Thursday, September 20, 2007 - 11:41 PM
the longest summer of all time
"Is it just me," I asked, "or has this been the longest summer of all time?"
"You've gone everywhere and done everything. I think it might just be you."
Nonsense! I still have so much going and doing to do. As my friends plan to take leave from wherever they are and re-congregate back at school on Monday, here I am contemplating: getting up early to take Mieka to the airport tomorrow, the gelato I ate tonight (fourth this week? I'm awful), and to a large degree the work I will be cracking down on when Monday comes and I, too, will do the whole back-to-school (en français, la rentrée) thing, albeit under self-enforcement. My summer vacation is about to be over in a big way, and it's time to read read read and write write write so I can return to school with a respectable amount of stuff done. I would also like to take the GRE before I leave Paris. I know that sounds like a downer, but like most students at the end of summer, I'm feeling that familiar sense of readiness, something that would seem so inconceivable at the beginning of the summer but come so naturally in September. Except this time I won't be waiting in long lines at the Seminary Co-op or playing Super Smash Bros. in the last few hours of glory before classes start or kicking rocks down the path past the Botany Pond. I'll be doing that stuff again in January, but for now it's just me, the city of Paris which is just as wonderful as I could ever want... and the library.
And did I mention I got a library card? Not a regular library card-- see, the closest library to me is the Bibliothèque Historique de la Ville de Paris, which is a "bibliothèque specialisée" with lots of oooooold archives pertaining to the city's history. So you have to be 18 to use it and get a reader card and everything, which I did once before when I did research at Berkeley's archival library last winter so I more or less knew how it worked. Which is good because getting a card turned out to be my first experience navigating a semi-bureaucratic system in a foreign language in a foreign country. Fun! And of course I needed a photo, and of course I don't carry ID photos of myself, so of course I had to walk to the métro and take some photos Amélie-style, and of course I didn't have change, so of course I had to go to the store and buy myself a chocolate bar. Poor me.
Anyway, the machine tells you not to smile and to make a "neutral face" so I mostly look frightened, disoriented, or like a pod person, or like a frightened disoriented pod person (with very reflective glasses):
After all that, though, the library is awesome! I will tell you more about it later. For now talking about this is kind of boring me and therefore probably you, so to make up for it here are some pictures of crabs in a neighborhood we ate in yesterday, with a lot of Greek restaurants in it. The one with the bubbles is bubbling because IT'S STILL ALIVE OH MAN
¶ 
"You've gone everywhere and done everything. I think it might just be you."
Nonsense! I still have so much going and doing to do. As my friends plan to take leave from wherever they are and re-congregate back at school on Monday, here I am contemplating: getting up early to take Mieka to the airport tomorrow, the gelato I ate tonight (fourth this week? I'm awful), and to a large degree the work I will be cracking down on when Monday comes and I, too, will do the whole back-to-school (en français, la rentrée) thing, albeit under self-enforcement. My summer vacation is about to be over in a big way, and it's time to read read read and write write write so I can return to school with a respectable amount of stuff done. I would also like to take the GRE before I leave Paris. I know that sounds like a downer, but like most students at the end of summer, I'm feeling that familiar sense of readiness, something that would seem so inconceivable at the beginning of the summer but come so naturally in September. Except this time I won't be waiting in long lines at the Seminary Co-op or playing Super Smash Bros. in the last few hours of glory before classes start or kicking rocks down the path past the Botany Pond. I'll be doing that stuff again in January, but for now it's just me, the city of Paris which is just as wonderful as I could ever want... and the library.
And did I mention I got a library card? Not a regular library card-- see, the closest library to me is the Bibliothèque Historique de la Ville de Paris, which is a "bibliothèque specialisée" with lots of oooooold archives pertaining to the city's history. So you have to be 18 to use it and get a reader card and everything, which I did once before when I did research at Berkeley's archival library last winter so I more or less knew how it worked. Which is good because getting a card turned out to be my first experience navigating a semi-bureaucratic system in a foreign language in a foreign country. Fun! And of course I needed a photo, and of course I don't carry ID photos of myself, so of course I had to walk to the métro and take some photos Amélie-style, and of course I didn't have change, so of course I had to go to the store and buy myself a chocolate bar. Poor me.
Anyway, the machine tells you not to smile and to make a "neutral face" so I mostly look frightened, disoriented, or like a pod person, or like a frightened disoriented pod person (with very reflective glasses):
After all that, though, the library is awesome! I will tell you more about it later. For now talking about this is kind of boring me and therefore probably you, so to make up for it here are some pictures of crabs in a neighborhood we ate in yesterday, with a lot of Greek restaurants in it. The one with the bubbles is bubbling because IT'S STILL ALIVE OH MAN
¶