[Updated to correct the horrible spelling errors] Every vacation has some down days, and the past two have been like that for me. Perhaps I’m just getting tired of the foreign-ness of everything (especially here, where I can’t speak the language), perhaps it’s the days getting shorter, perhaps it’s not having enough intellectual challenge without the class, or perhaps I just miss Paris, I’m not sure. Yesterday we went into […]
On Monday we left Paris and traveled to Porto, Portugal. Our travel day wasn’t the best; everything was long — the RER train to CDG took for ever, EasyJet’s computers were on the fritz, which meant that we spent almost an hour in line to check in, the plane did one of those “load and then sit on the tarmac” things, which added an hour to the total travel time, […]
On Saturday morning, we followed what has become our Saturday morning routine: Sleep in a bit, drink lots of coffee while lying in bed reading Le Monde, then put on our sneakers and gym shorts and take a run. Suzie found an excellent route, which takes us past two sets of long stairs, which we go up and down four times each, then into Parc Montsouris, then into the Cite […]
It’s always easy to take whatever it is you have in your life for granted. This weekend, I had just the opposite experience. I realized just how good I’ve got it. It started on Thursday afternoon. Suzie had to do some “real” work (i.e., work for which she would be paid in real money, rather than in personal-satisfaction credits), so after having a quick lunch with some of my classmates […]
More evidence that McCain’s selection of Sarah Palin as his running mate was perhaps the single worst Presidential campaign decision ever made, this story from the New York Times: Who was the highest paid individual in Senator John McCain’s presidential campaign during the first half of October as it headed down the homestretch? Not Randy Scheunemann, Mr. McCain’s chief foreign policy adviser; not Nicolle Wallace, his senior communications staffer. It […]
This today from the Pew Research Center: Only 11% of Americans are satisfied with the way things are going in the U.S. today, which is the lowest figure ever recorded. Here’s a graph of the trend. By the way, who are these 11% of people who are satisfied with the way things are going nowadays? Also today from the Pew Center, especially for my friend Jill, additional confirmation that Republicans […]
I went to the Franprix just down the block this afternoon to get a few groceries. I had a problem buying apples. Most grocery stores in France require you to weigh fruit or vegetables that are sold by the kilo at a electronic scale, which then spits out an adhesive price tag that you stick on the outside of the plastic bag holding the fruits or vegetables. To get the […]
I went to the office of La Poste on Rue d’Alésia and mailed my ballot on Monday. Even though I am solidly in the center of the political spectrum, this decision was not even a close one. Thinking about my decision, I realize that it was based on three separate but related fundamental notions. Trite and tired and cliched, maybe, but a big part of my decision was grounded in […]
Silly, funny, and slightly scary and sad poll this weekend in the Femina supplement to the French paper Le Journal du Dimanche. The poll, carried out by the French polling firm Institut français d’opinion publique (IFOP), asked 1006 people in France various questions about the United States. Not all the news was terribly bad; for example, 62% of the French (and 68% of those under 35) said they appreciated the […]