like. And I mean exactly. Creepy.

I also thought this one was kind of interesting. There is only one question to determine what rejected crayon color you are, and that question is: what color underwear are you wearing? I'm not sure what one has to do with the other, but ok, whatever.

You are

What Rejected Crayon Are You?

If you want to visit the site it's called Blog Things.

Hmmm

2006-02-24T10:40:00.000+01:00

I use xtrastats.com's free counter service for my blog. I like it because you can actually see the referring pages that bring people to your blog, how many people visited at what time, what their screen resolution is, stuff like that.

You can also see the keywords that someone searched for that ultimately brought them to your site. Although google searches have only turned up 2 hits to this blog, I would like to share a screen capture with you that shows those search terms.

Interesting.

Scrapalamode.

Brokeback Mountain blinkie.

And they both came to my blog.

Okaaaay.

And that ends today's post on "things that make you go 'hmmmm.'"

Caught up

2006-02-22T22:20:00.000+01:00

I finally feel caught up, and man is it a good feeling. I've been feeling really behind and sort of off balance the last couple of days because I haven't been doing my morning pages, yoga, or scrapped anything, and on top of that I was avoiding my homework. But today I fixed that! Now I feel much better. I haven't done my yoga yet, I was just going to write a quick post and then do that before bed. Just wanted to share a super duper quick lo that I did for a challenge on the Shabby Shoppe message boards. I'm not familiar with the Naked Chef, but the challenge was based on that. Here were the rules:

1 photo
1 element/stamp/brush
1 lightly textured background
1 quote/word art

and nothing else! Tricky. But it was fun, it was quick, and I think the result is pretty cute. I've been wanting to do this page for a while, I just never got around to it.

Stitches by Gina Miller, paper by Sara Carling. Font is MA Brownie.

Sorbonne, Schmorbonne

2006-02-22T16:00:00.000+01:00

I had my first class at the Sorbonne today.

I should probably mention that it was also my last class. After much reflection, I have decided to drop it. Truly, it was pretty much awful this morning. Let me give you a quick list why, in no particular order:

1) It starts at 9:30. That may not seem early, but I have to get up no later than 7:30 in order to get there on time. When you're running on college time, that's early.
2) There is only one other student besides myself. That's right, ONE.
3) It's THREE HOURS LONG. That's too long even for a normal class, but it is soooo much worse when there's only one other person the prof can look at besides you. Do you have any idea how hard it is to swallow all your yawns for 3 hours straight?
4) It's boring!! I am interested in linguistics, but this class is more history than anything. Ugh.
5) The prof wants me to do what are essentially book reports every week. I'm supposed to just pick random chapters that "interest me" from the books she assigned (which I'd have to buy) and bring in summaries every week.
6) I'd have to take the exam. In French. Graded by a French professor. Considering this course doesn't count for ANYTHING (it's just elective credit), I really can't afford to have it bring down my GPA.
7) If I dropped it...I'd have no classes on Wednesdays.
8) If I dropped it...I'd have no classes on Fridays.

Let me reiterate points 7 and 8 for you just in case you missed them.

NO WEDNESDAY OR FRIDAY CLASSES.

Oh yes, it'll be sweet.

Nope, still don't like children

2006-02-19T14:19:00.000+01:00

I discovered last night that although I now have a higher tolerance for small children than I used to, I still don't like them all that much. I have a lot of patience in certain areas. I can sit for hours at a time tweaking details on a scrapbook page that nobody will notice but me. That patience is not and never has been extended to small children.

Last night my host parents had a family over for dinner that they hadn't seen in a really long time. This couple has two children, ages 4 and about 1, I think. The 4 year old, Julian, really liked me. I mean, he REALLY liked me. The adults kept asking him if he was flirting with me, but he didn't understand what the word meant. He came into my room like 5 times begging me to play with him, and I couldn't say no. Considering that he is a child, he was actually pretty cute. He made me play hide and seek with his stuffed animals, which was actually mildly entertaining. If you had said to me last week, "Alexis, I bet that next week you will be crawling around your room, holding onto a stuffed rabbit, and calling out things like, 'T'es où, Monsieur Le Tigre?' (where are you, Mr. Tiger?) and 'Es-tu dans ma placard, Monsieur Le Tigre?' (are you in my closet, Mr. Tiger?)" I would've laughed in your face.

No way.
No how.
Not happening.

But I did it.
And it was kind of entertaining.

The most hilarious part of the evening was definitely when he found the "Dark Vador" (that's Darth Vador - the French can't pronounce "th" so his official French name is Dark) window cling that I have on my bulletin board. He obviously wanted it, so I told him he could have it. This is how the conversation went after that (in French, of course):

Me: Julian, you can have that if you want it.
Julian: Are you sure? You should ask Guillaume.
Me: It's mine; I don't need to ask Guillaume. You can have it.
Julian: No, it belongs to your parents (he points downstairs to where Guillaume and Alexia are).
Me: It's my gift to you. You can have it.
Julian: No, go ask your "faux parents."

I almost died laughing. Go ask your false parents. I think he said that because I had just had a conversation explaining to him that my real parents were in the States. I used the word "vrai" which also means true. So I guess that makes sense. If Mom and Dad are my true parents, then Guillaume and Alexia must be my false parents.

Any fond feelings that I had for the kids quickly went away as soon as I went to bed. The baby was sleeping in the guest room, which happens to share a wall with my room. She was coughing and crying ALL NIGHT LONG. Mon dieu. I don't think I slept more than 2 hours consecutively the whole night. Honestly Mom and Dad, I don't know how you resisted the urge to put a pillow over my face when I was little. I didn't sleep through the night til I was over a year old; I'm sure the thought must've crossed your mind. Haha joking. Sort of. lol. So rest assured, everyone: I still don't like kids and don't want to have any of my own for a long time.

And even if I do, we'll see how long they last.

KIDDING. SO KIDDING.

Anyway, enough with that, lest somebody call the police on me or something. I made a lo today! You should look at it and be at peace and not think about screaming children anymore.

Everything is from Sara Carling's AMAZING AMAZING kit, "Authentic." You should all run straight to the Shabby Shoppe and buy it. It's so easy to work with and everything in it is just so cool. Fonts are Minion and Pierre Tryout.

Cutest desktop EVER

2006-02-18T19:15:00.000+01:00

Hi, my name is Alexis.

Hi, Alexis.

I have a problem. I'm addicted to buying digital scrapbooking supplies online.

Fortunately this is a lot less expensive than my other addiction, crack cocaine.

TOTALLY KIDDING. No seriously, my other addiction is buying paper scrapping supplies, which is a lot worse for the wallet than digital scrapping supplies. And I actually seem to be USING the digi scrapping stuff that I buy.

For example, today I went to Scrapbook Bytes and I bought Gina Miller's Build Your Own Bulletin Board Kit, Note This add on, and Perfectly Imperfect Stitches. I was so inspired that I decided to make new wallpaper for my desktop. I give you the cutest desktop EVER:

The space on the right is for my icons. Everything on the board, except the photos, obviously, is by Gina Miller. Oh, that pink and green flower is by Shabby Princess. I wanted to have something that has some of my favorite pictures of my favorite people on it. If you didn't make the cut, I'm sorry. Either I didn't have room on the board or I don't have a picture of you. Remedy that and send me one! I can't promise that I'll make a new bulletin board, but I will seriously give it some thought. Provided, of course, that I know who you are. But I don't really think any strangers will be sending me photos. At least, I sincerely hope not.

That's kind of a disturbing tangent and I'm not really going to follow it. Just look at the bulletin board and throw up if you have too, 'cause I know it's just that cute.

Scrapping Sites

2006-02-18T11:41:00.000+01:00

While enjoying my lazy Saturday morning, I stumbled across several way cool scrapping sites that you should check out. And without any further ado (or any ado at all, really), here they are:

The Shabby Shoppe
Ok, I know that I already have the Shabby Princess homepage in the sidebar, but I just had to add this. She had a grand re-opening of the Shoppe on Valentine's Day and has added a ton of new products (a few of which I now own, they were so gorgeous I just had to do it) and even a gallery and a message board.

Digi Pick of the Day
This is a cool blog that features a different kit or lo every day. Sometimes there are even freebies - watch for those. Lots of inspiration here, folks.

And speaking of inspiration, I give you my last find of the morning, the Digi Scraplift Blog.
Once a week she posts a lo, and it's your job to scraplift it. Email her your take on it and she'll publish it on the blog. How cool is that? Inspiration and exposure for your work. Love it.

Check 'em out.

Le Nouveau Monde

2006-02-17T20:21:00.000+01:00

I went and saw The New World today. You know, that movie with Colin Farrell that tells the same story that pretty much EVERY studio, including Disney, has done. I realize this is probably old news for those of you in the states. It just came out in Paris two days ago. They're a little behind as far as movies go.

It was pretty good. I have no expectations for it, so I guess I can say it was better than I thought it would be. I thought it moved a bit slowly and I found the ending to be a bit disappointing, but whatever. The important thing is, I only paid 7 euros to get in! This is big news. I have never gone to the movies at a time when the student discount applied. Normally it's 9 or 10 to get in, so to get in for 7 was thrilling. Plus I split a bag of candy with my friend and we only had to pay 1.50 each.

Sweet.

Anyway, I would say that The New World is a good rental. I wouldn't pay 7 euros to see it again, but I might rent it.

Well there really isn't any other news here....I'm still not really doing any work. My classes are just starting to get rolling (yes I realize I've been here for a month). I'm not going to know how to do any work or right papers or anything like that when I go back to school for my senior year. It's gonna be pretty much awful, I think. You want me to do what? A 5 page paper? Sorry, I'm on strike right now, no can do.

Ok this post is rather rambling and pointless, I'm gonna stop it here.

A toute à l'heure. Peut-être.

Elle va terminer en prison!

2006-02-16T12:26:00.001+01:00

Yes, you're probably translating that right: she is going to end up in prison. Or maybe, she is going to die in prison. Something along those lines. And yes, that was said about me. But why, you might ask yourself?

Did she...

Get arrested for dealing drugs at her friendly neighborhood Quick?
Get caught smuggling 40 kilos of mac and cheese into the country?
Stab a waiter with her fork when he brought her steak that was supposed to be "bien cuit" but was, in reality, bleeding and twitching on her plate?

Actually, I'm going to go to prison because I went to the France Telecom HQ and I harpooned everyone that works there. That's right, harpooned. Ok not really, but I do fantasize about doing that every once in a while. You're probably a little confused, so let me give you the backstory:

At the beginning of last semseter, I lived with the meanest, most miserable old French woman I have ever met. She was awful and I was unhappy being there and I thought that if I had access to the internet, I would be able to put up with living there for a semester.

I was wrong.

Pretty much as soon as my housing director made the call to get internet installed in my house, life got unbearable with Crazy Old Bat, as I affectionately refer to her, and I decided to move. I moved BEFORE there was internet.

There was nothing hooked up.
There were no cables, no modem, and no phone line.
I HAD NO INTERNET.

France telecom wanted me to pay several hundred euros for a service that i never even used. A couple weeks ago (and we're talking several MONTHS after I moved), France telecom finally relented and graciously lowered the fee to 55 euro. I guess that's supposed to cover the initial installation fee or something like that, which just for the record NEVER HAPPENED.

Anywhoo.

I paid them. I was pissed off, but I pai

d them. But apparently, they're still not happy, and they think I still might be living with Crazy Old Bat and sneakily using the internet service that they never installed. My program director and the housing director are currently in the process of proving to France Telecom that I don't live there anymore. They have to send them all these official documents and write letters and go through all this other crap just to prove that I don't live with Crazy anymore.

Sheesh.

I've got an idea. I'll go to their offices, grab them by their stupid little French moustaches, and drag them to Crazy's house.

I will show them the bed that I used to sleep in.
I will show them the toilet that I used to scrub.
I will show them the floor that I used to vacuum.
I will introduce them to Crazy.

And using their superior reasoning powers they will see for themselves that I no longer live there.

(clean room + no luggage + Crazy Old Bat = NO STUDENT)

So that's the story of why I'm going to termine en prison. At this rate, I'll be back home before they even start to prosecute me, and I highly doubt that I'll be extradited for an unpaid internet bill...oh wait...I PAID THEM. Good lord. Well, if that happens, I guess that I won't ever be able to come back to France again after this semester because I'll be a fugitive from justice.

Oh dear...

;)

Kidney breathing and other things your body is not supposed to do

2006-02-15T10:25:00.000+01:00

For those of you who may not know, I've started doing yoga again. I was really into it for a while in high school, but then I just let it fall by the wayside. It wasn't really a priority, but every so often I would do a few sun salutations or something like that. At school last year and the year before I tried unsuccessfully to join the yoga club. Well, I joined, I just never went. The practices were always on an inconvenient night, I had work to do, I was tired, etc. I think I was trying to find excuses so that I wouldn't have to go and accept responsibility for the fact that this is something I should be doing for my body. Let me just tell you, I feel GREAT. I've practiced it nearly every day for the last two weeks, sometimes twice a day, and I feel amazing. Granted, I have loads of free time so it's much easier for me to do things for myself than it is for all you people who have annoying things like jobs or real classes or families that get in the way of your free time. And I am very grateful that I can take this semester and use it to do good things for myself, like get out and explore Paris, work on my scrapbooking, do yoga, etc. I'm just amazed at the amount of energy I have now. If you know me, you know that I HATE to work out. I have this fear-bordering-on-phobia of people seeing me working out. That's why yoga is so fantastic! I don't go to a class, I just do it in my room every morning and most evenings. Granted I have gone to a few classes so I know about proper alignment and I know that I'm not going to hurt myself doing it, so if you want to start I might recommend actually going to a class before jumping into it alone.

There is this way cool CD, however, that is now on my list of items that I would have to have if I were stranded on a desert island. It's called "Yoga Sanctuary" and you can find it here. You could also buy it as an audiobook on iTunes. That's what I did, because the copy that I actually own didn't make the Paris cut. I wouldn't really recommend buying the audiobook if you've never done this before, because the real version comes with a big double-sided poster that illustrates every single pose and gives you a much better idea of what you're doing.

I'm really quite proud of myself for sticking with this for so long (yes, two weeks is a long time for me). Usually when I try to make a commitment to some kind of exercise/fitness goal, I keep at it for maybe 3 days. My goals are not quite as lofty as Shiva Rea's (the instructor on the CD), I have to admit. She wants me to breathe into my kidneys, my feet, my shoulders, pretty much everywhere except my lungs. At one point, she even instructs me to "move the left kidney into the body." I sincerely hope that isn't necessary...if you're practicing yoga in lieu of seeing a surgeon because your kidney has found its way outside of your body, it may be time to seek help. Anyway, that's what Shiva Rea wants me to do. Kidney breathing and other super exciting stuff like touching my heels to the floor in Downward Dog. My goals, however, run a little more on the...hmm...superficial side. Kidney breathing or killer shoulders? Relocating my inner organs or being able to do as many pushups as my boyfriend? Hmm, which is more important to me right now. I wonder, wonder, wonder. But the important thing is I'm taking better care of myself, even if I'm doing it for reasons that Ms. Rea might not agree with.

Now if you'll excuse me, I have to go find any other organs that might've popped loose after this morning's practice.

It says "I choo-choo-choose you..."

2006-02-14T10:02:00.000+01:00

...and there's a picture of a train.

Ribbon and hearts tag from Robin Carlton's Sweet Shoppe kit. Fonts are MA Sexy and minion.

All better!

2006-02-12T14:36:00.000+01:00

That definitely didn't take as long as I thought it would. Everything is back to normal now, plus I added a few things. There's a list of blogs that are worth checking out in the sidebar. Michelle Malkin is news, dooce is just...well, you just have to read it. It's absolutely hilarious but I can't really describe it. All the others are scrapbooker's blogs.

I also had to get a new counter because I couldn't remember which site the other one came from. I put the new count at 300 because I think that's about where it was before I lost half my blog. I'd still like to figure out how I managed that one.

There's also a blinkie that's linked to an awesome No Piracy blog. If you scrap or design you should definitely visit this site!

Anywhoo, that's all for now. Other than fixing the blog, I haven't done ANYTHING productive today. Haven't done my yoga, or my morning pages, or even showered, for that matter. So I think I'll go take care of that stuff now.

You may breathe easier now. All is right in my blogging world.

ARGGH

2006-02-12T12:52:00.000+01:00

Ok I'm not quite sure how I did it, or if it was even my fault, but somehow half the template for my blog got deleted. THAT would explain why nobody could see anything - there was nothing there. So I had to copy half a template from a new blog and paste it into mine. Most of the personalizing that I did is gone and I have to put it back in there, including my banner, links, colors, etc. So please bear with me - hopefully I'll get it fixed by the end of the day, but I do have work to do.

Ha ha you got me, of course I don't have any work. But seriously, hopefully by the end of the day it'll be back to normal.

Things that make you want to throw up

2006-02-11T15:14:00.000+01:00

This lo might be one of them. Again, no apologies. I've stopped doing that lol.

All elements are from the latest Shabby Princess free kit, Splendor. Download it, it's amazing. All her work is. Visit the site! The link is in my sidebar. Font is Minion.

The joys of not having class on Fridays

2006-02-10T21:56:00.000+01:00

Or ever really, for that matter. Our real classes start on Monday. Orientation is officially, we took the exam yesterday. And today has been a blissfully free day. I slept late, cleaned my room, went to a café with Emily and Leslie, and now I have the whooooole evening to myself. My host parents aren't here, so I'm making pancakes. Unfortunately I will not be eating them with syrup, as the only syrup in the house was my gift to them and I feel weird opening it up with them not being here. So I'll be having pancakes with some amazing homemade jam that appears in my fridge from time to time. Yummy.

I also did this today.

Patterned paper is by Shabby Princess from the Shabby Mommy kit, font is CK Mindy. The background is white, so it's kind of hard to see. I was just too lazy to put a border around it before I uploaded.

I heart French bureaucracy...haha

2006-02-10T13:57:00.000+01:00

I went and registered for my Sorbonne class yesterday. Quel cauchemar (what a nightmare). The Sorbonne has several campuses all over Paris. The one that I had to go to is almost an hour away from my house, so I spent an hour experiencing the joys of public transportation before I even got there. After that I spent another hour wandering around and trying to find the right office. I had a little piece of paper with me saying where I was supposed to go and who I was supposed to see for this class, but it didn’t really do me any good. It sort of reminded me of Hogwarts – I swear to you, the hallways shifted behind me and the staircases switched sides whenever I turned around. Not cool. Not only that, but no one in the whole freakin’ school seemed to know where I was supposed to be going. I asked 5 different people and they all sent me to different places, only one of which I was actually able to find. The guy there seemed to know that he was talking about, and he told me that I needed to go to Malesherbes at 2pm (it was noon at the time). I was like oh, ok, and which hallway is that in? He gave me a funny look, pulled out a student guide to the Sorbonne, and pointed to a blurb about Malesherbes – another campus on the OTHER FREAKIN’ SIDE OF PARIS. I was so mad. I spent all morning wandering around completely for nothing because not only was I in the wrong hallway, I was in the wrong arrondisement. Turns out Skidmore’s infallible secretary hadn’t looked at my class closely enough and sent me to the wrong school.
After lunch I reattempted the enrollment. It was much less painful than the first time around. I waited for probably half an hour in the wrong line, but after that everything went off without a hitch. I think, at least. There seems to be a problem with the TD section that I picked. [TD = travaux dirigés. It’s the French equivalent of a smaller, seminar-style class. The other part of the course is the cours magistral, which is basically a big lecture.] The students doing the registration were trying to convince me to come in at 8:30 on FRIDAY MORNINGS to take this class. Not only that, but I would’ve had an hour break, and then TWO HOURS of CM. That’s 5 hours of that class, all on one day, that day being Friday.

I don’t think so.

Ugh. The scheduling, or lack thereof, drives me nuts. At Skidmore, they have the course listings posted halfway through the semester and you can easily make your own schedule far in advance of the following semester. Not here. I’ve been here for almost 3 weeks and my class schedule isn’t even set yet. The French universities just barely released the course scheduling information last week. ARRGH. I need to be organized, I need to have a plan. I do not enjoy flying by the seat of my academic pants. It makes me crazy, it really does.

I say again: quel cauchemar.

Going Somewhere?

2006-02-07T23:22:00.000+01:00

Then you should definitely visit this site:

StudentLux.com

It's a site that gives travel advice mainly geared towards students, but it's good for everyone. There are SO many people that have no idea how priceline works or are just afraid of it, and it's such an amazing service. This site explains priceline and gives hints on how to travel cheaply but without sacrificing comfort...dare we say luxury? One of my best friends started it - he's so awesome (hi, Ryan). Check it out...I really think this site is headed somewhere, no pun intended.

Creating Fiend

2006-02-07T14:01:00.000+01:00

That's me! I have so much free time on my hands, I mean seriously, what else am I going to do?

Here is the lo of Will that I posted about earlier. Isn't he so cute? No, you're not going blind, I blurred out the journaling. Granted, the page kind of loses something without it, but too bad. It's for him and not for all of you, so I don't really care if you can't read it. So there. lol.

And here's what I did this morning. Actually it only took about 15 mins, so keep that in mind if you don't like it. Or not, like I said, I don't really care what you all think. lol. It's a quote from that amazing book that you should ALL BUY!! I was just so inspired by it, because it's so true. Just ponder that one for a minute.

There should be a black border around the whole thing but for some reason it's not showing up. Just use your imaginations, ok?

A little "me" time

2006-02-07T12:09:00.000+01:00

I went to the Pompidou Center yesterday, just me. It was a very enlightening experience. Not because of the art, or really anything in particular...just the fact that I can go somewhere by myself and have a good time. Looking at art is a really subjective activity anyway, and it's hard to get the "full experience", whatever that may be, when you're worried about rushing people or holding them up. I found it to be extremely enjoyable. Those of you who know me probably know that it's somewhat difficult for me to do things on my own. It's not that I'm an extremely sociable person, it's just always felt kind of awkward for me to visit places by myself. It just seems like when I go somewhere, it's more enjoyable to go there with friends.

Totally not true.

Ok, not completely untrue. Friends are fantastic (love you guys, especially if you're taking the time to read my blog lol), but there is definitely something to be said for going solo sometimes.

So do yourself a favor this week. Go somewhere just for you, all by yourself. Doesn't have to be for a long time, but it does have to be alone.

This may be sounding familiar to those of you who took my suggestion and bought "The Artist's Way" (Hi Mom and Dad). Yes, it was an artist date. And it is such a good idea!!

So go do it. Right now. Or if you can't go right now, think of where you want to go, and then do it this week.

You'll thank yourself later.

See, I do actually scrapbook

2006-02-06T23:50:00.000+01:00

Here is a lo I did for a challenge at thedigichick.com. We were supposed to use "Sweet On You" as the theme. Really, it's not my fault there weren't any left to take pictures of...they're so magically delicious.

Mmm....forbidden holiday candy....

I also did a lo of Will, I will talk to him later today and see if I have his permission to post it.

Weird...

2006-02-05T17:27:00.000+01:00

Yes, I know that someone else's post is in my blog. I've contacted blogger support about it. I'm not going to change the post until after I hear back from them. Thanks for the heads up, guys.

A Birthday Celebration, aka Is Eeevverybooooody Happy

2006-02-05T09:56:00.000+01:00

Yesterday was Emily's birthday, and we celebrated in traditional Parisian fashion by....going to an Italian restaurant. No seriously, the food was amazing. I got steak and fries, but I forgot to ask for it to be "bien cuit" (well cooked). Just for future reference, for those of you who might be visiting France sometime soon...if you like your steak medium, ask for it to be well cooked. Always ask for one step above. If you don't specify, they run the cow by your table and it's up to you to catch it and wrangle it to the ground. That's pretty much what happened to me last night. The upshot, however, was that there was so much delicious sauce that it really didn't matter how it was cooked. Practically our whole program came to the dinner, and we all split the cost of Emily's dinner. That nearly broke the bank, it came out to an extra euro per person. Whew.
After dinner, eight of us found a really cheap resto/bar and stayed there til about 1:30, then caught the night bus home. It was definitely a good evening even though I was sick yesterday. You would think that staying up til 3am would make you sicker, but nope! I feel great today. I think I'm just as happy as the guy me and Leslie saw in the metro yesterday.
On the way to the restaurant, we were waiting on the platform at St. Paul. There was a guy, probably 50 years old, sitting on a bench on the other side of the tracks. We're not sure if he was a little slow or just drunk, but he kept looking at me and Leslie and singing, in Engt concerning quotes, he's the Sox version of the NHL, "yesterday, we skate hard; tomorrow we skate harder."

It's pretty hard to imagine anyone filling the quote gap left by Johnny Damon, who seems destined for a rendezvous with angst and disappointment as the latest Bronx Bomber mercenary. Johnny must really be an 'Idiot', as he didn't have his contract negotiated in currency other than dollars.

We can only hope that some of the youngsters on the horizon have not only ability but communication skills. With management somewhere between the Cone of Silence and 'Hakuna Matata' mode, we're going to need excitement from somewhere. Oh, you say, it's all about winning baseball games? Well, that won't necessarily be as easy with a revamped Blue Jay roster, youngsters maturing for the D-Rays, and the ever-lurking Yankees, the 'Jaws' of the AL East.

somewhere. Oh, you say, it's all about winning baseball games? Well, that won't necessarily be as easy with a revamped Blue Jay roster, youngsters maturing for the D-Rays, and the ever-lurking Yankees, the 'Jaws' of the AL East.

The Price of Happiness

2006-02-03T20:58:00.000+01:00

How much is happiness worth to you?

This is my happiness:

And it's worth 10 euro for two family size boxes.

Leslie and I went to The Real McCoy today. It's a tiny, ridiculously overpriced American grocery store close to the Eiffel Tower. Both our host parents were going to be gone tonight and we wanted mac and cheese and hamburg. The Real McCoy is possibly the most amazing store I've been in in Paris. It's packed with fruit roll-ups, lucky charms (which I might have to go back and buy after the next lunch money distribution - they're 8 euro a box), hot chocolate, stove top stuffing, cake mixes and frosting, and pretty much anything else that you might get a craving for. Man, the next time I get homesick, I know exactly where I'm going.

Straight to the pop tarts.

Take Note

2006-02-03T13:14:00.000+01:00

This is an amazing book. Buy it.

The Artist's Way by Julia Cameron

My copy arrived yesterday, two weeks early and much to my surprise. I started reading and could not put it down. I finished the entire book in 3 1/2 hours, then re-read the introduction and chapter one this morning. Reading the description on Amazon, it does sound kind of corny. I admit that. But just read it. Trust me, ok?

It's not just about being an artist or whatever. It's about enabling yourself to achieve your goals, whatever they may be, and giving yourself permission to do whatever it is that you truly want to do.

Do yourself a favor and either check this book out of the library or buy yourself a copy.

Comments

2006-02-02T12:37:00.000+01:00

Sorry guys, I thought I had changed the settings so anyone could comment, but apparently I only thought I had or else I didn't save it. Anywhoo, I think it really should work now, should you want to leave a comment.

*ahem*

Eeeee!

2006-02-01T20:06:00.000+01:00

That is my 'Eeee-I'm-so-excited-I-can-hardly-contain-it' noise. My Dover books came today!! Like a month ago I ordered 3 books from the Dover Electronic Clip Art collection. I know, some of you are probably thinking "clip art? wtf, mate?" but seriously this is SO cool. Each book has like a thousand different things that I can use for my as-of-late-neglected designs. I got 3: calligraphic ornaments (swirls and swoopy things), 1500 decorative ornaments (everything from turkeys to plants to art nouveau motifs), and floral, folk, and paisley designs.

Paisley!! How can you not get excited? I'm going to go eat dinner now and then I HAVE to play afterwards.

I mean, seriously. Paisley.

'Nuf said.

Wow!

2006-02-01T13:19:00.000+01:00

So I found out this morning that there are people out there besides my parents (Hi Mom, hi Dad) that read my blog. This is good news! I just barely put the link in my aim profile. Not that I really think many more people will read it that way, but who knows. I read people's blogs if they have a link in their profile. But then again, I have been officially diagnosed with AMPWS (Away Message/Profile Whore Syndrome). It's a chronic condition bought on by too much free time that drives me to obsessively check people's away messages and read their profiles. They might have changed since five minutes ago.

I know that my counter (did you notice, I got a new one! I didn't like the Bravenet link on the other one) keeps slowly going up, but I have no idea if that's because I refresh the page every couple of hours to see if more people have visited (that's another sympton of AMPWS) or if it's only because my parents read this almost every day or if there are actual new people viewing. So here's what I think you should do - reply to this post with a comment. I changed it so you don't have to have a blogger account to post comments, anyone can do it. Just say "hey," or anything, really. If I know you, say something so I know it's you...like "crackwhore" or "shortcakes" or "I really wanna lose three pounds." If the results are really depressing I might go into the comments section and make stuff up for my own amusement. That would be fun, ya?

And thank you from the bottom of my heart for giving me something else to be obsessive about. Lord knows there's nothing else to do in this city ;)

I heart online shopping

2006-01-28T13:34:00.000+01:00

They just make it so darned easy for you to get your money into their pockets! Not that I'm complaining - I'm a BIG fan of any system that allows me to do my shopping while sitting on my butt, that does not involve going outside, and that gets me books written in my native language. I bought a book on amazon.com yesterday. It's called "The Artist's Way" and it's written by Julia Cameron. It's supposed to be this super-inspirational, 12 week course that will help you get over your issues and get on with the business of being creative. I've seen so many amazing reviews of it and it was only $10. How could I resist? Who knows when that'll get here - I didn't want to pay extra for the expedited international shipping, so it could get here anytime between 2 and a half weeks from now and mid-March. I'm really not in any rush. My Dover clipart books should be here next week, so that'll give me something to play with until this other book comes.

I actually did venture outside and do some real shopping yesterday. I was badly in need of a bag for my school books and I found one at the La Defense mall for only 18 euro. I might get around to posting pics today or tomorrow. Right now I have a pretty bad headache, so it probably won't be too soon.

On a totally unrelated note, here is a link that you must visit:

http://cuteoverload.com

You HAVE to go to this site! They have pictures of little fuzzy baby animals that are so freakin' cute it'll just make your head explode, and witty commentary to boot. Check it out.

Brr!

2006-01-27T18:30:00.000+01:00

Brrrr I'm soooo cold. Outside, it's not too bad - it's like 30 degrees. Inside, however, it doesn't feel too much warmer. The heating in our house is really weird. It's controlled by a thermostat, but the thermostat only moniters the ground floor. I live on the third floor. So, when the first floor reaches the desired temperature, the heat turns off entirely. That means that 95% of the time, the heat is not on in my room. I say again: brr.

Right now I'm wearing a pair of tights underneath my jeans. I really can't remember the last time I did that.

I'm sorry, this is rambling. I don't know why I'm talking about this. I think i'm slightly hyper because I've eaten about half a pount of necco candy hearts this afternoon. Mom and Dad sent me MORE than a pound on Wednesday and the bag is probably 3/4 gone. Ugh, I'm not going to contemplate that any more.

Maybe tomorrow morning I'll get up at a semi-normal time and do some yoga. I did that the other day and discovered just how out of shape I was. My arms and my abs were sore for like 3 days. Now that I feel normal again, I should get back to that. It's hard though because I have a cd that I listen to and practice along with, and I don't want my host parents to hear it ("Breathe into your kidneys." "Quoi?"). My host dad works from home, so he's almost always here in the mornings, and I go out in the evenings. Of course, these are mostly excuses that I've invented so I never actually have to exercise.

I guess I'll just have to live with being round ;)

I am...glue?

2006-01-22T23:47:00.000+01:00

What scrapbooking item are you?

You are GLUE!You are the adhesive that keeps things together. You go through life helping others. You stick to people and try to keep people together. You like it best when you are surrounded by people and able to help them. But Glue Beware - in your efforts to keep everyone together and with you, you sometimes overlook yourself and find it hard to keep yourself together. Don't neglect personal time in your overwhelming need to socialize and help others.
Take this quiz!

Quizilla |
Join

| Make A Quiz | More Quizzes | Grab Code

I was sort of hoping for something cooler...like eyelet or self-adhesive acid-free polka-dotted ribbon...but glue is cool too.

Exploring

2006-01-22T11:39:00.000+01:00

So I went out with my friend Emily last night. We didn't really have a specific plan in mind, just that we didn't want to pay 14 euro for drinks. We wandered up and down the Champs-Elysée and then a little ways away from it in the hopes of finding something cheaper.

Bingo!

Not even two minutes away from the Champs-Elysée we stumbled across the CUTEST little café/restaurant/bar. Awesome prices. I got a pina colada for 6.50! For those of you playing the home game, you can expect to pay 8 at a regular bar and between 10 and 15 at a place on the Champs-Elysée. They also had a full menu that looked yummy and was also pretty cheap. I think we found a place to frequent. I always wanted to be a regular somewhere, didn't you? Sure beats aimless wandering.
The only problem with this place is that they definitely closed at 10:30 or so. And that was on a Saturday night. So I guess it doesn't count as a real bar, but maybe if we were looking for a place on a weeknight and we didn't want to stay out too late...it would be perfect. We finally decided to leave when they started stacking up the chairs around us.

We got a LOT of catcalls last night, it was pretty bizarre. They all happened after we met up with Sarah ("Your friend! She is so tall!") so that probably had something to do with it. When we were walking on the Champs-Elysée this guy literally jumped right in front of us and started speaking Spanish to us. I could be wrong, but I'm pretty certain he wasn't even Spanish. Weird. Other than that, it was just stuff the people said when we were walking by that I definitely would've been oblivious to a few months ago (chou-chou, jolie jolie, that sort of thing). It really pisses me off that they don't understand the concept of sexual harrassment in France. Actually, pretty much anywhere in Europe. I mean yes, I think we take it a little too far in terms of being PC in America, but I really hated being blatantly stared at and chatted up by weird sketchy drunk guys. It's really a pain.

Let me give you an example of how that scenario usually goes. Let's say I'm waiting for a cab or the nightbus or something like that it's pretty late at night. I am always sober and I am always surrounded by drunk guys that think a cab stand is the perfect place to meet girls. In this scenario, the guy won't leave me alone. Can't ignore him, he keeps talking to me and won't go away, so I decide to lie through my teeth just to stop him from getting pissed off. Keep in mind this whole exchange is happening in French.

Sketchy Drunk Guy (SDG): You're really pretty. *hiccup* What's your name?
Me: Allison
SDG: Allison...(swaying slightly) are you from Russia? [note: I am not making this up. They ALWAYS ask me if I'm Russian]
Me: No. *looking at my watch like my boyfriend will be arriving any minute*
SDG: Where are you from?
Me: Canada.
SDG: Canada? I know somebody in Canada...*furrowing his brow in intense concentration* Are you from...Montreal?
Me: Yeah.
SDG: See, I knew it...Are you sure you're not from Russia...No...Do you have a boyfriend in Canada?
Me: Yes.
SDG: Oh, that's...that's too bad. Why are you in Paris?
Me: Vacation. *cursing under my breath and praying for the stupid bus to hurry the hell up*
SDG: It's a nice city, nice city...Maybe we could go out some time?
Me: No. I have a boyfriend.
SDG: Pssssh I know that.
Me: [silent]
SDG: Is he Russian too?
Me: Yes. [internal monologue: goddamn stupid frickin bus I'm gonna kill this guy I swear to God I WILL kick him in the balls if he gets any closer]

At which point the bus usually shows up and I attach myself to a group of people speaking English.

Ah, the joys of the Parisian nightlife.

Your moment of zen for the day

2006-01-20T17:42:00.000+01:00

aka the magical bag of wonderfulness

Do yourself a favor and click on this picture. You have to look at it full size to truly appreciate its magical wonderfulness.

Retail therapy...it's good for what ails ya

2006-01-18T13:23:00.000+01:00

Today I am in a much better mood, I am glad to say. I think that the bulk of my hysteria yesterday was a direct result of

a) saying goodbye to Will
b) getting up at 5am to catch my flight
c) airport stress

Now that I've slept for almost 11 hours, I feel much better. I still miss everybody, but I think I'll be ok here for the semester. With better weather and a good night's sleep, Paris doesn't seem quite so bad as it did yesterday. Plus, all the stores are having SALES! It's not the same as it is in the states. There, stores have sales all the time. End of season, semi-annual, after every major holiday, etc. In Paris, sales only happen twice a year, and every single store in the city is on sale at those times. And I just happend to come back right in the middle of one of them. It runs til the end of the first week in February, thereabouts, and most stuff is between 30-50% off. Nice. Of course, I can't really justify buying anything, seeing as I dropped $160 at Ann Taylor when I was in Philly. But you know what I do need?

A bag.

Right now I'm using a $14 street vendor bag that I bought the first week I was in Paris last semester. Considering that it's a knockoff, it's held up remarkably well. The thing is, it's light pink. Well, it used to be. Now it's just dirty. It's pretty filthy, actually, and it's pretty much beyond all help. But that's ok, because I can buy a nice, new bag for pretty cheap. Retail therapy does wonders for the soul.

After I go shopping it'll be time to study for my exam. My final exam for a class I took first semester is tomorrow morning at 9. It really makes no sense, and it basically counts for my entire grade for the course. Fortunately, the professor loves us (me and my friend who is also taking the course), and when the exam is over it goes through our director's magical grade converter. I got my grades for all my other classes this morning (A's all around, heck ya), so I can totally bomb this exam and it really won't affect my GPA at all. I don't think I'll bomb it, though, no worries. Anyway, I'm off to hit the shops now. If i find a wonderful Parisian bag I will post a pic tonight.

Later dudes.

Tiger, tiger

2006-01-15T14:32:00.000+01:00

So, I went to the zoo with Will yesterday. I didn't that that many pictures because it was SO cold. The afternoon was spent dashing from enclosure to enclosure and praying that my fingers wouldn't fall off while they were out of my gloves. I ended up with about 50 shots, and then deleted all but six. This one of the tiger is my favorite.

Ooh, I have another picture to post. This one clearly was not taken at the zoo. This was my Christmas present from Will! It's a non-engagement ring. Just to be clear. Isn't it pretty? Something shiny...hehe.

Playing with the tiger picture in photoshop has put me in a much better mood than I was in when I posted earlier today. I think I might have been spending too much time on the computer, though. This week I've been spending a LOT more time designing kits and fixing photos than I usually do and I think it's making me headache-y. That's not good, especially since I'll have several hours to kill tonight before I go to Will's hockey game, and I was planning on spending it working on my lastest kit. I'm really happy with the way this one is coming out. I actually got the inspiration from an area rug. I really liked the color scheme, so I borrowed it. I was working on a piece of stripey paper when I realized that the color scheme is almost identical to a Burberry scarf. And the name for the kit was born: London Town. I think it's cute, I guess we'll see how it looks when I post it here!

Frustrated!!

2006-01-15T10:46:00.000+01:00

Grrr. That about covers my mood right now. Now why is she in such a bad mood, you might be asking yourself? She's in Europe, living the good life and playing with photoshop! Well, that's part of the problem. I don't have photoshop, I have photoshop ELEMENTS. big difference. As I'm getting more into designing, I'm finding more and more things that would be SO much easier to do with CS2, or that I flat out CAN'T do with elements. Now, you're probably thinking that the reason I can't have PSCS2 is because of the cost. Actually, that's not it, not completely. Yes, it is expensive, but if I saved up I could buy it with a student discount within a couple months, probably. But there's a catch. Even if I bought it, I couldn't use it, because I currently have what I affectionately refer to as "the little laptop that could." I have a G3 ibook...the little baby one. It's a great computer, don't get me wrong, but I've had it for 4 years and it's getting old. On top of that, it just won't support the full version of photoshop. I think my poor little computer would have an e-stroke if I fired up the trial version of CS2 that's been sitting on my desktop for about a week. I think I have to delete it and stop tempting myself. So, bottom line is, CS2 would cost me over $2,000. I've decided that when I buy a new laptop, I'm going big. I currently have my eye on a 17-in refurbished powerbook. *cue drooling* but they're so expensive!! and then the software...ugh. With that said, I would like to announce the creation of the "Buy Alexis a Laptop" fund that is currently open and accepting donations...haha I wish. Just kidding. Unless you really do want to buy me a laptop. lol.

In addition to all this computer stuff, I really don't want to go back to France. I had a fantastic 2 weeks in the states with my family and then went to Germany to spend almost 2 weeks with Will, my boyfriend. On Tuesday I fly back to Paris and he flies to NY to go back to school. He'd like to come and visit me for spring break in March, which would be really awesome, but flights are SO expensive. We'll see, I guess. It would really be great because otherwise I won't see him til June. Even if he can't visit me, I'll still get to see my mom in April, and hopefully my aunt. We're going to have a grand old time eating escargots and drinking wine. That's if I can persuade my mom to even try one. They're really good, I swear! But anyway, I really don't feel like going back to France. First semester was enjoyable but I don't feel the need to extend my stay by another 5 months. France is a nice place to visit but I definitely don't want to live there once my junior year is over. I'm too much of a homebody and I love America too much to ever live anywhere else.

On that note, I must be going. Now that vacation is just about over I should be able to update the blog more often, so keep checking back! God bless the USA! Can't wait to be back there!

Merry Belated Christmas!

2005-12-28T01:06:00.000+01:00

I had a WONDERFUL Christmas. I got a wacom intuos3 4x5 tablet!! I also got some cool paper scrapping stuff, a photography/scrapbooking book, a tripod, and some other nifty stuff. I've been playing with my tablet nonstop ever since I unwrapped it and let me tell you, it is one amazing toy.

I finished my second kit, Powdered Snow. No, I still haven't put up either this one or the first one for download anywhere, but I will soon, I swear! I'm not entirely happy with the paperclips. I realized when I was making the preview that I made the distance of the drop shadow WAY too large and as a result it's really difficult to make them look realistic when they're attached to paper. Of course, I didn't save them individually, but as one large block of paperclips all on one layer, so I can't go back and fix the drop shadows without redoing every single paperclip. Sigh. Well, this is my second kit and I'm sticking to it.

Blinkie, Take 2

2005-12-21T23:29:00.000+01:00

It works!

Home!

2005-12-19T17:02:00.000+01:00

I am HOME! Well, not quite, but I will be by the end of the day. My parents will be picking me up ANYTIME and then we'll be heading back to my house.

The flight yesterday was pretty uneventful except for having a migraine for about five hours of it. Thankfully, I was not on the list of people whose lives customs were going to make miserable by searching their bags yesterday. We went through without a hitch and got in the limo to go back to my friend's house. I felt badly about going to bed an hour after I got there, but a migraine makes it really difficult to socialize. But no worries, I feel so much better now, and I'm going HOME!!

Blinkie

2005-12-16T12:28:00.000+01:00

I made a blinkie this morning to use in my sig line at the various scrapping sites I go to. Isn't it cute? Simple, but cute.

so apparently the blinkie doesn't blink. sorry. it's much cuter if you can actually see the entire thing. i'll have to work on that.

My First Kit!

2005-12-15T20:17:00.000+01:00

I finished the preview for my first kit. It's not available anywhere yet, but I'll probably be posting it somewhere soon. I'll put up a link as soon as it's available for download. Comments are welcome, as it is my first attempt at designing.

Sick Days and Paper Clips

2005-12-15T17:57:00.000+01:00

I stayed home sick from school today. I was only supposed to have two classes, one of which was a party since we took our final exam on Monday, so it wasn't that big of a deal. This means that I'm done with class for the semester!! I am currently studying abroad in Paris, and I fly back to the States on Sunday. I cannot wait!! This past week has gone by soooo quickly. Today has sort of dragged, but I guess that's to be expected when you feel crummy.

On the upside, however, I was able to spend just about the whole day, when I wasn't sleeping, playing in photoshop elements and designing my own digital stuff. I made a monumental discovery (those of you who are even remotely familiar with photoshop will laugh about this). I have been spending the past week trying to figure out how to draw a paperclip by hand (or touchpad, as the case may be). It is impossible for me. I tried everything...making circles and trying to trace around half of it, attempting it freehand, and so many other things that flat out didn't work and resulted in stunted, mutated little paperclips that looked like they had spent some time in an oven. I had all but given up hope when I was scrolling through the custom shapes and I found...a paperclip! Wow. Let me tell you, that is a LOT easier. So here's my advice: make sure you've looked at ALL the shapes before you laboriously try to draw one pixel by pixel. They're a smart bunch at Adobe, they are.

So following that amazing discovery, I flew into action and made a grand total of two paperclips before my attention wandered and I decided to write this blog entry. I decided it would be good to have a blog because it's a good way to chronicle my progress as a designer and a way for my family to stay up to date on what I'm doing. I have been very, very bad about returning emails this semester, I admit it. I'm quite sure that I can commit to regular blog entries more easily than to sending out group emails regularly. This is much easier because although it is meant for other people to read, I write for myself. If someone isn't interested, that's fine, skip to the next post or what have you. But this is my space and I can do whatever I want with it! So there!

Anyway, that's enough for now. I hope you all like my banner and that you can actually see it as there seemed to be some problems with that yesterday. And just for the record....à la mode does NOT refer to ice cream. Yes, that's what it generally means in the states, but in this case it means "in fashion." I just chose the name because it's French (which seems appropriate since I am in Paris, for the time being) and it sounds cool...say it a few times, don't you agree?

Scrap à la mode.

Welcome.